Chips, fragments and vestiges by Gail Hamilton :: :: University of Virginia Library

Gold, and gear, and storied birthright—take the gilded trumpery up!
Life may bring me gall and wormwood, but I scorn your honeyed cup.
Meekness lends its graceful semblance as you come with bended knee,
But I read your inmost soul and I know its mockery.

O your white hands, diamond-flashing, they will clasp my hand forsooth!
You will condescend to give your name in barter for my youth.

189

At your footstool I shall gladly lay my panting spirit down;
You will stoop and place the jewel somewhat kindly, in your crown!

Long the doubt has been, and bitter was the trial to your pride.
Should you, through those gray old portals, lead a nameless, dowerless bride?
Should the blood to you transmitted in a pure, untainted flow
Through a thousand generations, now a base admixture know?

Uprose Love and showed the maiden as you saw her day by day;
How the sunshine of her presence wrought red gold of coarsest clay.
How her genial mirth would play about the summits of your life
And her grateful love repay you that you stooped to call her wife.

Thus in the quivering scales uncertain did you watch with clear, calm eye,
Until Reason bade remember how the years glide noiseless by.

190

Pride is but a flimsy blanket when a frost is on the panes.
Pride is but unsavory porridge when a chill is in the veins.

So you breathed a requiescat to the dead within their graves:
“Blood is strong, but love is stronger; blood claims service, love makes slaves.”
Thus with smiling self-excuse straight swung back my garden gate—
Soothing Pride's Cerberean mouths with the home-made sop of fate.

Truly a right princely lover, come to woo a lowly maid:
Rather of consent than question were the untremulous words you said.
Certes, maiden whom you honored with your choice were over-blest.
Loveliest rose would leave its stem to bloom upon such knightly breast.

Listen! When we stood last evening underneath the apple-tree
And you in your self-complacence dared to speak those words to me,

191

Dared invade my throbbing summer with your pale and nerveless cold—
Dared to set your tawdry tinsel off against my beaten gold—

Though my heart flamed out in passion sweeping round you as you stood,
Flinging up your puny soul blindly to my womanhood—
Yet I spared you for the past's sake, thinking it were better so—
Bade my white lips hide their scorning and respond a kindly “no.”

Blind! you would not be contented with the simple words I spoke,
For the three-fold brazen armor of your pride turned back the stroke,
But must goad my slender patience with your weak essays to win—
Though I stab you to the heart, shall my soul be free from sin!

Listen! I, the lowly maiden with obscure hand scarcely meet
But to touch the golden sceptre held out to me at your feet—

192

I have weighed you in the balance; righteous judgment kept control;
Weighed your manhood, found you wanting; and I scorn you, soul to soul.

Well I know your wooded acres and your sea-ward stretching fields—
All the pomp and honor blazoned on your old heraldric shields;
But Alcides' club was valiant only in Alcides' hand—
Brave Excalibur untempered till the true Prince drew the brand.

Did the whole earth stretch before you, one ancestral pleasure-park;
Mountain heaps of golden treasures coined for you in caverns dark;
All your palace flaming ruby, every portal wrought of pearl—
Kay was but the son of Antour—were you any less a churl?

Well I mind me of the poem that you read one August morn,
How Pleione's god-like daughter wedded with the base earth-born—
How her star shone dimly after, passion-paling out of view,
You have read to little purpose if I make the story true.

193

Haughty? Were you humbled plough-boy, horny hands embrowned with toil,
Scanty life for soul and body wresting from a surly soil,
And an honest heart had proffered with its silent deeps all stirred—
Baby-breath should not be softer than my sorely-smiting word.

Never yet a loyal soul brought true homage unto me
That I did not pour libations to Love's grand humility.
Love for love may not be granted, nor by menace, nor by ruth,
But I shamed my mother's bosom if I gave not truth for truth.

Truth for truth? yea, truth for falsehood, truth for tinsel, truth for you,
Who her royal port and vesture in your grim halls never knew.
But your satin words are insult: shall I spare you sharpest pain?
All your honor is dishonor: what is meeter than disdain?

Wherefore prate of summer mornings musical with lute and song?
Do not airs from “Puritani” make a summer day less long?

194

Rippling laughter in the pauses—was it never heard before?
Did I blush and smile for you, sir? So I did for twenty more.

But in singing, did I ever sing my mother's songs to you?
Did a silver silence ever fall upon us with the dew?
Did we ever wander vaguely from the commonplace of speech?
Or the soul scale higher ranges than the tongue essayed to reach?

If I frolic in the garden with my keen-eyed pointer here
Would it justify his claiming to be recognized my peer?
On the banners of my jesting to all common eyes unfurled,
Shall be read the Open Sesame to my divinest world?

Faith, born of self-adulation, holds in store but inward smart,
You could move me, but not sway me—while my time, not touch my heart.
If in your blind eye-worship some dim phantom passed before you
Must I vindicate my righteousness by kneeling to adore you?

195

Go your way. The world is wider than that you and I should tend
With unequal steps discordant down one pathway to the end.
Leave me, if so be the silence soothe me to a calmer state,
Leave me, lest with petty urgence, my indifference turn to hate.

June's young roses, clasp above me—twine around me—hide my pain.
Murmuring music, lull my senses; subtle odors, pierce my brain.
O to sleep a hundred cycles if the guerdon they should bring
Were a thrill along my pulses at the coming of the King!