University of Virginia Library

I had not thought that severance from her side
Aught but a bitter pang could ever be;
Yet this—the first time flowing seas divide
My days from hers, since that great day when we
To one another all at once became,
The sole man I, and the sole woman she,
Of a new world where nothing is the same
As in the world that was,—ev'n separation
Reveals an unanticipated bliss,
And all its pains find more than compensation
In our completer intercourse. It is
That for the first time also we can write
Each to the other now without restraint
Or insecurity. 'Twas in the sight
Of others only that, while breathing still
The same air, and still treading the same soil,
We met; save rarely, when our simple skill
Was helped by some strong favouring chance to foil
The dragons of my heart's Hesperides.
And then the newness of our own desires
That would not suffer joy to be at ease,
And thoughts that, as along electric wires,
Flash'd none but brief and broken messages
Because the stint o' the costly time forbade
Love's longed-for luxury of full utterance—all
These interferences with freedom made
Our meetings marred, and mingled drops of gall
With the spoilt honey of their sweetest hours.
But now such furtive signs and hurried hints
Of feelings prison-bound by hindering powers
Find confirmation nothing checks or stints
In the full-flowing fearless tenderness
Of written words, wherein the loaded heart
Loosens the long-pent and importunate stress
Of its dear burden. Absence, too, presents
A power (how often wished!) to stand apart
A little while from this new past of ours,
This past so brief, so recently begun,
Scarce older than the rose of August's bowers,
And yet so full already of events,
So rich in marvels and in memories!
And, thus, released from time's embarrassments,
To sort and set in order one by one
Its crowded treasures, with undazzled eyes
Their wealth explore and realise as true
Those bright confused experiences that seemed
Whilst still so all-bewilderingly new
No surer than the sense of sweet things dreamed.
Until, mere jumbled heaps of gems no more,
But gem by gem in shining sequence spread,
Love in lone hours may tell his rosary o'er
Nor miss one bead from memory's golden thread.
Heart's heart of mine! Till life's last lingering ray
Will it not light us, though its sun be set,
That day of days, our memorablest day
Among the woods and ruins? Our lips met
The first time then. 'Twas you that led the way,
Which only you of all our number knew,
For strangers to the land both I and they.
The others followed us. I walked with you.
And as we went you told me legends gay
Of the dead rulers of those ruins green,
Counts of the Coast who there held royal sway
In the land's old time. All breezy bright had been
The days till now; but this was silvery grey
And soft and still. The path you led us wound
Along low brambled copses glimmering white
With giant hemlock. At the last we found
A sudden clearing where the hill was quite
Unwooded. Ruin'd walls were tumbled round
Bare slopes of grass, and naught beyond in sight
But woods whose purple belts the prospect bound
Beneath us and about us, left and right.
Poised on the sky-line of a little mound
You looked and listened, and your woodland eyes
Deepened, and from your lips came rippling clear
A short quick laugh. “Our friends are, I surmise,
Still far behind us. Let us wait them here!”
You said, and down you sat upon the ground,
And I beside you. From the invisible sea
Came to us a long lone melancholy sound.
Else, all was still; the hills the woods and we;
Stiller than sleep. I heard as in a swound
My own heart beat while side by side we sat
So silent. All your drooping face was drown'd
In a rosy glow. You loosed your mouse-grey hat
And where you laid it low upon your knee
Round it I tried to wreathe—I know not what,
Some long --- weed. You shook your brown curls free,
And made an effort vain to smoothe them flat,
And laughed again, but would not look at me.
Then we began to talk of this and that
In lifeless tones. Our thoughts from all we said
And all the scene that we were gazing at
Were far away. But we had grown afraid
Of silence. You were plucking tufts of grass,
And strewing them about you blade by blade.
I mused—“How oft may it have come to pass
That just where we are sitting here, we two,
The ruins round us, and the revelling mass
Of the proud woods above us and below,
And the sea's voice familiar yet forlorn
Heard on the stillness, others sat before
In the unreckon'd years ere we were born?
How often, too, when we shall be no more,
Will others on the wood-girt hillside here
Again sit talking, while the day goes by,
As we are talking now—as vainly near,
As falsely far, with an inaudible sigh
Between them! Others, ignorant of our case,
Full of their own, and only moved thereby,
Yet haply moved like us by thoughts too dear
For utterance; and like us,—at least like me,
Babbling about the features of this place
Albeit as heedless of them as can be;
Talking for talk's sake only, who the while
Can only think of—”

There you raised your face,
And full on mine you turn'd it suddenly
With swimming eyes and half heart-broken smile
Low murmuring “Only think of—what?”

But I
Was silence-struck. Vain verbiage, brought to bay
Abruptly by the sharp reality,
Grovell'd with inarticulate disgrace
Dumfounded: Not a word more could I say.
And shudderingly, all resistance vain,
Like things caught up, and seized, and swept away
By the unconquerable hurricane,
We rushed together with a faint wild cry,
Closed in a mute embrace that present, past,
And future Love made boundless to engirth.
How long did those transcendent moments last?
Enough to metamorphose heaven and earth
And both our lives, whose old world vanishing fast
Reveal'd a new world glowing into birth.
When pillow'd on my breast lay, pale, supine,
The passion-tranced submissive loveliness
Of your surrender'd beautiful soft face
Breathing faint bliss, with lips upturn'd to mine
Half open, lids half closed; and I could trace
In the deep languors of those longlash'd eyes,
Reveal'd at last, the whole pathetic tale
Of all the martyrdoms, the agonies,
The pangs and rendings such a soul as yours,
Before it suffers passion to prevail,
In its resistance to the fierce surprise
Of love's invasion, silently endures;
Then I remember'd that throughout it all,
That time of dread suspicions, and fierce throes,
And proud revolts, and warnings augural
Of evil, I, your poor friend, who Heaven knows
Would, if he thus might spare you love's least ache,
Or win you any blessing peace bestows,
Have roll'd in Tophet's flame-pits for your sake,
Must all that woeful while have been by those
Ill-ominous denunciators made
To wear the semblance of your worst of foes,
The man of whom you should be most afraid,
His love, a wrong your pride must needs resent,
His presence your young life's most menacing
And deadliest danger: and yet none the less,
Even when your heart most fear'd that dreaded thing,
The shamed acknowledgment of love's success,
Even when your brave soul was the most intent
To save a noble pride from the distress
Of arms surrender'd in a noble strife,
That peerless perfect sense of justice blent
With all the instincts of a high-born heart,
Held fast; nor ever did you stoop to vent
The trouble that was torturing your own life
On me, the cause of it. No peevish start
Of sudden coldness meant to mystify
The man who loved you; no attempt to gain
Respite for doubt by even the smallest lie;
No unjust word; no cruel feminine art
Of self-protection practised in disdain
Of love's good faith.