University of Virginia Library

Canto 6

Then she to him with lingering eyes of dew:
“Far be it from me that I come between
Thee and thy aged father and mother old
Who pine for thee beside the unanswering wave,
And unresponding billow: then thou art
Their only son; no other to console,
No daughter to put arms about their neck,
And whisper sweet untruths with good intent;
For often a girl may to the heart convey
Comfort in ways not understood of men.
Then as thou sayest, dread uncertainty
Far worse than actual shock of sudden truth.
I would not intervene to break the past
And shatter all those holy memories.
But then! O then! If thou shouldst leave me quite,
Forgive me, Gilbert, that I can but think
A little of the life forlorn to be.
Ere I had met thee, simple were my days
And if tranquillity be happiness,
Then was I happy; for the simple toil
That calls an Eastern maiden to her task
Was all-sufficient; to and fro I went
And my grave father pleased, and that I pleased
Was all my life; little to me he spoke,
And never of the matters of the heart;
Since in the East a maid secluded lives,
Walled in; and exiled and deaf and blind and dumb;
So that I had no audience but the stars,
Nor any close companion but the moon.
Then! Then! When West broke in upon the East,
Then languid thou wast carried to this house,
And suffering, with strange and alien eyes
Thou didst regard me mistily and mute,
Then by thy coming all my life did cease,
For a new splendour burst upon my soul.
It was not thou, but all that thou didst mean,
O breaker of a silence as of tombs!
O hurler of a bolt from serene skies!
Thou, thou didst pluck the veil from off my face,
Aye, and the deeper veil from off my soul.
Then I began to breathe, to move and live,
And the sweet stirring of a vaster life
Caught at my heart and like to coming spring,
With a wild ache and odour streamed on me.
I had been so enfolded till that hour,
That the first falling dew of thee was pain,
Pain and yet joy; a light, yet not a light,
A light that made my darkness yet more dark.
And when I came to minister to thee,
The solace that I gave thee made more deep
What I had dreamed ere to thy couch I came.
To hover o'er thee, to suppress each sound,
To see that silence sweetly was observed
And that no voice broke in too harsh on thee;
These, all these duties added to my flame,
And made that active which till now had slept.
The placing of a pillow at thy head,
The bringing of a cool draught to thy lips,
To ease thee in the hot and fiery night,
These tasks but fed like fuel silent fire.
And after, when thou hadst the strength to speak,
In broken whisper, then in stammering tongue,
Which soon our Eastern music and our words
Learned to pronounce; when of a different land,
Of distant sun, and glooms of heavy dew,
Of peaceful farms, and wandering cattle thou
Didst give me the strange picture, I have wept,
I know not why, but still so sweet it seemed.
So thou becam'st to me more than thyself
An image of the half-world yet unseen,
And in deep night I felt thy claims arise
Over the English graves and English fields.
Such hast thou been to me! Ah not, believe,
Merely a human being but lying crowned
With mystery of gardens and of grass,
And shivering trees, and birds invisible,
And with the strange spray of a solemn sea.
For never the great sea have I beheld
But in thy words, never the thousand ships,
Nor heard the bursting billow at midnight.
O, thou hast sung to me from thy sick bed
Of Wonder and of things beyond my ken,
A messenger from other worlds art thou,
And ah! I cannot lose thee, let thee go,
No not for father's or for mother's sake,
For going thou dost take away my dreams,
My very being and breath, all which I late
Have learned of the great world in which we dwell.
O Gilbert, wheresoever thou goest I go,
And if I aid or can contrive escape,
Dear, leave me not behind! I should but pine,
And wither slowly to an Eastern grave.
Then should my father say to me ‘My child,
What ails thee?’ Or some man of medicine call,
Fool, with his herbs and drugs to make me well.
Then dying to my father I perchance
Would speak, and ‘Father,’ weakly I would say,
‘Since he hath gone, the life in me is gone,
With his departing I am lone and lost.
Ah, if thou wouldst my breath revisit me,
Call him again over the foreign sea,
Else I shall go without him to my grave.’”