Where Hymen’s torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a whore.
XVIII
Hard words—harsh truth! a truth which many know.
Enough.—The faithful and the fairy pair,
Who never found a single hour too slow,
What was it made them thus exempt from care?
Young innate feelings all have felt below,
Which perish in the rest, but in them were
Inherent—what we mortals call romantic,
And always envy, though we deem it frantic.
XIX
This is in others a factitious state,
An opium dream363 of too much youth and reading,
But was in them their nature or their fate:
No novels e’er had set their young hearts bleeding,364
For Haidée’s knowledge was by no means great,
And Juan was a boy of saintly breeding;
So that there was no reason for their loves
More than for those of nightingales or doves.
XX
They gazed upon the sunset; ’tis an hour
Dear unto all, but dearest to their eyes,
For it had made them what they were: the power
Of Love had first o’erwhelmed them from such skies,
When Happiness had been their only dower,
And Twilight saw them linked in Passion’s ties;
Charmed with each other, all things charmed that brought
The past still welcome as the present thought.
XXI
I know not why, but in that hour to-night,
Even as they gazed, a sudden tremor came,
And swept, as ’twere, across their hearts’ delight,
Like the wind o’er a harp-string, or a flame,
When one is shook in sound, and one in sight:
And thus some boding flashed through either frame,
And called from Juan’s breast a faint low sigh,
While one new tear arose in Haidée’s eye.
XXII
That large black prophet eye seemed to dilate
And follow far the disappearing sun,
As if their last day of a happy date
With his broad, bright, and dropping orb were gone;
Juan gazed on her as to ask his fate—
He felt a grief, but knowing cause for none,
His glance inquired of hers for some excuse
For feelings causeless, or at least abstruse.
XXIII
She turned to him, and smiled, but in that sort
Which makes not others smile; then turned aside:
Whatever feeling shook her, it seemed short,
And mastered by her wisdom or her pride;
When Juan spoke, too—it might be in sport—
Of this their mutual feeling, she replied—
“If it should be so—but—it cannot be—
Or I at least shall not survive to see.”
XXIV
Juan would question further, but she pressed
His lip to hers, and silenced him with this,
And then dismissed the omen from her breast,
Defying augury with that fond kiss;
And no doubt of all methods ’tis the best:
Some people prefer wine—’tis not amiss;
I have tried both—so those who would a part take
May choose between the headache and the heartache.
XXV
One of the two, according to your choice,
Woman or wine, you’ll have to undergo;
Both maladies are taxes on our joys:
But which to choose, I really hardly know;
And if I had to give a casting voice,
For both sides I could many reasons show,
And then decide, without great wrong to either,
It were much better to have both than neither.
XXVI
Juan and Haidée gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mixed all feelings—friend, child, lover, brother—
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are poured in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
XXVII
Mixed in each other’s arms, and heart in heart,
Why did they not then die?—they had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong;
The World was not for them—nor the World’s art
For beings passionate as Sappho’s song;
Love was born with them, in them, so intense,
It was their very Spirit—not a sense.
XXVIII
They should have lived together deep in woods,
Unseen as sings the nightingale;365 they were
Unfit to mix in these thick solitudes
Called social, haunts of Hate, and Vice, and Care:366
How lonely every freeborn creature broods!
The sweetest song-birds nestle in a pair;
The eagle soars alone; the gull and crow
Flock o’er their carrion, just like men below.
XXIX
Now pillowed cheek to cheek, in loving sleep,
Haidée and Juan their siesta took,
A gentle slumber, but it was not deep,
For ever and anon a something shook
Juan, and shuddering o’er his frame would creep;
And Haidée’s sweet lips murmured like a brook
A wordless music, and her face so fair
Stirred with her dream, as rose-leaves with the air.367
XXX
Or as the stirring of a deep clear stream
Within an Alpine hollow, when the wind
Walks o’er it, was she shaken by the dream,
The mystical Usurper of the mind—
O’erpowering us to be whate’er may seem
Good to the soul which we no more can bind;
Strange state of being! (for ’tis still to be)
Senseless to feel, and with sealed eyes to see.368
XXXI
She dreamed of being alone on the sea-shore,
Chained to a rock; she knew not how, but stir
She could not from the spot, and the loud roar
Grew, and each wave rose roughly, threatening her;
And o’er her upper lip they seemed to pour,
Until she sobbed for breath, and soon they were
Foaming o’er her lone head, so fierce and high—
Each broke to drown her, yet she could not die.
XXXII
Anon—she was released, and then she strayed
O’er the sharp shingles with her bleeding feet,
And stumbled almost every step she made:
And something rolled before her in a sheet,
Which she must still pursue howe’er afraid:
’Twas white and indistinct, nor stopped to meet
Her glance nor grasp, for still she gazed and grasped,
And ran, but it escaped her as she clasped.
XXXIII
The dream changed:—in a cave369 she stood, its walls
Were hung with marble icicles; the work
Of
