Upon thy tongue he interrupted?
Was there?—
A tale out of the poets, about love,
And happiness and sorrow, and such things.
But I forget such things when thou art by.
Besides, I asked him here again, to-night,
Here, at this hour; and he is punctual.
In truth, then, I despair of hearing it.
He keeps his word relentlessly. With not
More pride an Indian shows his foeman’s scalp
Than he his watch for punctuality.
But tales of love are far more readily
Made than remembered.
Tell-tale, make one, then.
Love is the art of hearts and heart of arts.
Conjunctive looks and interjectional sighs
Are its vocabulary’s greater half.
Well then, my story says, there was a pair
Of Lovers, once—
Once! nay, how singular!
But where they lived indeed I quite forget;—
Say anywhere—say here: their names were—I
Forget those, too; say any one’s, say ours.
Most probable, most pertinent, so far!
The lady was, of course, most beautiful,
And made her lover do just as she pleased;
And consequently, he did very wrong.
They met, sang, walked, talked folly, just as all
Such couples do, adored each other; thought,
Spoke, wrote, dreamed of and for nought on earth
Except themselves; and so on.
Pray proceed!—
That’s all;
Oh, no!
Well, thus the tale ends; stay!
No, I cannot remember nor invent.
Do think!
I can’t.
Oh then, I don’t like that:
’Tis not in earnest.
Well, in earnest, then.
She did but look upon him, and his blood
Blushed deeper even from his inmost heart;
For at each glance of those sweet eyes a soul
Looked forth as from the azure gates of Heaven;
She laid her finger on him, and he felt
As might a formless mass of marble feel
While feature after feature of a god
Were being wrought from out of it. She spake,
And his love-wildered and idolatrous soul
Clung to the airy music of her words,
Like a bird on a bough, high swaying in the wind.
He looked upon her beauty and forgot,
As in a sense of drowning, all things else;
And right and wrong seemed one, seemed nothing she
Was beauty, and that beauty everything.
He looked upon her as the sun on earth:
Until, like him, he gazed himself away
From Heaven so doing till he even wept—
Wept on her bosom as a storm-charged cloud
Weeps itself out upon a hill, and cried—
I, too, could look on thee until I wept—
Blind me with kisses! let me look no longer;
Or change the action of thy loveliness,
Lest long same-seemingness should send me mad!—
Blind me with kisses; I would ruin sight
To give its virtue to thy lips, whereon
I would die now, or ever live; and she,
Soft as a feather-footed cloud on Heaven,
While her sad face grew bright like night with stars,
Would turn her brow to his and both be happy;—
Numbered among the constellations they!—
Then as tired wanderer, snow-blinded, sinks
And swoons upon the swelling drift, and dies,
So on her dazzling bosom would he lay
His famished lips, and end their travels there.
Oh, happy they! not he would go to Heaven,
Not, though he might that moment.
Nor I now.
Helen, my love!
Yes, I am here.
It has
Been such a day as that, thou knowest, when first
I said t loved thee; that long, sunny day
We passed upon the waters—heeding nought,
Seeing nought but each other.
I remember.
The only wise thing that I ever did—
The only good, was to love thee, and therefore
I would have no one else as wise as I,
Didst thou not say that student would be here?
I think I hear him every minute come.
It is not kind. We should be more alone.
There was a time thou wouldst have no one else.
Am I not with thee all day?
Yes, I know;
But often and often thou art thinking not
Of me.
My good child!—
Well, I know thou lovest me;
And so I cannot bear thee to think, speak,
Or be with any but me.
Then I will not.
Oh, thou wouldst promise me the clock round. Now,
Promise me this—that I shall never die,
And I’ll believe thee when I am dead—not till.
But let it pass. I am at peace with thee;
And pardon thee, and give thee leave to live.
Magnanimous!
When earth, and Heaven, and all
Things seem so bright and lovely for our sakes,
It is a sin not to be happy. See,
The moon is up, it is the dawn of night.
Stands by her side one bold, bright, steady star—
Star of her heart, and heir to all her light,
Whereon she looks so proudly mild and calm,
As though she were the mother of that star,
And knew he was a chief sun in his sphere,
But by her side, in the great strife of lights
To shine to God, he had filially failed,
And hid his arrows and his bow of beams.
Mother of stars! the Heavens look up to thee.
They shine the brighter but to hide thy waning;
They wait and wane for thee to enlarge thy beauty;
They give thee all their glory night by night;
Their number makes not less thy loneliness
Nor loveliness.
Heaven’s beauty grows on us;
And when the elder worlds have ta’en their seats,
Come the divine ones, gathering one by one,
And family by family, with still
And holy air, into the house of God—
The house of light He hath builded for Himself,
And worship Him in silence and in sadness,
Immortal and immovable. And there,
Night after night, they meet to worship God.
For us this witness of the worlds is given,
That we may add ourselves to their great glory,
And worship with them. They are there for lights
To light us on our way through Heaven to God;
And we, too, have the power of light in us.
Ye stars, how bright ye shine, to night; mayhap
Ye are the resurrection of the worlds—
Glorified globes of light! Shall ours be like ye?
Nay, but it is! this wild, dark earth of ours,
Whose face is furrowed like a losing gamester’s,
Is shining round, and bright, and smooth in air,
Millions of miles off. Not a single path
Of thought I tread, but
