Angel in the House | Page 9

the veil'd moon of nuptial love.?Who is the happy husband? He
Who, scanning his unwedded life,?Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
'Twas faithful to his future wife.
IV.--VENUS VICTRIX.
Fatal in force, yet gentle in will,
Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,?For, like the kindly lodestone, still
She's drawn herself by what she attracts.
THE VIOLETS.
1
I went not to the Dean's unbid:
I would not have my mystery,?From her so delicately hid,
The guess of gossips at their tea.?A long, long week, and not once there,
Had made my spirit sick and faint,?And lack-love, foul as love is fair,
Perverted all things to complaint.?How vain the world had grown to be!
How mean all people and their ways,?How ignorant their sympathy,
And how impertinent their praise;?What they for virtuousness esteem'd,
How far removed from heavenly right;?What pettiness their trouble seem'd,
How undelightful their delight;?To my necessity how strange
The sunshine and the song of birds;?How dull the clouds' continual change,
How foolishly content the herds;?How unaccountable the law
Which bade me sit in blindness here,?While she, the sun by which I saw,
Shed splendour in an idle sphere!?And then I kiss'd her stolen glove,
And sigh'd to reckon and define?The modes of martyrdom in love,
And how far each one might be mine.?I thought how love, whose vast estate
Is earth and air and sun and sea,?Encounters oft the beggar's fate,
Despised on score of poverty;?How Heaven, inscrutable in this,
Lets the gross general make or mar?The destiny of love, which is
So tender and particular;?How nature, as unnatural
And contradicting nature's source,?Which is but love, seems most of all
Well-pleased to harry true love's course;?How, many times, it comes to pass
That trifling shades of temperament,?Affecting only one, alas,
Not love, but love's success prevent;?How manners often falsely paint
The man; how passionate respect,?Hid by itself, may bear the taint
Of coldness and a dull neglect;?And how a little outward dust
Can a clear merit quite o'ercloud,?And make her fatally unjust,
And him desire a darker shroud;?How senseless opportunity
Gives baser men the better chance;?How powers, adverse else, agree
To cheat her in her ignorance;?How Heaven its very self conspires
With man and nature against love,?As pleased to couple cross desires,
And cross where they themselves approve.?Wretched were life, if the end were now!
But this gives tears to dry despair,?Faith shall be blest, we know not how,
And love fulfill'd, we know not where.
2
While thus I grieved, and kiss'd her glove,
My man brought in her note to say,?Papa had hid her send his love,
And would I dine with them next day??They had learn'd and practised Purcell's glee,
To sing it by to-morrow night.?The Postscript was: Her sisters and she
Inclosed some violets, blue and white;?She and her sisters found them where
I wager'd once no violets grew;?So they had won the gloves. And there
The violets lay, two white, one blue.
CANTO VI.--THE DEAN
PRELUDES.
I.--PERFECT LOVE RARE.
Most rare is still most noble found,
Most noble still most incomplete;?Sad law, which leaves King Love uncrown'd
In this obscure, terrestrial seat!?With bale more sweet than others' bliss,
And bliss more wise than others' bale,?The secrets of the world are his.
And freedom without let or pale.?O, zealous good, O, virtuous glee,
Religious, and without alloy,?O, privilege high, which none but he
Who highly merits can enjoy;?O, Love, who art that fabled sun
Which all the world with bounty loads,?Without respect of realms, save one,
And gilds with double lustre Rhodes;?A day of whose delicious life,
Though full of terrors, full of tears,?Is better than of other life
A hundred thousand million years;?Thy heavenly splendour magnifies
The least commixture of earth's mould,?Cheapens thyself in thine own eyes,
And makes the foolish mocker bold.
II.--LOVE JUSTIFIED.
What if my pole-star of respect
Be dim to others? Shall their 'Nay,'?Presumably their own defect,
Invalidate my heart's strong 'Yea'??And can they rightly me condemn,
If I, with partial love, prefer??I am not more unjust to them,
But only not unjust to her.?Leave us alone! After awhile,
This pool of private charity?Shall make its continent an isle,
And roll, a world-embracing sea;?This foolish zeal of lip for lip,
This fond, self-sanction'd, wilful zest,?Is that elect relationship
Which forms and sanctions all the rest;?This little germ of nuptial love,
Which springs so simply from the sod,?The root is, as my song shall prove,
Of all our love to man and God.
III.--LOVE SERVICEABLE.
What measure Fate to him shall mete
Is not the noble Lover's care;?He's heart-sick with a longing sweet
To make her happy as she's fair.?Oh, misery, should she him refuse,
And so her dearest good mistake!?His own success he thus pursues
With frantic zeal for her sole sake.?To lose her were his life to blight,
Being loss to hers; to make her his,?Except as helping her delight,
He calls but incidental bliss;?And holding life as so much pelf
To buy her posies, learns this lore:?He does not rightly love himself
Who does not love another more.
IV.--A RIDDLE SOLVED.
Kind souls, you wonder why, love you,
When you, you wonder why, love none.?We love, Fool, for the good we do,
Not that which unto us is done!
THE DEAN.
1
The Ladies rose. I held the door,
And sigh'd, as her departing grace?Assured me that she always wore
A heart as