Angel in the House | Page 9

tear,
I vow'd to love and pray'd to
wed
The maiden who had grown so dear;
Thank'd God who had set her in
my path;
And promised, as I hoped to win,
That I would never dim my faith
By the least selfishness or sin;
Whatever in her sight I'd seem
I'd truly be; I'd never blend
With my delight in her a dream
'Twould change her cheek to comprehend;
And, if she wish'd it, I'd
prefer
Another's to my own success;
And always seek the best for her
With unofficious tenderness.
4

Rising, I breathed a brighter clime,
And found myself all self above,
And, with a charity sublime,
Contemn'd not those who did not love:
And I could not but feel that
then
I shone with something of her grace,
And went forth to my fellow
men
My commendation in my face.
CANTO V.--THE VIOLETS
PRELUDES.
I.--The Comparison.
Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,
In common and in holy course,
He fails, in spite of prayer and vow
And agonies of faith and force;
Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails
To righteous life, his virtuous deeds
Lack beauty, virtue's badge; she
fails
More graciously than he succeeds.
Her spirit, compact of gentleness,
If Heaven postpones or grants her pray'r,
Conceives no pride in its
success,
And in its failure no despair;
But his, enamour'd of its hurt,
Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,
Crows from the dunghill of
desert,
And wags its ugly wings for pride.
He's never young nor ripe; she

grows
More infantine, auroral, mild,
And still the more she lives and knows
The lovelier she's express'd a child.
Say that she wants the will of
man
To conquer fame, not check'd by cross,
Nor moved when others bless
or ban;
She wants but what to have were loss.
Or say she wants the patient
brain
To track shy truth; her facile wit
At that which he hunts down with
pain
Flies straight, and does exactly hit.
Were she but half of what she is,
He twice himself, mere love alone,
Her special crown, as truth is his,
Gives title to the worthier throne;
For love is substance, truth the
form;
Truth without love were less than nought;
But blindest love is sweet
and warm,
And full of truth not shaped by thought,
And therefore in herself she
stands
Adorn'd with undeficient grace,
Her happy virtues taking hands,
Each smiling in another's face.
So, dancing round the Tree of Life,
They make an Eden in her breast,
While his, disjointed and at strife,
Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.

II.--Love in Tears.
If fate Love's dear ambition mar,
And load his breast with hopeless pain,
And seem to blot out sun and
star,
Love, won or lost, is countless gain;
His sorrow boasts a secret bliss
Which sorrow of itself beguiles,
And Love in tears too noble is
For pity, save of Love in smiles.
But, looking backward through his
tears,
With vision of maturer scope,
How often one dead joy appears
The platform of some better hope!
And, let us own, the sharpest
smart
Which human patience may endure
Pays light for that which leaves
the heart
More generous, dignified, and pure.
III.--PROSPECTIVE FAITH.
They safely walk in darkest ways
Whose youth is lighted from above,
Where, through the senses'
silvery haze,
Dawns 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