My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale | Page 2

varied and elaborate,?Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake?Our shores in England--from those loftiest notes,?Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made?For cottagers and spinners at the wheel?And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs?Stretched under wayside hedgerows, ballad tunes?Food for the hungry ears of little ones?And of old men who have survived their joys--?'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,?And of the men that framed them, whether known?Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,?That I should here assert their rights, attest?Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce?Their benediction; speak of them as Powers?For ever to be hallowed; only less,?For what we are and what we may become,?Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,?Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.
Prelude, Book V.?H. M.
MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. INTRODUCTION.
In some there lies a sorrow too profound?To find a voice or to reveal itself?Throughout the strain of daily toil, or thought,?Or during converse born of souls allied,?As aught men understand. And though mayhap?Their cheeks will thin or droop; and wane their eyes'?Frank lustre; hair may lose its hue, or fall;?And health may slacken low in force; and they?Are older than the warrant of their years;?Yet they to others seem to gild their lives?With cheerfulness, and every duty tend,?As if their aspects told the truth within.
But they are not as others: not for them?The bounding pulse, and ardour of desire,?The rapture and the wonder in things new;?The hope that palpitating enters where?Perfection smiles on universal life;?Nor do they with elastic enterprise?Forecast delight in compassing results;?Nor, having won their ends, fall godlike back?And taste the calm completion of content.?But in a sober chilled grey atmosphere?Work out their lives; more various though they are?Than creatures in the unknown ocean depths,?Yet each in whom this vital grief has root?Is dull to what makes everything of worth.?And though, may be, a shallow bodily joy?Oft tingles through them at the breathing spring,?Or first-heard exultation of the lark;?Still that deep weight draws ever steadily?Their thoughts and passions back to secret woe.?Though, if endowed with light, heroic deeds?May be achieved; and if benignly bent?They may be treasured blessings through their lives;?Yet power and goodness are to them as dreams,?And they heed vaguely, if their waking sight?Be met with slanting storm against the pane,?Or sunshine glittering on the leaves that play?In purest blue of breezy summer morns.
Whence springs this well of mournfulness profound,?Unfathomable to plummet cast by man??Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind?Heaving the ocean into maddened arms?That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks,?And scatter them, as if compacted slight?As little eggs boys star against a tree?In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable,?To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws,?The power that in the logging crocodiles'?Outrageous bulk puts evil fire of life??That spouts from mountain-pyramids a flood?Of lava, overwhelming works and men?In burning, fetid ruin?--The power that stings?A city with a pestilence: or turns?The pretty babe, who in his mother's lap?Babbles her back the lavished kiss and laugh,?Through lusts and vassalage to obdurate sin,?Into a knife-armed midnight murderer?
Our lives are mysteries, and rarely scanned?As we read stories writ by mortal pen.?We can perchance but catch a straying weft?And trace the hinted texture here or there,?Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates.?Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed?With one bright child, a wonder in his years,?For loveliness and genius versatile:?Some common ill destroys him; parents, both,?Until their death, are left but living tombs?That hold the one dead image of their joy.?A man, the flower of honour, who has found?His well-beloved young daughter fled from home,?Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing?Tainting his blood. A youth who throws the strength?Of his whole being into love for one?Answering him honeyed smiles, and leaves his land?For some far country, seeking wealth he hopes?Will grace her daintily with choice delights,?And on returning sees the honeyed smiles?Are sweetening other lips. A husband who?Has found that household curse, a faithless wife.?A thinker whose far-piercing care perceives?His nation goes the road that ends in shame.?A gracious woman whose reserve denies?The power to utter what consumes her heart.?Such instances (and some a loss to know,?Which steadfast reticence will shield from those,?Debased or garrulous, whose hearts corrupt,?But learn the gloomy secrets of their kind?To poison-tip their wit, or grope and grin?With pharisaic laughter at disgrace)--?Such instances as these demand no guide?To thrid the dismal issues from their source!?But others are there, lying fast concealed,?Dark, hopeless, and unutterably sad,?Which have not been, and never may be known.
Then we may well call happy one whose grief,?Mixed up with sacred memories of the past,?Can tell to others how the tempest rose,?That struck and left him lonely in the world;?And who, narrating, feels his sorrow soothed,?By that respect which love and sorrow claim.
It much behoves us all, but chiefly those?Whom fate has favoured with an easy trust,?To keep a bridle