My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale | Page 3

upon restless speech?And thought: and not in flagrant haste prejudge?The first presentment as the rounded truth.?For true it is, that rapid thoughts, and freak?Of skimming word, and glance, more frequently?Than either malice, settled hate, or scorn,?Support confusion, and pervert the right;?Set up the weakling in the strong man's place;?And yoke the great one's strength to idleness;?Pour gold into the squanderer's purse, and suck?The wealth, which is a power, from their control?Who would have turned it unto noble use.?And oftentimes a man will strike his friend,?By random verbiage, with sharper pain?Than could a foe, yet scarcely mean him wrong;?For none can strip this complex masquerade?And know who languishes with secret wounds.?They whom the brunt of war has maimed in limb,?Who lean on crutches to sustain their weight,?Are manifest to all; and reverence?For their misfortunes kindly gains them place:?But wounds, sometimes more deep and dangerous,?We may in careless jostle through the crowd,?Gall and oppress, because to us unknown.?Then, howsoever by our needs impelled,?Let us resolve to move in gentleness;?Judge mildly when we doubt; and pause awhile?Before injustice palpably proclaimed?Ere we let fall the judgment stroke: against?Their ignominious craft, who ever wait?To filch another's right, we will maintain?Majestic peace in silence; knowing well?Their craft takes something richer from themselves.?It is but seemly to respect the great;?But never let us fail toward lowly ones;?Respecting more, in that they lack the force?To claim it of the world. For souls there are?Of poor capacities, whose purpose holds,?Throughout their unregarded lives, a worth,?And earnest law of fixed integrity,?That were an honour even unto those?Whose genius marks the boundaries of our race.
PART THE FIRST.
LOVE.
Love comes divinely, gladdening mortal life,?As sunrise dawns upon the gaze of one?Bewildered in some outland waste, and lost:?Who, lonely faint and shuddering, through the night?Heard savage creatures nigh; and far-off moan?Of tempests on the wind.
Auroral joy?Flushes the brow of childhood, warms his cheek?To rosier redness at the name of Love;?And earlier thoughts awake in darkness strive;?As unfledged nestlings move their sightless heads?At sound, toward a fair world to them unknown.?Young Hope scales azure mountain heights to gaze,?In Love's first golden and delicious dream.?He sees the earth a maze of tempting paths,?For blissful sauntering mid the crowded flowers?And music of the rills. No ambushed wrongs,?Or thwarting storms there baffle and surprise;?But lingering, man treads long an odorous way;?And at the close, with Love clasped hand in hand,?Sets in proud glory: thence to rise anon?With Love beyond the stars and rest in heaven.
Man, nerved by Love, can steadily endure?Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web?Of crosses that distracting clog advance:?In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger?At momentary thought of home, of her,?His gracious wife, and bright-faced joys.
To him?The wrinkled patriarch, who sits and suns?His shrunken form beneath the boughs he climbed?A lissom boy, whence comes that brooding smile,?Whose secret lifts his cheeks, and overflows?His sight with tender dew? What through his frame?Melts languor sweeter than approaching sleep?To one made weary by a hard day's toil??It is the memory of primal love,?Whose visionary splendour steeped his life?In hues of heaven; and which grown open day,?Revealing perilous falls, his steps confined?Within the pathways to the noblest end.?Now following this dimmed glory, tired, his soul?Haunts ever the mysterious gates of Death;?And waits in patient reverence till his doom?Unfolding them fulfils immortal Love.
As from some height, on a wild day of cloud,?A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds?Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom?A golden beam of light; creating lakes,?And verdant pasture, farms, and villages;?And touching spires atop to flickering flame;?Disclosing herds of sober feeding kine;?And brightening on its way the woods to song;?As he, that wanderer, brightens when the shaft?Suddenly falls on him. A moment warmed,?He scarcely feels its loveliness before?The light departing leaves his saddened soul?More cold than ere it came.
Thus love once shone?And blessed my life: so vanished into gloom.
I. MY BEAUTIFUL LADY.
I love My Lady; she is very fair;?Her brow is wan, and bound by simple hair:
Her spirit sits aloof, and high,?But glances from her tender eye
In sweetness droopingly.
As a young forest while the wind drives through,?My life is stirred when she breaks on my view;
Her beauty grants my will no choice?But silent awe, till she rejoice
My longing with her voice.
Her warbling voice, though ever low and mild,?Oft makes me feel as strong wine would a child:
And though her hand be airy light?Of touch, it moves me with its might,
As would a sudden fright.
A hawk high poised in air, whose nerved wing-tips?Tremble with might suppressed, before he dips,
In vigilance, hangs less intense?Than I, when her voice holds my sense
Contented in suspense.
Her mention of a thing, august or poor,?Makes it far nobler than it was before:
As where the sun strikes life will gush,?And what is pale receive a flush,
Rich hues, a richer blush.
My Lady's name, when I hear strangers use,?Not meaning her, sounds to me lax