My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale | Page 7

to beguile?The hours of sunshine by her golden smile;?And holds it like a goblet brimmed with wine,?Nigh clad in trails of tangled eglantine.
In the deep peacefulness which shone around?My soul was soothed: no darksome vision frowned?Before my sight while cast upon the ground?Where Psyche's and My Lady's shadows lay,?Twin graces on the flower-edged gravel way.
I then but yearned for Titian's glorious power,?That I by toiling one devoted hour,?Might check the march of Time, and leave a dower?Of rich delight that beauty I could see,?For broadening generations yet to be.
VIII. HER GARDEN.
The wind that's good for neither man nor beast?Weeks long incessant from the blighting East?Drove gloom and havoc through the land and ceased.?When swaying mildly over wide Atlantic seas,?Bland and dewy soft streamed the Western breeze.
In walking forth, I felt with vague alarm,?Closer than wont her pressure on my arm,?As through morn's fragrant air we sought what harm?That Eastern wind's despite had done the garden growth;?Where much lay dead or languished low for drouth.
Her own parterre was bounded by a red?Old buttressed wall of brick, moss-broidered;?Where grew mid pink and azure plots a bed?Of shining lilies intermixed in wondrous light;?She called them "Radiant spirits robed in white."
Here the mad gale had rioted and thrown?Far drifts of snowy petals, fiercely blown?The stalks in twisted heaps: one flower alone?Yet hung and lit the waste, the latest blossom born?Among its fallen kinsmen left forlorn.
"Thy pallid droop," cried I, "but more than all,?Thy lonely sweetness takes my soul in thrall,?O Seraph Lily Blanch! so stately tall:?By violets adored, regarded by the rose,?Well loved by every gentle flower that blows!"
My Lady dovelike to the lily went,?Took in curved palms a cup, and forward leant,?Deep draining to the gold its dreamy scent.?I see her now, pale beauty, as she bending stands,?The wind-worn blossom resting in her hands!
Then slowly rising, she in gazing trance?Affrayed, long pored on vacancy. A glance?Of chilly splendour tinged her countenance?And told the saddened truth, that stress of blighting weather, Had made her lilies and My Lady droop together.
IX. TOLLING BELL.
"Weak, but her spirits good," the letter said:?A bell was tolling, while these words I read,?A dull sepulchral summons for the dead.
Fear grew in every pace I strode?Hurrying on that endless road.
And when I reached the house a terror came?That wrought in me a hidden sense of blame,?And entering I scarce dared to speak her name,
Who lay, sweet singer, warbling low?Rhymes I made her long ago.
"The sun exhales the morning dew,
The dew returns again?At eve refreshing rain:?The forest flowers bloom bravely new,
They drooping fade and die,?The seeds that in them lie?Will blossom as the others blew."
"And ever rove among the flowers
Bright children who ere long?Are men and women strong:?When on they pass through sun and showers,
And glancing sideways watch?Their children run to catch?A rainbow with the laughing Hours."
I watched in awkward wonder for a time?As there she listless lay and sang my rhyme,?Wrapped up in fabrics of an Indian clime
She seemed a Bird of Paradise?Languid from the traversed skies.
A dawn-bright snowy peak her smile . . . Strange I?Should dawdle near her grace admiringly,?When love alarmed and challenged sympathy,
Announced in chills of creeping fear?Danger surely threatening near.
I shrank from searching the abyss I felt?Yawned by; whose verge voluptuous blossoms belt?With dazzling hues:--she speaks! I fall and melt,
One sacred moment drawn to rest,?Deeply weeping in her breast:
Within the throbbing treasure wept? But brief?Those loosening tears of blessed deep relief,?That won triumphant ransom from my grief,
While loving words and comfort she?Breathed in angel tones to me.
Our visions met, when pityingly she flung?Her passionate arms about me, kissing clung,?Close kisses, stifling kisses; till each wrung,
With welded mouths, the other's bliss?Out in one long sighing kiss.
Love-flower that burst in kisses and sweet tears,?Scattering its roseate dreamflakes, disappears?Into cold truth: for, loud with brazen jeers,
That bell's toll, clanging in my brain,?Beat me, loth, to earth again:
Where, looking on my Love's endangered state,?Wrought by keen anguish mad, I struck at fate,?Prostrating mockingly in sport or hate
The aspirations, darkling, we?Cherish and resolve to be.
She spoke, but sharply checked; then as her zone?A lady's hands would clasp, My Lady's own?Pressed at her yielding side; her solemn tone
And forward eager face implored?Me to kneel where she adored.
Despite her pain, with tender woman's phrase?She solaced me, whose part it was to raise?Anew the gladness to her weakened gaze,
And wisely in man's firmness be?To my drooping vine a tree.
But no; sunk, dwindled, dwarfed, and mean, beside?Her couch I sitting saw her eyes grow wide?With awe, and heard her voice move as the tide
Of steady music rich and calm?In some high cathedral psalm.
Then, as that high cathedral psalm o'erflows?The dusky, vaulted aisles, and slowly grows?A burst of harmony the hearer knows,
Her voice assailed by rage, and I?Took its purport wonderingly.
"Ah, pause for dread, before you charge in haste?The ways of fate; for how can those