My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale | Page 9

and stifling me with hot remorse;
Frightened, despairing, "Love," I cried,?Wildly busy at her side;
And kissed and chafed her brow; I chafed her hand;?Audacious grown with fear, released the band?That clasped her tender waist, and keenly scanned
Each feature, till her opening eyes?Met my own in bright surprise
"Ah you! I had from you passed and the world?Through endless nothing rudely was I hurled?While you there hung above, your proud lip curled,
Regarding me with piercing hate?Crying I deserved my fate."
We met each other, as when waters meet?In long continued shock, and muttering, sweet?Confusion mixed in unity complete
That changing time may not dissever;?One in love and one for ever.
Purged by remorse, love knit my strength; and now?Came gracious power to still upon her brow?Those troubled waves of some dark underflow;
Her soul victorious over pain?Spoke in golden smiles again.
We sat and read how Prospero closed his strife?With evil, wrought his charm, and crowned his life?In making two fair beings man and wife:
Of brave Count Gismond's happy lot;?And the Lady of Shalott.
We ceased; for eve had come by dusky stealth.?I saw, while lifting her, like crimson health?Burn in her cheeks, holding the weighted wealth
Of all the worlds in heaven to me;?Held her long, long, lingeringly:
And laying down more than my life, her weight;?Scarce kissed her pallid hands, then moved with great?Reluctance, bodeful, from her placid state;
But, ere my slow feet reached the door,?Turned and caught one last look more,
And awe-struck stood to see portentous loom?From her large eyes full gazing through the gloom?Love darkly wedded to eternal doom,
As she were gazing from the dead:?Falling at her feet I said,
"Bless me, dear Love, bless me before I go;?With love divine a beam of comfort throw,?For guidance and support, that I through woe
Be raised and purified in grace?Worthy to behold your face."
She bowed her head in stately tenderness?Low whispering as her hands my brow did press,?"I pray that He will your lone spirit bless,
And if to leave you be my fate,?Pray you for me while I wait."
A useless pang in her no more to wake,?I forced myself away, nor dared to take?Another look for her beloved sake;
My face had told of the distressed?Swollen heart labouring in my breast.
When in the outer air, I felt as one?Fresh startled from a dream, wherein the sun?Had dying left the earth a dingy, dun
Annihilation. The nightjar?Only thrilled the air afar:
No other sound was there: a muffled breeze?Crept in the shrubs, and shuddered up the trees,?Then sought the ghost-white vapour of the leas,
Where one long sheet of dismal cloud?Swathed the distance in a shroud.
A solitary eye of cold stern light?Stared threateningly beyond the Western height,?Wrapped in the closing shadows of the night;
And all the peaceful earth had slept?But that eye stern vigil kept.
I wandered wearily I knew not where;?Up windy downs far-stretching, bleak and bare;?Through swamps that soddened under stagnant air;
In blackest woods and brambled mesh,?Thorny bushes tore my flesh:
Amid the ripening corn I heard it sigh,?Hollow and sad, as night crawled sluggishly:?Hollow and sadly sighed the corn while I
Moved darkly in the midst, a blight?Darkening more the hateful night.
My soul its hoarded secrets emptied on?The vaulted gloom of night: old fancies shone,?And consecrated ancient hopes long gone;
Old hopes that long had ceased to burn,?Gone, and never to return.
No starlight pierced the dense vault over head,?And all I loved was passing or had fled:?So on I wandered where the pathway led;
And wandered till my own abode?Spectral pale rose from the road.
What time I gained my home I saw the morn?Made dimly on the sullen East. Wayworn?I went into the echoing house forlorn,
Heartsick and weary sought my room,?Better had it been my tomb.
I lay, and ever as my lids would close?In dull forgetfulness to slumberous doze,?Lone sounds of phantom tolling scared repose;
Till wearied nature, sore oppressed,?Slowly sank and dropped to rest.
X. WILL-O'-THE-WISP.
"Gone the sickness, fled the pain,?Health comes bounding back again,?And all my pulses tingle for delight.
Together what a pleasant thing?To ramble while the blackbirds sing,?And pasture lands are sparkling dewy bright!
"Soon will come the clear spring weather,?Hand in hand we'll roam together,?And hand in hand will talk of springs to come;
As on the morning when you played?The necromancer with my shade,?In senseless shadow gazing darkly dumb.
"Cast away that cloudy care,?Or, I vow, in my parterre?You shall not enter when the lilies blow,
And I go there to stand and sing?Songs to the heaven-white wondrous ring;?Sir Would-be-Wizard of the crumpled brow!"
XI. GIVEN OVER.
The men of learning say she must?Soon pass and be as if she had not been.
To gratify the barren lust?Of Death, the roses in her cheeks are seen?To blush so brightly, blooming deeper damascene.
All hope and doubt, all fears are vain:?The dreams I nursed of honouring her are past,
And will not comfort me again.?I see a lurid sunlight throw its last?Wild gleam athwart the land whose shadows lengthen fast.
It does not seem so