The Mistress of the Manse | Page 8

and flew away!
And for twice a thousand years,?Floating through the radiant ether,?Lived the happy glendoveers,?Of the other, jealous neither,--?Sapphire naught without the red,?Ruby still by blue bested.
But when weary of their life,?They came down to earth at even--?Purple husband, purple wife--?From the upper deeps of heaven,?And reclined upon the grass,?That their little lives might pass.
Wing to wing and arms enwreathed,?Sank they from their life's long dreaming;--?Into earth their souls they breathed;?But when morning's light was streaming,?All their joys and sweet regrets?Bloomed in banks of violets!
As from its dimpled fountain, at its own capricious will, Each step a note of music, and each fall and flash a thrill, The rill goes singing to the meadow levels and is still,
So fell from Nourmahal her song upon the captive sense;?It dashed in spray against the throne, it tinkled through the tents, And died at last among the flowery banks of recompense;
For when great Selim marked her fire, and read her riddle well, And watched her from the flushing to the fading of the spell, He sprang forgetful, from his seat, and caught her as she fell.
He raised her in his tender arms; he bore her to his throne: "No more, oh! Nourmahal, my wife, no more I sit alone;?And the future for the dreary past shall royally atone!"
He called to him the princes and the nobles of the land,?Then took the signet-ring from his, and placed it on her hand, And bade them honor as his own, fair Nourmahal's command.
And on the minted silver that his largess scattered wide, And on the gold of commerce, till the mighty Selim died,?Her name and his in shining boss stood equal, side by side.
XXII.
The opening of the wondrous tome?Was like the opening of a door?Into a vast and pictured dome,?Crowded, from vaulted roof to floor,?With secrets of her life and home.
To be like Philip was to be?Another Philip--only less!?To win his wit in full degree?Would bear to him but nothingness,?From one no wiser grown than he!
If blue and red in Hindostan?Were blue and red at home, she knew?That she--a woman, he--a man,?Could never wear the royal hue?Till blue and red together ran
In complement of each to each;?She might not tint his life at all?By learning wisdom he could teach;?So what she gave, though poor and small,?Should be of that beyond his reach.
Where Philip fed, she would not feed;?Where Philip walked, she would not go;?The books he read she would not read,?But live her separate life, and, so,?Have sole supplies to meet his need.
He held his mission and his range;?His way and work were all his own;?And she would give him in exchange?What she could win and she alone,?Of life and learning, fresh and strange.
XXIII.
While thus she sat in musing mood,?Determining her life's emprise,?The sunlight flushed the distant wood,?Then, coming closer, filled her eyes,?And glorified her solitude.
The clouds were shivered by the lance?Sped downward by the morning sun,?And from her heart, in swift advance,?The shadows vanished, one by one,?Till more than sunlight filled the manse.
She closed the volume with a gust?That sprent the light with powdered gold;?Then placed it high to hide and rust?Where, curious and over-bold?She found it, lying in its dust.
Her soul was light, her path was plain;?One shadow only drooped above,--?The shadow of a heart and brain?So charged with overwhelming love?That it oppressed and gave her pain.
The modest comb that kept her hair;?To Philip was a golden crown;?And every ringlet was a snare,?And every hat, and every gown?And slipper, something more than fair.
His love had glorified her grace,?And she was his, and not her own,--?So wholly his she had no place?Beside him on his lonely throne,?Or share in love's divine embrace.
And knowing that the coming days?Would strip her features of their mask,?That duty then would speak her praise,?And love become a loyal task,?Save he should find beneath the glaze
His fiery love of her had spread,?Diviner things he had not seen,?She feared her woman's heart and head?Were armed with charms and powers too mean?To win the boon she coveted.
But still she saw and held her plan,?And fear made way for springing hope.?If she was man's, then hers was man:?Both held their own in even scope;?And then and there her life began.
LOVE'S PHILOSOPHIES.
I.
A wife is like an unknown sea;--?Least known to him who thinks he knows?Where all the shores of promise be,?Where lie the islands of repose,?And where the rocks that he must flee.
Capricious winds, uncertain tides,?Drive the young sailor on and on,?Till all his charts and all his guides?Prove false, and vain conceit is gone,?And only docile love abides.
Where lay the shallows of the maid,?No plummet line the wife may sound;?Where round the sunny islands played?The pulses of the great profound,?Lies low the treacherous everglade.
And sailing, he becomes, perforce,?Discoverer of a lovely world;?And finds, whate'er may be his course,?Green lands within white seas impearled,?And streams