The Mistress of the Manse | Page 8

pinions in the glass
Of a silver lake repeated.
One was blue
and one was red,
And the lovely pair were wed.
"Purple wings are very fine,"
Spoke the voice of Ruby, gently:

"Ay" said Sapphire, "they're divine!"--
Looking at his blue intently.

"But we're blest," said Ruby, then,
"And we'll not complain like
men."
Sapphire stretched his loving arms,
And she nestled on his bosom,

While his heart inhaled her charms
As the sense inhales a blossom;--

Drank her wholly, tint and tone,
Blent her being with his own.
Rapture passed, they raised their eyes,
But were startled into clamor


Of a marvellous surprise!
Was it color! was it glamour!


Purple-tinted, sweet and warm,
Was each wing and folded form!
Who had wrought it--how it came--
These were what the twain
disputed.
How were mingled smoke and flame
Into royal hue
transmuted?
Each was right, the other wrong:
But their quarrel was
not long,
For the moment that their speech
Differed o'er their little story,

Swiftly faded off from each
Every trace of purple glory,
Blue was
bluer than before,
And the red was red once more.
Then they knew that both were wrong,
And in sympathy of sorrow

Learned that each was only strong
In the power to lend and borrow,--

That the purple never grew
But by grace of red to blue.
So, embracing in content,
Hearts and wings again united,
Red and
blue in purple blent,
And their holy troth replighted,
Both, as happy
as the day,
Kissed, and rose, 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