The Unknown Eros | Page 5

to thee,?I, dreaming, night by night, seek now to see,?And, in a mortal sorrow, still pursue?Thro' sordid streets and lanes?And houses brown and bare?And many a haggard stair?Ochrous with ancient stains,?And infamous doors, opening on hapless rooms,?In whose unhaunted glooms?Dead pauper generations, witless of the sun,?Their course have run;?And ofttimes my pursuit?Is check'd of its dear fruit?By things brimful of hate, my kith and kin,?Furious that I should keep?Their forfeit power to weep,?And mock, with living fear, their mournful malice thin.?But ever, at the last, my way I win?To where, with perfectly sad patience, nurst?By sorry comfort of assured worst,?Ingrain'd in fretted cheek and lips that pine,?On pallet poor?Thou lyest, stricken sick,?Beyond love's cure,?By all the world's neglect, but chiefly mine.?Then sweetness, sweeter than my tongue can tell,?Does in my bosom well,?And tears come free and quick?And more and more abound?For piteous passion keen at having found,?After exceeding ill, a little good;?A little good?Which, for the while,?Fleets with the current sorrow of the blood,?Though no good here has heart enough to smile.
X. THE TOYS.
My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes?And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,?Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,?I struck him, and dismiss'd?With hard words and unkiss'd,?His Mother, who was patient, being dead.?Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,?I visited his bed,?But found him slumbering deep,?With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet?From his late sobbing wet.?And I, with moan,?Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;?For, on a table drawn beside his head,?He had put, within his reach,?A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,?A piece of glass abraded by the beach?And six or seven shells,?A bottle with bluebells?And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, To comfort his sad heart.?So when that night I pray'd?To God, I wept, and said:?Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,?Not vexing Thee in death,?And Thou rememberest of what toys?We made our joys,?How weakly understood,?Thy great commanded good,?Then, fatherly not less?Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,?Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,?'I will be sorry for their childishness.'
XI. TIRED MEMORY.
The stony rock of death's insensibility?Well'd yet awhile with honey of thy love?And then was dry;?Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove,?Nor all thy kind, long letters, nor the band?Which really spann'd?Thy body chaste and warm,?Thenceforward move?Upon the stony rock their wearied charm.?At last, then, thou wast dead.?Yet would I not despair,?But wrought my daily task, and daily said?Many and many a fond, unfeeling prayer,?To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm.?In vain.?'For 'tis,' I said, 'all one,?The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain,?As if 'twere none.'?Then look'd I miserably round?If aught of duteous love were left undone,?And nothing found.?But, kneeling in a Church, one Easter-Day,?It came to me to say:?'Though there is no intelligible rest,?In Earth or Heaven,?For me, but on her breast,?I yield her up, again to have her given,?Or not, as, Lord, Thou wilt, and that for aye.'?And the same night, in slumber lying,?I, who had dream'd of thee as sad and sick and dying,?And only so, nightly for all one year,?Did thee, my own most Dear,?Possess,?In gay, celestial beauty nothing coy,?And felt thy soft caress?With heretofore unknown reality of joy.?But, in our mortal air,?None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,?And fresh despair?Bade me seek round afresh for some extreme?Of unconceiv'd, interior sacrifice?Whereof the smoke might rise?To God, and 'mind him that one pray'd below.?And so,?In agony, I cried:?'My Lord, if thy strange will be this,?That I should crucify my heart,?Because my love has also been my pride,?I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss?Wherein She has no part.'?And I was heard,?And taken at my own remorseless word.?O, my most Dear,?Was't treason, as I fear??'Twere that, and worse, to plead thy veiled mind,?Kissing thy babes, and murmuring in mine ear,?'Thou canst not be?Faithful to God, and faithless unto me!'?Ah, prophet kind!?I heard, all dumb and blind?With tears of protest; and I cannot see?But faith was broken. Yet, as I have said,?My heart was dead,?Dead of devotion and tired memory,?When a strange grace of thee?In a fair stranger, as I take it, bred?To her some tender heed,?Most innocent?Of purpose therewith blent,?And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such?That the pale reflex of an alien love,?So vaguely, sadly shown,?Did her heart touch?Above?All that, till then, had woo'd her for its own.?And so the fear, which is love's chilly dawn,?Flush'd faintly upon lids that droop'd like thine,?And made me weak,?By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,?And Nature's long suspended breath of flame?Persuading soft, and whispering Duty's name,?Awhile to smile and speak?With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine;?Thy Sister sweet,?Who bade the wheels to stir?Of sensitive delight in the poor brain,?Dead of devotion and tired memory,?So that I lived again,?And, strange to aver,?With no