The Unknown Eros | Page 5

but the heaped wave
Of
some chance, wandering tide,
Such as that world of awe
Whose
circuit, listening to a foreign law,
Conjunctures ours at unguess'd
dates and wide,
Does in the Spirit's tremulous ocean draw,
To pass
unfateful on, and so subside?
Thee, whom ev'n more than Heaven
loved I have,
And yet have not been true
Even 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