Victories of Love | Page 8

their grace, were
still unquell'd,
And force and flattery both compell'd
Her softness!
Say I'm worthy. I
Grew, in her presence, cold and shy.
It awed me,
as an angel's might
In raiment of reproachful light.
Her gay looks
told my sombre mood
That what's not happy is not good;
And, just
because 'twas life to please,
Death to repel her, truth and ease

Deserted me; I strove to talk,

And stammer'd foolishness; my walk

Was like a drunkard's; if she took
My arm, it stiffen'd, ached, and
shook:
A likely wooer! Blame her not;
Nor ever say, dear Mother,
aught
Against that perfectness which is
My strength, as once it was
my bliss.
And do not chafe at social rules.
Leave that to charlatans and fools.

Clay grafts and clods conceive the rose,
So base still fathers best. Life
owes
Itself to bread; enough thereof
And easy days condition love;


And, kindly train'd, love's roses thrive,
No more pale, scentless
petals five,
Which moisten the considerate eye
To see what haste
they make to die,
But heavens of colour and perfume,
Which,
month by month, renew the bloom
Of art-born graces, when the year

In all the natural grove is sere.
Blame nought then! Bright let be the air
About my lonely cloud of
care.
VIII. FROM FREDERICK.
Religion, duty, books, work, friends, -
'Tis good advice, but there it
ends.
I'm sick for what these have not got.
Send no more books:
they help me not;
I do my work: the void's there still
Which
carefullest duty cannot fill.
What though the inaugural hour of right

Comes ever with a keen delight?
Little relieves the labour's heat;

Disgust oft crowns it when complete;
And life, in fact, is not less dull

For being very dutiful.
'The stately homes of England,' lo,
'How
beautiful they stand!' They owe
How much to nameless things like
me
Their beauty of security!
But who can long a low toil mend

By looking to a lofty end?
And let me, since 'tis truth, confess
The
void's not fill'd by godliness.
God is a tower without a stair,
And
His perfection, love's despair.
'Tis He shall judge me when I die;
He
suckles with the hissing fly
The spider; gazes calmly down.
Whilst
rapine grips the helpless town.
His vast love holds all this and more.

In consternation I adore.
Nor can I ease this aching gulf
With
friends, the pictures of myself.
Then marvel not that I recur
From each and all of these to her.
For
more of heaven than her have I

No sensitive capacity.
Had I but her,
ah, what the gain
Of owning aught but that domain!
Nay, heaven's
extent, however much,
Cannot be more than many such;
And, she
being mine, should God to me
Say 'Lo! my Child, I give to thee
'All
heaven besides,' what could I then,
But, as a child, to Him complain


That whereas my dear Father gave
A little space for me to have

In His great garden, now, o'erblest,
I've that, indeed, but all the rest,

Which, somehow, makes it seem I've got
All but my only cared-for
plot.
Enough was that for my weak hand
To tend, my heart to
understand.
Oh, the sick fact, 'twixt her and me
There's naught, and half a world
of sea.
IX. FROM FREDERICK.
In two, in less than two hours more
I set my foot on English shore,

Two years untrod, and, strange to tell,
Nigh miss'd through last
night's storm! There fell
A man from the shrouds, that roar'd to
quench
Even the billows' blast and drench.
Besides me none was
near to mark
His loud cry in the louder dark,
Dark, save when
lightning show'd the deeps
Standing about in stony heaps.
No time
for choice! A rope; a flash
That flamed as he rose; a dizzy splash;
A
strange, inopportune delight
Of mounting with the billowy might,

And falling, with a thrill again
Of pleasure shot from feet to brain;

And both paced deck, ere any knew
Our peril. Round us press'd the
crew,
With wonder in the eyes of most.
As if the man who had
loved and lost
Honoria dared no more than that!
My days have else been stale and flat.
This life's at best, if justly
scann'd,
A tedious walk by the other's strand,
With, here and there
cast up, a piece
Of coral or of ambergris,
Which, boasted of abroad,
we ignore
The burden of the barren shore.
I seldom write, for
'twould be still
Of how the nerves refuse to thrill;
How, throughout
doubly-darken'd days,
I cannot recollect her face;
How to my heart
her name to tell
Is beating on a broken bell;
And, to fill up the
abhorrent gulf,
Scarce loving her, I hate myself.
Yet, latterly, with strange delight,
Rich tides have risen in the night,


And sweet dreams chased the fancies dense
Of waking life's dull
somnolence.
I see her as I knew her, grace
Already glory in her face;

I move about, I cannot rest,
For the proud brain and joyful breast

I have of her. Or else I float,
The pilot of an idle boat,
Alone, alone
with sky and sea,
And her, the third simplicity.
Or Mildred, to some
question, cries,
(Her merry meaning in her eyes,)
'The Ball, oh,
Frederick will go;
Honoria will be there! and, lo,
As moisture sweet
my seeing blurs
To hear my name so link'd with hers,
A mirror
joins, by guilty chance,
Either's averted, watchful glance!
Or with
me, in the Ball-Room's blaze,
Her brilliant