Victories of Love | Page 8

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 mildness threads the maze;?Our thoughts are lovely, and each word?Is music in the music heard,?And all things seem but parts to be?Of one persistent harmony,?By which I'm made divinely bold;?The secret, which she knows, is told;?And, laughing with a lofty bliss?Of innocent accord, we kiss:?About her neck my pleasure weeps;?Against my lip the silk vein leaps;?Then says an Angel, 'Day or night,?If yours you seek, not her delight,?Although by some strange witchery?It seems you kiss her, 'tis not she;?But, whilst you languish at the side?Of a fair-foul phantasmal bride,?Surely a dragon and strong tower?Guard the true lady in her bower.'?And I say, 'Dear my Lord. Amen!'?And the true lady kiss again.?Or else some wasteful malady?Devours