Go, then! - till time and fate impress This truth on thee, be mine no more! They will! for thou, I feel, not less Than I, wast destined to this lore.
We school our manners, act our parts — But He, who sees us through and through, Knows that the bent of both our hearts Was to be gentle, tranquil, true.
And though we wear out life, alas ! Distracted as a homeless wind, In beating where we must not pass, In seeking what we shall not find;
Yet we shall one day gain, life past, Clear prospect o'er our being's whole; Shall see ourselves, and learn at last Our true affinities of soul.
We shall not then deny a course To every thought the mass ignore ; We shall not then call hardness force, Nor lightness wisdom any more.
Then, in the eternal Father's smile, Our soothed, encouraged souls will dare To seem as free from pride and guile, As good, as generous, as they are.
Then we shall know our friends! — though much
Will have been lost - the help in strife,
The thousand sweet, still joys of such
As hand in hand face earthly life —
Though these be lost, there will be yet A sympathy august and pure ; Ennobled by a vast regret,
And by contrition seal'd thrice sure.
And we, whose ways were unlike here, May then more neighbouring courses ply; May to each other be brought near, And greet across infinity.
How sweet, unreach'd by earthly jars, My sister! to maintain with thee The hush among the shining stars, The calm upon the moonlit sea!
How sweet to feel, on the boon air, All our unquiet pulses cease! To feel that nothing can impair The gentleness, the thirst for peace The gentleness too rudely hurl'd On this wild earth of hate and fear; The thirst for peace a raving world Would never let us satiate here.
4. ISOLATION. TO MARGUERITE
WE were apart; yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee; Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew, Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.
The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas! I learn'd --- The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturn'd. Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell — Thou lov'st no more; Farewell! Farewell!
Farewell! - and thou, thou lonely heart, Which never yet without remorse Even for a moment didst depart From thy remote and spherèd course To haunt the place where passions reign- Back to thy solitude again!
Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her pure immortal frame, When she forsook the starry height To hang over Endymion's sleep Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep.
Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved How vain a thing is mortal love, Wandering in Heaven, far removed. But thou hast long had place to prove
This truth- to prove, and make thine own: "Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone."
Or, if not quite alone, yet they Which touch thee are unmating things- Ocean and clouds and night and day; Lorn autumns and triumphant springs; And life, and others' joy and pain, And love, if love, of happier men.
Have dream'd two human hearts might blend In one, and were through faith released From isolation without end
Prolong'd; nor knew, although not less Alone than thou, their loneliness.
YES! in the sea of life enisled,
With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow, And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights, And they are swept by balms of spring, And in their glens, on starry nights, The nightingales divinely sing; And lovely notes, from shore to shore, Across the sounds and channels pour
Oh! then a longing like despair Is to their farthest caverns sent; For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!
Who order'd, that their longing's fire Should be, as soon as kindled, cool'd? Who renders vain their deep desire? — A God, a God their severance ruled! And bade betwixt their shores to be The unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea.
In this fair stranger's eyes of grey Thine eyes, my love! I see. I shiver; for the passing day Had borne me far from thee.
This is the curse of life! that not A nobler, calmer train
Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain;
But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-choked souls to fill, And we forget because we must And not because we will.
I struggle towards the light; and ye, Once-long'd-for storms of love!
If with the light ye cannot be, I bear that ye remove.
I struggle towards the light-but oh, While yet the night is chill,
Upon time's barren, stormy flow, Stay with me, Marguerite, still!
7. THE TERRACE AT BERNE
(Composed Ten Years after the Preceding)
TEN years! and to my waking eye Once more the roofs of Berne appear; The rocky banks, the terrace high, The stream! — and do I linger here?
The clouds are on the Oberland, The Jungfrau snows look faint and far
But bright are those green fields at hand, And through those fields comes down the Aar, And from the blue twin-lakes it comes, Flows by the town, the churchyard fair ; And 'neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house! and is my Marguerite there?
Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush Of startled pleasure floods thy brow, Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: 'Tis thou! Or hast thou long since wander'd back, Daughter of France! to France, thy home; And flitted down the flowery track Where feet like thine too lightly come ?
Doth riotous laughter now replace Thy smile; and rouge, with stony glare, Thy cheek's soft hue; and fluttering lace The kerchief that enwound thy hair?
Or is it over? — art thou dead?—
Dead! - and no warning shiver ran Across my heart, to say thy thread Of life was cut, and closed thy span! Could from earth's ways that figure slight Be lost, and I not feel 't was so? Of that fresh voice the gay delight Fail from earth's air, and I not know?
Or shall I find thee still, but changed, But not the Marguerite of thy prime ? With all thy being re-arranged, Pass'd through the crucible of time; With spirit vanish'd, beauty waned, And hardly yet a glance, a tone, A gesture anything — retain'd Of all that was my Marguerite's own? I will not know! For wherefore try, To things by mortal course that live, A shadowy durability,
For which they were not meant, to give?
« ZurückWeiter » |