CLARICE awoke next morning with the sense
That something she had found, and something lost;
A little pain she felt, but knew not whence,
A little loosening of her vestal frost:
And she was sad for him–not knowing yet
How lightly men can love, how soon forget.
‘Twas a grey, misty, miserable day,
And he would sit, she thought, alone and drear
In dingy lodgings; or perchance would stray
Out in the busy street, with none to cheer,
No one to sound his lonely heart’s abysm,
And comfort him with German Pessimism.
A stirring as of springtide he had wrought
In that fair breast which yet he could not win;
She pitied, and she wondered, and she thought:
They say that Pity is to Love akin–
Agreed–with one important reservation–
She is at best a very poor relation.
For Clarice neither loved the swain himself,
Nor dreamed of being some day some one’s wife;
But he, like those great Germans on the shelf,
Suggested a new way of viewing life:
The first poor swallow does not make a summer,
Yet is he a thrice memorable comer.
Her father–might she speak to him? In vain!
He would have scorned a modern love affair;
It never entered his most learned brain
That this unmothered daughter needed care;
And he was seeking, in that dust-heap dark,
Some mouldy scandal touching Joan of Arc.
She had no comrades; books were all her friends;
And even these had failed her utterly,
For none could teach her how to make amends,
None could restore her nature’s harmony;
Nor found she any grief so vague as hers
Recorded by the ancient chroniclers.
The classic beauty either loves her wooer,
Or else she hates him in the same degree:
Daphne was glad to ‘scape her bright pursuer
By branching out into a laurel-tree;
Queen Dido slew herself that luckless day
When the too pious Trojan sailed away.
These old companions have no kindly aid
For any heart in lore of love unlearned;
So, of her fluctuating thoughts afraid,
To Spenser and to Shakespeare Clarice turned,
And read of all sweet ladies wooed by men,
From Una chaste to wifely Imogen.
She read, and pondered, and read o’er again
The moonlight vows of glowing Juliet;
She read how scorning doubt, delay, and pain,
Sir Scudamour found white-robed Amoret,
And led her by the coy resisting hand
From sovran Cytherea’s priestess-band.
And much she marvelled how such things might be;
“And such things are,” she thought, “this very day,
But Heaven in grace has left me fancy-free,
And this is well; and he is gone away:
My father now must analyse alone
Those blotches on the shield of valiant Joan.”
But, as the days and weeks and months went on,
Less calm she grew; more anxious to believe
That she was happier since the youth had gone,
That she was no fond simple girl, to grieve
For a mere fantasy; but ne’ertheless
She oft forgot her reasoned happiness.
And having no one else to think about,
She thought of Wilfred; seemed to see him, hear
Him speak: and his successor was a lout
Who made that inward vision doubly clear;
For slow he was of speech, and dull of eye,
And short, and round, and rubicund, and shy.
In study and in dreams, one long year passed:
The house seemed shadowed by some direful ban:
For every day was lonelier than the last,
Each book the dullest ever writ by man:
Clarice had half begun to doubt her boast,
When–a three-volume novel came by post!
She knew the writing–rapid, firm, and fine;
She looked within–and there was Wilfred’s name–
The letters rose and danced along the line,
Mocking her quivering lips and cheeks aflame;
This was his book, his voice, his heart; she sighed,
And turned the leaves with a sad thrill of pride.
‘Twas the first novel she had ever read–
Think of it, Mudie’s votaries and Smith’s!
Ambrosially her sky-born soul was fed
On the sun’s poetry in old-world myths,
But never knew what wealth of weed and flower
His tireless beams engender hour by hour.
And Wilfred’s heroine was a maiden queen
Like Clarice, bred on such Olympian food:
Surely she saw her own transfigured mien–
“But no,” she thought, “for I am not so good,
So fair–some other’s portrait this must be,
And her he loves, and has forgotten me.”
She read with pain and pleasure; new she pored,
Jealously, o’er some page with passion fraught,
And wondered what fair Goddess he adored;
Now, her heart sprang to meet some bright-clad thought;
For thoughts there were, rich ears of harvest-gold,
Not choked with tares and poppies, as of old.
Not one day thus she pored, but many days;
She knew the volumes three almost by heart,
She lived in the book’s life, thought in its phrase,
And so for weeks she conned and mused apart;
Till, as it chanced, one afternoon there came
A visitor of antiquarian fame.
A blear-eyed bookworm; yet he was a shade
More human than her father; he had penned
Stout vindications of the slandered Maid
Of Orleans, till he half estranged his friend:
He took the scutcheon of that virgin knight,
And either whitewashed, or else washed it white.
Now the pair sat and argued; but at last
The visitor, right glad to end the strife
When Clarice entered, left the angry past,
And stooped to safer themes of modern life;
Of dynamite he spoke, and what could ail
The Irish; then of books–of Wilfred’s tale.
“The book is good–or rather, not so bad
As one might augur from its great success;
You know the young romancer–it is sad
When budding brains are doomed to idleness;
For he is ill–they say, in doubtful case,
Alone, in lodgings,”–and he named the place.
Poor Clarice stole away; the old man’s words
Chilled her like death; she saw the sun grow dim,
And like the fluttering of imprisoned birds
She felt wild pulses throb in every limb:
To a dull corner of her room she crept,
And there, till night was black, she crouched and wept.
But in the midnight watches she began,
Thinking of his pain, to forget her own;
And all her strenuous soul was bent to plan
How she might aid him; for that word–“Alone,”
Rang in her ears; she knew, as ne’er before,
The load of bitter meaning that it bore.
Pure innocence–what counsellor is worse?–
Guided and guarded her in all she did;
She had no friend, not even an old nurse,
To tell her what was lawful, what forbid;
And so resolved–lacking such nurse or friend–
That Wilfred she must seek, and watch, and tend.
Then Clarice slept, and dreamed that Wilfred’s book
Became a world; its chapters palaces;
And she its Goddess: but an earthquake shook
The domes of light and rainbow terraces:
The miraged earth engulphed its phantom race,
And left its two Immortals face to face.
(Constance Naden)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, God Poems, Life Poems, World Poems, Night Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Soul PoemsBased on Keywords: chapters, successor, pored, pursuer, abysm, dynamite, dullest, conned, engender, reasoned, slandered