HOW lightly men can love, how soon forget!
I said–yet some there be not false or fickle:
For one, the blind god wings an arrowlet
No deadlier pointed than a sweetbriar prickle;
For one, a dart fledged with Tartarean flame,
Barbed, venomed, and thrice cursed in Hecate’s name.
Neither the rose-thorn nor the poisoned arrow
Was sped for Wilfred–but a keen-tipped shaft,
That rankled deep, yet pierced not bone and marrow,
And still he dined, debated, jested, laughed;
The while his heart was like a tooth, whose fang
Aches with dull woe, or with fierce throbbing pang.
For one bright image lived before his eyes;
Where’er he moved, the haunting shape was there:
And long he pondered what rich sacrifice
Could win its beauty; till the vision fair,
As saint from heaven instructs an eremite,
Taught her sad thrall to worship her aright.
She made herself the centre of a world
Peopled with gracious phantoms indistinct;
But, as he gazed, a golden mist upfurled,
And all was clearly shaped, and brightly tinct:
How could he choose but chronicle from far
The story of that new-created star?
And thus he dreamed and wrote, until his dream
Was all set forth in fine-writ manuscript;
He felt, at the last page of the last ream,
As though in some great argosy he shipped
His wealth; not with the trader’s avarice keen,
But as the hard-won ransom of a queen.
And the book prospered wheresoe’er it went;
Much fame had Wilfred, and a little gold,
Yet thought of the one copy that he sent
To Clarice, more than of the hundreds sold;
And for her smile, had been content to lose
Even the most nectareous of reviews.
‘Tis sweet, in truth, to feel oneself a god
Shaping with words a spirit-universe,
Touching to various life the formless clod,
Winning fresh glory e’en from Fate perverse,
That foe to plans divine and human toils,
Which like a snake in every Eden coils.
Such deities are mortal; and when these,
As once their sire Apollo, love in vain,
And grant the willing mind no hour of ease,
But still toward high achievement strive and strain,
What marvel if the genial visage pales,
And the pulse languishes, and the strength fails?
‘Twas thus with Wilfred; though the bookworm old
Had somewhat overdrawn his piteous plight,
Most truly might that learned man have told
Of many a torpid day and tossing night,
Filled with sick hope of one approving line
From Clarice–but there came no word or sign.
One cheerless afternoon, upon his couch
Brooding he lay; there came a tap–the door
Soft-opened–sure his dazzled eyes could vouch
That the fair image kept in his heart’s core
They saw; come haply as a cruel wraith,
With cold ethereal gifts to mock his faith.
The maiden entered; the dim light aslant
On his pale face, constrained her like a charm;
She felt and seemed a spectral visitant
Of one in mortal straits; on languid arm
He raised himself, with an uncertain cry
Of “Clarice!” and sank backward wearily.
Then all the wifehood and the motherhood
That in her virgin heart close-hidden lay
Sprang forth; the voice of her quick-pulsing blood
Rebuked her coming, and yet murmured “Stay!”
She stood there an Olympian goddess mute
And blushing, with soft eyes irresolute.
At last she spoke–“Forgive me! but I knew
That you were ill, alone–and I am come
With fruit and medicines–if I weary you,
Tell me, and bid me go” –here she grew dumb,
And cold, and faint, and all her thoughts forgot,
Because so wild he gazed, yet answered not.
He lay and watched her timid attitudes,
The rosy colour mantling in her cheek,
Her faltering phrases, with brief interludes
Of sighs; he watched, and did not stir or speak:
But when, like one who in strange peril stands,
She tottered, grew death-pale, flung out her hands,
He rose with desperate hunger in his face,
Clasped her with arms that trembled as they strained,
Kissed the fair head that bent to his embrace,
The lily cheeks, the eyelids violet-veined;
And held her long, although she faintly strove
To free herself, in very fear of love.
She did not know the feeling of a kiss,
Except her father’s–which had not been warm–
And now she shrank and shuddered from her bliss
E’en as a thirsting wretch before the storm
Of wind and rain, that must renew his life,
Unless he die in the tumultuous strife.
At length he half-released her–“Sweet,” he said,
“This is my fruit, my medicine; were I blind
Now must I see–must live, if I were dead;
You are my breath, my pulse, my inmost mind;
Music you are, whose mournfulness and mirth
Reveal the Will of this phantasmal Earth.”
She blushed at his remembrance of that page
In Schopenhauer–“Ah forgive!” she cried–
“I was a tame-bred goldfinch in its cage,
Not knowing that the world is all outside;
Yet such poor birds will beat the bars, and sing
Of hope, and build an idle nest in Spring.”
“Yet nay,” he smiled, “you are Olympian-born,
You are Egeria’s self, the nymph who blest
Rome’s king with laws from Heaven: that gloomy morn
When I arose from nightmare-laden rest
A banished man, you sent your sprite divine,
That pitying led me to the fountain-shrine.”
What more fond vows they uttered–how they planned
The future’s wedded joy–I need not tell,
For every love-taught soul will understand;
Nor how, when twilight came, they broke the spell
Reluctantly, that Clarice home might haste,
Yet once again, and still once more embraced.
That night she dreamed that over fertile ground
And blossomed herbage the two lovers trod;
The air was filled with an ?olian sound
That sang of secret life beneath the sod,
And all pure fragrances of flower and fruit
Lived in the music of that fitful lute.
Of couching flocks it chanted; of the bird
Nested in shade; of all things that have breath;
Of human fate; and still entranced they heard,
And knew the harmonies of Birth and Death:
Till downward flowed the dream, and bore her deep
Into the dark unhaunted caves of Sleep.
(Constance Naden)
More Poetry from 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, Death & Dying Poems, Faces Poems, Heaven PoemsBased on Keywords: goldfinch, fragrances, debated, hecate, instructs, mournfulness, hard-won, argosy, venomed, jested, vouch