Keats to Morris

But ah! it little profits, that we thrust

From all that 's said, what both must feel, unnamed.

Better to face it boldly, as we must,

Than feel it in the silence, and be shamed.

Irene, I have loved you, as men love

Light, music, odor, beauty, love itself;Whatever is apart from and above

Those daily needs which deal with dust and pelf.

And I had been content, without one thought Our guardian angels could have blushed to know,

So to have lived and died, demanding naught Save, living dying, to have loved you so.

My youth was orphaned, and my age will be Childless. I have no sister. None, to steal One stray thought from the many thoughts of thee,

Which are the source of all I think and feel.

671

My wildest wish was vassal to thy will:
My haughtiest hope, a pensioner on thy smile,
Which did with light my barren being fill,
As moonlight glorifies some desert isle.

I never thought to know what I have known-
The rapture, dear, of being loved by you:

I never thought, within my heart, to own One wish so blest that you should share it too :

Nor ever did I deem, contemplating

The many sorrows in this place of pain, So strange a sorrow to my life could cling, As, being thus loved, to be beloved in vain.

But now we know the best, the worst. We have

Interred, and prematurely, and unknown, Our youth, our hearts, our hopes, in one small grave,

Whence we must wander, widowed, to our

own.

And if we comfort not each other, what

Shall comfort us, in the dark days to come? Not the light laughter of the world, and not The faces and the firelight of fond home.

And so I write to you; and write, and write, For the mere sake of writing to you, dear. What can I tell you, that you know not? Night

Is deepening through the rosy atmosphere

About the lonely casement of this room,

Which you have left familiar with the grace That grows where you have been. And on the gloom

I almost fancy I can see your face:

Not pale with pain, and tears restrained for me,
As when I last beheld it; but as first,
A dream of rapture and of poesy,

Upon my youth, like dawn on dark, it burst.

Perchance I shall not ever see again

That face. I know that I shall never see
Its radiant beauty, as I saw it then,
Save by this lonely lamp of memory,

With childhood's starry graces lingering yet
I' the rosy orient of young womanhood;
And eyes like woodland violets newly wet;
And lips that left their meaning in my blood!

I will not say to you what I might say
To one less worthily loved, less worthy love.
I will not say. "Forget the past. Be gay.
And let the all ill-judging world approve

Light in your eyes, and laughter on your lip."
I will not say... "Dissolve in thought for

ever

Our sorrowful, but sacred, fellowship."

For that would be, to bid you, dear, dissever

Your nature from its nobler heritage

In consolations registered in heaven,

But I would say, O pure and perfect pearl Which I have dived so deep in life to find,

Athwart the mountain, and the mist, to you.
I know each robber hamlet. I know all
This mountain people. I have friends both
true

And trusted, sworn to aid whate'er befall.

I have a bark upon the gulf. And I,
If to my heart I yielded in this hour,
Might say... "Sweet fellow-sufferer, let us fly!
I know a little isle which doth embower

A home where exiled angels might forbear

A while to mourn for paradise."... But no! Never, whate'er fate now may bring us, dear, Shalt thou reproach me for that only woe

Which even love is powerless to console; Which dwells where duty dies: and haunts the tomb

Of life's abandoned purpose in the soul;
And leaves to hope, in heaven itself, no room.

Man cannot make, but may ennoble, fate,
By nobly bearing it. So let us trust
Not to ourselves but God, and calmly wait
Love's orient, out of darkness and of dust.
Farewell, and yet again farewell, and yet

Never farewell-if farewell mean to fare
Alone and disunited. Love hath set
Our days, in music, to the self-same air;

And I shall feel, wherever we may be,

The shadow of the sunniness of thee,
Even though in absence and an alien clime,
Hovering, in patience, through a clouded
time.

Farewell! The dawn is rising, and the light
Is making, in the east, a faint endeavor
To illuminate the mountain-peaks. Good-night.
Thine own, and only thine, my love, forever.

COUNT RINALDO RINALDI.

Locked in my heart thou liest. The wave may 'Tis a dark-purple, moonlighted midnight:

curl, The wind may wail above us. wind,

Wave and

What are their storm and strife to me and you? No strife can mar the pure heart's inmost calm.

This life of ours, what is it? A very few Soon-ended years, and then-the ceaseless psalm,

And the eternal sabbath of the soul!

There is music about on the air. And where, through the water, fall flashing The oars of each gay gondolier, The lamp-lighted ripples are dashing, In the musical moonlighted air, To the music, in merriment; washing, And splashing, the black marble stair That leads to the last garden-terrace, Where many a gay cavalier And many a lady yet loiter,

Round the Palace in festival there.

Hush!... while I write, from the dim Car- 'Tis is a terrace all paven mosaic,

miné

The midnight angelus begins to roll,
And float athwart the darkness up to me.

My messenger (a man by danger tried)

Waits in the courts below; and ere our star Upon the forehead of the dawn hath died, Beloved one, this letter will be far

Black marble, and green malachite; Round an ancient Venetian Palace, Where the windows with lampions are bright. 'Tis an evening of gala and festival, Music, and passion, and light. There is love in the nightingales' throats, That sing in the garden so well: There is love in the face of the moon:

PROGRESS.

There is love in the warm languid glances Of the dancers adown the dim dances: There is love in the low languid notes That rise into rapture, and swell, From viol, and flute, and bassoon.

The tree that bends down o'er the water,

So black, is a black-cypress tree. And the statue, there, under the terrace, Mnemosyne's statue must be. There comes a black gondola slowly To the Palace in festival there: And the Count Rinaldo Rinaldi

Has mounted the black marble stair.

There was nothing but darkness, and midnight, And tempest, and storm, in the breast

Of the Count Rinaldo Rinaldi,

As his foot o'er the black marble pressedThe glimmering black marble stair

Where the weed in the green ooze is clinging, That leads to the garden so fair,

Where the nightingales softly are singing, Where the minstrels new music are stringing, And the dancers for dancing prepare.

There rustles a robe of white satin :
There's a footstep falls light by the stair:
There rustles a robe of white satin:
There's a gleaming of soft golden hair :
And the Lady Irene Ricasoli

Stands near the cypress-tree there-
Near Mnemosyne's statue so fair,
The Lady Irene Ricasoli,

With the light in her long golden hair.

And the nightingales softly are singing
In the mellow and moonlighted air;
And the minstrels their viols are stringing;
And the dancers for dancing prepare.

"Siora," the Count said unto her,

"The shafts of ill-fortune pursue me; The old grief grows newer and newer, The old pangs are never at rest; And the foes that have sworn to undo me Have left me no peace in my breast. They have slandered, and wronged, and maligned

me:

Though they broke not my sword in my hand, They have broken my heart in my bosom

And sorrow my youth has unmanned. But I love you, Irene, Irene,

With such love as the wretched alone
Can feel from the desert within them
Which only the wretched have known!
And the heart of Rinaldo Rinaldi

Dreads, Lady, no frown but your own.
To others be all that you are, love-
A lady more lovely than most;
To me-be a fountain, a star, love,
That lights to his haven the lost;
A shrine that with tender devotion

The mariner, kneeling, doth deck

With the dank weeds yet dripping from ocean, And the last jewel saved from the wreck.

"None heeds us, beloved Irene ! None will mark if we linger or fly. VOL. III.-43

Amid all the mad masks in yon revel,
There is not an ear or an eye-
Not one-that will gaze or will listen;
And save the small star in the sky
Which, to light us, so softly doth glisten,
There is none will pursue us, Irene.
O love me, O save me, I die!

I am thine, O be mine, O beloved!

"Fly with me, Irene, Irene!

The moon drops: the morning is near, My gondola waits by the garden, And fleet is my own gondolier!" What the Lady Irene Ricasoli,

673

By Mnemosyne's statue in stone, Where she leaned, 'neath the black-cypress tree, To the Count Rinaldo Rinaldi Replied then, it never was known, And known, now, it never will be.

But the moon hath been melted in morning:
And the lamps in the windows are dead:
And the gay cavaliers from the terrace,
And the ladies they laughed with, are fled;
And the music is hushed in the viols;

And the minstrels, and dancers, are gone; And the nightingales now in the garden, From singing have ceased, one by one; But the Count Rinaldo Rinaldi

Still stands, where he last stood, alone, 'Neath the black-cypress tree, near the water, By Mnemosyne's statue in stone.

O'er his spirit was silence and midnight,
In his breast was the calm of despair.
He took, with a smile, from a casket
A single soft curl of gold hair,
A wavy warm curl of gold hair,
And into the black-bosomed water

He flung it athwart the black stair.
The skies they were changing above him;
The dawn, it came cold on the air;

He drew from his bosom a kerchief-
"Would," he sighed, "that her face was less
fair!

That her face was less hopelessly fair."
And folding the kerchief, he covered
The eyes of Mnemosyne there.

When Love's last wrong hath been forgotten coldly,

As First Love's face;

And, like a rat that comes to wanton boldly

In some lone place,

"On her cold, dead bosom my portrait lies,
Which next to her heart she used to wear-
Haunting it o'er with her tender eyes,
When my own face was not there.

Once festal-in the realm of light and laughter "It is set all round with rubies red,

Grim Doubt appears;

And pearls which a Peri might have kept.

While weird Suggestions from Death's vague For each ruby there, my heart hath bled:

Hereafter,

O'er ruined years,

Creep, dark and darker, with new dread to mut

ter

Through Life's long shade,

For each pearl, my eyes have wept."

And I said: "The thing is precious to me: They will bury her soon in the churchyard clay;

Yet make no more in the chill breast the flutter It lies on her heart, and lost must be,

Which once they made;

Whether it be-that all doth at the grave

If I do not take it away."

I lighted my lamp at the dying flame,
And crept up the stairs that creaked for fright,
Till into the chamber of death I came,
Where she lay all in white.

The moon shone over her winding-sheet.
There, stark she lay on her carven bed:
Seven burning tapers about her feet,
And seven about her head.

As I stretched my hand, I held my breath;
I turned as I drew the curtains apart:

I dared not look on the face of death:
I knew where to find her heart-

O Man, what art thou, O my friend, my brother, I thought, at first, as my touch fell there,

Even to thyself?

THE PORTRAIT.

MIDNIGHT past! Not a sound of aught
Through the silent house, but the wind at his

prayers.

I sat by the dying fire, and thought
Of the dear dead woman up-stairs.

A night of tears! for the gusty rain

Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon looked forth, as though in pain, With her face all white and wet:

Nobody with me, my watch to keep,

It had warmed that heart to life, with love; For the thing I touched was warm, I swear, And I could feel it move.

'Twas the hand of a man, that was moving slow O'er the heart of the dead-from the other side:

And at once the sweat broke over my brow, "Who is robbing the corpse?" I cried.

Opposite me, by the tapers' light,

The friend of my bosom, the man I loved,
Stood over the corpse, and all as white,
And neither of us moved.

"What do you here, my friend?"... The man
Looked first at me, and then at the dead.
"There is a portrait here," he began;
"There is. It is mine," I said.

But the friend of my bosom, the man I love: Said the friend of my bosom, "Yours, no doubt, And grief had sent him fast to sleep

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The portrait was, till a month ago,
When this suffering angel took that out,
And placed mine there, I know."

"This woman, she loved me well," said I.

"A month ago," said my friend to me:
"And in your throat," I groaned, "you lie!"
He answered... "Let us see."

"Enough!" I returned, "let the dead decide:
And whosesoever the portrait prove,
His shall it be, when the cause is tried,
Where Death is arraigned by Love."

We found the portrait there, in its place:
We opened it by the tapers' shine:
The gems were all unchanged: the face
Was-neither his nor mine.

ASTARTE.

675

"One nail drives out another, at least!

The face of the portrait there," I cried,

Other footsteps fall about me-faint, uncertain, In the shadow of the world, as it recedes:

"Is our friend's, the Raphael-faced young priest, | Other forms peer through the half-uplifted curWho confessed her when she died."

tain

Of that mystery which hangs behind the creeds.

What is gone, is gone forever. And new fashions

May replace old forms which nothing can re

store:

But I turn from sighing back departed passions With that pining at the bosom as of yore.

I remember to have murmured, morn and even : Though the earth dispart these Earthlies, face from face,

Yet the Heavenlies shall surely join in Heaven, For the spirit hath no bonds in time or space.

"Where it listeth, there it bloweth; all exist

ence

Is its region; and it houseth, where it will. I shall feel her through immeasurable distance, And grow nearer and be gathered to her still.

"If I fail to find her out by her gold tresses, Brows, and breast, and lips, and language of I shall know her by traces of dead kisses, sweet strains,

And that portion of myself which she retains."

But my being is confused with new experience, And changed to something other than it was; And the Future with the Past is set at variance; And life falters with the burdens which it has.

Earth's old sins press fast behind me, weakly wailing:

Faint before me fleets the good I have not

done;

And my search for her may still be unavailing 'Mid the spirits that are passed beyond the

sun.

AT HOME DURING THE BALL.

'Tis hard upon the dawn, and yet

She comes not from the ball. The night is cold, and bleak, and wet, And the snow lies over all.

I praised her with her diamonds on:
And as she went, she smiled.
And yet I sighed when she was gone,
Above our sleeping child.

And all night long, as soft and slow
As falls the falling rain,
The thoughts of days gone long ago
Have filled my heart again.

Once more I hear the Rhine rush down
(I hear it in my mind!)
Once more about the sleeping town,
The lamps wink in the wind.

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