Lucile Part 15

If ever your feet, like my own, O reader, have traversed these mountains alone, Have you felt your ident.i.ty shrink and contract At the sound of the distant and dim cataract, In the presence of nature's immensities? Say, Have you hung o'er the torrent, bedew'd with its spray, And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll'd, Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold, Track'd the summits from which every step that you tread Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed Of invisible waters, whose mistical sound Fills with awful suggestions the dizzy profound?

And, laboring onwards, at last through a break In the walls of the world, burst at once on the lake?

If you have, this description I might have withheld.

You remember how strangely your bosom has swell'd At the vision reveal'd. On the overwork'd soil Of this planet, enjoyment is sharpen'd by toil; And one seems, by the pain of ascending the height, To have conquer'd a claim of that wonderful sight.

XX.

Hail, virginal daughter of cold Espingo!

Hail, Naiad, whose realm is the cloud and the snow; For o'er thee the angels have whiten'd their wings, And the thirst of the seraphs is quench'd at thy springs.

What hand hath, in heaven, upheld thine expanse?

When the breath of creation first fashion'd fair France, Did the Spirit of Ill, in his downthrow appalling, Bruise the world, and thus hollow thy basin while falling?

Ere the mammoth was born hath some monster unnamed The base of thy mountainous pedestal framed?

And later, when Power to Beauty was wed, Did some delicate fairy embroider thy bed With the fragile valerian and wild columbine?

XXI.

But thy secret thou keepest, and I will keep mine; For once gazing on thee, it flash'd on my soul, All that secret! I saw in a vision the whole Vast design of the ages; what was and shall be!

Hands unseen raised the veil of a great mystery For one moment. I saw, and I heard; and my heart Bore witness within me to infinite art, In infinite power proving infinite love; Caught the great choral chant, mark'd the dread pageant move-- The divine Whence and Whither of life! But, O daughter Of Oo, not more safe in the deep silent water Is thy secret, than mine in my heart. Even so.

What I then saw and heard, the world never shall know.

XXII.

The dimness of eve o'er the valleys had closed, The rain had ceased falling, the mountains reposed.

The stars had enkindled in luminous courses Their slow-sliding lamps, when, remounting their horses, The riders retraversed that mighty serration Of rock-work. Thus left to its own desolation, The lake, from whose glimmering limits the last Transient pomp of the pageants of sunset had pa.s.s'd, Drew into its bosom the darkness, and only Admitted within it one image--a lonely And tremulous phantom of flickering light That follow'd the mystical moon through the night.

XXIII.

It was late when o'er Luchon at last they descended.

To her chalet, in silence, Lord Alfred attended Lucile. As they parted, she whispered him low, "You have made to me, Alfred, an offer I know All the worth of, believe me. I cannot reply Without time for reflection. Good night!--not good by."

"Alas! 'tis the very same answer you made To the Duc de Luvois but a day since," he said.

"No, Alfred! the very same, no," she replied.

Her voice shook. "If you love me, obey me. Abide My answer to-morrow."

XXIV.

Alas, Cousin Jack!

You Ca.s.sandra in breeches and boots! turn your back To the ruins of Troy. Prophet, seek not for glory Amongst thine own people.

I follow my story.

CANTO V.

I.

Up!--forth again, Pegasus!--"Many's the slip,"

Hath the proverb well said, "'twixt the cup and the lip!"

How blest should we be, have I often conceived, Had we really achieved what we nearly achieved!

We but catch at the skirts of the thing we would be, And fall back on the lap of a false destiny.

So it will be, so has been, since this world began!

And the happiest, n.o.blest, and best part of man Is the part which he never hath fully play'd out: For the first and last word in life's volume is-- Doubt.

The face of the most fair to our vision allow'd Is the face we encounter and lose in the crowd.

The thought that most thrills our existence is one Which, before we can frame it in language, is gone.

O Horace! the rustic still rests by the river, But the river flows on, and flows past him forever!

Who can sit down, and say... "What I will be, I will"?

Who stand up, and affirm... "What I was, I am still"?

Who is that must not, if question'd, say......

"What I would have remain'd or become, I am not"?

We are ever behind, or beyond, or beside Our intrinsic existence. Forever at hide And seek with our souls. Not in Hades alone Doth Sisyphus roll, ever frustrate, the stone, Do the Danaids ply, ever vainly, the sieve.

Tasks as futile does earth to its denizens give.

Yet there's none so unhappy, but what he hath been Just about to be happy, at some time, I ween; And none so beguiled and defrauded by chance, But what once in his life, some minute circ.u.mstance Would have fully sufficed to secure him the bliss Which, missing it then, he forever must miss.

And to most of us, ere we go down to the grave, Life, relenting, accords the good gift we would have; But, as though by some strange imperfection in fate, The good gift, when it comes, comes a moment too late.

The Future's great veil our breath fitfully flaps, And behind it broods ever the mighty Perhaps.

Yet! there's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip; But while o'er the brim of life's beaker I dip, Though the cup may next moment be shatter'd, the wine Spilt, one deep health I'll pledge, and that health shall be thine, O being of beauty and bliss! seen and known In the deeps of my soul, and possess'd there alone!

My days know thee not; and my lips name thee never.

Thy place in my poor life is vacant forever.

We have met: we have parted. No more is recorded In my annals on earth. This alone was afforded To the man whom men know me, or deem me, to be.

But, far down, in the depth of my life's mystery, (Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwells, Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells, Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls, 'Mid the world's adamantine and dim pedestals; At whose feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for whom The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)-- Thou abidest and reignest forever, O Queen Of that better world which thou swayest unseen!

My one perfect mistress! my all things in all!

Thee by no vulgar name known to men do I call; For the Seraphs have named thee to me in my sleep, And that name is a secret I sacredly keep.

But, wherever this nature of mine is most fair, And its thoughts are the purest--belov'd, thou art there!

And whatever is n.o.blest in aught that I do, Is done to exalt and to worship thee too.

The world gave thee not to me, no! and the world Cannot take thee away from me now. I have furl'd The wings of my spirit above thy bright head; At thy feet are my soul's immortalities spread.

Thou mightest have been to me much. Thou art more.

And in silence I worship, in darkness adore.

If life be not that which without us we find-- Chance, accident, merely--but rather the mind, And the soul which, within us, surviveth these things, If our real existence have truly its springs Less in that which we do than in that which we feel, Not in vain do I worship, not hopeless I kneel!

For then, though I name thee not mistress or wife, Thou art mine--and mine only,--O life of my life!

And though many's the slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, Yet while o'er the brim of life's beaker I dip, While there's life on the lip, while there's warmth in the wine, One deep health I'll pledge, and that health shall be thine!

II.

This world, on whose peaceable breast we repose Unconvulsed by alarm, once confused in the throes Of a tumult divine, sea and land, moist and dry, And in fiery fusion commix'd earth and sky.

Time cool'd it, and calm'd it, and taught it to go The round of its...o...b..t in peace, long ago.

The wind changeth and whirleth continually: All the rivers run down and run into the sea: The wind whirleth about, and is presently still'd: All the rivers run down, yet the sea is not fill'd: The sun goeth forth from his chambers; the sun Ariseth, and lo! he descendeth anon.

All returns to its place. Use and Habit are powers Far stronger than Pa.s.sion, in this world of ours.