Lucile Part 38

Is the land of our birth less the land of our birth, Or its claim the less strong, or its cause the less worth Our upholding, because the white lily no more Is as sacred as all that it bloom'd for of yore?

Yet be that as it may be; I cannot perchance Judge this matter. I am but a woman, and France Has for me simpler duties. Large hope, though, Eugene De Luvois, should be yours. There is purpose in pain, Otherwise it were devilish. I trust in my soul That the great master hand which sweeps over the whole Of this deep harp of life, if at moments it stretch To shrill tension some one wailing nerve, means to fetch Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart, Its pathos the purest, from out the wrung heart, Whose faculties, flaccid it may be, if less Sharply strung, sharply smitten, had fail'd to express Just the one note the great final harmony needs.

And what best proves there's life in a heart?--that it bleeds?

Grant a cause to remove, grant an end to attain, Grant both to be just, and what mercy in pain!

Cease the sin with the sorrow! See morning begin!

Pain must burn itself out if not fuel'd by sin.

There is hope in yon hill-tops, and love in yon light.

Let hate and despondency die with the night!"

He was moved by her words. As some poor wretch confined In cells loud with meaningless laughter, whose mind Wanders trackless amidst its own ruins, may hear A voice heard long since, silenced many a year, And now, 'mid mad ravings recaptured again, Singing through the caged lattice a once well-known strain, Which brings back his boyhood upon it, until The mind's ruin'd crevices graciously fill With music and memory, and, as it were, The long-troubled spirit grows slowly aware Of the mockery round it, and shrinks from each thing It once sought,--the poor idiot who pa.s.s'd for a king, Hard by, with his squalid straw crown, now confess'd A madman more painfully mad than the rest.-- So the sound of her voice, as it there wander'd o'er His echoing heart, seem'd in part to restore The forces of thought: he recaptured the whole Of his life by the light which, in pa.s.sing, her soul Reflected on his: he appear'd to awake From a dream, and perceived he had dream'd a mistake: His spirit was soften'd, yet troubled in him: He felt his lips falter, his eyesight grow dim, But he murmur'd...

"Lucile, not for me that sun's light Which reveals--not restores--the wild havoc of night.

There are some creatures born for the night, not the day.

Broken-hearted the nightingale hides in the spray, And the owl's moody mind in his own hollow tower Dwells m.u.f.fled. Be darkness henceforward my dower.

Light, be sure, in that darkness there dwells, by which eyes Grown familiar with ruins may yet recognize Enough desolation."

IX.

"The pride that claims here On earth to itself (howsoever severe To itself it may be) G.o.d's dread office and right Of punishing sin, is a sin in heaven's sight, And against heaven's service.

"Eugene de Luvois, Leave the judgment to Him who alone knows the law.

Surely no man can be his own judge, least of all His own doomsman."

Her words seem'd to fall With a weight of tears in them.

He look'd up, and saw That sad serene countenance, mournful as law And tender as pity, bow'd o'er him: and heard In some thicket the matinal chirp of a bird.

X.

"Vulgar natures alone suffer vainly.

"Eugene,"

She continued, "in life we have met once again, And once more life parts us. Yon day-spring for me Lifts the veil of a future in which it may be We shall meet nevermore. Grant, oh grant to me yet The belief that it is not in vain we have met!

I plead for the future. A new horoscope I would cast: will you read it? I plead for a hope: I plead for a memory; yours, yours alone, To restore or to spare. Let the hope be your own, Be the memory mine.

"Once of yore, when for man Faith yet lived, ere this age of the sluggard began, Men aroused to the knowledge of evil, fled far From the fading rose-gardens of sense, to the war With the Pagan, the cave in the desert, and sought Not repose, but employment in action or thought, Life's strong earnest, in all things! oh, think not of me, But yourself! for I plead for your own destiny: I plead for your life, with its duties undone, With its claims unappeased, and its trophies unwon; And in pleading for life's fair fulfilment, I plead For all that you miss, and for all that you need."

XI.

Through the calm crystal air, faint and far, as she spoke, A clear, chilly chime from a church-turret broke; And the sound of her voice, with the sound of the bell, On his ear, where he kneel'd, softly, soothingly fell.

All within him was wild and confused, as within A chamber deserted in some roadside inn, Where, pa.s.sing, wild travellers paused, over-night, To quaff and carouse; in each socket each light Is extinct; crash'd the gla.s.ses, and scrawl'd is the wall With wild ribald ballads; serenely o'er all, For the first time perceived, where the dawn-light creeps faint Through the wrecks of that orgy, the face of a saint, Seen through some broken frame, appears noting meanwhile The ruin all round with a sorrowful smile.

And he gazed round. The curtains of Darkness half drawn Oped behind her; and pure as the pure light of dawn She stood, bathed in morning, and seem'd to his eyes From their sight to be melting away in the skies That expanded around her.

XII.

There pa.s.s'd through his head A fancy--a vision. That woman was dead He had loved long ago--loved and lost! dead to him, Dead to all the life left him; but there, in the dim Dewy light of the dawn, stood a spirit; 'twas hers; And he said to the soul of Lucile de Nevers: "O soul to its sources departing away!

Pray for mine, if one soul for another may pray.

I to ask have no right, thou to give hast no power, One hope to my heart. But in this parting hour I name not my heart, and I speak not to thine.

Answer, soul of Lucile, to this dark soul of mine, Does not soul owe to soul, what to heart heart denies, Hope, when hope is salvation? Behold, in yon skies, This wild night is pa.s.sing away while I speak: Lo, above us, the day-spring beginning to break!

Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam: Is it hope that awakens? or do I but dream?

I know not. It may be, perchance, the first spark Of a new light within me to solace the dark Unto which I return; or perchance it may be The last spark of fires half extinguish'd in me.

I know not. Thou goest thy way: I my own; For good or for evil, I know not. Alone This I know; we are parting. I wish'd to say more, But no matter! 'twill pa.s.s. All between us is o'er.

Forget the wild words of to-night. 'Twas the pain For long years h.o.a.rded up, that rush'd from me again.

I was unjust: forgive me. Spare now to reprove Other words, other deeds. It was madness, not love, That you thwarted this night. What is done is now done.

Death remains to avenge it, or life to atone.

I was madden'd, delirious! I saw you return To him--not to me; and I felt my heart burn With a fierce thirst for vengeance--and thus... let it pa.s.s!

Long thoughts these, and so brief the moments, alas!

Thou goest thy way, and I mine. I suppose 'Tis to meet nevermore. Is it not so? Who knows, Or who heeds, where the exile from Paradise flies?

Or what altars of his in the desert may rise?

Is it not so, Lucile? Well, well! Thus then we part Once again, soul from soul, as before heart from heart!"

XIII.

And again clearer far than the chime of a bell, That voice on his sense softly, soothingly fell.

"Our two paths must part us, Eugene; for my own Seems no more through that world in which henceforth alone You must work out (as now I believe that you will) The hope which you speak of. That work I shall still (If I live) watch and welcome, and bless far away.

Doubt not this. But mistake not the thought, if I say That the great moral combat between human life And each human soul must be single. The strife None can share, though by all its results may be known.

When the soul arms for battle, she goes forth alone.

I say not, indeed, we shall meet nevermore, For I know not. But meet, as we have met of yore, I know that we cannot. Perchance we may meet By the death-bed, the tomb, in the crowd, in the street, Or in solitude even, but never again Shall we meet from henceforth as we have met, Eugene.

For we know not the way we are going, nor yet Where our two ways may meet, or may cross. Life hath set No landmarks before us. But this, this alone, I will promise: whatever your path, or my own, If, for once in the conflict before you, it chance That the Dragon prevail, and with cleft shield, and lance Lost or shatter'd, borne down by the stress of the war, You falter and hesitate, if from afar I, still watching (unknown to yourself, it may be) O'er the conflict to which I conjure you, should see That my presence could rescue, support you, or guide, In the hour of that need I shall be at your side, To warn, if you will, or incite, or control; And again, once again, we shall meet, soul to soul!"

XIV.

The voice ceased.

He uplifted his eyes.

All alone He stood on the bare edge of dawn. She was gone, Like a star, when up bay after bay of the night, Ripples in, wave on wave, the broad ocean of light.

And at once, in her place was the Sunrise! It rose In its sumptuous splendor and solemn repose, The supreme revelation of light. Domes of gold, Realms of rose, in the Orient! and breathless, and bold, While the great gates of heaven roll'd back one by one, The bright herald angel stood stern in the sun!

Thrice holy Eospheros! Light's reign began In the heaven, on the earth, in the heart of the man.

The dawn on the mountains! the dawn everywhere!

Light! silence! the fresh innovations of air!

O earth, and O ether! A b.u.t.terfly breeze Floated up, flutter'd down, and poised blithe on the trees.

Through the revelling woods, o'er the sharp-rippled stream, Up the vale slow uncoiling itself out of dream, Around the brown meadows, adown the hill-slope, The spirits of morning were whispering, "HOPE!"

XV.

He uplifted his eyes. In the place where she stood But a moment before, and where now roll'd the flood Of the sunrise all golden, he seem'd to behold, In the young light of sunrise, an image unfold Of his own youth,--its ardors--its promise of fame-- Its ancestral ambition; and France by the name Of his sires seem'd to call him. There, hover'd in light, That image aloft, o'er the shapeless and bright And Aurorean clouds, which themselves seem'd to be Brilliant fragments of that golden world, wherein he Had once dwelt, a native!

There, rooted and bound To the earth, stood the man, gazing at it! Around The rims of the sunrise it hover'd and shone Transcendent, that type of a youth that was gone; And he--as the body may yearn for the soul, So he yearn'd to embody that image. His whole Heart arose to regain it.

"And is it too late?"

No! for Time is a fiction, and limits not fate.

Thought alone is eternal. Time thralls it in vain.

For the thought that springs upward and yearns to regain The true source of spirit, there IS no TOO LATE.

As the stream to its first mountain levels, elate In the fountain arises, the spirit in him Arose to that image. The image waned dim Into heaven; and heavenward with it, to melt As it melted, in day's broad expansion, he felt With a thrill, sweet and strange, and intense--awed, amazed-- Something soar and ascend in his soul, as he gazed.