(To the rest) I will return alone. If any come To seek me at my house, entreat their stay.
[They withdraw, and a Waiting-Woman enters.
This, if I err not, is the pretty wench
That waits upon my lady. What, fair maid!
Thy mistress, having comeliness to spare,
There is but one thing that still harks me back.
To bring a cloud upon the summer day
Of one so happy and so beautiful,—
It is a hard condition. For myself
I know not that the circumstance of life
In all its changes can so far afflict me
As makes anticipation much worth while.
But she is younger,—of a sex beside
Whose spirits are to ours as flame to fire,
More sudden and more perishable too;
So that the gust wherewith the one is kindled
Extinguishes the other. Oh she is fair!
As fair as Heaven to look upon! as fair
As ever vision of the Virgin blest
That weary pilgrim, resting by the fount
Beneath the palm and dreaming to the tune
Of flowing waters, duped his soul withal.
It was permitted in my pilgrimage
To rest beside the fount beneath the tree,
Beholding there no vision, but a maid
Whose form was light and graceful as the palm,
Whose heart was pure and jocund as the fount
And spread a freshness and a verdure round.
This was permitted in my pilgrimage
And loth am I to take my
staff again.
Say that I fall not in this enterprise—
Yet must my life be full of hazardous turns,
And they that house with me must ever live
In imminent peril of some evil fate.
Danger from foes-that is a daylight danger-
Danger from tyrants-that too is seen and known—
But envious friends and jealous multitudes....
In dusk to walk through a perpetual ambush....
[A pause again.
Still for myself, I fear not but that I,
Taking what comes, leaving what leave I must,
Could make a sturdy struggle through the world.
But for the maid, the choice were better far
To win her dear heart back again if lost,
And stake it upon some less dangerous throw.
My mistress, sir, so please you, takes her walk
Along the garden terrace, and desires
That you'll go forth to meet her.
Had done its best to single out a soul
Most form'd for peaceful virtues- -ah! I come.
I have some little overstaid my time.
First let me plead for pardon of that trespass.
I said to Clara when the sun went down
Now if-though truly 'tis impossible—
He come not ere yon blushing cloud grows gray,
His promises are no more worth than bubbles.
And look how gray it is!
ARTEVELDE.
A hectic change.
The smiling dawn, the laughing blue-eyed day,
The graybeard eve incessantly pass on,
Fast fleeting generations born of time
And buried in eternity-they pass
And not a day resigns its little life
And enters into darkness, that can say
'Lo! I was fair, and such as I have been
My issue shall be. Lo! I cast abroad
Such affluence of glory over earth,
That what had been but goodly to the sight
Was made magnificent, what had been bare
Show'd forth a naked beauty-in all this
Was I thus rich, and that which I possess'd
To-morrow shall inherit.' False as hope!
To-morrow's heritage is cloud and storm.
Oh! what a moody moralist you grow!
Yet in the even-down letter you are right;
For Ursel, who is weatherwise, says always
That when the sun sets red with the wind south
The morrow shall be stormy. What of that?
Oh! now I know; the fish won't take the bait.
'Tis marvellous the delight you take in fishing!
Were I to hang upon a river's edge
So tediously, angling, angling still,
The fiend that watches our impatient fits
Would sometime tempt me to jump headlong in.
And you-you cannot quit it for a day!
Have I not read your sadness?
Oh! you are cunning to divine men's thoughts.
But come what may to-morrow, we have now
A tranquil hour, which let us entertain
As though it were the latest of its kind.
Why should we think it so?
I trust that many such may come to you;
But for myself, I feel as if life's stream
Were shooting o'er some verge, to make a short,
An angry and precipitate descent,
Thenceforward much tormented on its way.
What can have fill'd you with such sad surmises? You were not wont to speak despondently.
Nor do I now despond. All my life long
I have beheld with most respect the man
Who knew himself and knew the ways before him,
And from amongst them chose considerately,
With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage,
And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purposes. I trained myself
To take my place in high or low estate
As one of that scant order of mankind.
Wherefore, though I indulge no more the dream
Of living as I hoped I might have lived,
A life of temperate and thoughtful joy,
Yet I repine not, and from this time forth
Will cast no look behind.
What change hath come since morning!
The words and looks which seem'd all confidence,
To me at least-how soon are they recalled!
But let them be-it matters not; I, too,
Will cast no look behind—Oh, if I should,
My heart would never hold its wretchedness.
My gentle Adriana, you run wild
In false conjectures; hear me to the end.
If hitherto we have not said we loved,
Yet hath the heart of each declared its love
By all the tokens wherein love delights.
We heretofore have trusted in each other,
Too wholly have we trusted to have need
|