"And therefore now Let her, that is the womb and tomb of all, Great Nature, take, and forcing far apart Those blind beginnings that have made me man Dash them anew together at her will Through all her cycles into man once more, Or beast or bird or fish, or opulent flower But till this cosmic order everywhere Shatter'd into one earthquake in one day Is not so far when momentary man Shall seem no more a something to himself, But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes, That stays the rolling Ixionian wheel, And numbs the Fury's ringlet-snake, and plucks The mortal soul from out immortal hell, Shall stand: ay, surely: then it fails at last, And perishes as I must; for O Thou, Passionless bride, divine Tranquillity, Yearn'd after by the wisest of the wise, I woo thee roughly, for thou carest not How roughly men may woo thee so they win Thus thus: the soul flies out and dies in the air." With that he drove the knife into his side: She heard him raging, heard him fall; ran in, Beat breast, tore hair, cried out upon herself As having fail'd in duty to him, shriek'd That she but meant to win him back, fell on him, Clasp'd, kiss'd him, wail'd: he answer'd, "Care not thou What matters? All is over: Fare thee well!" THE GOLDEN SUPPER. [This poem is founded upon a story in Boccaccio. A young lover, Julian, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavors to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel of it. He speaks of having been haunted in delirium by visions and the sound of bells, sometimes tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a witness to it completes the tale.] HE flies the event: he leaves the event to me: Poor Julian - how he rush'd away; the bells, As who should say "continue." Well, he had One golden hour of triumph shall I say? Solace at least before he left his home. Would you had seen him in that hour of his! He moved thro' all of it majestically Restrain'd himself quite to the close but now - Whether they were his lady's marriage-bells, Or prophets of them in his fantasy, I never ask'd: but Lionel and the girl Were wedded, and our Julian came again Back to his mother's house among the pines. But there, their gloom, the mountains and the Bay, The whole land weigh'd him down as Ætna does The Giant of Mythology: he would go, Would leave the land forever, and had gone Surely, but for a whisper "Go not yet,” Some warning, and divinely as it seem'd By that which follow'd but of this I deem As of the visions that he told the event Glanced back upon them in his after life, And partly made them tho' he knew it not. And thus he stay'd and would not look at her. No, not for months: but, when the eleventh moon After their marriage lit the lover's Bay, Heard yet once more the tolling bell, and said, Would you could toll me out of life, but found All softly as his mother broke it to him A crueller reason than a crazy ear, For that low knell tolling his lady dead Dead - and had lain three days without a pulse: All that look'd on her had pronounced her dead. And so they bore her (for in Julian's land They never nail a dumb head up in elm), Bore her free-faced to the free airs of heaven, What did he then? not die: he is here and hale Not plunge headforemost from the mountain there, And leave the name of Lover's Leap: not he: He knew the meaning of the whisper now, Thought that he knew it. "This, I stay'd for this; O love, I have not seen you for so long. |