PART VI.

They sate as one within the grot that rose
Crowning a grassy lawn which overruled
The paradise beneath them. She reclined
Upon the seat, Astrophel on the sward;
Her hand was gathered in his own; his eyes
Raised, as if in the mirror of that face
He saw a life revealed.
The Hebe she,
With the deep azure eyes and golden hair,
With lips half-opened, through their roses showing
The witchery of laughter as she smiled,
A thing of joy and of abounding life;
But in her mien the fine reserve that, veiled
And self-retiring as the violet,
Draws after it the contemplative soul;
A syren face of gentleness and faith,
But in that freedom trustful as a child.
He sate beside her, watchful of that star,
The man repellent and reserved; nor yet
Conscious was she of the one aim and thought
His life absorbing, to leave memory
And an enduring presence among men.
He had forgotten life absorbed in her;
A mightier power sate on the altar-place,
And fame, the shadow, ministered on love.

But she, that thing of faith and beauty, played
Childlike, awhile, upon Hope's orient shore,
Pleased with the ocean-shell that murmuring gave
Responses from the bosom of the Sea.
Her spirit was that shell, or rather lyre,
Vibrating to the tones of his deep voice
Silent and answerless to all. And she
Within her solitudes of thought had sighed
Thus to be loved by one, untainted by
Conventional breath of life, even as him
She saw reposing there beside her feet.
Thus in her lonely hours she had shaped
The ideal form; the vision, and the hope,
Half-hidden by her fear, while half-revealed.
She pictured him that she might love as one
Who should create memorials undrawn
From the cold roots of buried ancestry,
Who should stand forth the light and guide; the spirit
That made life follow him, the potentate,
The star, and the crowned heir of memory,
Even the Poet.

In the solitudes
Of her young heart had that high maiden lived.
The rolling days unheeded lapsed by her,
Unfolding modes of one monotony;
And thus her bright eyes languidly had turned
From circles gathered round, from praise unheard,
And flattery sighed to inattentive ears;
Vain incense all, poured forth before a shrine
Whose spirit had departed.
There she sate;
The dream of her creation realised.
They met in that wild solitude, each led
By conscious impulse owned, yet unavowed,
The secret wish of her young hope to hear
Reserves that folded him as with a cloud;
To know the thought or feeling she would share
Or joy or grief; to look in that deep breast
And read its inmost leaves.
They walked within
The light of love; they lived that golden age
Of youth, the memory of after life;
The incense of the opening heart poured forth
Pure as the angels' orisons to God;
The faith that yields itself a sacrifice;
The hope that on the future dreams; and truth
That robes the idol with divinity
Drawn from its heavenly nature.
And these are
The visions and romance of after time;
Jest of the soul that never felt the fires
Of the Promethean Titan; disbelief
Of a used being and a sapless tree,
Of the rent lyre whose chords once vibrated
To melodies forgotten; the despair
Of life outlived, and impotence descending
Into its grave of rest.
With a slight laugh,
Within whose accent purpose lurked, to chase
The shadow from his brow, and sunlight throw
O'er talk whose threads had been for moments lost;
Gaily and gracefully as one who played
With a light toy, yet nearest to her heart,
With finger archly pointed, and bright eyes
Within whose depths was laughter, she began: —

" You are not earnest with me, Astrophel:
On ordinary features I can read
The birth and growth of thought, but not on yours;
And when you tell me of the power I hold,
I look into your face to find the shadow
Of substance that is not.
" There is a cloud,
Or veil, thrown over depths where all is calm,
Hiding the sky beyond: thus when you kneel
And talk to me, with an idolatrous tongue,
Of beauty that I have not, which exists
But in the poet's phantasy, I feel
You are a potency I dare not trust."

In the light words an archness dwelt wherein
Was witchery that dimpled round her lips
And lightened in her face, the conscious power
Of one who sports with the subjected. Then
The faint hue faded from her cheek, and grew
The deepening shadow, till in those last tones
The pensiveness of thought was audible.
He raised his head, confronting her with eyes
That gave the faith they drew.
" Cornelia!
There is no thought within this heart, of past
Or future veiled. I seek to tell my life;
But ere the tale begin, I would repose
On the light drawn from yours." He gazed on her,
The ideal of the poet there confessed.

" You have revealed your heart, I look within
Its mirror, teaching me. Hear that I am;
A tale, or rather episode of life;
Record too brief, but from material drawn
Whereof are memories moulded.
" You found me
Among the abodes of men, as if I were
A dweller among cities. I became
A fragment drifted from the ark of home,
Cast on the tides of life, to rise or fall.
And thus I lived and breathed amid the smoke
And squalor of a life that clung to me;
Suffering responded back from my own heart,
That told me I was one with fellow-man.
Emerging from the strife, you rose before me:
The garb I wore showed me akin to need
That was not; I had disciplined my wants,
To minister on helpless wretchedness.

" Amid the northern hills our mansion rose.
Upon the oriel of that ancient hall
Our race was shown; there hung the regal shield
Of the great victor upon Crecy's plain;
I, lineal branch from that majestic trunk.
Those halls have passed from us, and have become
A tale that was, a memory and a dream.
My venerated mother, widowed there,
Succumbed to circumstance she could not rule;
I, sole surviving pillar of the house,
For the rose twined with me, my sister dear,
Fell off from us, and perished by the way.
But by those sea-laved towers, in luxury nursed,
I had not wasted youth. I had watched Nature,
Till from her symbols I had drawn the truths
She teaches to her children. I breathed strength
Caught from the hills, and quiet from the vales;
And that great perseverance, sleepless strife
Of effort still renewed, and power instilled,
I drew from solemn voices of the Sea.

" Then an accusing and a questioning soul
Within me grew, that loved to match itself
'Gainst opposition; restlessness of will,
Aimless of purpose, vague and undefined.
Caught not from austere foreheads of the hills,
Or the green faces of the fields, it was
The dim sense of an unknown faculty
Struggling to birth, until alone with God,
Seer-like, I struck the rock, and from its depths
Flowed forth the stream of heaven-born Poetry.

" Meanwhile adversity frowned on our house,
And then necessity came, as with a scourge,
To expel us from those towers we had held.
We gathered in the hall at that last hour,
My widowed mother and my sister dear;
And there the menials, in our summer hours
Faithful, now crouched together, held aloof
Like seamews from the storm. But ere the gates
Closed on our parting footsteps, from the wall
With reverential hands I raised the shield
That blazed on Crecy's field; I bore away
That sole inheritance, then followed them,
And left those halls for ever.
" On my way
I turned for moments, as towards a friend
Bound with my being, to the eternal Sea.
Day broke with livid face above the hills;
And the grey mists, like shrouds of sheeted ghosts,
Hung heavily on the deep, invisible
Save where the foam from its pale lips of wrath
Surged whitening at my feet. I heard the winds
Sob their wild dirges as they hurried by,
As if they mourned the parting of the last
Of our ancestral line. The waves upheaved
Their watery brows, and felt their sightless way
Along the sides of the dim caves, and gave,
And heard their answers in their tongues unknown,
Each element obeying like ourselves
Laws of inevitable destiny.

" I bent toward the sands, and bowed my head
Before those waters like the priests of old,
Waiting the inspiration, till I deemed
I heard, through ghostly shrouds of the grey mists,
The Voices of my Fathers in the storm.
It was a phantasy, but it fixed my soul,
Rock-like, to be the staid support and guide
Of those who clung in hope and faith to me,
Last column of a fallen monument.
The shield hung on the crag whereby I knelt.
I raised it reverently, and 'mid the roar
Of the deaf waves I pledged my heart that strife
Of effort ceaseless, sleepless, should be mine;
That I would fail not in the race though fell
The snows of winter on my head, till won
A crown undrawn from dust, albeit of kings;
A laurel won from conflicts of the soul
That leave undying record in the hearts
Of mightiest poets.
" I arose; I felt
My prayer was heard, and my oath sealed; I bore
The shield before me as a talisman
That to look on was strength. As one absorbed
I followed, with a step and brow assured,
The remnant of the last of our great line.
We shook the dust of mountains from our feet;
We turned to the arena of all strife,
The mightiest of cities, merged, and lost
As water-drops within the infinite deep."

He ceased, but ceasing, he still seemed to speak;
His voice and utterance took the solemn tone
That rises from the soul when it pours forth
Its inmost thought. She gazed on him intent,
And read upon his brow all he had told,
The stamp profound of truth engraven there;
Conscious of strifes to come, repulse, or hate,
Or jealousy, or cold forgetfulness
From slumbering tribunals. Then she dwelt
On the opposing spirit that looked out
From those firm lips, and read the purpose calm
That moulded them to marble fixedness.
Silence became a presence in the grot.
Unquiet thought was visible in her eyes,
While with averted look she saw him still.
Abstractedly she gazed along the roof
Of that low bower with branching laurel twined,
That o'er the seat spread overshadowing boughs.
While yet he spake the energy had passed.
Her spirit was subdued by what she heard;
She looked on him who bodied forth his life,
While the inferior being she had led
Awoke a feeling of unworthiness.
She thought of all that he had borne, the pangs
Ennobling, that like a healthful nurse
Strengthen the heart they purify. The high
And noble form his ancient halls cast forth,
Panoplied in the truth that sublimates
The man above his kind. The abstracted one,
That entered the arena of world-strife
For failure or for victory; of a race
Of regal lineage that paled her own.

Thus, while she contemplated him, she felt
A veneration mingled with her thought.
She plucked a branch round which her fingers twined,
Shaped to a wreath, and then she slowly turned
Towards him; in her gesture now was pause
And visible hesitation, and reserve
Vibrated in her voice; her eyes down cast,
Lest his quick glance should look within her breast,
And read what yet she knew not.
" Astrophel,
You will win wreaths enduring, yet retain
Awhile this perishable memory
Which is their symbol, given by a thing
As fleeting as itself;" and then the light
Of a faint smile broke o'er her shadowed face.
" If I have yet a wish, and unconfessed,
The chiefest as the last, return it me
When the accorded laurel is your own."

She ceased; in ceasing proved she had essayed
Effort beyond her strength. He rose and bore
Her form, as with unsettled step she turned
To leave the grot; in that brief moment felt
That life flashed on him as with rays from heaven:
Her tresses steeped her neck in amber light.
Her eyes were closed, but o'er their orbs the tint
Of violet veins in tenderest azure stole.
He gazed on her unconscious form, and felt
His world within that grasp; thus, in that hour,
The children they before great Nature were
United, and indissolubly one.