Chapter 19
The quiet days were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, and his strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watch our ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It was the waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountain crest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot across the welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dying season. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, and birds of passage took their flight. Atmâ marked these things, and often withdrew to lament.
One evening they watched the shadows lengthening. Atmâ's heart was oppressed, but Bertram looked on the shifting scene with happy undaunted smile. In voice pathetic only from mortal weakness and strong with immortality he said:
"When mists and dreams and shadows flee, And happy hills so far and high Bend low in benedicite, I know the break of day is nigh.
Thus have I watched in daisied mead A grayer heaven bending low, And heard the music of a brook In meet response more softly flow, Until at mystic signal given From realm entranced the spell was riven, The sunbeams glanced, The wavelets danced, And gladness spread from earth to heaven.
This little flower Right bravely blooming at my feet So dainty, sweet, Has missed the spirit of the hour. But stay, the tender calyx thrills, It feels the silence of the hills, Behold it droops, in haste to be At one with that hushed company."
_Atmâ:_
"Not day, but night, beloved friend, Long doleful night, The shadows of the eve portend."
_Bertram:_
"Watcher unseeing! what of the night! 'Tis past and gone. I know th' advance and joy of light! Look how for it all things put on Such hues as in comparison The earth and sky to darkness turn, Hues of the sard, and chrysolite And sapphire herald in the morn."
_Atmâ:_
"Ah! woe is me for day so quickly past, For morning fled, and noontide unexpressed."
_Bertram:_
"The subtly-quickening breath of morn my inmost being is borne, And I behold th' unearthly train Of solemn splendours that pertain To seraph state, Such as our glories symbolize. They sweep in countless bright convoys Athwart my blissful view, they seem Completion of all pleasure known Or loved, and of our fairest dream End and interpretation."
_Atmâ:_
"Let be, my friend; so it be morn to thee I make no moan, though thy day's dawn shall be Night of desertion and lament to me."