Chapter 59

_Lord S_. Tis for your sake, my Gertrude, I am sorry. If you could go alone, I'd have you go.

_Lady Gertrude_. And leave you ill? No, you are not so cruel. Believe me, father, I am happier In your sick room, than on a glowing island In the blue Bay of Naples.

_Lord S_. It was so sudden! 'Tis plain it will not go again as quickly. But have your walk before the sun be hot. Put the ice near me, child. There, that will do.

_Lady Gertrude_. Good-bye then, father, for a little while.

[_Goes_.]

_Lord S_. I never knew what illness was before. O life! to think a man should stand so little On his own will and choice, as to be thus Cast from his high throne suddenly, and sent To grovel beast-like. All the glow is gone From the rich world! No sense is left me more To touch with beauty. Even she has faded Into the far horizon, a spent dream Of love and loss and passionate despair!

Is there no beauty? Is it all a show Flung outward from the healthy blood and nerves, A reflex of well-ordered organism? Is earth a desert? Is a woman's heart No more mysterious, no more beautiful, Than I am to myself this ghastly moment? It must be so--it _must_, except God is, And means the meaning that we think we see, Sends forth the beauty we are taking in. O Soul of nature, if thou art not, if There dwelt not in thy thought the primrose-flower Before it blew on any bank of spring, Then all is untruth, unreality, And we are wretched things; our highest needs Are less than we, the offspring of ourselves; And when we are sick, they _are_ not; and our hearts Die with the voidness of the universe.

But if thou art, O God, then all is true; Nor are thy thoughts less radiant that our eyes Are filmy, and the weary, troubled brain Throbs in an endless round of its own dreams. And she _is_ beautiful--and I have lost her!

O God! thou art, thou art; and I have sinned Against thy beauty and thy graciousness! That woman-splendour was not mine, but thine. Thy thought passed into form, that glory passed Before my eyes, a bright particular star: Like foolish child, I reached out for the star, Nor kneeled, nor worshipped. I will be content That she, the Beautiful, dwells on in thee, Mine to revere, though not to call my own. Forgive me, God! Forgive me, Lilia!

My love has taken vengeance on my love. I writhe and moan. Yet I will be content. Yea, gladly will I yield thee, so to find That thou art not a phantom, but God's child; That Beauty is, though it is not for me. When I would hold it, then I disbelieved. That I may yet believe, I will not touch it. I have sinned against the Soul of love and beauty, Denying him in grasping at his work.