Chapter 5

The spinner twisted her slender thread As she sat and spun: "The earth and the heavens are mine," she said, "And the moon and sun; Into my web the sunlight goes, And the breath of May, And the crimson life of the new-blown rose That was born to-day."

The spinner sang in the hush of noon And her song was low: "Ah, morning, you pass away too soon, You are swift to go. My heart o'erflows like a brimming cup With its hopes and fears. Love, come and drink the sweetness up Ere it turn to tears."

The spinner looked at the falling sun: "Is it time to rest? My hands are weary,--my work is done, I have wrought my best; I have spun and woven with patient eyes And with fingers fleet. Lo! where the toil of a lifetime lies In a winding-sheet!"

MARY AINGE DE VERE (_Madeline Bridges_).

TAKE, O, TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY.[1]

Take, O, take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, like break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, Seals of love, but sealed in vain.

Hide, O, hide those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears, On whose tops the pinks that grow Are yet of those that April wears! But first set my poor heart free,

Bound in those icy chains by thee.

SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER.

[1] The first stanza of this song appears in Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," Activ. Sc. I.; the same, with the second, stanza added, is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's "Bloody Brother," Act v. Sc. 2.

WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY.

I loved thee once, I'll love no more, Thine be the grief as is the blame; Thou art not what thou wast before, What reason I should be the same? He that can love unloved again, Hath better store of love than brain: God sends me love my debts to pay, While unthrifts fool their love away.

Nothing could have my love o'erthrown, If thou hadst still continued mine; Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own, I might perchance have yet been thine. But thou thy freedom didst recall, That if thou might elsewhere inthrall; And then how could I but disdain A captive's captive to remain?

When new desires had conquered thee, And changed the object of thy will, It had been lethargy in me, Not constancy, to love thee still. Yea, it had been a sin to go And prostitute affection so, Since we are taught no prayers to say To such as must to others pray.

Yet do thou glory in thy choice. Thy choice of his good fortune boast; I 'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice, To see him gain what I have lost; The height of my disdain shall be, To laugh at him, to blush for thee; To love thee still, but go no more A begging to a beggar's door.

SIR ROBERT AYTON.

TIME'S REVENGE.

She, who but late in beauty's flower was seen, Proud of her auburn curls and noble mien-- Who froze my hopes and triumphed in my fears, Now sheds her graces in the waste of years. Changed to unlovely is that breast of snow, And dimmed her eye, and wrinkled is her brow; And querulous the voice by time repressed, Whose artless music stole me from my rest. Age gives redress to love; and silvery hair And earlier wrinkles brand the haughty fair.

From the Greek of AGATHIAS. Translation of ROBERT BLAND.

THE DREAM.

Our life is twofold; sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence: sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality, And dreams in their development have breath, And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy; They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts, They take a weight from off our waking toils, They do divide our being; they become A portion of ourselves as of our time, And look like heralds of eternity; They pass like spirits of the past,--they speak Like sibyls of the future; they have power,-- The tyranny of pleasure and of pain; They make us what we were not,--what they will, And shake us with the vision that's gone by. The dread of vanished shadows.--Are they so? Is not the past all shadow? What are they? Creations of the mind?--The mind can make Substances, and people planets of its own With beings brighter than have been, and give A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh. I would recall a vision which I dreamed Perchance in sleep,--for in itself a thought, A slumbering thought, is capable of years, And curdles a long life into one hour.

I saw two beings in the hues of youth Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill, Green and of a mild declivity, the last As 't were the cape of a long ridge of such, Save that there was no sea to lave its base, But a most living landscape, and the wave Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men Scattered at intervals, and wreathing smoke Arising from such rustic roofs; the hill Was crowned with a peculiar diadem Of trees, in circular array, so fixed, Not by the sport of nature, but of man: These two, a maiden and a youth, were there Gazing,--the one on all that was beneath Fair as herself,--but the boy gazed on her; And both were young, and one was beautiful; And both were young,--yet not alike in youth. As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge, The maid was on the eve of womanhood; The boy had fewer summers, but his heart Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye There was but one beloved face on earth, And that was shining on him; he had looked Upon it till it could not pass away; He had no breath, no being, but in hers; She was his voice; he did not speak to her, But trembled on her words; she was his sight, For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers, Which colored all his objects;--he had ceased To live with himself: she was his life, The ocean to the river of his thoughts, Which terminated all; upon a tone, A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow, And his cheek change tempestuously;--his heart Unknowing of its cause of agony. But she in these fond feelings had no share: Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother,--but no more; 'twas much, For brotherless she was, save in the name Her infant friendship had bestowed on him; Herself the solitary scion left Of a time-honored race. It was a name Which pleased him, and yet pleased him not,--and why? Time taught him a deep answer--when she loved Another; even _now_ she loved another, And on the summit of the hill she stood, Looking afar if yet her lover's steed Kept pace with her expectancy, and flew.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparisoned; Within an antique oratory stood The boy of whom I spake;--he was alone, And pale, and pacing to and fro: anon He sate him down, and seized a pen and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned His bowed head on his hands and shook, as 'twere With a convulsion,--then arose again, And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written, but he shed no tears, And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet; as he paused, The lady of his love re-entered there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet She knew she was by him beloved; she knew-- For quickly comes such knowledge--that his heart Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all. He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded, as it came; He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed From out the massy gate of that old Hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way; And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The boy was sprung to manhood; in the wilds Of fiery climes he made himself a home, And his soul drank their sunbeams; he was girt With strange and dusky aspects; he was not Himself like what he had been; on the sea And on the shore he was a wanderer; There was a mass of many images Crowded like waves upon me, but he was A part of all; and in the last he lay Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them; by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds Were fastened near a fountain; and a man, Clad in a flowing garb, did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumbered around: And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in heaven.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love was wed with one Who did not love her better: in her home, A thousand leagues from his,--her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of beauty,--but behold! Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, As if its lids were charged with unshed tears. What could her grief be?--she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill-repressed affliction, her pure thoughts. What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which preyed Upon her mind--a spectre of the past.

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand Before an altar--with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The starlight of his boyhood;--as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock That in the antique oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then-- As in that hour--a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,--and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reeled around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been,-- But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back And thrust themselves between him and the light; What business had they there at such a time?

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The lady of his love;--O, she was changed, As by the sickness of the soul! her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, They had not their own lustre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things, And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight familiar were to hers. And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise Have a far deeper madness, and the glance Of melancholy is a fearful gift; What is it but the telescope of truth, Which strips the distance of its fantasies, And brings life near in utter nakedness, Making the cold reality too real!

A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The wanderer was alone as heretofore, The beings which surrounded him were gone, Or were at war with him; he was a mark For blight and desolation, compassed round With hatred and contention; pain was mixed In all which was served up to him, until, Like to the Pontic monarch of old days, He fed on poisons, and they had no power, But were a kind of nutriment; he lived Through that which had been death to many men, And made him friends of mountains: with the stars And the quick Spirit of the universe He held his dialogues; and they did teach To him the magic of their mysteries; To him the book of Night was opened wide, And voices from the deep abyss revealed A marvel and a secret.--Be it so.

My dream was past; it had no further change. It was of a strange order, that the doom Of these two creatures should be thus traced out Almost like a reality,--the one To end in madness--both in misery.

LORD BYRON.

ALAS! HOW LIGHT A CAUSE MAY MOVE.

FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM."

Alas! how light a cause may move Dissension between hearts that love! Hearts that the world in vain has tried, And sorrow but more closely tied; That stood the storm when waves were rough, Yet in a sunny hour fall off, Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity!

A something light as air,--a look, A word unkind or wrongly taken,-- O, love that tempests never shook, A breath, a touch like this has shaken! And ruder words will soon rush in To spread the breach that words begin; And eyes forget the gentle ray They wore in courtship's smiling day; And voices lose the tone that shed A tenderness round all they said; Till fast declining, one by one, The sweetnesses of love are gone, And hearts, so lately mingled, seem Like broken clouds,--or like the stream, That smiling left the mountain's brow, As though its waters ne'er could sever, Yet, ere it reach the plain below, Breaks into floods that part forever.

O you, that have the charge of Love, Keep him in rosy bondage bound, As in the Fields of Bliss above He sits, with flowerets fettered round;-- Loose not a tie that round him clings, Nor ever let him use his wings; For even an hour, a minute's flight Will rob the plumes of half their light. Like that celestial bird,--whose nest Is found beneath far Eastern skies,-- Whose wings, though radiant when at rest, Lose all their glory when he flies!

THOMAS MOORE.

BLIGHTED LOVE.

Flowers are fresh, and bushes green, Cheerily the linnets sing; Winds are soft, and skies serene; Time, however, soon shall throw Winter's snow O'er the buxom breast of Spring!

Hope, that buds in lover's heart, Lives not through the scorn of years; Time makes love itself depart; Time and scorn congeal the mind,-- Looks unkind Freeze affection's warmest tears.

Time shall make the bushes green; Time dissolve the winter snow; Winds be soft, and skies serene; Linnets sing their wonted strain: But again Blighted love shall never blow!

From the Portuguese of LUIS DE CAMOENS. Translation of LORD STRANGFORD.

THE NEVERMORE.

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell; Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.

Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart One moment through my soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,-- Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

THE PORTRAIT.

Midnight past! Not a sound of aught Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers. I sat by the dying fire, and thought Of the dear dead woman upstairs.

A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon looked forth, as though in pain, With her face all white and wet:

Nobody with me, my watch to keep, But the friend of my bosom, the man I love: And grief had sent him fast to sleep In the chamber up above.

Nobody else, in the country place All round, that knew of my loss beside, But the good young Priest with the Raphael-face, Who confessed her when she died.

That good young Priest is of gentle nerve, And my grief had moved him beyond control; For his lips grew white, as I could observe, When he speeded her parting soul.

I sat by the dreary hearth alone: I thought of the pleasant days of yore: I said, "The staff of my life is gone: The woman I loved is no more.

"On her cold dead bosom my portrait lies, Which next to her heart she used to wear-- Haunting it o'er with her tender eyes When my own face was not there.

"It is set all round with rubies red, And pearls which a Peri, might have kept. For each ruby there my heart hath bled: For each pearl my eyes have wept."

And I said--"The thing is precious to me: They will bury her soon in the churchyard clay; It lies on her heart, and lost must be If I do not take it away."

I lighted my lamp at the dying flame, And crept up the stairs that creaked for fright, Till into the chamber of death I came, Where she lay all in white.

The moon shone over her winding-sheet, There stark she lay on her carven bed: Seven burning tapers about her feet, And seven about her head.

As I stretched my hand, I held my breath; I turned as I drew the curtains apart: I dared not look on the face of death: I knew where to find her heart.

I thought at first, as my touch fell there, It had warmed that heart to life, with love; For the thing I touched was warm, I swear, And I could feel it move.

'Twas the hand of a man, that was moving slow O'er the heart of the dead,--from the other side: And at once the sweat broke over my brow. "Who is robbing the corpse?" I cried.

Opposite me by the tapers' light, The friend of my bosom, the man I loved, Stood over the corpse, and all as white, And neither of us moved.

"What do you here, my friend?" ... The man Looked first at me, and then at the dead. "There is a portrait here," he began; "There is. It is mine," I said.

Said the friend of my bosom, "Yours, no doubt, The portrait was, till a month ago, When this suffering angel took that out, And placed mine there, I know."

"This woman, she loved me well," said I. "A month ago," said my friend to me: "And in your throat," I groaned, "you lie!" He answered, ... "Let us see."

"Enough!" I returned, "let the dead decide: And whosesoever the portrait prove, His shall it be, when the cause is tried, Where Death is arraigned by Love."

We found the portrait there, in its place: We opened it by the tapers' shine: The gems were all unchanged: the face Was--neither his nor mine. "One nail drives out another, at least! The face of the portrait there," I cried, "Is our friend's, the Raphael-faced young Priest, Who confessed her when she died."

The setting is all of rubies red, And pearls which a Peri might have kept. For each ruby there my heart hath bled: For each pearl my eyes have wept.

ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON (_Owen Meredith_).

ONLY A WOMAN.

"She loves with love that cannot tire: And if, ah, woe! she loves alone, Through passionate duty love flames higher, As grass grows taller round a stone."

--COVENTRY PATMORE.

So, the truth's out. I'll grasp it like a snake,-- It will not slay me. My heart shall not break Awhile, if only for the children's sake.

For his, too, somewhat. Let him stand unblamed; None say, he gave me less than honor claimed, Except--one trifle scarcely worth being named--

The heart. That's gone. The corrupt dead might be As easily raised up, breathing,--fair to see, As he could bring his whole heart back to me.

I never sought him in coquettish sport, Or courted him as silly maidens court, And wonder when the longed-for prize falls short.

I only loved him,--any woman would: But shut my love up till he came and sued, Then poured it o'er his dry life like a flood.

I was so happy I could make him blest!-- So happy that I was his first and best, As he mine,--when he took me to his breast.

Ah me! if only then he had been true! If for one little year, a month or two, He had given me love for love, as was my due!

Or had he told me, ere the deed was done, He only raised me to his heart's dear throne-- Poor substitute--because the queen was gone!

O, had he whispered, when his sweetest kiss Was warm upon my mouth in fancied bliss, He had kissed another woman even as this,--

It were less bitter! Sometimes I could weep To be thus cheated, like a child asleep;-- Were not my anguish far too dry and deep.

So I built my house upon another's ground; Mocked with a heart just caught at the rebound,-- A cankered thing that looked so firm and sound.

And when that heart grew colder,--colder still, I, ignorant, tried all duties to fulfil, Blaming my foolish pain, exacting will,

All,--anything but him. It was to be The full draught others drink up carelessly Was made this bitter Tantalus-cup for me.

I say again,--he gives me all I claimed, I and my children never shall be shamed: He is a just man,--he will live unblamed.

Only--O God, O God, to cry for bread. And get a stone! Daily to lay my head Upon a bosom where the old love's dead!

Dead?--Fool! It never lived. It only stirred Galvanic, like an hour-cold corpse. None heard: So let me bury it without a word.

He'll keep that other woman from my sight. I know not if her face be foul or bright; I only know that it was his delight--

As his was mine; I only know he stands Pale, at the touch of their long-severed hands, Then to a flickering smile his lips commands,

Lest I should grieve, or jealous anger show. He need not. When the ship's gone down, I trow, We little reck whatever wind may blow.

And so my silent moan begins and ends, No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends Or sneer of foes, with this my torment blends.

None knows,--none heeds. I have a little pride; Enough to stand up, wifelike, by his side, With the same smile as when I was his bride.

And I shall take his children to my arms; They will not miss these fading, worthless charms; Their kiss--ah! unlike his--all pain disarms.

And haply as the solemn years go by, He will think sometimes, with regretful sigh, The other woman was less true than I.

DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK.

DOROTHY IN THE GARRET.

In the low-raftered garret, stooping Carefully over the creaking boards, Old Maid Dorothy goes a-groping Among its dusty and cobwebbed hoards; Seeking some bundle of patches, hid Far under the eaves, or bunch of sage, Or satchel hung on its nail, amid The heirlooms of a bygone age.

There is the ancient family chest, There the ancestral cards and hatchel; Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest, Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel. Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom Of the chimney, where with swifts and reel, And the long-disused, dismantled loom, Stands the old-fashioned spinning-wheel.

She sees it back in the clean-swept kitchen, A part of her girlhood's little world; Her mother is there by the window, stitching; Spindle buzzes, and reel is whirled With many a click: on her little stool She sits, a child, by the open door, Watching, and dabbling her feet in the pool Of sunshine spilled on the gilded floor

Her sisters are spinning all day long; To her wakening sense the first sweet warning Of daylight come is the cheerful song To the hum of the wheel in the early morning. Benjie, the gentle, red-cheeked boy. On his way to school, peeps in at the gate; In neat white pinafore, pleased and coy, She reaches a hand to her bashful mate;

And under the elms, a prattling pair. Together they go, through glimmer and gloom:-- It all comes back to her, dreaming there In the low-raftered garret room; The hum of the wheel, and the summer weather. The heart's first trouble, and love's beginning, Are all in her memory linked together; And now it is she herself that is spinning.

With the bloom of youth on cheek and lip. Turning the spokes with the flashing pin, Twisting the thread from the spindle-tip, Stretching it out and winding it in. To and fro, with a blithesome tread, Singing she goes, and her heart is full, And many a long-drawn golden thread Of fancy is spun with the shining wool.

Her father sits in his favorite place, Puffing his pipe by the chimney-side; Through curling clouds his kindly face Glows upon her with love and pride. Lulled by the wheel, in the old arm-chair Her mother is musing, cat in lap, With beautiful drooping head, and hair Whitening under her snow-white cap.