Part 2

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway, Bettered not has Fate or my hand’s achieving; Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track— Never transcended!

AMABEL

I MARKED her ruined hues, Her custom-straitened views, And asked, “Can there indwell My Amabel?”

I looked upon her gown, Once rose, now earthen brown; The change was like the knell Of Amabel.

Her step’s mechanic ways Had lost the life of May’s; Her laugh, once sweet in swell, Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: “Who sings the strain I sang ere warmth did wane? Who thinks its numbers spell His Amabel?”—

Knowing that, though Love cease, Love’s race shows undecrease; All find in dorp or dell An Amabel.

—I felt that I could creep To some housetop, and weep, That Time the tyrant fell Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed That love like ours had died), “Fond things I’ll no more tell To Amabel,

“But leave her to her fate, And fling across the gate, ‘Till the Last Trump, farewell, O Amabel!’”

1865.

HAP

IF but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

“IN VISION I ROAMED” TO —

IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan, As though with an awed sense of such ostent; And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky, To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome, Where stars the brightest here to darkness die: Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

And the sick grief that you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near? Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

1866.

AT A BRIDAL TO —

WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity, A dream of other offspring held my mind, Compounded of us twain as Love designed; Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree, And each thus found apart, of false desire, A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose, Each mourn the double waste; and question dare To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows. Why those high-purposed children never were: What will she answer? That she does not care If the race all such sovereign types unknows.

1866.

POSTPONEMENT

SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word, Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard, Wearily waiting:—