Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863

Oh, but I was saying that Our Lady stood over the half moon, and Henrietta sat below it, with that soft cashmere morning dress, fighting all around her to see which fold should cling most lovingly to her graceful form. It was all a delicious poem to me, and if I were Horace, you would have had a splendid ode. Oh, well!

'Why, what a Joseph he is!' said Henrietta, waking me out of this reverie.

'Oh,' said I, starting, 'how did you know that?'

'Only conjecture, my dear friend; but when we see a man with his eyes fixed in that ghostly way, and his mustaches and all in perfect repose, we reasonably imagine that he's seeing visions; and I suppose you'll come flaming out presently with some dreams that shall have, for remote consequences, a throne in some Eastern paradise, and a princess, perhaps – who knows?'

'Who knows?' echoed I; 'but go on, Hypatia.'

'Oh yes! where shall I begin? Oh! there is Penhurst Lane, girls, you remember?'

'The raven?' said Bertha.

'No,' said Fanny, 'that is Mr. Rawdon. Penhurst Lane is an idealist.'

'A very idealist, just so,' returned Harry. 'Well, the way I've been a martyr to that man's caprice is perfectly heart-rending. He came of some gorgeous family in the middle of Pennsylvania, where all the tribes, like leaning towers, incline toward Germany. To be sure, you'd never dream it from his looks, for he is a perfect Mark Antony in that respect. You needn't laugh. Didn't he have bonnes fortunes as well as Alcibiades? Not that Penhurst had bonnes fortunes, or ever dreamed of such things; but he always had such a proclivity toward any one who would listen to his harangues; and I must say, just inter nos (the only bit of Latin I know, Lenox, I got it from the English 'Don Giovanni'), that I have quite a talent for listening well. But I'd as lief encounter a West India hurricane or a simoom. I used to feel him coming an hour beforehand. Then I would read a little in Blair, take a peep at Sir Charles Grandison, swallow half a page of Cowper's 'Task,' and look over the Grecian and Roman heroes; then I was fortified. 'Why didn't I take Shelley?' Oh my! why, he couldn't endure Shelley, said he was a poor, weak creature, all gone to imagination! Then I would assume a Sontag and thick boots, if the weather was cold, to appear sensible, you know, and await his coming; that is, if I didn't become exasperated before that stage, and rush in to see Lil Brennan to avoid him. And his opinions, such an unfolding! You never caught him looking with admiration, oh no! I might have laid a wilderness of charms on the floor, at his very feet, and he would have brushed them all away with indifference. His mind revolved around a weightier theme than any 'lady of fashion;' like a newly discovered moon, he flew around the earth, and with miraculous speed. He stopped in China to say 'Confucius;' in India, to say 'Brahma;' in Persia, to say 'Ormuzd;' and so on around. My dear Lenox, if you had asked him whether Ormuzd was at peace with all the world, he would have retired into himself, for he hadn't the faintest idea. As for music, or any fine art, he never approached it but once, when he led me to the piano, begging for some native American melody, and not a German romance. Well, I played him 'God save the Queen,' with extravagant variations, which he took for 'Yankee Doodle.' No matter! I made a mistake when I spoke of his opinions; he hadn't any. He was what some call 'well read,' that is, he had a distant desire to 'improve his mind,' but his magnificent self so filled his little vision, that his great desire was obscured and distorted. Like my beloved Jean Paul, he had once said to himself, Ich bin ein Ich (I am a ME), and the noble consciousness overwhelmed him, and excluded all after thoughts on any minor subject. He never heard Grisi, never saw Rachel; they were triflers, 'life was too grave, too short;' but he escorted me occasionally to lectures and orations. I remember two or three of these. A lecture on the 'Fossils of Humanity and Primeval Formations,' which was unintelligible, consequently to him 'sublime;' one on 'the Exalted,' that soared out of sight and beyond the empire of gravity, and one on 'Architecture,' by Dr. Vinton, a splendid production, the fruit and evidence of years of study and rare talent, that sent me home with longings and unaccustomed reverence for the Great in every form, and with grief that my own ignorance rendered it only a half-enjoyed pleasure to me; while Penhurst talked as if it were only the echo of his own thoughts; pretended to say it was very 'sensible!' But you've had enough of Mr. Lane, who was never known to laugh except at his own wit, who patronized me because I was a 'solid' young lady, and not given to flights. You may readily imagine that our interviews were generally tête-à-têtes, for general society was to him a thing 'stale, flat, and unprofitable.' Of course you know I only endured his visits because among the girls it was considered a compliment to receive them, and they were all dying of envy. Besides and principally, it is neither politic nor pleasant to offend any one, and I could not have denied myself to him, without doing this; so' —

'But, Harry, he is married now.'

'Ah me! yes. He saw me in a cap and bells once with you, Lenox, and not many weeks afterward married a damsel who reveres him as a Solon, this man, who said:

– 'The wanderingsOf this most intricate UniverseTeach me the nothingness of things.Yet could not all creation pierceBeyond the bottom of his eye.'

'Are you done, Harry?'

'Yes, Lenox.'

'Then sing us Béranger's Grace à la fêve, je suis roi.'

She has such a delicious voice.

'And while I am on tiresome people, who think only of themselves, let me recall P. George Rawdon; the Raven, Bertha; I always believed his first name was Pluto, because of the shades around him. They say every one has a text book; his was neither the Bible, the Prayer Book, Thomas à Kempis, La Nouvelle Héloise, or 'Queechy,' but Mrs. Crowe's 'Night Side of Nature.' Talk of having a skeleton in the house! the most distressing ones that ever preceded Douglas and Sherwood's were nothing to him! he reminded one constantly of an Egyptian feast. He looked sadly at children, and gave little Henry Parsons, his godchild, a miniature dagger with a jewelled handle, with which the child nearly destroyed his right hand. When poor Mary was married, he walked mournfully up to the altar, and stared during the ceremony unmistakably at an imaginary coffin, hanging, like Mohammed's, midway between the ceiling and the floor. Poor man, it's really curious, but he contrives to be always in mourning, and everybody knows that he goes only to see tragedies, and has the dyspepsia, like Regina and her diamond cross, from principle. He composes epitaphs for all the ladies of his acquaintance, and presents them, like newspaper-carrier addresses, on New Year's days. I have one in my writing desk in a very secret drawer; a soul-cheering effusion, but not particularly agreeable to the physical humanity. This I intend to bequeath to the British museum, where it will be in future ages as great a treat to the antiquary as the Elgin marbles. What a doleful subject – pass him by!'

'Don't forget Leon Channing,' suggested Fanny, who was listening with great interest, and from a natural dread of ghosts and vampires was glad to see that Mr. Rawdon had come to a crisis.

'Dear me, no!' said Henrietta, cheerily, 'it's quite refreshing to come to an individual who creates a smile. I never was born for tears and lamentations, Bertha, any more than a lily was made to be merry; and if it were not for Len Channing, I don't suppose I should ever have been sharpened to such a dangerous degree; it's this constant friction, you know; well, as some darling of a cosmopolite has said, 'We must allow for friction in the most perfect machinery – yes, be glad to find it – for a certain degree of resistance is essential to strength. I like Leon very well. No one is more safe in a parlor engagement, always in the right place at the right tune, never embarrassed, never de trop; but then the queer consciousness, when he's giving you a meringué or an ice, that if you were a 'real pretty,' graceful, conversible fawn or dove he would be doing it with the same interest! Why? Oh, because he says women belong to a lower order in the animal creation! Yes, veil your face, Mr. Lenox Raleigh, and be mournful that you are a man! 'A lower order of humanity!' Well, of course, I'm always quarrelling with him. To be sure he's a shallow kind of a philosopher, one of your rationalists; thinks Boston is the linchpin of the whole universe; has autograph letters from Emerson and Longfellow, and all that sort of thing. Now, I dare say it's very fine for a Schelling or a Hegel once in a while to beam over the earth, but it always seems inharmonious to me to see little jets of philosophers popping up in your face and then down again, all the time, thinking themselves great things. That's the way with Leon. Let me tell you what happened when I saw him last; and that was in Cologne, more than a year ago. I was sitting in our room with a great folio of Retzsch's engravings before me, and father writing horrible notes in his journal at the table, and wishing the eleven thousand virgins and all Cologne in the bottom of the Rhine, when I looked up, and somehow there was Leon. Of course we were rejoiced to see him, it's always so pleasant to meet friends abroad. After some talk, father went out to take another look at the cathedral, and indulge in speculations and legends, and left Leon and me in the window. It's as queer and horrible an old town, girls, as you ever dreamed of, and, as there was nothing external very fascinating, Leon soon turned his gaze inward, and, after twanging several minor strings, began to harp on his endless 'inferiority of woman.' I plied him, you may know; I gave him Zenobias and Didos and de Staels and de Medicis – in an emergency Pope Joan, and finally the Boston Margaret Fuller. Leon only stroked his beard and smiled.

''Miss Henrietta,' said he, at last, when I stopped in exultation, 'do you grant the Africans the vigor or variety of intellect of the Europeans?'

''No,' said I.

''Yet you concede that there may be instances among them, where education and culture have developed great results.'

''Yes,' I thought, 'there might be.'

''Just as I, bewildered by Miss Henrietta's keen shafts and graceful manœuvres, yield that a woman is, once in a century, gifted with a man's depth of thought and her sex's loveliness.' The comparison was odious. What did I do? Oh, I (the swarthy Ethiop) only rose from my faded arm chair, saluted Mr. Channing (the lordly European) as if I were his partner in a quadrille, and brought out my cameos and mosaics to show him. In about half an hour the beauty of his reasoning and comparison reached his brain, but mine was impenetrable to his most honeyed apologies; as I very sweetly assured him, 'I couldn't understand, didn't see the drift, couldn't connect the links.' Leon says ancient history is a fable, and Herodotus a myth, and all because a woman sat upon the tripod at Delphi, and because a woman wore the helmet and carried the shield of wisdom.'

'What's the matter, Harry?' asked Fanny, compassionately, as her small fingers were stretched like infant grid-irons before her eyes, and a silence ensued.

'My new bonnet, Fanny dear, I am wondering what it shall be; we must go down this very morning and decide.'

Did you ever think, Narcissus, and you, Gustav, and all of you boys, when you are engaged in your small diplomacies and coups de main, and feeling like giants in intellect beside the dear little girls who play polkas for you of evenings and sing sweet ballads, that pour bien juger les grands, il faut les approcher? I thought so that morning, as I heard the animated discussion that succeeded Henrietta's monologue; a discussion into which all sorts of delicate conceits of lace and flowers entered largely, and which savored about as much of the preceding elements as last night's Charlotte Russe of this morning's coffee.

Since Henrietta's oration, I am more than ever afraid of a Vulcan. It is very plain that our most fashionably cut suits and most delicately perfumed billets are not all powerful, – that the dear creatures are either waking or we have been asleep. Reveillons!

'Aux armes, citoyens!'

Now, while I was writing that last word, a heavy hand was laid on my shoulder, and looking up, I saw – Nap. I love Nap. I have a girlish weakness (let some lady arraign me for this hereafter) for him; so I shouted out and grasped his hands.

'How are the boys?'

'Flourishing. Come to stay?

'Yes, old fellow.'

'Stocks up?'

'To the sky.'

'The governor?'

'All right.'

I haven't any governor. Nap has; and one that saw fit to persecute him from twenty to thirty, because he declined to take 'orders.' Per Bacco! Never mind, a fit of paralysis has shaken the opposition out of the old gentleman at last, and Nap is in sunshine in consequence, and rushes around Wall street like a veteran.

But I didn't promise to tell you about Nap, or the girls either; it was only a few rays of light I had to dash over 'our beaux;' so where is your mother, belle Beatrice? I must make my adieux.

What say you, little one? You like Henrietta; you want to see her again? You pull me back with your wee white hands; I will talk to you for an hour longer, if I may hold the little kittens in my own. I may? And kiss each finger afterward? Ah! you dear child! Well, then —

'Are you going to Van Wyck's to-night, Lenox?' asked Bertha of me, as we rose from dinner, a month afterward.

'Yes, after the opera. And you? I fancy – yes – from your eyes.'

Bertha did not answer, and I strolled up stairs into the little back drawing room. From the library above I could hear Fanny's merry voice and the ring of Nap's cheery replies. Such a comfort as it was to me to see those two so fond of each other. You see I am, in a way, Fanny's father, and took no very great credit to myself when she half laid her hand in the extended one of Snowe. How curiously that witch Harry managed the thing, though! Dear little Fan; she stood in more than one twilight by the garden window, and whispered over: 'Addio, Francesca! addio, Cecco!' and Snowe faded in the returning spring of her heart, and into the blooming vista of their separation, hopefully walked Nap, and was welcomed with many smiles.

This afternoon, I walked over to the garden window, and there was Harry, scrawling an old, bearded hermit on the glass with her diamond ring. We both looked out – nothing much to see – a New York garden, thirty feet square, with the usual gorgeousness of our winter flowers!

'You are thinking of Shiraz, Harry.'

'Yes,' said she, dreamily, 'I am thinking of Shiraz!'

She didn't say it, but don't you suppose I knew just as well that she was wishing for her Vulcan and a great rose garden? I began to sing the 'Last Man,' but didn't succeed admirably; then I lighted my pipe – Harry didn't mind, you know, indeed she only looked at it wishfully.

'In my rose garden,' said she, with a laugh, 'I shall smoke to kill the rosebugs.'

'Don't wait,' said I, taking down a dainty écume de mer (the back drawing room was my peculiar 'study,' and the repository of several gentlemanly 'improprieties'), and I adjusted the amber mouth piece to the cherry stem, 'Don't wait for Persia, make your rose garden here.'

Harry shook her head: 'You know, Len,' she said, 'that my roses would grow like so many witches in a Puritan soil. I always thought that story of the Norwegians' taking rosebuds for bulbs of fire, and being terrified, was a very delicate and poetical satire upon all superstition.'

'Are you going to wash away all superstition?' I asked hastily.

'No,' said she, with a smile at my fierceness; 'no, I like to see the sun shine on the dew drops that the webs catch and swing between the tops of the grasses.'

I looked at her as she laid her head back against the curtains. My nonchalance was as striking as hers, and – as genuine! We were no children to be awkward in any event. I took her hand; it was a glowing pulse – and mine? She wore one of those curious little cabal rings; there were the Hebrew characters for Faith, traced as with a gold pen dipped in melted pearls on black enamel. My seal was an emerald, Faith also, impaled. I snatched it up and laid it by the ring on her hand. She smiled – such a smile! intensest sympathy, deepest! Could it be? to love the same old symbols, the same weird music? I caught her close, and bent over her lips. The gold hair waved over my shoulder; the great, glittering eyes foamed into mine, then melted and swam into deep, quivering seas of dreams. I whispered, 'Zoe mou!' Oh, the quick, golden whisper, the flash of genial heartiness, the daring – oh, how tender! 'Sas agapo.' I held her off, radiant, glowing, fragrant, and Bertha's dress rustled up the stairs.

Henrietta stooped to pick up the seal, which had fallen; she balanced it on the tip of her finger – the nervy Titan queen! and drew Bertha down by her side on the sofa. It was growing dark.

'I must be off, girls, and get your camelias. What will you have, Bertha? a red or a white, you've a moment to decide?'

'Neither, Len; I do not go.'

'Why, Bertha? Oh! I remember, it is your anniversary,' and I kissed her.

'And you, princess!' I turned to Henrietta.

'Only roses, good my liege.'

What was the opera that night? Pshaw! what a rhetorical affectation this question! as if I could ever forget! Die Zauberflöte, and it rang pure and clear through my thrilled heart. It followed me around to Van Wyck's, where I found Henrietta and Fanny. A compliment to madame, a German with mademoiselle, and home again. A great light streamed out of the drawing room. I pushed the door open. With a cry of joy, Fan rushed into the arms of the grave, fair man who put Bertha off his knee to welcome her. Nap, who had followed us in, for a moment stood transfixed, and Henrietta, more quiet, stood by their side, saying: 'Here is Harry, Fred, when you choose to see her.' And he did choose, her own brother, whom she had not seen for three years!

'Come in, Nap,' I said. 'Fred Ruyter.'

'Nap and Fanny,' I whispered; Fred smiled invisibly.

And Bertha? Oh, you know, of course, that she's Bertha Ruyter, and that Fred is her husband, just home from six months in Rio, and exactly a year from his wedding night! Oh, Lionardo! what mellow, transparent, flowing shades drowned us all that night!

'Harry,' I said, the next morning, before I went down town, as I lounged over her sofa, 'you have my emerald?'

'Yes!' and her bright face turned up to mine.

'You will keep it, and take me also, dear?'

'Ma foi! oui,' was the sweet, smiling reply.

'I'm not quite ugly enough for a Vulcan, I know; but after a while, if you are patient, who knows? What sayest thou, Venus?'

'I will try you, bon camarade.'

'Your hand upon it, Harry.'

She gave it; I kissed the gold hair that waved against my lips. Fanny rushed impetuously upon us, with half-opened eyes, and stifled us with caresses.

'Such a proposal,' said she musingly, after she had returned to her wools and beads, '14° above zero!'

'And the Polyphemus, Fanny?'

'Is for Nap,' and Fanny blushed and laughed. She was wondering if that great event, an 'engagement,' always came about in so prosaic a way. But looking at Bertha, I caught the bright, long, gravely humorous gleam from her dark eyes, and walked upon it all the way down to Exchange Place.

Adieu, little Beatrice; my story hath at last an ending. Keep the little hands and little heart warm for somebody brave by and by. Go shining about and dancing, and smiling, Hummingbird; may sweetest flowers always bloom around you; may you dwell in a fragrant rose garden of your own, mignonne! Adieu.

ETHEL.

FITZ FASHION'S WIFE

Take the diamonds from my forehead – their chill weight but frets my brow!How they glitter! radiant, faultless – but they give no pleasure now.Once they might have saved a Poet, o'er whose bed the violet waves:Now their lustre chills my spirit, like the light from new-made graves.Quick! unbind the braided tresses of my coroneted hair!Let it fall in single ringlets such as I was wont to wear.Take that wreath of dewy violets, twine it round their golden flow;Let the perfumed purple blossoms fall upon my brow of snow!Simple flowers, ye gently lead me back into the sunny years,Ere I wore proud chains of diamonds, forged of bitter, frozen tears!Bring the silver mirror to me! I am changed since those bright days,When I lived with my sweet mother, and a Poet sang my praise.My blue eyes are larger, dimmer; thicker lashes veil their light;Upon my cheek the crimson rose fast is fading to the white.I am taller, statelier, slighter, than I was in days of yore: —If his eyes in heaven behold me, does he praise me as before?Proudly swells the silken rustle – all around is wealth and state, —Dearer far the early roses twining round the wicker gate,Where my mother came at evening with the saint-like forehead pale,And the Poet sat beside her, conning o'er his rhythmed tale.As he read the linked lines over, she would sanction, disapprove:Soft and musical the pages, but he never sang of love.I had lived through sixteen summers, he was only twenty-one,And we three still sat together at the hour of setting sun.Lowly was the forest cottage, but the sweetbrier wreathed it well;'Mid its violets and roses, bees and robins loved to dwell.Wilder forms of larch and hemlock climbed the mountain at its side;Fairy-like a rill came leaping where the quivering harebells sighed.Glittering, bounding, singing, dancing, ferns and mosses loved its track;Lower in it dipped the willows, as to kiss the cloudland's rack.Soon there came a stately lover, – praised my beauty, softly smiled:'He would make my mother happy,' – I was but a silly child!Came a dream of sudden power – fairest visions o'er me glide —Wider spheres would open for me; – dazzled, I became a bride:Fondly deemed my lonely mother would be freed from sordid care;Splendor I might pour around her, every joy with her might share.Then the Poet, who had never breathed one word of love to me, —We might shape his life-course for him, give him culture wide and free.How I longed to turn the pages, with a husband's hand as guide,Of the long-past golden ages, art and science at my side!To my simple fancy seemed it almost everything he knew —Ah! he might have won affection, faithful, fervent, trusting, true!I was happy, never dreaming wealth congeals the human soul,Freezing all its generous impulse – I but saw its wide control.Years have passed – a larger culture poured strange knowledge through my mind —I have learned to read man's nature: better I were ever blind!How can I take upon me what I look upon with scorn,Or learn to brook my own contempt, or trample the forlorn?I cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slaveTo narrow fancies; I must feel, although a husband rave!I cannot choose my friends because I know them rich, or great;My heart elects the noble, – what cares love for wealth or state?Very lovely are my pictures, saints and angels throng my hall —But with shame my cheek is flushing, and my quivering lashes fall:Can I gaze on pictured actions, daring deeds, and emprise high,And not feel my degradation while these fetters round me lie?Once the Poet came to see me, but it gave me nought but pain;I was glad to see the Gifted go, ne'er to return again.For my husband scorning told me: 'True, his lines were very sweet,But his clothes, so worn and seedy – scarce for me acquaintance meet!Artists, poets, men of genius, truly should be better paid,But not holding our position, cannot be our friends,' he said.'As gentlemen to meet them were a very curious thing;They were happier in their garrets – there let them sigh or sing.There were Travers and De Courcy – could he ask them home to dine,At the risk of meeting truly such strange fellows o'er their wine?'Then he said, 'My cheeks were peachy, lips were coral, curls were gold,But he liked them braided crown-like, and with pearls and diamonds rolled.I was once a little peasant; now I stood a jewelled queen —Fitter that a calmer presence in his stately wife were seen!'Then he gave a gorgeous card-case; set with rubies, Roman gold,Handed me a paper with it, strands of pearls around it rolled;Names of all his wife should visit I would find upon the roll: —Found I none I loved within it – not one friend upon the scroll!And my mother, God forgive me! I was glad to see her go,Ere the current of her loving heart had turned like mine to snow.Must I still seem fair and stately, choking down my bosom's strife,Because 'all deep emotions were unseemly in his wife'?Must I gasp 'neath diamonds' glitter – walk in lustrous silken sheen —Leaving those I love in anguish while I play some haughty scene?I am choking! closer round me crowds convention's stifling vault —Every meanness's called a virtue – every virtue deemed a fault!Every generous thought is scandal; every noble deed is crime;Every feeling's wrapped in fiction, and truth only lives in rhyme!No; – I am not fashion's minion, – I am not convention's slave!If 'obedience is for woman,' still she has a soul to save.Must I share their haughty falsehood, take my part in social guile,Cut my dearest friends, and stab them with a false, deceitful smile?Creeping like a serpent through me, faint, I feel a deadly chill,Freezing all the good within me, icy fetters chain my will.Do I grow like those around me? will I learn to bear my partIn this glittering world of fashion, taming down a woman's heart?Must I lower to my husband? is it duty to abateAll the higher instincts in me, till I grow his fitting mate?Shall I muse on noble pictures, turn the poet's stirring page,And grow base and mean in action, petty with a petty age?I am heart-sick, weary, weary! tell me not that this life,Where all that's truly living must be pruned by fashion's knife! —I can make my own existence – spurn his gifts, and use my hands,Though the senseless world of fashion for the deed my memory brands.Quick! unbraid the heavy tresses of my coroneted hair —Let its gold fall in free ringlets such as I was wont to wear.I am going back to nature. I no more will school my heartTo stifle its best feelings, play an idle puppet's part.I will seek my banished mother, nestle closely on her breast;Noble, faithful, kind, and loving, there the tortured one may rest.We will turn the Poets' pages, learn the noblest deeds to act,Till the fictions in their beauty shall be lived as simple fact.I will mould a living statue, make it generous, strong, and high,Humble, meek, self-abnegating, formed to meet the Master's eye.Oh, the glow of earnest culture! Oh, the joy of sacrifice!The delight to help another! o'er all selfish thoughts to rise!Farewell, cold and haughty splendor – how you chilled me when a bride!Hollow all your mental efforts; meanness all your dazzling pride!Put the diamonds in their caskets! pearls and rubies, place them there!I shall never sigh to wear them with the violets in my hair.Freedom! with no eye upon me freezing all my fiery soul;Free to follow nature's dictates; free from all save God's control.I am going to the cottage, with its windows small and low,Where the sweetbrier twines its roses and the Guelder rose its snow.I will climb the thymy mountains where the pines in sturdy mightFollow nature's holy bidding, growing ever to the light;Tracking down the leaping streamlet till the willows on it rise,Watch its broad and faithful bosom strive to mirror back the skies.Through the wicker gate at evening with my mother I will come,With a little book, the Poet's, to read low at set of sun.'Tis a gloomy, broken record of a love poured forth in death,Generous, holy, and devoted, sung with panting, dying breath.By the grassy mound we'll read it where he calmly sleeps in God, —My gushing tears may stream above – they cannot pierce the sod!Hand in hand we'll sit together by the lowly mossy grave —Oh, God! I blazed with jewels, but the noble dared not save!I am going to the cottage, there to sculpture my own soul,Till it fill the high ideal of the Poet's glowing roll.* * *Stay, lovely dream! I waken! hear the clanking of my chain!Feel a hopeless vow is on me – I can ne'er be free again!His wife! I've sworn it truly! I must bear his freezing eye,Feel his blighting breath upon me while all nobler instincts die!Feel the Evil gain upon me as the weary moments glide,Till I hiss, a jewelled serpent, fit companion, at his side.Vain is struggle – vain is writhing – vain are sobs and stifled gasps —I must wear my brilliant fetters though my life-blood stain their clasps!Hark! he calls! tear out the violets! quick! the diamonds in my hair!There's a ball to-night at Travers' – 'tis his will I should be there.Splendid victim in his pageant, though my tortured head should ache,Yet I must be brilliant, joyous, if my throbbing heart should break!I shudder! quick! my dress of rose, my tunic of point lace —If fine enough, he will not read the anguish in my face!I know one place he dare not look – it is so still and deep —He dare not lift the winding sheet that veils my last, long sleep!He dreads the dead! the coffin lid will shield me from his breath —His eye no more will torture – Joy! I shall be free in death!Free to rest beside the Poet. He will shun the lowly grave:There my mother soon will join us, and the violets o'er us wave.