We watched her day by day with anxious eyes
And felt she was not, could not be the same,
And yet we knew not why; but only hope
With sighing hearts that all might turn out well;
But evermore the shadow deeper fell.
'Twas but the twilight of the night of death!
A little, thirsty, intermissive cough,
A frothy, restive, indecisive cough,
So silent and so subtle that it passed
For weeks and weeks almost unnoticed, came
And fretted sedulously at her life.
Her form grew frail and thin, her garments hung In flaggy, windy folds about her limbs,
And even seemed about to drop from her;
Her long white lady-hands disclosed to view
The shape of bones and joints, the muscles' play;
Her features sharper, more intensive grew,
And ever whiter, save that evermore
On either cheek a small unnatural spot,
A vivid star of crimson came and went;
Her brow grew smoother and more prominent.
And yet she murmured not, nor took alarm,
And never pined, nor spoke her thought, although
I think she knew her fate, ay, from the first;
And so she faded, faded as the world
Fades in the mournful autumn, constantly;
And by-and-bye we came to realise
The truth, which in our hearts so long had lain
In mute impressions, never shaped in words.
One night I went to her, as was my wont
When I could snatch an hour from my own toil,
To help her out a bit, and found her worse.
Her strength had given out; she lay at rest
In listless attitude upon her couch.
I bent o'er her, and, as she did not speak,
But seemed too tired and weary e'en for that,
I felt a breaking, bursting in my heart,
And fell a weeping, baby that I was
(I could not help it for the life of me),
And sobbed, and gushed out my storm of grief,
So long fermenting, but compressed within,
And, child-like, cried until I could not cry.
She got my hand in hers and bade me sit,
And looked on me with fixed and languid eyes,
And spoke anon, "There, you'll be better now.
I saw you coming o'er the paddock stile,
And thought to tell you all that now you know.
Or why these tears? Well, it is better thus.
It pains me much to see you sorrow so
Because the truth has proved itself at last.
It would have pained me deeper to have been
That truth's interpreter to my mother's ears.
And now we'll talk of what you know, and I,
I know, have known and felt so long ago,
That I am going, going noiselessly,
But feel that I am going, like the brook
That runs adown the dingle variously
Amid the broken rocks, all joyously
It skips and trips awhile, and sings a song-
A glad, unshadowed song—and ripples back
The trickling laughter of the sun.
It comes into an almost level course;
The banks grow narrower, closer to the brink
Of a great chasm. There the waters move
So silent and so deep within themslves,
Without a smile, a ripple, or a song,
Till suddenly they drop themselves amid
The yawning gulph that opens underneath."
From hints and scraps I have met with, it is evident this poem would have been extended to double its present length, and have been carried down through his own history. This would have formed the most practical part of the poem.
HE blaze had faded from the fecund sky;
The awful wonder of the scarlet beast
Upon whose seven-fold forehead's brazen front
In glaring characters of sulphureous light,
Great blustering names of blasphemy were writ.
I bowed myself unto the earth and moaned;
The heaviness of death was on my soul;
The burden of the future's unborn woe,
In all the harrowing blaze of prophesy,
Like scorching embers, glowed on Memory's shrine.
I lifted up my eyes and peered around.
The desolated island placid lay;
The sky was silent, dark, and slumberous,
Serene and signless. Ghost-like, here and there,
Long dusky trees were limned against its night.
Great flexuous shapes of strange uncertain bulk,
But by their hideous blackness visible,
Inertly crowded in the midnight south.
The shapeless masses of the fissured hills
Rose breathlessly around me everywhere.
All things were frightful in their death-like rest,
Portentous, hideous, undefined, and foul!
And darkness! oh, a darkness horrible!
So horrible! lay like the hand of death
Upon the shuddering forehead of the earth,
So clammy cold! No sound disturbed its rest
But the tumultuous sobbings of the breeze,
And far away amid the night, somewhere,
The guttural mutterings of a cataract,
Like the dull murmur of approaching storms,
Or distant clamour of awaking winds.
I bent my palsied limbs-a weariness!
And felt amid the dark, and closed my book,
And turned my fevered eyes far heavenward,
And clasped my hands before my breast and prayed,
And sobbed and prayed, "Dear God, be merciful!
Be merciful, and leave me here in peace!
The awful presence of Thy might, Thy wrath,
Thy majesty the horror of despair-
The awe of judgment, torment, wailing, woe-
The midnight of the future, like a pall-
'Tis on my soul, with all the agony
And utter desolation of the lost.
Thy burden is too heavy for me, Lord,
Oh! I am crushed and weary unto death;
Oh! let me see Thy face no more, dear God,
Until my fainting soul, unearthed, has gained
A God-like power, a more than mortal strength.
Oh! take Thy hand from off me, lest I die!
Oh! I am broken, broken, broken, crushed!"
My head sank earthward, and I wept again—
Wept in my weakness, as a child might weep.
I raised myself; the scene was all unchanged;
The damp, morbose sudations of the earth
Commingled with the dank miasma of the marsh,
Clung with a mucid chillness round my frame,
And drizzled from my moulting hair and beard
In drops of humid, fetid dew, upon
The saturated robe which clogged my frame;
A mortal dampness chilled me to the soul.
I shivered, shivered with an inward gasp,
And shrank into a heap from the cold damp,
That like a cloud of fog enwrapt me round.
A restless aching, yearning for repose
Stole o'er me, and I groped and groped around,
If peradventure I might find a stone,
A tuft of weed, a little mound of earth,
Or block of wood, however small, whereon
My throbbing head might drop, and rest, and sleep
In dull forgetfulness, until the dawn,
The far-off dawn of day; or till the light
Broke round my spirit from the morn of heaven.
Oh, never to be forgotten
Is the rapture and glow of that night;
The stars seemed half dropped from the skies
In a torrent of mystical light.
|