Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,

And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance

hung.

And I said, "My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,

Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee."

On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a

light,

As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern

All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes

Saying, "I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do

Saying, "Dost thou love me, cousin?" weeping, "I have loved thee long."

Love took up the glass of Time, and turned it in his glowing hands;

Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;

Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses

ring,

And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately

ships,

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the

lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no

more !

O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren

shore !

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs

have sung,

Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?- having known me— to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than

mine!

Yet it shall be thou shalt lower to his level day by

day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a

clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to ander

Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee

with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart's

disgrace,

Rolled in one another's arms, and silent in a last

embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength

of youth!

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's

rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!

Well, 't is well that I should bluster! Hadst thou

less unworthy proved

Would to God-for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.

Never, though my mortal summers to such length of years should come

As the many-wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home.

Where is comfort? in division of the records of the

mind?

Can I part her from herself, and love her, as I knew her,

kind?

I remember one that perished: sweetly did she speak and move:

Such a one do I remember, whom to look at was to

love.

Can I think of her as dead, and love her for the love she bore?

/ No-she never loved me truly: love is love forever

more.

Comfort? comfort scorned of devils! this is truth the

poet sings,

That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier

things.

Drug thy memories, lest thou learn it, lest thy heart be put to proof,

In the dead, unhappy night, and when the rain is on the

roof.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at

the wall,

Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.