Earl of Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton Lytton

“ Let that pass! 'Tis not I, 'tis not you, that can name her, alas! And I dare not question or judge her. But why, Why cherish the cause of your own misery? Why think of one, lady, who thinks not of you? Why be bound by a chain which himself he breaks through? And why, since you have but to stretch forth your hand, The love which you need and deserve to command, Why shrink? Why repel it?" "O hush, sir! O hush!" Cried Matilda, as though her whole heart were one blush. "Cease, cease, I conjure you, to trouble my life! Is not Alfred your friend? ”

“ Words, however, are things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul, Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control. And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day The light code proclaim'd on his lips to obey; And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully aught That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought. Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth, Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth, Lived and breathed, and made moan—stirr'd themselves—strove to start Into deeds—though deposed, in that Hades, his heart. ”

“ I too have at last Lived to learn that love is not—such love as is past, Such love as youth dreams of at least—the sole part Of life, which is able to fill up the heart; Even that of a woman. "Between you and me Heaven fixes a gulf, over which you must see That our guardian angels can bear us no more. We each of us stand on an opposite shore. Trust a woman's opinion for once. Women learn, By an instinct men never attain, to discern Each other's true natures. Matilda is fair, Matilda is young—see her now, sitting there!— How tenderly fashion'd— (oh, is she not? say,) To love and be loved!" ”

“ Woman's honor, you ask? Is there, sir, no dishonor In the smile of a woman, when men, gazing on her, Can shudder, and say, "In that smile is a grave"? No! you can have no cause, Duke, for no right you have In the contest you menace. That contest but draws Every right into ruin. By all human laws Of man's heart I forbid it, by all sanctities Of man's social honor! The Duke droop'd his eyes. "I obey you," he said, "but let woman beware How she plays fast and loose thus with human despair, And the storm in man's heart. ”

“ No star ever rose And set, without influence somewhere. Who knows What earth needs from earth's lowest creature? No life Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife And all life not be purer and stronger thereby. The spirits of just men made perfect on high, The army of martyrs who stand by the Throne And gaze into the face that makes glorious their own, Know this, surely, at last. Honest love, honest sorrow, Honest work for the day, honest hope for the morrow, Are these worth nothing more than the hand they make weary, The heart they have sadden'd, the life they leave dreary? ”

“ What I hear in the silence, and see in the lone Void of life, is the young hero born of my own Perish'd youth: and his image, serene and sublime In my heart rests unconscious of change and of time, Could I see it but once more, as time and as change Have made it, a thing unfamiliar and strange, See, indeed, that the Being I loved in my youth Is no more, and what rests now is only, in truth, The hard pupil of life and the world: then, oh, then, I should wake from a dream, and my life be again Reconciled to the world ”

“ While he woos, thou art wanton; thou lettest him love thee; But thou art not his friend, for his grief cannot move thee; And at last, when he sickens and dies, what dost thou? All as gay are thy garments, as careless thy brow, And thou laughest and toyest with any new comer, Not a tear more for winter, a smile less for summer! Hast thou never an anguish to heave the heart under That fair breast of thine, O thou feminine wonder! For all those—the young, and the fair, and the strong, Who have loved thee, and lived with thee gayly and long, And who now on thy bosom lie dead? ”

“ Thus, his youth In his manhood renew'd, fame and fortune he won Working only for home, love, and duty. One son Matilda had borne him; but scarce had the boy, With all Eton yet fresh in his full heart's frank joy, The darling of young soldier comrades, just glanced Down the glad dawn of manhood at life, when it chanced That a blight sharp and sudden was breath'd o'er the bloom Of his joyous and generous years, and the gloom Of a grief premature on their fair promise fell: No light cloud like those which, for June to dispel, Captious April engenders ”

“ Judge her love by her life. For our life is but love In act. Pure was hers: and the dear God above, Who knows what His creatures have need of for life, And whose love includes all loves, through much patient strife Led her soul into peace. Love, though love may be given In vain, is yet lovely. Her own native heaven More clearly she mirror'd, as life's troubled dream Wore away; and love sigh'd into rest, like a stream That breaks its heart over wild rocks toward the shore Of the great sea which hushes it up evermore With its little wild wailing. ”

“ There, hover'd in light, That image aloft, o'er the shapeless and bright And Aurorean clouds, which themselves seem'd to be Brilliant fragments of that golden world, wherein he Had once dwelt, a native! There, rooted and bound To the earth, stood the man, gazing at it! Around The rims of the sunrise it hover'd and shone Transcendent, that type of a youth that was gone; And he—as the body may yearn for the soul, So he yearn'd to embody that image. His whole Heart arose to regain it. "And is it too late?" No! for Time is a fiction, and limits not fate. Thought alone is eternal. ”

“ And give not, O madman! the heart in thy breast To a phantom, the soul of whose sense is possess'd By an Age not thine own!' "But unconscious is he, And he heeds not the warning, he cares not to see Aught but ONE form before him! "Rash, wild words are o'er, And the vision is vanish'd from sight evermore! And the gray morning sees, as it drearily moves O'er a land long deserted, a madman that roves Through a ruin, and seeks to recapture a dream. Lost to life and its uses, withdrawn from the scheme Of man's waking existence, he wanders apart." ”

“ God's love does not. And His love is unchanged, when it changes our lot. Looking up to this light, which is common to all, And down to these shadows, on each side, that fall In time's silent circle, so various for each, Is it nothing to know that they never can reach So far, but what light lies beyond them forever? Trust to me! Oh, if in this hour I endeavor To trace the shade creeping across the young life Which, in prayer till this hour, I have watch'd through its strife With the shadow of death, 'tis with this faith alone, That, in tracing the shade, I shall find out the sun. ”

“ I was not of those whom the buffets of fate Tame and teach; and my heart buried slain love in hate. If your own frank young heart, yet unconscious of all Which turns the heart's blood in its springtide to gall, And unable to guess even aught that the furrow Across these gray brows hides of sin or of sorrow, Comprehends not the evil and grief of my life, 'Twill at least comprehend how intense was the strife Which is closed in this act of atonement, whereby I seek in the son of my youth's enemy The friend of my age. ”

“ But if, lady, the love you describe, in the bed Of a blissful security thus hath reposed Undisturb'd, with mild eyelids on happiness closed, Were it not to expose to a peril unjust, And most cruel, that happy repose you so trust, To meet, to receive, and, indeed, it may be, For how long I know not, continue to see A woman whose place rivals yours in the life And the heart which not only your title of wife, But also (forgive me!) your beauty alone, Should have made wholly yours?—You, who gave all your own! Reflect!—'tis the peace of existence you stake On the turn of a die. ”

“ Had she deem'd That this airy, gay, insolent man of the world, So proud of the place the world gave him, held furl'd In his bosom no passion which once shaken wide Might tug, till it snapped, that erect lofty pride? Were those elements in him, which once roused to strife Overthrow a whole nature, and change a whole life? There are two kinds of strength. One, the strength of the river Which through continents pushes its pathway forever To fling its fond heart in the sea; if it lose This, the aim of its life, it is lost to its use, It goes mad, is diffused into deluge, and dies. ”

“ A surprise,—an emotion! When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? how works it?... We scarcely detect it. But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it! This accursed aesthetical, ethical age Hath so finger'd life's hornbook, so blurr'd every page, That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story With its fables of faery, its legends of glory, Is turn'd to a tedious instruction, not new To the children that read it insipidly through. We know too much of Love ere we love. ”

“ The woman who loves should, indeed, Be the friend of the man that she loves. She should heed Not her selfish and often mistaken desires, But his interest whose fate her own interest inspires; And rather than seek to allure, for her sake, His life down the turbulent, fanciful wake Of impossible destinies, use all her art That his place in the world find its place in her heart. I, alas!—I perceived not this truth till too late; I tormented your youth, I have darken'd your fate. Forgive me the ill I have done for the sake Of its long expiation! ”

“ And I said to myself, 'I am young yet: too young To have wholly survived my own portion among The great needs of man's life, or exhausted its joys; What is broken? one only of youth's pleasant toys! Shall I be the less welcome, wherever I go, For one passion survived? No! the roses will blow As of yore, as of yore will the nightingales sing, Not less sweetly for one blossom cancell'd from Spring! Hast thou loved, O my heart? to thy love yet remains All the wide loving-kindness of nature. ”

“ Live to shield her from want, and to share with her sorrow; Live to solace the day, and provide for the morrow: Will that woman feel less than another, O say, The loss of what life, sparing this, takes away? Will she feel (feeling this) , when calamities come, That they brighten the heart, though they darken the home?" She turn'd, like a soft rainy heav'n, on him Eyes that smiled through fresh tears, trustful, tender, and dim. "That woman," she murmur'd, "indeed were thrice blest!" "Then courage, true wife of my heart!" to his breast As he folded and gather'd her closely, he cried. ”

“ It is not the deed A man does, but the way that he does it, should plead For the man's compensation in doing it. "Here, My next neighbor's a man with twelve thousand a year, Who deems that life has not a pastime more pleasant Than to follow a fox, or to slaughter a pheasant. Yet this fellow goes through a contested election, Lives in London, and sits, like the soul of dejection, All the day through upon a committee, and late To the last, every night, through the dreary debate, As though he were getting each speaker by heart, Though amongst them he never presumes to take part. ”

“ IX. But a wound deeper far, undescried, The young heart was rankling; for there, of a truth, In the first earnest faith of a pure pensive youth, A love large as life, deep and changeless as death, Lay ensheath'd: and that love, ever fretting its sheath, The frail scabbard of life pierced and wore through and through. There are loves in man's life for which time can renew All that time may destroy. Lives there are, though, in love, Which cling to one faith, and die with it; nor move, Though earthquakes may shatter the shrine. Whence or how Love laid claim to this young life, it matters not now. ”

“ The trees only, o'er every unvisited walk, Began on a sudden to whisper and talk. And, as each little sprightly and garrulous leaf Woke up with an evident sense of relief, They all seem'd to be saying... "Once more we're alone, And, thank Heaven, those tiresome people are gone!" III. Through the deep blue concave of the luminous air, Large, loving, and languid, the stars here and there, Like the eyes of shy passionate women, look'd down O'er the dim world whose sole tender light was their own, When Matilda, alone, from her chamber descended, And enter'd the garden, unseen, unattended. ”

“ XII. How lovely she look'd in the lovely moonlight, That stream'd thro' the pane from the blue balmy night! How lovely she look'd in her own lovely youth, As she clung to his side, full of trust and of truth! How lovely to HIM, as he tenderly press'd Her young head on his bosom, and sadly caress'd The glittering tresses which now shaken loose Shower'd gold in his hand, as he smooth'd them! XIII. O Muse, Interpose not one pulse of thine own beating heart Twixt these two silent souls! There's a joy beyond art, And beyond sound the music it makes in the breast. ”

“ Do you think we should live With the living so lightly, and learn to survive That wild moment in which to the grave and its gloom We consign'd our heart's best, if the doors of the tomb Were not lock'd with a key which Fate keeps for our sake? If the dead could return or the corpses awake? JOHN. Nonsense! ALFRED. Not wholly. The man who gets up A fill'd guest from the banquet, and drains off his cup, Sees the last lamp extinguish'd with cheerfulness, goes Well contented to bed, and enjoys its repose. ”

“ Her tears fell beyond The world's limit, to feel that the world could respond To that heart's deepest, innermost yearning, in naught, 'Twas no longer this earth's idle inmates she sought: The wit of the woman sufficed to engage In the woman's gay court the first men of the age. Some had genius; and all, wealth of mind to confer On the world: but that wealth was not lavish'd for her. For the genius of man, though so human indeed, When call'd out to man's help by some great human need, The right to a man's chance acquaintance refuses To use what it hoards for mankind's nobler uses. ”

“ No man is the absolute lord of his life. You, my friend, have a home, and a sweet and dear wife. If I often have sigh'd by my own silent fire, With the sense of a sometimes recurring desire For a voice sweet and low, or a face fond and fair, Some dull winter evening to solace and share With the love which the world its good children allows To shake hands with,—in short, a legitimate spouse, This thought has consoled me: 'At least I have given For my own good behavior no hostage to heaven.' You have, though. ”

“ Even so seem'd to creep O'er that fair and ethereal face, day by day, While the radiant vermeil, subsiding away, Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual veil Of a sadness unconscious. The lady grew pale As silent her lord grew: and both, as they eyed Each the other askance, turn'd, and secretly sigh'd. Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give? True, we know what life is—but, alas! do we live? The grammar of life we have gotten by heart, But life's self we have made a dead language—an art, Not a voice. ”

“ The strife None can share, though by all its results may be known. When the soul arms for battle, she goes forth alone. I say not, indeed, we shall meet nevermore, For I know not. But meet, as we have met of yore, I know that we cannot. Perchance we may meet By the death-bed, the tomb, in the crowd, in the street, Or in solitude even, but never again Shall we meet from henceforth as we have met, Eugene. For we know not the way we are going, nor yet Where our two ways may meet, or may cross. Life hath set No landmarks before us. ”

“ Never yet did the sun touch to ripples of gold Tresses brighter than those which her soft hand unroll'd From her noble and innocent brow, when she rose, An Aurora, at dawn, from her balmy repose, And into the mirror the bloom and the blush Of her beauty broke, glowing; like light in a gush From the sunrise in summer. Love, roaming, shall meet But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet— Eyes brighter—brows whiter—a figure more fair— Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair— Than thine, Lady Alfred! ”

“ XXIII. As some minstrel may fling, Preluding the music yet mute in each string, A swift hand athwart the hush'd heart of the whole, Seeking which note most fitly must first move the soul; And, leaving untroubled the deep chords below, Move pathetic in numbers remote;—even so The voice which was moving the heart of that man Far away from its yet voiceless purpose began, Far away in the pathos remote of the past; Until, through her words, rose before him, at last, Bright and dark in their beauty, the hopes that were gone Unaccomplish'd from life. ”

“ You, with such a love's memory deep in your heart! You the hero, whose life hath perchance been led on Through the deeds it hath wrought to the fame it hath won, By recalling the visions and dreams of a youth, Such as lies at your door now: who have but, in truth, To stretch forth a hand, to speak only one word, And by that word you rescue a life! ”

“ I believed, and with honest conviction believed, In my love for Matilda. I never conceived That another could shake it. I deem'd I had done With the wild heart of youth, and looked hopefully on To the soberer manhood, the worthier life, Which I sought in the love that I vow'd to my wife. Poor child! she shall learn the whole truth. She shall know What I knew not myself but a few days ago. The world will console her—her pride will support— Her youth will renew its emotions. In short, There is nothing in me that Matilda will miss When once we have parted. 'Tis best as it is! ”

“ VIII. Matilda shrank back; for she suddenly found That a finger was press'd on the yet bleeding wound She, herself, had but that day perceived in her breast. "You are sad,"... said the Duke (and that finger yet press'd With a cruel persistence the wound it made bleed) — "You are sad, Lady Alfred, because the first need Of a young and a beautiful woman is to be Beloved, and to love. You are sad: for you see That you are not beloved, as you deem'd that you were: You are sad: for that knowledge hath left you aware That you have not yet loved, though you thought that you had. ”

“ What was love, then?... not calm, not secure—scarcely kind, But in one, all intensest emotions combined: Life and death: pain and rapture?" Thus wandering astray, Led by doubt, through the darkness she wander'd away. All silently crossing, recrossing the night. With faint, meteoric, miraculous light, The swift-shooting stars through the infinite burn'd, And into the infinite ever return'd. And silently o'er the obscure and unknown In the heart of Matilda there darted and shone Thoughts, enkindling like meteors the deeps, to expire, Leaving traces behind them of tremulous fire. ”

“ He reads In your heart—He that judges of all thoughts and deeds. With eyes, mine forestall not! This only I say: You have not the right (read it, you, as you may!) To say... 'I am the wrong'd."'... "Have I wrong'd thee?—wrong'd THEE!" He falter'd, "Lucile, ah, Lucile!" "Nay, not me," She murmur'd, "but man! The lone nun standing here Has no claim upon earth, and is pass'd from the sphere Of earth's wrongs and earth's reparations. But she, The dead woman, Lucile, she whose grave is in me, Demands from her grave reparation to man, Reparation to God. ”

“ Your farewell! you go! LUCILE. Yes, Lord Alfred. ALFRED. Reveal The cause of this sudden unkindness. LUCILE. Unkind? ALFRED. Yes! what else is this parting? LUCILE. No, no! are you blind? Look into your own heart and home. Can you see No reason for this, save unkindness in me? Look into the eyes of your wife—those true eyes, Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise The sweet soul shining through them. ALFRED. Lucile! (first and last Be the word, if you will!) let me speak of the past. I know now, alas! though I know it too late, What pass'd at that meeting which settled my fate. ”

“ True! women there are (self-named women of mind!) Who love rather liberty—liberty, yes! To choose and to leave—than the legalized stress Of the lovingest marriage. But she—is she so? I will not believe it. Lucile! O no, no! Not Lucile! "But the world? and, ah, what would it say? O the look of that man, and his laughter, to-day! The gossip's light question! the slanderous jest! She is right! no, we could not be happy. 'Tis best As it is. I will write to her—write, O my heart! And accept her farewell. OUR farewell! must we part— Part thus, then—forever, Lucile? ”