Julia Ditto Young

“ And the dance and jest go rioting on, and none of his murdering knows!”
“Ah, well, I would risk it! but whether Saville, for us it could happen so,—
Perish the thought! ’tis a sacrilege,—but never, dear love, shall we know.
I am as a bee untimely crushed ere he unloadeth his sweets,
Dead to accomplishment, effort, and joy, whose heart still cruelly beats,
Ardent, ambitious, and pulsing strong with fiery tropical heats,—
God! how I worship my art divine, my heavenly art, Saville,—
That I were rotting a grain a day, yet able to serve her still!” ”

“ As a rock-spitted ship need reck never more of the wind and its ways—
Sat in his isolate chamber, lost in the clamant strange town
Where he had crept in the dark when his sun forever went down,
Broken winged crept to be free of the well-meant pity of friends
Rough as a blundering touch on a burn that solace intends,
Free of condolences oily, felicitous, falser than hell,
From men who at last might eclipse him, who still rode safe on the swell,
Free of the bitter black sense—the shock—that no one of them all
Vitally cared if he starved in his garret, a rat in the wall. ”

“ The Fairy Saville all things of good would serfs at his beckoning be,
“And first ’twas Love and then ’twas Wealth, dear heart, that thou gavest me,
And now ’tis Fame, and Vision draws nigh, lured to mine eyes by thee!”
And he said ’twas strange to reflect indeed that if he had been alone
Throughout the term of his blindness, if God had not made her known
To his cankered heart, ’twas certain the mordant malevolent tone
Of his mind would have tainted his later life, projecting through future days
When the hand’s sleight wedded to strength of purpose should fill the world with his praise ”

“ He perforce must debate the thing in his heart, “But is this true now, or a lie?”—
Why, he had trusted her as his God, and lo! she had bought him and sold,
Made him a chattel, a page, a toy to deck with her chains of gold,
A Delilah’s dupe,—’twere better to be mould in the churchyard mould!
Ah, well! myself, I have pity alone for the women who fail of the right,—
I know not in faith how it is we are made so the black seemeth often the white,—
We aspire to a dew-drop’s clarity, to a resolute self-control,
To face the world—why, the woman lives not who even can face her own soul! ”

“ And Kyrle mused silent, while slowly his mind, as whelmed in the gulf-stream’s drift,
Swirled far in a vague speculation: This poetic, this perilous gift,
Whose owner may dwell in the ultimate stars and is free of a fairy-knoll,
Who heareth the grass give thanks to the rain, who readeth a dragon-fly’s soul,
Who trembles at night to list the winds conspire and whisper and plot,
Who of choice is blind to all false foul things and seeth but that which is not,
How can a creature like this endure humanity’s sordid lot—
How sink from its rosy and opal haunts in filmy Elysian tracts ”

“ Where Kyrle and Saville and their happiness were safe from the tempest shut,
And the cheery lamp shed a kindly glow over the humble place,
And the nets and the bits of coral and spar lent it a simple grace.
“If only this cottage were ours, Saville! if this our idyl might be
Played for a white half-year divine down by the ice fringed sea!
But alas! the sable curtain must drop, and the actors perforce must flee!” ”

“ And Saville perceived with a wild regret that ’twas not the end of the world,
And slowly she turned on her languid divan, dismissing them all from the room,
And shuddering flung her cerements off, like Lazarus in the tomb,
And dragged her rebellious feet across the velvety carpet, and flung
Herself odalisque- wise on a couch where a mirror magnificent hung.
For women, methinks that the text should read, “If haply ye have all things
And have not beauty, then have ye naught,” for beauty such benison brings
No woman would barter it for a crown or the wealth barbaric of kings! ”

“ Yet if so be that one conquers temptation and out of the gates of hell
Flame-blackened with shrivelling garments back cometh alive and well,
There’s not on the earth a stronger soul than such a king-spirit must be,
That hath even outdaunted Satan himself, bidding him tremble and flee,—
Nothing can shake the integrity, the rock’s impregnable strength
Of the fort long assaulted that now is left to its hard won peace at length,—
Exalted, serene, the spirit shall reign in its untouched citadel,
And look henceforth with an equal eye on the things of heaven or hell ”

“ But the man thrilled solemnly to the thought that whether for good or for ill
He had mixed his life with another life and was bound as with steel to Saville,
And he raged at himself for an image of clay that senseless and selfish had snared
The love of a creature angelic, to whom he should never have dared
Lift even a worshiping thought, since his foiled adoration was but
As a rayless rare jewel, unmined, unprized, under a mountain shut.
Men take for granted the ferventest love ”

“ For an hour or twain ’twas enough to enjoy, merely that God had said
“Let there be light!” for him once more, and had summoned his eyes from the dead,
But quickly the rift crept widening in,—’twas but a mere broken toy,
A splintered gem, a goblet cracked, if Saville did not share in his joy.
He blamed himself for granting her prayer,—she should have remained beside
Her husband and bravely fronted with him what weal or woe should betide,—
Alone? ”

“ Was the flame still lambently blazing and clear, the gold from the dross to refine,
Of force to pierce and to purify men, and change then from panthers and swine?
Could a man step out of his daily round and that passionate picture scan,
And not go forth to the greed and the grind a cleaner and better man?
Had she heard as she gazed the Spirits of Good singing their deathless song,
Had she felt it were better to starve and rot than swerve to the smallest wrong?
But Saville was mute ”

“ By the kisses that leaven the soddenest lives, the kisses that stab as with spears
Of rapture the dull integument of the sordid and leaden-paced years,
Kisses for which full many a man and maiden have counted it well
To court dishonor and death and burn forever in burning hell,—
Shall a slight thing come to dissever the twain cemented thus heart to heart?
Shall they sundered be though earth divides? Can God even drive them apart? ”

“ For a woman may have a petrified heart, icy, and rock to the core,
Scarred by tempests and seamed and gashed, lichened and rusted o’er,
Of pity incapable, never to beat with a pulse of kindliness more,—
She may have a mind, if you call it a mind, the sluggish dull animal sense ”

“ If a human soul in a need extreme where the weltering surges roll
Entreats for a token of sympathy, the touch of a stancher soul,
Hasten, O hasten to give of thy strength! let not the poor sufferer wait,
For the sand burns white and the waves leap fierce, and to-morrow it may be too late,—
Thou shalt haply see in the morning sun an outworn shell at thy gate! ”

“ And the intellect, steady and poised at first, is faster and faster whirled
’Till it staggers and swoons in the awful void, and trembling and over-awed
Flies as a child to its father to the tenderer thought of God. ”

“ And man was honest and woman was true and the Infinite God was kind,
And the world was a fair pure world again, and only his eyes were blind,
And he bowed his head to the All-wise Will, embracing the doom assigned. ”

“ Yet the foul faint doubt he had trampled at first sprang weedlike over again,—
She was but a woman and therefore false,—she smiled on a hundred men,—
And he thought how she clung to his arm in the snow and he wished he had killed her then! ”

“ Kyrle had not dashed his foot on a stone since the vernal day they were wed.
Fair is the dawn, when the half-waked robins closelier nestle and croon,
Fair, but faint by the smiting white supernal splendor of noon,
And they who but warble of “Love’s Young Dream” methinks can never have known
The gordian tie of an older love, where shadow and substance have grown
Incorporate utterly, not as the moss clings into the crannied stone ”

“ Or if not the same, then so closely knit that none can dissever the two,—
Men swear that they love us for mind or soul, and haply they think they do,
But the veriest dairymaid milking her cow knows it is wholly untrue;
Surely, plain women are sometimes loved ”

“ Think not twice in a life to find such a rose-ruby to keep!
Ah! they were saying carelessly, back in his wonted place,
“Wonder where he has slipped to? Poor devil, he’s out of the race—
Nothing remains, as the French say, but drawing the sheet o’er the face,”—
And ever he mused of his village home and the graves on the churchyard hill,
Where the only hearts that had beat for him were crumbling, cruelly still,
And his useless eyes brimmed over with tears, and slowly his blood grew chill. ”

“ But when into Kyrle’s existence blank, arid as African sands,
Into the barrenness marred and vexed by alien tongues and hands,
An angel’s voice rang heavenly high, and a star in his pathway fell,
Welcomer ’twas to the lonely man than water in nethermost hell. ”

“ We can but smile at the modern cry for an equaler social plan,—
Man is the servant of God alone, but woman serves God and man,
And God is the greater, certainly, but man dwelleth here below,
Not at a vast vague altitude, too loftily far to know
If we lay at his altar the homage meek, the allegiance that we owe.
We may wrap in a napkin our talents and God will not thunder or smite,
But woe to the household drudge who keepeth the fire on the hearth not bright. ”

“ In hatefullest frantic chaos, a lunatic’s furious whim.
Strange! that because of a trifling loss, scarce more in creation’s scheme
Than a gnat in a summer woodland, a leaf afloat on a stream,
Because two vials were shattered, God’s purposes high should seem
Only an idiot babble heard in a horrible dream. ”

“ We may dwell content in a lowly cot, wearing our homespun gray,
Neighbored by robins and lambs alone and the squirrels across the way,
Disprizing wealth and keeping aloof from the breakneck race of greed,
Our brows unbeaded by hard-wrung sweat ”

“ O August imperial! night divine! O infinite passionate sea!
Each of itself is a gift so rich that well may the high gods be
Envying man the sweet low earth and their beautiful trinity!
Kyrle and Saville went wandering on, slow pacing the surf-beat shore,
And he stumbled not, for she chose the path, and heavy his arm hung o’er
Her delicate shoulders ”

“ Then Saville perceived what is common to all who are linked with disciples of art,
That she stood without the holy of holies, an alien, a stranger, apart,
But she passed the portal and coined a word to comfort the desolate heart.
“Hearken, my dearest! You murmur because you fancy you have not done
Your stent to the utmost, have painted but one great picture,—but one!
You should rather thank God from a grateful heart you were gifted to do so much,
For manifold millions of men go by, nor help the world by a touch ”

“ Simple, sufficient, as if she had said in a homaging, honey-fraught tone,
“You are Cæsar,—unmastered, unrivalled,—our planet doth own
No man for your fellow,—Enough! You are even so Kyrle and alone!” ”

“ Clasp close the near ones about your hearth, let never caresses lack,
For the turn of a card, the fall of a leaf, may speed them adown the track
Facile, declivitous, into the bourne of the Acheron valley black! ”

“ And Kyrle, lapped soft in a luxury he never had known or had dreamed,
Grew half content for a little space with the things of this world and seemed
To drowse in uxorious slothful fields, lotosed, Lethean-streamed.
And Saville was the sweetest of ministrants; the scheme of her life was full plain
To her sight; she but lived for this man; her fathers had garnered the grain
Of their wealth for Ms use and behoof ”

“ Why, we are sprent with gems! they fall in a wavering thistledown blur,
In the gallery of the meadow mouse, on the restless squirrel’s fur,
The schoolboy crushes them into a ball, the woodman follows his sled
Through the wreck of a myriad fragile stars, strange as the stars o’erhead,—
And Oh! ”

“ With a masque, a foolery petty and vain, amusing herself with his loss,—
God! it had been but an insult throughout, her ’havior so sisterly free,—
She scarce had esteemed him a man at all,—why, then, forsooth! should she be
Distantly coy with a clod, reserved as a maid is alway
With a man? ”