Knave of Hearts

“ Trust me, these symptoms of thy faithful heart,
In absence, shall my dearest hopes sustain,
Delia! since such thy sorrow that we part,
Such when we meet thy joy shall be again.
Hard is that heart and unsubdued by love
That feels no pain, nor ever heaves a sigh,
Such hearts the fiercest passions only prove,
Or freeze in cold insensibility. ”

“ Winged with cloud whose wrath shall bid love's day be done.
Yet shall darkness bring the awakening sea a lordlier lover,
Clothed with strength more amorous and more strenuous will,
Whence her heart of hearts shall kindle and her soul recover
Sense of love too keen to lie for love's sake still. ”

“ I smelt the roses; and the night
Outside was fog and frost.
What though I claimed her dying there!
God nor one angel understood
Nor cared, who from loved feet to hair
Had changed to mist her blood.
Love, love had claimed us long, and long
Our hearts sang harp-strung, late and soon;
But God!—God jangles thus the song
And makes discord of tune.
What lily lilier than her face!
More virgin than her lips I kissed!
When morn like God, with gold and grace
Broke massed in mist! broke massed in mist!
[Pg 82] 2. ”

“ If I felt anything in that hour, it was that the glorious ideal world which lay before us was not more lovely or more ideal than the new world which I now entered; and where in this life and the next, I hoped to dwell for ever with Cornelius. For to those who love purely, love is its own world, its own solitude, its own new created Eden, green and pleasant where they abide, a new born Adam and Eve, without the temptation and the fall, their hearts filled with tenderness, their souls overflowing with adoration. ”

“ If so it be one place both hearts contain,
For what do they complain?
What courtesy can Love do more,
Than to join hearts that parted were before?
Woe to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
Into the self-same room;
'Twill tear and blow up all within
Like a grenade shot into a magazine.
Then shall Love keep the ashes and torn parts
Of both our broken hearts;
Shall out of both one new one make,
From hers th' alloy, from mine the metal take. ”

“ Seven of Clubs—A little money and—Nine of Hearts—much joy—Ace of Hearts—will be announced to the person making the essay by a letter, and—Knave of Spades—a wild young man—Seven of Hearts—will be overjoyed at receiving—Nine of Clubs—some unexpected tidings. The cards of surprise—viz., the King of Diamonds and the Ace of Clubs—predict that a letter will be received from some military man, and that it will contain money.”
THE STAR METHOD OF CONSULTING THE CARDS.
We will suppose the person making the essay to be a widow, and consequently represented by the Queen of Spades. ”

“ But since, dear Lucy, we have seen the ‘Revealings of a Heart,’ I feel that there could be so much misery relieved—so many hearts gained for Heaven, by a knowledge of self, and the perfections of the Deity—not taught in dry, dogmatical truths, addressed only to the reason, but in words and acts of sympathy and love, which soothe the torn and lacerated heart, and bind in sweet captivity the young and pure. ”

“ Cornelius watched me silently, and read on my face what was passing within me.
"Daisy," he said, in a low, sad tone, "remember we are not men or women until our hearts are mastered, until our passions—ay, the best and purest—lie subdued."
The words subdued my resentful mood to a sorrow more tender and holy. My burden was heavy, but was it more than I could bear? Daughter of the cross, should I dare to repine? I yielded; I tasted the bitter joy which those who bravely drain the cup of sacrifice find in its dregs—a strange sort of sweetness, to be felt, not described, and, alas! ”

“ Sweet heart, forgive me for thine own sweet sake,
Whose kind blithe soul such seas of sorrow swam,
And for my love's sake, powerless as I am
For love to praise thee, or like thee to make
[236] Music of mirth where hearts less pure would break,
Less pure than thine, our life-unspotted Lamb.
Things hatefullest thou hadst not heart to damn,
Nor wouldst have set thine heel on this dead snake.
Let worms consume its memory with its tongue,
The fang that stabbed fair Truth, the lip that stung
Men's memories uncorroded with its breath. ”

“ No, I’ll own my Flame, and plead my Title too.—But hold, wretched Aurelian, hold, whither does thy Passion hurry thee? Alas! the cruel fair Incognita Loves thee not! She knows not of thy Love! If she did, what Merit hast thou to pretend?—Only Love.—Excess of Love. And all the World has that. All that have seen her. Yet I had only seen her once, and in that once I lov’d above the World; nay, lov’d beyond my self, such vigorous Flame, so strong, so quick she darted at my Breast; it must rebound, and by Reflection, warm her self. ”

“ Oh Clement, that love at one and the same instant created on our sympathizing hearts!—sustained, with mutual ardor, through the uniform but interesting years of childhood!—at length spurred on by dangers and denial to form its firmest, chastest tie!—is there a temptation on earth, or a horror in futurity, which could bribe or bid that love seek to extinguish its smallest hope, its least particle of enjoyment?—No! ”

“ Like those sullen children in the market-place, they feel no sympathies with heaven or with earth: unthankful in prosperity, unsoftened by adversity, well may it be said of them, Hearts of stone, hearts of stone!
Not of such were Henry and Maria: naturally warm in affections and generous in sympathies, it needed but the pilot's hand to steer their hearts aright: the energies of life were there, both fresh and full, lacking but direction heavenwards ”

“ Yet if ’tis true,
By our own hearts of others we may judge,
Mine in no peril lies that’s shown to you,
Whose heart, I’m sure, is noble. Worthy sir,
Souls attract souls when they’re of kindred vein.
The life that you love, I love. Well I know,
’Mongst those who breast the feats of the bold chase,
You stand without a peer ”

“ Death takes her hand and leads her through the waste
Of her own soul, wherein she hears the voice
Of lost Love's tears, and, famishing, can but taste
The dead-sea fruit of Life's remembered joys.
A LAST WORD.
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Song,
Strive to succeed as others have, who gave
Their lives unto her; shaping sure and strong
Her lovely limbs that made them god and slave.
Not for thyself, but for the sake of Art,
Strive to advance beyond the others' best;
Winning a deeper secret from her heart
To hang it moonlike 'mid the starry rest. ”

“ There is the heart—” she pressed a hand to a pendulous right breast “—but as my old friend, the Baroness Blenau used to say, hearts do not guide but to sorrow. Ah, friend Rodvard, believe me, if one is to have the great peace, one must deny the heart’s message and seek the good of all beyond what gives pain at the moment.” ”

“ Clasping her hands in prayer, with her eyes raised for a moment to the lowering sky above, she faintly murmured the words, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me;” then rousing all her courage for the desperate attempt, she entered the gloomy tunnel.
No lingering step there—no doubting, hesitating heart! as with the painful duties which conscience had before imposed upon her shrinking nature, Clemence felt a necessity to go through, and through as quickly as possible. ”

“ Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed
Who feeds our hearts with fame.
XIV Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting,
God of all suns and songs, he too bends down
To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown,
And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting.
[Pg 56] Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art,
Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart,
Mourns thee of many his children the last dead,
And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs
Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes,
And over thine irrevocable head
Sheds light from the under skies. ”

“ In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!
We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean.
Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
Soul to soul while the years fell past ”

“ Shed like a consecration; and his heart,
Hearing, is made for love's sake as a part
Of that far singing, and the life thereof
Part of that life that feeds the world with love:
Yea, heart in heart is molten, hers and his,
Into the world's heart and the soul that is
Beyond or sense or vision; and their breath
Stirs the soft springs of deathless life and death,
Death that bears life, and change that brings forth seed
Of life to death and death to life indeed,
As blood recircling through the unsounded veins
Of earth and heaven with all their joys and pains. ”

“ A measure of courage returned to Rose. "Do you expect to be able to make me drink that?" she demanded.
"Not I—but Destiny, if it will! See here!" From a pocket of her dressing-gown Judith produced a sealed deck of playing cards. "Let these declare the will of Destiny toward us. I will break the seal, shuffle the cards, and deal," she explained, suiting action to the word. "The one who gets the Trey of Hearts will drain that glass. ”

“ Upon dead lips no dust of Love's dead bloom;
And in dead hands no shards of Faith's rent flask;
But Hope, who still stands at her starry task,
Weaving the web of comfort on her loom!
Thrice blessed! who, 'though he hear the tomb proclaim,
How all is Death's and Life Death's other name;
Can yet reply: "O Grave, these things are yours!
But that is left which life indeed assures—
Love, through whose touch I shall arise the same!
Love, of whose self was wrought the universe!" ”

“ Not the martyr's ardour of selfless love, an unprofitable flame that burnt out and did no service— not the rapid rage of pleasure that seemed for a little to make the flesh divine, to clothe the naked senses with the fiery raiment of faith; but a stingless love, an innocuous desire. "Hesperia," the tenderest type of woman or of dream, born in the westward "islands of the blest," where the shadows of all happy and holy things live beyond the sunset a sacred and a sleepless life, dawns upon his eyes a western dawn, risen as the fiery day of passion goes down, and risen where it sank. ”

“ They sat together now in the darkened room from which their father's coffin had been carried an hour before, and both were in bitter sorrow. It is a blessed thing, that atmosphere of love which pervades this whole wide restless world, emanating, no doubt, from the unseen presence of Him who is Love, and penetrating, in some one shape or other, into the life of the most forlorn amongst us. ”

“ So Tristram looked on Iseult face to face
And knew not, and she knew not. The last time—
The last that should be told in any rhyme
Heard anywhere on mouths of singing men
That ever should sing praise of them again;
The last hour of their hurtless hearts at rest,
The last that peace should touch them, breast to breast,
The last that sorrow far from them should sit,
This last was with them, and they knew not it. ”

“ Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!
"O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!—
Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!" ”

“ Fear thou the gods and me and thine own heart,
Lest all these turn against thee; for who knows
What wind upon what wave of altering time
Shall speak a storm and blow calamity?
And there is nothing stabile in the world
But the gods break it; yet not less, fair son,
If but one thing be stronger, if one endure,
Surely the bitter and the rooted love
That burns between us, going from me to thee,
Shall more endure than all things. What dost thou,
Following strange loves? why wilt thou kill mine heart? ”

“ The extremest Malice of our Fate can hinder:
That still is left us, and on that we'll feed,
As on the Leavings of Calamity.
There, we will feast, and smile on past Distress,
And hug, in scorn of it, our mutual Ruine.
OSM. O thou dost talk, my Love, as one resolv'd,
Because not knowing Danger. But look forward;
Think on to Morrow, when thou shalt be torn
From these weak, struggling, unextended Arms;
Think how my Heart will heave, and Eyes will strain,
To grasp and reach what is deny'd my Hands:
Think how the Blood will start, and Tears will gush
To follow thee my separating Soul. ”

“ And Silence ruled the deep's abyss;
And through dark leaves thou saw'st the white
Breasts of the starry maids who kiss
Pale feet of moony Artemis.
Thy dreams! when, breasting matted weeds
Of Arethusa, thou didst hear
The music of the wind-swept reeds;
And down dim forest-ways drew near
Shy herds of slim Arcadian deer.
Thy wisdom! that knew naught but love
And beauty, with which love is fraught;
The wisdom of the heart—whereof
All noblest passions spring—that thought
As Nature thinks, "All else is naught."
Thy hope! wherein To-morrow set
No shadow ”

“ Though smoother-seeming than the still sea’s glass,
More fit for very manhood’s heart to fear,
Than all straits past of peril. Hardly here
Might aught of all things hearten him save one,
Faith: and as men’s eyes quail before the sun
So quailed his heart before the star whose light
Put out the torches of his bridal night,
So quailed and shrank with sense of faith’s keen star
That burned as fire beheld by night afar
Deep in the darkness of his dreams; for all
The bride-house now seemed hung with heavier pall
Than clothes the house of mourning. ”