Loyal Heart

“ A soul full of trust and [Pg 177] brimming over with compassion and with love. Colonel Harris was loyal to the core; he clung to his loyalty, to his belief in Luke as he would to a rock, fearful lest he should flounder in a maze of wonderment, of surmises, of suspicions. God help him! But in Louisa even loyalty was submerged in a sea of love. She cared nothing about suspicions, about facts, about surmises. She had no room in her heart for staunchness: it was all submerged in love. ”

“ How pleasantly I might linger on here, ‘My duns forgetting, by my duns forgot.’ How smoothly I might float down the stream of life, without even having to pull an bar! How delightfully domestic and innocent and inglorious the whole thing! Isn’t it tempting, you dog? Does it not touch even your temperament through its thick hide of worldliness? And I believe in my heart it is all feasible, all to be done. “I have just tossed up for it Head for India, and head it is! So that Loyd is booked for a pleasant journey, and I start to-morrow, to ensure him all the happiness in my power to confer. ”

“ Love, perchance, you mistrust, yet you need to be loved. You mistake your own feelings. I fear you mistake What so ill I interpret, those feelings which make Words like these vague and feeble. Whatever your heart May have suffer'd of yore, this can only impart A pity profound to the love which I feel. Hush! hush! I know all. Tell me nothing, Lucile." "You know all, Duke?" she said; "well then, know that, in truth, I have learn'd from the rude lesson taught to my youth From my own heart to shelter my life; to mistrust The heart of another. We are what we must, And not what we would be. ”

“ My pride fights in vain With the truth that leaps from me. We two meet again 'Neath yon terrible heaven that is watching above To avenge if I lie when I swear that I love,— And beneath yonder terrible heaven, at your feet, I humble my head and my heart. I entreat Your pardon, Lucile, for the past—I implore For the future your mercy—implore it with more Of passion than prayer ever breathed. By the power Which invisibly touches us both in this hour, By the rights I have o'er you, Lucile, I demand—" "The rights!"... said Lucile, and drew from him her hand. ”

“ Nay, not all in vain! shall the world gain a man, And yet Heaven lose a soul? Have I done all I can? Soul to soul, did he say? Soul to soul, be it so! And then—soul of mine, whither? whither?" XVIII. Large, slow, Silent tears in those deep eyes ascended, and fell. "HERE, at least, I have fail'd not"... she mused... "this is well!" She drew from her bosom two letters. In one, A mother's heart, wild with alarm for her son, Breathed bitterly forth its despairing appeal. "The pledge of a love owed to thee, O Lucile! ”

“ No less quick was Leoncia in knowing, and could the blind man have beheld the involuntary glance of knowledge the man and woman threw at each other and the immediate embarrassment of averted eyes, he could have unerringly diagnosed Francis’ trouble. The mestiza girl saw, and with a leap at her heart scented a love affair. Likewise had Henry seen and unconsciously scowled.
The Just One spoke:
“An affair of heart undoubtedly,” he dismissed the matter. “The eternal vexation of woman in the heart of man. Nevertheless, this man stands free. ”

“ Sooner mayst thou trust thy purse to a professional pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to which the heart never mounts in dew! Only, when man weeps, he should be alone—not because tears are weak, but because they should be sacred. Tears are akin to prayers. ”

“ The shock of this rupture left not a shade of reproach for the girl in Lowell’s mind, but it broke up the fountains of the deep in his own life. He was scarcely more than a boy in years, but he had in temperament and capacity for emotion a far greater maturity. He could write of himself a few years later: “Brought up in a very reserved and conventional family, I cannot in society appear what I really am. I go out sometimes with my heart so full of yearning toward my fellows that the indifferent look with which even entire strangers pass me brings tears to my eyes.” ”

“ Then she spoke of the soldier!... the man's work and fame, The pride of a nation, a world's just acclaim! Life's inward approval! XXVIII. Her voice reach'd his heart, And sank lower. She spoke of herself: how, apart And unseen,—far away,—she had watch'd, year by year, With how many a blessing, how many a tear, And how many a prayer, every stage in the strife: Guess'd the thought in the deed: traced the love in the life: Bless'd the man in the man's work! "THY work... oh, not mine! Thine, Lucile!"... he exclaim'd... "all the worth of it thine, If worth there be in it!" ”

“ This plaintive spectre rested for a moment on a stone, in the smiling solitude of Savigny: there were so many hearts there which would have joyfully received her! They would so gladly have restored her to a sweet reality of existence! But Lucile's heart could beat only in an atmosphere made expressly for her and never breathed by others. She swiftly devoured the days of the world apart in which Heaven had placed her. Why had God created a being only to suffer? What mysterious relation can there be between a long-suffering nature and an eternal principle? ”

“ Never think it!"
"Yet we should give God the best," said Lawrence sadly.
"Give Him what He asketh of thee, Lolly. Methinks that is not often the making a man's life desolate. But is the cloister the only way to give to God? Didst learn that from the Word, or out of thine own heart? He that trusteth his own heart is a fool."
"Why, Mariot, art not giving me counsel to trust mine own heart in this matter?"
"Never a whit. I counsel thee to trust God's providence, and let Him choose for thee. If He have not meant this maid for thee, have no fear she shall say yea to thine asking. ”

“ We doubt if there is, ever was, or ever will be, a man so universally pleasant in the minds of people as M. Loyal is in the minds of the citizens of our French watering-place. They rub their hands and laugh when they speak of him. ”

“ But I must love thee till I die.
II. The sight of thee hath well-nigh grown
As needful to me as the light;
I am unrestful when alone,
And my heart doth not beat aright
Except it dwell within thy sight.
III. And yet—and yet—O selfish love!
I am not happy even with thee;
I see thee in thy brightness move,
And cannot well contented be,
Save thou should'st shine alone for me.
IV. We should love beauty even as flowers—
For all, 'tis said, they bud and blow,
They are the world's as well as ours—
But thou—alas! God made thee grow
So fair, I cannot love thee so! ”

“ An allusion to the widow's "two mites." (Luke xxi, 1-4.)
168. The all-sustaining Beauty: The all-pervading spirit of God that unites all things in one sympathetic whole. This [144] divinity in humanity is its highest beauty. In The Oak Lowell says:
"Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains
Some emblem of man's all-containing soul."
172. A god goes with it: The god-like quality of real charity, of heart to heart sympathy. In a letter written a little after the composition of this poem Lowell speaks of love and freedom as being "the sides which Beauty presented to him then." ”

“ A portly, upright, broad-shouldered, brown-faced man, whose soldierly bearing gives him the appearance of being taller than he is, look into the bright eye of M. Loyal, standing before you in his working-blouse and cap, not particularly well shaved, and, it may be, very earthy, and you shall discern in M. Loyal a gentleman whose true politeness is ingrain, and confirmation of whose word by his bond you would blush to think of. ”

“ Passion is here, but it is not stormy, and love and tenderness, but they are not feeble and tearful. Depth of feeling and strength of character lie open to view in the firm lines, and the fine light and shade of the verse come incontrovertibly from a nature evenly poised, whose companionship must have been to Lowell that of a kindred spirit, capable indeed of guiding and not merely of seconding his resolves. ”

“ However the world might use him he was sure of comfort and happiness at his own fireside, where he read Shelley, and Keats, and Lessing, while Mrs. Lowell studied upon her German translations. The sympathy of a true- hearted woman is always valuable, even when she does not quite understand the grievance in question, but the sympathy that Maria Lowell could give her husband was of a rare sort. She could sympathize with him wholly in heart and intellect. ”

“ It is the honest truth. M. Loyal’s nature is the nature of a gentleman. He cultivates his ground with his own hands (assisted by one little labourer, who falls into a fit now and then) ; and he digs and delves from morn to eve in prodigious perspirations—‘works always,’ as he says—but, cover him with dust, mud, weeds, water, any stains you will, you never can cover the gentleman in M. Loyal. ”

“ Yet M. Loyal is not a man of mere castles in the air, or, as he would say, in Spain. He has a specially practical, contriving, clever, skilful eye and hand. His houses are delightful. He unites French elegance and English comfort, in a happy manner quite his own. He has an extraordinary genius for making tasteful little bedrooms in angles of his roofs, which an Englishman would as soon think of turning to any account as he would think of cultivating the Desert. ”

“ And yet a dim foreboding still would flit
Between her and her hope to darken it.
XII. She could not figure forth a happy fate,
Even for this life from heaven so newly come;
The earth must needs be doubly desolate
To him scarce parted from a fairer home:
Such boding heavier on her bosom sate
One night, as, standing in the twilight gloam,
[Pg 131]
She strained her eyes beyond that dizzy verge
At whose foot faintly breaks the future's surge.
XIII. Poor little spirit! naught but shame and woe
Nurse the sick heart whose lifeblood nurses thine:
Yet not those only ”

“ Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily on a smooth stream, that are so sparkling and buoyant in the sunshine—down upon fruit, bloom upon flowers, blush in summer air, life of the winged insect, whose whole existence is a day—how soon ye sink in troubled water! Poor Dolly’s heart—a little, gentle, idle, fickle thing; giddy, restless, fluttering; constant to nothing but bright looks, and smiles and laughter—Dolly’s heart was breaking.
Emma had known grief, and could bear it better. ”

“ After studying Lorelei's unsmiling face his tone altered. "Oh, I know! I slipped, but it couldn't be helped. Nature insisted, and I yielded gracefully, but no harm done, none whatever. This isn't a defeat, my dear; it's a victory. I licked the demon rum and proved myself a man of iron. I subjugated the cohorts of General Benjamin Booze, then I signed a treaty of peace, and there was no bad blood on either side." After an uncomfortable pause, during which he vainly waited for her to speak, he explained more fully: "My dear, nothing is absolute! Life is a series of compromises. Have a heart. ”

“ It may beat against the heart of other men, in anger, all in pressure against the others. It may beat hard, like iron, saying it is independent. But this is only beating against the heart of mankind, not alone.—But either with or against the heart of mankind, or the heart of someone, mother, wife, friend, children—so must the heart of every man beat. It is so."
"It beats alone in its own silence," said Lilly.
The Italian shook his head.
"We'd better be going inside, anyhow," said Argyle. "Some of you will be taking cold."
"Aaron," said Lilly. "Is it true for you?" ”

“ Whatever thou hast given me
I here again to Thee resign.
All mine is thine, say but the word;
Whate'er Thou willest—be it done;
I know thy love, all-gracious Lord—
I know it seeks my good alone.
Apart from Thee all things are naught;
Then grant, O my supremest bliss!
Grant me to love Thee as I ought;
Thou givest all in giving this.
—Ignatius Loyola, tr. by Edward Caswall. ———
THE ACQUIESCENCE OF PURE LOVE
To me 'tis equal whether love ordain
My life or death, appoint me pain or ease
My soul perceives no real ill in pain,
In ease or health no real good she sees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Leslie's want of spirits.
"Yes," was answered. "Nothing but real trouble ever brings such persons to their senses."
Ah! Is not heart-trouble the most real of all with which we are visited? There comes to it, so rarely, a balm of healing. To those external evils which merely affect the personal comfort, the mind quickly accommodates itself. We may find happiness in either prosperity or adversity. But, what true happiness is there for a loving heart, if, from the only source of reciprocation, there is but an imperfect response? ”

“ In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain. Our healing is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies or aristocracies or democracies, but will be revealed by the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity.—Lowell. ”

“ But others have suffered, Louie—no less—and yet have believed—have hoped. It is not beyond our power—for it has been done again and again!—by the most weak, the most miserable. Oh! think of that—tear yourself first from the evil life—and you, too, will know what it is to be consoled—to be strengthened. The mere effort to come with me—I promise it you!—will bring you healing and comfort. We make for ourselves the promise of eternal life, by turning to the good. ”