Una

“ But Una with unclosing eyes
⁠Looks long towards the South;
The spray hangs diamonds on her hair,
⁠A smile is on her mouth.
Now Una's lover in the wood,
⁠The wood beside the shore.
He breathes his passion to the night
⁠“Oh, love me, love, a-stór.” ”

“ She trusted in the village ideal of virginal vacuousness as the type of beauty which most captivated men, though every year she was more shrewdly doubtful of the divine superiority of these men. That a woman’s business in life was to remain respectable and to secure a man, and consequent security, was her unmeditated faith—till, in 1905, when Una was twenty-four years old, her father died. ”

“ But there is always the imminent chance of some failure of precaution, and the multitude must needs thrill to the spectacle of intrepidity and danger. Naught could exceed the enthusiasm that greeted this slim, graceful Una a few days later in the streets of a distant city, as clad in long draperies of fleecy white she reclined against a splendid leonine specimen, her shining golden hair hanging on her shoulders, or mingling with his tawny mane as now and again she let her soft cheek rest on his head, her luminous dark gray eyes smiling down at the cheering crowds. ”

“ Una Golden Schwirtz would not be very different from that Mrs. Captain Golden who, alone in a flat, had read all day, and forgotten what she had read, and let life dream into death.
But now Una was still fighting to keep in life.
She began to work out her first definite philosophy of existence. In essence it was not so very different from the blatant optimism of Mr. S. Herbert Ross—except that it was sincere.
“Life is hard and astonishingly complicated,” she concluded. “No one great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work—or want to work—will always have trouble or discontent. ”

“ UNA AND THE LION Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who had only one child, a little girl, whom they named Una, and they all lived happily at home for many years till Una had grown into a woman. ”

“ Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.”
Una and her Paupers—happily styled Una, for such lives are unique, exceptional, in Protestant annals—is the history of a large-hearted, sympathetic, North-of-Ireland lady, who was gradually led, by her natural inclinations and by circumstances, to a partial renunciation of the comforts of a pleasant home and family affection, and submit herself to training as a nurse in the celebrated Kaiserswerth [132] institution of Protestant deaconesses. ”

“ A dozen men might follow this young lady and she would not be aware of their proximity. There is something about her of Una, but Una so completely protected by a quality in herself, and by her upbringing and character, that she has no need of a lion. ”

“ His bride returned with him to the melancholy seclusion of their Munster residence, where she bore him in succession two daughters—Alice, the elder, dark-eyed and dark-haired, grave and sensible—Una, four years younger, with large blue eyes and long and beautiful golden hair.
Their poor mother was, I believe, naturally a lighthearted, sociable, high-spirited little creature; and her gay and childish nature pined in the isolation and gloom of her lot. At all events she died young, and the children were left to the sole care of their melancholy and embittered father. ”

“ Despite her tenderness, Una had something of youth’s joy in getting rid of old things, as preparation for acquiring the new. She did sob when she found her mother’s straw hat, just as Mrs. Golden had left it, on the high shelf of the wardrobe as though her mother might come in at any minute, put it on, and start for a walk. She sobbed again when she encountered the tiny tear in the bottom of the couch, which her own baby fingers had made in trying to enlarge a pirate’s cave. That brought the days when her parents were immortal and all-wise ”

“ How could I face the reality? There are times when I wish I had never been born. Life has always seemed such a beautiful thing to me—and now it is a hideous thing. Rilla-my-Rilla, if it weren't for your letters—your dear, bright, merry, funny, comical, believing letters—I think I'd give up. And Una's! Una is really a little brick, isn't she? ”

“ Not unwelcome to the ears of Una was this praise, but she was properly deprecatory: “Why, she probably thought I was just a stuffy, stupid, ugly old thing, as old as—”
“As old as Eddie Schwirtz, heh? Go on, insult me! I can stand it! Lemme tell you I ain’t forty-three till next October. Look here now, little sister, I know when a woman admires another. Lemme tell you, if you’d ever traveled for dry-goods like I did, out of St. ”

“ Such a man deserves our pity; for I can not realize that a man purposely and willfully degrades his mother, sister, wife, and daughter. No! my better nature, my best knowledge and conviction forbid me to believe it.
THE UNA.
In February, 1853, Paulina Wright Davis started a woman's paper called The Una, published in Providence, Rhode Island, with the following prospectus:
Usage makes it necessary to present our readers with a prospectus setting forth our aims and objects. ”

“ And in her terror she buried her head under the bed-clothes, and whispered her prayers for an hour.
CHAPTER VII
Una's Love
"I have been with Father Denis," said De Lacy, next day, "and he will come to-morrow; and, thank Heaven! you may both make your confession and hear mass, and my mind will be at rest; and you'll find poor Una happier and more like herself." ”

“ Observe the antithetical structure of this stanza, both in the Stichomuthia, or balance of line against line, and in the lines themselves. In this rapid word-play Arthur wins his point by appealing to Una's faith.
363. No faith so fast, etc., no faith is so firm that human infirmity may not injure it.
376. Una, Truth, is the sole daughter of Eden. ”

“ The master of the house bade the soothsayer speak on.
This one looked down into the bowl of water where the sand was, and said: “The Maiden of Unai shall grow up fairer than the children of men. Her beauty shall shine as the beauty of an earthly deity. Every man who looks upon her shall pine with love and longing, and when she is fifteen years old there shall die for her sake a mighty hero from near, and a valiant hero from afar. And there shall be sorrow and mourning because of her, loud and grievous, so that the sound of it shall reach High Heaven and offend the peace of the gods.” ”

“ Unas is the lord of wisdom, and his mother knoweth not his name. The adoration of Unas is in heaven, he hath become mighty in the horizon like Temu, the father that gave him birth, and after Temu had given him birth Unas became stronger than his father. The Doubles (i.e. vital strength) of Unas are behind him, the soles of his feet are beneath his feet, his gods are over him, his serpents are [seated] upon his brow, the serpent-guides of Unas are in front of him, and the spirit of the flame looketh upon [his] soul. The powers of Unas protect him. Unas is a bull in heaven. ”

“ Wherefore I pray thee, by the reverence due to that union wherein thy manhood is united to the adorable Trinity in order to our glorification, that thou wouldst deign to unite my will to thine, and so to strengthen and secure it, that it may be unable to rebel against thee. In union with thy most sinless limbs, I commend to thee all the members of my body, with all their movements, that they may throughout this day move for thy glory alone, for thy praise and thy love. ”

“ Iduna’s fruit of health and youth accords, ’tis true, the power,
But Freya ’tis who sows the seed of love’s delightful flower:
We all admire her; when the gods she folds in her embrace,
The ecstacy that fills their soul what tongue hath power to trace? ”

“ For with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life—uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which 'smell sweet, and blossom in the dust', the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all. ”

“ Fierce in his soul was the struggle and tumult of passions contending;
Love triumphant and crowned, and friendship wounded and bleeding,
Passionate cries of desire, and importunate pleadings of duty!20
“Is it my fault,” he said, “that the maiden has chosen between us? ”

“ I have often talked with angels on this subject, and they have invariably declared that in heaven they are unable to divide the Divine into three, because they know and perceive that the Divine is One and this One is in the Lord. ”

“ March in Marbridge used to mean violets and daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays. March here means days of pale clean light and great sweeping wind which chased grey clouds across a steely sky, and stirred the lust for fight and freedom in men's minds and set them longing to be up and away and at battle with the world or the elements. ”

“ This, Ana, is the first Lady of Egypt, the Royal Heiress, the Princess of the Two Lands, the High-priestess of Amon, the Cherished of the Gods, the half-sister of the Heir-apparent, the Daughter of Hathor, the Lotus Bloom of Love, the Queen to be of—Userti, whose queen will you be? Have you made up your mind? For myself I know no one worthy of so much beauty, excellence, learning and—what shall I add—sweetness, yes, sweetness. ”

“ People kept passing to and fro all the time, or stopping sometimes to look in; solemnly-gay holiday people, enjoying themselves after their own fashion. The light flickered on them, too, and on the brick pavement, and on the trees, plentiful almost as canals in the town. Julia leaned forward and looked, and listened to the guttural Dutch voices, and the curious patois to be heard now and then, and the distant notes of music that blended with it. And the flickering lights and shadows danced across her mind, and the simple holiday feeling of it all got to her head. ”

“ There is an older and less-known sgeul of how Ana, that most ancient goddess, the Mother, after she had fashioned all the gods, and had made man out of rock and sand and water and the breathing of her breath, made woman out of the body of a wave of the sea and out of foam of apple-blossom and out of the wandering wind. And there are many tales that, in this way or a like way, have in them the mysterious wind of the wild-apple, many poems on whose shadowy waters float the rose-flusht snow of the scattered blossoms of dreams and desires. ”

“ Have no care for the things of earth, but only for heavenly things.... We were born together, and as our bodies have been twins, growing with one growth even before our birth, so let our souls be as one in the life to come. We will be twins to all eternity, María. Say, do you desire this? Do you long to be for ever one with me in the presence of our Father, can you desire, as I do, that our righteousness may be as that of one, and that the praises we shall sing before the throne of God may sound as one hymn? ”

“ Father, says he, keep them in thy name, that they may be one, like as we are! Observe, I beseech you, what a wonderful union Christ requires in his followers; he does not pray that they may be of one mind, but that they may be one; nor does he mention this union in a vague manner, but says, "That they may be one, as we are," who are one and the same in a most perfect, yet unspeakable and inexplicable manner. ”

“ And, Anna, because you are good, and always have been, you shall be given a whole solar system to manage just as you like. The Heavenly Father has no end of them; He tosses them out of His hand as a boy does marbles ”

“ How strange are women, Ana! Here you have one of the greatest of her sex, as you learned in the temple of Amon. And yet she opens beneath the sun of hope and shrivels beneath the shadow of fear, like the touched leaves of that tender plant which grows upon the banks of the river; she who, with her eyes set on the mystery that is beyond, whereof she hears the whispering winds, should tread both earthly hope and fear beneath her feet, or make of them stepping stones to glory. ”

“ Ursus, Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had succumbed to her dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in her darkness. An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the ideas usually evoked by the word were realized in the lady's appearance. There was nothing diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothing floating, no mist about her. She was a goddess; rose-coloured and fresh, and full of health. ”

“ Ana, be advised by me, put away the flesh and increase the spirit, for in it alone is happiness, whereof woman and all our joys are but earthly symbols, shadows thrown by that mortal cloud which lies between us and the Light Above. ”

“ For a moment she stood and looked, hearing the wild night voices, the sob of the wet wind, the rustle and mutter of the trees—those primitive inarticulate things that do not lie. And in her heart she felt very weary of shams and pretences, very hungry for the rest of reality and truth. ”

“ Ursula again appeared to her during one of her frequent ecstasies, and consoled her by the assurance that she had taken the institution under her special patronage, that it was agreeable to God, and that it would be perpetuated from age to age, even to the end of the world. In little more than a month after its foundation, the number of the members had increased from twenty-seven to seventy-two, all filled with the spirit of their holy Mother; all inflamed with liveliest zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of their neighbour. ”