And he gazed round. The curtains of Darkness half drawn Oped behind her; and pure as the pure light of dawn She stood, bathed in morning, and seem'd to his eyes From their sight to be melting away in the skies That expanded around her.
XII.
There pass'd through his head A fancy--a vision. That woman was dead He had loved long ago--loved and lost! dead to him, Dead to all the life left him; but there, in the dim Dewy light of the dawn, stood a spirit; 'twas hers;
And he said to the soul of Lucile de Nevers:
"O soul to its sources departing away!
Pray for mine, if one soul for another may pray.
I to ask have no right, thou to give hast no power, One hope to my heart. But in this parting hour I name not my heart, and I speak not to thine.
Answer, soul of Lucile, to this dark soul of mine, Does not soul owe to soul, what to heart heart denies, Hope, when hope is salvation? Behold, in yon skies, This wild night is passing away while I speak:
Lo, above us, the day-spring beginning to break!
Something wakens within me, and warms to the beam:
Is it hope that awakens? or do I but dream?
I know not. It may be, perchance, the first spark Of a new light within me to solace the dark Unto which I return; or perchance it may be The last spark of fires half extinguish'd in me.
I know not. Thou goest thy way: I my own;
For good or for evil, I know not. Alone This I know; we are parting. I wish'd to say more, But no matter! 'twill pass. All between us is o'er.
Forget the wild words of to-night. 'Twas the pain For long years hoarded up, that rush'd from me again.
I was unjust: forgive me. Spare now to reprove Other words, other deeds. It was madness, not love, That you thwarted this night. What is done is now done.
Death remains to avenge it, or life to atone.
I was madden'd, delirious! I saw you return To him--not to me; and I felt my heart burn With a fierce thirst for vengeance--and thus . . . let it pass!
Long thoughts these, and so brief the moments, alas!
Thou goest thy way, and I mine. I suppose 'Tis to meet nevermore. Is it not so? Who knows, Or who heeds, where the exile from Paradise flies?
Or what altars of his in the desert may rise?
Is it not so, Lucile? Well, well! Thus then we part Once again, soul from soul, as before heart from heart!"
XIII.
And again clearer far than the chime of a bell, That voice on his sense softly, soothingly fell.
"Our two paths must part us, Eugene; for my own Seems no more through that world in which henceforth alone You must work out (as now I believe that you will)
The hope which you speak of. That work I shall still (If I live) watch and welcome, and bless far away.
Doubt not this. But mistake not the thought, if I say That the great moral combat between human life And each human soul must be single. 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. But this, this alone, I will promise: whatever your path, or my own, If, for once in the conflict before you, it chance That the Dragon prevail, and with cleft shield, and lance Lost or shatter'd, borne down by the stress of the war, You falter and hesitate, if from afar I, still watching (unknown to yourself, it may be)
O'er the conflict to which I conjure you, should see That my presence could rescue, support you, or guide, In the hour of that need I shall be at your side, To warn, if you will, or incite, or control;
And again, once again, we shall meet, soul to soul!"
XIV.
The voice ceased.
He uplifted his eyes.
All alone He stood on the bare edge of dawn. She was gone, Like a star, when up bay after bay of the night, Ripples in, wave on wave, the broad ocean of light.
And at once, in her place was the Sunrise! It rose In its sumptuous splendor and solemn repose, The supreme revelation of light. Domes of gold, Realms of rose, in the Orient! and breathless, and bold, While the great gates of heaven roll'd back one by one, The bright herald angel stood stern in the sun!
Thrice holy Eospheros! Light's reign began In the heaven, on the earth, in the heart of the man.
The dawn on the mountains! the dawn everywhere!
Light! silence! the fresh innovations of air!
O earth, and O ether! A butterfly breeze Floated up, flutter'd down, and poised blithe on the trees.
Through the revelling woods, o'er the sharp-rippled stream, Up the vale slow uncoiling itself out of dream, Around the brown meadows, adown the hill-slope, The spirits of morning were whispering, "HOPE!"
XV.
He uplifted his eyes. In the place where she stood But a moment before, and where now roll'd the flood Of the sunrise all golden, he seem'd to behold, In the young light of sunrise, an image unfold Of his own youth,--its ardors--its promise of fame--
Its ancestral ambition; and France by the name Of his sires seem'd to call him. 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. Time thralls it in vain.
For the thought that springs upward and yearns to regain The true source of spirit, there IS no TOO LATE.
As the stream to its first mountain levels, elate In the fountain arises, the spirit in him Arose to that image. The image waned dim Into heaven; and heavenward with it, to melt As it melted, in day's broad expansion, he felt With a thrill, sweet and strange, and intense--awed, amazed--
Something soar and ascend in his soul, as he gazed.
