Chapter XL

And then I stopp’d:—
Here raved I, jealous of this fool alone,
This coming clown.—To think of him I blush’d—
But what of her?—of Edith?—She would live,
With faintest smile, to fascinate—ah—crowds!
The rabble would be ravish’d but, forsooth,
To clap with crazy hands the rarer air
Wherein she moved. For them, her voice would sound,
With every trill so swaying all who heard
That thronging cheers would thunder in response!—
Her form, so sweet, would plead till foulest lives
Would feel how pure were joys beyond their reach,
And long for things their touch could never taint!
My sweet, sweet love!—
But, moving at her side,
Should I be aught?—Alas, I could but seem—
Beside the gilded glory of the stage,
Beside the loud-mouthed suitors of the show,
An unwhipt cur, to wait at some backdoor,
And jar with signalling bark the echo sweet
Of all-the-town’s applause. She mine would be
But as the sun, whose flaming brow has touch’d
The morning sea that flushes far and near,
Is thine, O trembling globulet of spray,
Because, forsooth, his image, glass’d in all
The sea and world, is glass’d, as well, in thee!—
Fool, fool! yet dear, dear folly!
These my thoughts;
My words—all I recall now—came at last
When slowly sauntering back we reach’d her home.
“Would God,” I sigh’d, “the time might come for us,
When, looking toward the future now so lone,
We two should need no more to say good-night.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and left me in the gloom.