Chapter XLII

No need is there that here I should recall—
I would not if I could—my suffering.
From Elbert, best of friends, my nobler self,
My soul of virtue and my heart of love,
What cause could rightly tear me?—Asking this,
My heart rose up from reason to rebel;
Indignant to have found a theory
That dared to hold an innate impulse down;
While will, caught there, betwixt the heart and head,
Each charge would bear, and yet forbear to act.
And Edith, peerless Edith! how my soul
Would struggle to forget her! Struggling thus,
How fair her form, conjured by raving thought,
Would rise, a Venus o’er my sea of sighs,
Till I would bend, and seem to plead anon
To be forgiven for forgetting her!
And then, how would I tear her traits apart;
And pluck the petals from each budding grace
And hope its naked stem some trace would show,
Too void of beauty, to suggest again
The bloom and sweetness of the life I loved.
Alas, but while I wrought for this alone,
How would her virtues but the more unfold!—
Like God’s own glory flowering in the skies,
That those detect who would not find it there,
But, when they test the stars, have dealt with light.