own name on desert sands.

Or at least I thought so purely! — thought no idiot Hope was raising

Any crown to crown Love’s silence, — silent Love that sat alone,—

Out, alas! the stag is like me, — he, that tries to go on grazing

With the great deep gun-wound in his neck, then reels with sudden moan.

It was thus I reeled! I told you that her hand had many suitors—

But she smiles them down imperially, as Venus did the waves;—

And with such a gracious coldness, that they cannot press their futures

On the present of her courtesy, which yieldingly enslaves.

And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber,

With the great saloon beyond it lost in pleasant thought serene,—

For I had been reading Camoens — that poem you remember,

Which his lady’s eyes are praised in, as the sweetest ever seen;

And the book lay open, and my thought flew from it, taking from it

A vibration and impulsion to an end beyond its own,

As the branch of a green osier, when a child would overcome it,

Springs up freely from his clasping and goes swinging in the sun.

As I mused I heard a murmur, — it grew deep as it grew longer—

Speakers using earnest language, — “Lady Geraldine, you would!”

And I heard a voice that pleaded ever on, in accents stronger,

As a sense of reason gave it power to make its rhetoric good.

Well I knew that voice, — it was an earl’s, of soul that matched his station—

Soul completed into lordship, — might and right read on his brow:

Very finely courteous, — far too proud to doubt his domination

Of the common people, — he atones for grandeur by a bow.

High, straight forehead, nose of eagle, cold blue eyes, of less expression

Than resistance, coldly casting off the looks of other men,

As steel, arrows, — unelastic lips, which seem to taste possession,

And be cautious lest the common air should injure or distrain.

For the rest, accomplished, upright, — ay, and standing by his order

With a bearing not ungraceful; fond of art, and letters too;

Just a good man made a proud man, as the sandy rocks that border

A wild coast, by circumstances, in a regnant ebb and flow.

Thus I knew that voice, — I heard it — and I could not help the hearkening:

In the room I stood up blindly, and my burning heart within

Seemed to seethe and fuse my senses, till they ran on all sides darkening,

And scorchèd, weighed like melted metal round my feet that stood therein.

And that voice, I heard it pleading, for love’s sake, — for wealth, position,

For the sake of liberal uses, and great actions to be done,—

And she interrupted gently, “Nay, my lord, the old tradition

Of your Normans, by some worthier hand than mine is, should be won”.

“Ah, that white hand”, he said quickly, — and in his he either drew it

Or attempted — for with gravity and instance she replied,—

“Nay, indeed, my lord, this talk is vain, and we had best eschew it,

And pass on like friends, to other points less easy to decide”.

What he said again, I know not. It is likely that his trouble

Worked his pride up to the surface, for she answered in slow scorn,—

“And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble,

Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born”.

There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever,

And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang full-statured in an hour:

Know you what it is when, anguish, with apocalyptic NEVER,

To a Pythian height dilates you, — and despair sublimes to power?

From my brain the soul-wings budded! — waved a flame about my body,

Whence conventions coiled to ashes: I felt self-drawn out, as man,

From amalgamate false natures; and I saw the skies grow ruddy

With the deepening feet of angels, and I knew what spirits can.

I was mad, — inspired, — say either! anguish worketh inspiration,—

Was a man or beast — perhaps so; for the tiger roars when speared;

And I walked on, step by step, along the level of my passion—

Oh my soul! and passed the doorway to her face, and never feared.

He had left her, — peradventure, when my footstep proved my coming,—

But for her, — she half arose, then sat — grew scarlet and grew pale:

Oh she trembled! — ’tis so always with a worldly man or woman

In the presence of true spirits, — what else can they do but quail?

Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird, in among its forest brothers

Far too strong for it! then drooping, bowed her face upon her hands,—

And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others!

I, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands.

I plucked up her social fictions, bloody-rooted though leaf-verdant,

Trod them down with words of shaming, — all the purple and the gold,

All the “landed stakes” and lordships, — all that spirits pure and ardent

Are cast out of love and honor because chancing not to hold.

“For myself I