I.
With stout iron shoes be my Pegasus shod!
For my road is a rough one: flint, stubble, and clod, Blue clay, and black quagmire, brambles no few, And I gallop up-hill, now.
There's terror that's true In that tale of a youth who, one night at a revel, Amidst music and mirth lured and wiled by some devil, Follow'd ever one mask through the mad masquerade, Till, pursued to some chamber deserted ('tis said), He unmasked, with a kiss, the strange lady, and stood Face to face with a Thing not of flesh nor of blood.
In this Mask of the Passions, call'd Life, there's no human Emotion, though mask'd, or in man or in woman, But, when faced and unmask'd, it will leave us at last Struck by some supernatural aspect aghast.
For truth is appalling and eldrich, as seen By this world's artificial lamplights and we screen From our sight the strange vision that troubles our life.
Alas! why is Genius forever at strife With the world, which, despite the world's self, it ennobles?
Why is it that Genius perplexes and troubles And offends the effete life it comes to renew?
'Tis the terror of truth! 'tis that Genius is true!
II.
Lucile de Nevers (if her riddle I read)
Was a woman of genius: whose genius, indeed, With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that life The chance had been hers to escape from this strife In herself; finding peace in the life of another From the passionate wants she, in hers, failed to smother.
But the chance fell too soon, when the crude restless power Which had been to her nature so fatal a dower, Only wearied the man it yet haunted and thrall'd;
And that moment, once lost, had been never recall'd.
Yet it left her heart sore: and, to shelter her heart From approach, she then sought, in that delicate art Of concealment, those thousand adroit strategies Of feminine wit, which repel while they please, A weapon, at once, and a shield to conceal And defend all that women can earnestly feel.
Thus, striving her instincts to hide and repress, She felt frighten'd at times by her very success:
She pined for the hill-tops, the clouds, and the stars:
Golden wires may annoy us as much as steel bars If they keep us behind prison windows: impassion'd Her heart rose and burst the light cage she had fashion'd Out of glittering trifles around it.
Unknown To herself, all her instincts, without hesitation, Embraced the idea of self-immolation.
The strong spirit in her, had her life been but blended With some man's whose heart had her own comprehended, All its wealth at his feet would have lavishly thrown.
For him she had struggled and striven alone;
For him had aspired; in him had transfused All the gladness and grace of her nature; and used For him only the spells of its delicate power:
Like the ministering fairy that brings from her bower To some maze all the treasures, whose use the fond elf, More enrich'd by her love, disregards for herself.
But standing apart, as she ever had done, And her genius, which needed a vent, finding none In the broad fields of action thrown wide to man's power, She unconsciously made it her bulwark and tower, And built in it her refuge, whence lightly she hurl'd Her contempt at the fashions and forms of the world.
And the permanent cause why she now miss'd and fail'd That firm hold upon life she so keenly assail'd, Was, in all those diurnal occasions that place Say--the world and the woman opposed face to face, Where the woman must yield, she, refusing to stir, Offended the world, which in turn wounded her.
As before, in the old-fashion'd manner, I fit To this character, also, its moral: to wit, Say--the world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings:
Grasp it firmly, it stings not. On one of two things, If you would not be stung, it behoves you to settle Avoid it, or crush it. She crush'd not the nettle;
For she could not; nor would she avoid it: she tried With the weak hand of woman to thrust it aside, And it stung her. A woman is too slight a thing To trample the world without feeling its sting.
III.
One lodges but simply at Luchon; yet, thanks To the season that changes forever the banks Of the blossoming mountains, and shifts the light cloud O'er the valley, and hushes or rouses the loud Wind that wails in the pines, or creeps murmuring down The dark evergreen slopes to the slumbering town, And the torrent that falls, faintly heard from afar, And the blue-bells that purple the dapple-gray scaur, One sees with each month of the many-faced year A thousand sweet changes of beauty appear.
The chalet where dwelt the Comtesse de Nevers Rested half up the base of a mountain of firs, In a garden of roses, reveal'd to the road, Yet withdrawn from its noise: 'twas a peaceful abode.
And the walls, and the roofs, with their gables like hoods Which the monks wear, were built of sweet resinous woods.
The sunlight of noon, as Lord Alfred ascended The steep garden paths, every odor had blended Of the ardent carnations, and faint heliotropes, With the balms floated down from the dark wooded slopes:
A light breeze at the window was playing about, And the white curtains floated, now in, and now out.
The house was all hush'd when he rang at the door, Which was open'd to him in a moment, or more, By an old nodding negress, whose sable head shined In the sun like a cocoa-nut polished in Ind, 'Neath the snowy foulard which about it was wound.
IV.
Lord Alfred sprang forward at once, with a bound.
He remembered the nurse of Lucile. The old dame, Whose teeth and whose eyes used to beam when he came, With a boy's eager step, in the blithe days of yore, To pass, unannounced, her young mistress's door.
The old woman had fondled Lucile on her knee When she left, as an infant, far over the sea, In India, the tomb of a mother, unknown, To pine, a pale flow'ret, in great Paris town.
She had sooth'd the child's sobs on her breast, when she read The letter that told her, her father was dead.
An astute, shrewd adventurer, who, like Ulysses, Had studied men, cities, laws, wars, the abysses Of statecraft, with varying fortunes, was he.
