O God, where does this tend
What would I have? What is
To bound all? can there be a 66
Of crowning life? The soul would never rule;
It would be first in all things, it would have
Its utmost pleasure filled, but, that complete,
Commanding, for commanding, sickens it.
The last point I can trace is, rest, beneath
Some better essence than itself, in weakness;
This is "myself," not what I think should be:
And what is that I hunger for but God?
My God, my God, let me for once look on thee
As though nought else existed, we alone!
And as creation crumbles, my soul's spark
Expands till I can say, Even from myself

these struggling aims?* this "sleep" which seems waking" point

I need thee and I feel thee and I love thee:
I do not plead my rapture in thy works
For love of thee, nor that I feel as one

Who cannot die: but there is that in me

Which turns to thee, which loves or which should love.
Why have I girt myself with this hell-dress?

Why have I labored to put out my life?

Is it not in my nature to adore,

* Je crains bien que mon pauvre ami ne soit pas toujours parfaitement compris dans ce qui reste à lire de cet étrange fragment, mais il est moins propre que tout autre à éclaircir ce qui de sa nature ne peut jamais être que songe et confusion. D'ailleurs je ne sais trop si en cherchant à mieux co-ordonner certaines parties l'on ne courrait pas le risque de nuire au seul mérite auquel une production si singulière peut prétendre, celui de donner une idée assez précise du genre qu'elle n'a fait qu'ébaucher. Ce début sans prétention, ce remuement des passion qui va d'abord en accroissant et puis s'appaise par degrés, ces élans de l'âme, ce retour soudain sur soimême, et par-dessus tout, la tournure d'esprit tout particulière de mon ami, rendent les changemens presque impossibles. Les raisons qu'il fait valoir ailleurs, et d'autres encore plus puissantes, ont fait trouver grâce à mes yeux pour cet écrit qu'autrement je lui eusse conseillé de jeter au feu. Je n'en crois pas moins au grand principe de toute composition principe de Shakespeare, de Rafaelle, de Beethoven, d'où il suit que la concentration des idées est dûe bien plus à leur conception qu'à leur mise en execution: j'ai tout lieu de craindre que la première de ces qualités ne soit encore étrangère à mon ami, et je doute fort qu'un redoublement de travail lui fasse acquérir la seconde. Le mieux serait de brûler ceci; mais que faire ?

à ce

Je crois que dans ce qui suit il fait allusion à un certain examen qu'il fit autrefois de l'âme ou plutôt de son âme, pour découvrir la suite des objets auxquels il lui serait possible d'attendre, et dont chacun une fois obtenu devait former une espèce de plateau d'où l'on pouvait apercevoir d'autres buts, d'autres projets, d'autres jouissances qui, à leur tour, devaient être surmontés. Il en résultait que l'oubli et le sommeil devaient tout terminer. Cette idée, que je ne saisis pas parfaitement, lui est peutêtre aussi inintelligible qu'à moi.

PAULINE.

And e'en for all my reason do I not
Feel him, and thank him, and pray to him
Can I forego the trust that he loves me?
Do I not feel a love which only ONE

O thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed!
I have denied thee calmly
do I not

Pant when I read of thy consummate deeds,
And burn to see thy calm pure truths out-flash
The brightest gleams of earth's philosophy?
Do I not shake to hear aught question thee?
If I am erring save me, madden me,

now?

Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die
Ages, so I see thee! I am knit round

As with a charm by sin and lust and pride,

Yet though my wandering dreams have seen all shapes
Of strange delight, oft have I stood by thee
Have I been keeping lonely watch with thee
In the damp night by weeping Olivet,
Or leaning on thy bosom, proudly less,
Or dying with thee on the lonely cross,
Or witnessing thy bursting from the tomb.

A mortal, sin's familiar friend, doth here
Avow that he will give all earth's reward,
But to believe and humbly teach the faith,
In suffering and poverty and shame,
Only believing he is not unloved.

And now, my Pauline, I am thine forever!
I feel the spirit which has buoyed me up
Deserting me, and old shades gathering on;
Yet while its last light waits, I would say much,
And chiefly, I am glad that I have said

That love which I have ever felt for thee

But seldom told; our hearts so beat together

That speech is mockery; but when dark hours come,
And I feel sad, and thou, sweet, deem'st it strange
A sorrow moves me, thou canst not remove,
Look on this lay I dedicate to thee,

Which through thee I began, and which I end,
Collecting the last gleams to strive to tell
That I am thine, and more than ever now
That I am sinking fast: yet though I sink,
No less I feel that thou hast brought me bliss
And that I still may hope to win it back.

Thou knowest, dear friend, I could not think all calm,

For wild dreams followed me and bore me off,
And all was indistinct; ere one was caught
Another glanced; so, dazzled by my wealth,
Knowing not which to leave nor which to choose,
For all my thoughts so floated, nought was fixed.
And then thou saidst a perfect bard was one
Who shadowed out the stages of all life,
And so thou bad'st me tell this my first stage.
'T is done, and even now I feel all dim the shift
Of thought; these are my last thoughts; I discern
Faintly immortal life and truth and good.

And why thou must be mine is, that e'en now
In the dim hush of night, that I have done,
With fears and sad forebodings, I look through
E'en at the last I have her still,

And say,

With her delicious eyes as clear as heaven

When rain in a quick shower has beat down mist,
And clouds float white in the sun like broods of swans.
How the blood lies upon her cheek, all spread

As thinned by kisses! only in her lips

It wells and pulses like a living thing,

And her neck looks like marble misted o'er

With love-breath, - a dear thing to kiss and love,
Standing beneath me, looking out to me,

As I might kill her and be loved for it.

Love me love me, Pauline, love nought but me,
Leave me not! All these words are wild and weak,
Believe them not, Pauline! I stooped so low
But to behold thee purer by my side,

To show thou art my breath, my life, a last
Resource, an extreme want: never believe
Aught better could so look to thee; nor seek
Again the world of good thoughts left for me !
There were bright troops of undiscovered suns,
Each equal in their radiant course; there were
Clusters of far fair isles which ocean kept

For his own joy, and his waves broke on them,
Without a choice; and there was a dim crowd
Of visions, each a part of the dim whole :
And one star left his peers and came with peace
Upon a storm, and all eyes pined for him;
And one isle harbored a sea-beaten ship,

And the crew wandered in its bowers and plucked
Its fruits and gave up all their hopes for home;
And one dream came to a pale poet's sleep,

And he said, "I am singled out by God,
No sin must touch me." I am very weak,
But what I would express is, Leave me not,
Still sit by me with beating breast and hair
Loosened, be watching earnest by my side,
Turning my books or kissing me when I
Look up

-like summer wind!

Be still to me
A key to music's mystery when mind fails,
A reason, a solution and a clue!

You see I have thrown off my prescribed rules:
I hope in myself — and hope and pant and love.
You'll find me better, know me more than when
You loved me as I was. Smile not! I have
Much yet to gladden you, to dawn on you;
No more of the past! I'll look within no more:
I have too trusted to my own wild wants,
Too trusted to myself, to intuition
Draining the wine alone in the still night,
And seeing how, as gathering films arose,
As by an inspiration life seemed bare
And grinning in its vanity, and ends
Hard to be dreamed of, stared at me as fixed,
And others suddenly became all foul
As a fair witch turned an old hag at night.
No more of this! We will go hand in hand;
I will go with thee, even as a child,

Looking no farther than thy sweet commands,
And thou hast chosen where this life shall be:
The land which gave me thee shall be our home,
Where nature lies all wild amid her lakes

And snow-swathed mountains and vast pines all girt
With ropes of snow where nature lies all bare,
Suffering none to view her but a race

Most stinted and deformed, like the mute dwarfs
Which wait upon a naked Indian queen.

And there (the time being when the heavens are thick
With storms) I'll sit with thee while thou dost sing
Thy native songs, gay as a desert bird
Who crieth as he flies for perfect joy,
Or telling me old stories of dead knights;
Or I will read old lays to thee - how she,
The fair pale sister, went to her chill grave
With power to love and to be loved and live :
Or we will go together, like twin gods
Of the infernal world, with scented lamp,
Over the dead, to call and to awake,

Over the unshaped images which lie
Within my mind's cave only leaving all

That tells of the past doubts. So, when spring comes,
And sunshine comes again like an old smile,
And the fresh waters and awakened birds
And budding woods await us, I shall be
Prepared, and we will go and think again,
And all old loves shall come to us, but changed

As some sweet thought which harsh words veiled before :
Feeling God loves us, and that all that errs

Is a strange dream which death will dissipate.
And then when I am firm, we'll seek again
My own land, and again I will approach
My old designs, and calmly look on all
The works of my past weakness, as one views
Some scene where danger met him long before.
Ah that such pleasant life should be but dreamed!

But whate'er come of it, and though it fade,
And though ere the cold morning all be gone,
As it will be ; though music wait for me,
And fair eyes and bright wine laughing like sin
Which steals back softly on a soul half saved,
And I be first to deny all, and despise

This verse, and these intents which seem so fair,
Still this is all my own, this moment's pride,
No less I make an end in perfect joy.
E'en in my brightest time, a lurking fear
Possessed me: I well knew my weak resolves,
I felt the witchery that makes mind sleep
Over its treasure, as one half afraid
To make his riches definite: but now
These feelings shall not utterly be lost,
I shall not know again that nameless care
Lest, leaving all undone in youth, some new
And undreamed end reveal itself too late :
For this song shall remain to tell forever
That when I lost all hope of such a change,
Suddenly beauty rose on me again.
No less I make an end in perfect joy,
For I, having thus again been visited,
Shall doubt not many another bliss awaits,

And, though this weak soul sink and darkness come,
Some little word shall light it up again,

And I shall see all clearer and love better,
I shall again go o'er the tracts of thought