A Romance of the Age

A ROMANCE OF THE AGE

A poet writes to his friend. Place-A room in Wycombe Hall.

Time-Late in the evening.

Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you;
Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will!
I am humbled who was humble! Friend,--I bow my head before you!
You should lead me to my peasants:--but their faces are too still.

There's a lady-an earl's daughter; she is proud and she is noble,
And she treads the crimson carpet,and she breathes the perfumed air;
And a kingly blood sends glances up her princely eye to trouble,
And the shadow of a monarch's crown, is softened in her hair.

She has halls and she has castles, and the resonant steam-eagles
Follow far on the directing of her floating dove-like hand--
With a thunderous vapour trailing, underneath the starry vigils,
So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure of her land.

There be none of England's daughters, who can show a prouder presence;
Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain:
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was I that I should love her-save for feeling of the pain?

I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things.
Oh, she walked so high above me, she appeared to my abasement,
In her lovely silken murmur, like an angle clad in wings!

Many vassals bow before her, as her chariot sweeps their door-ways;
She hath blest their little children,--as a priest or queen were she!
Oh, too tender, or too cruel far, her smile upon the poor was,
For I thought it was the same smile, which she used, to smile on me.

She has voters in the commons, she has lovers in the palace—
And of all the fair court-ladies, few have jewels half as fine:
Even the prince has named her beauty, ‘twixt the red wine and the chalice:
Oh, and what was I to love her? my beloved, my Geraldine!

Yet I could not choose but love her—I was born to poet uses—
To love all things set above me, all of good and all of fair.
Nymphs of old Parnassus,we are wont to call the Muses—
And in silver-footed climbing, poets pass from mount to star.

And because I was a poet, and because the public praised me,
With their critical deductions for the modern writer’s fault;
I could sit at rich men’s tables,--though the courtesies that raised me,
Still suggested clear between us, the pale spectrum of the salt.

And they praised me in her presence;--‘Will your book appear this summer ?’
Then returning to each other—‘Yes, our plans are for the moors;
Then with whisper dropped behind me—‘There he is! the latest comer!’
O, she only likes his verses! what is over, she endures

?Quite low-born! self-educated! somewhat gifted though by nature,--
And we make a point of asking him,--of being very kind:
You may speak, he does not hear you; and besides, he writes no satire,--
These new charmers who keep serpents with the antique sting resigned?

I grew colder, I grew colder, as I stood up there among them,--
Till as frost intense will burn you, the cold scorning scorched my brow;
When a sudden silver speaking, Gravely Cadenced, overrung them,
And a sudden silken stirring touched my inner nature through.

I looked upward and beheld her! With a calm and Regnant spirit,
Slowly round she swept her eyelids, and said clear before them all--
'Have you such Superfluous honour, sir, that, able to Confer it,
You will come down, Mr. Bertram, as my guest to
Wycombe Hall?'

Here she paused,--she had been paler at the first word of her speaking;
But because a silence followed it, blushed scarlet, as for shame;
Then, as scorning her own feeling, resumed calmly--I am
seeking
More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my
claim.

'N'evertheless, you see, I seek it--not because I am a woman,'--
(Here her smile sprang like a fountain, and, so, overflowed her mouth)
'But because my woods in Sussex have some purple shades at Gloaming,
Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.

‘I invite you, Mr. Bertram, to no hive for worldly speeches—
Sir, I scarce should dare—but only where God asked the thrushes first—
And if you will sing beside them, in the covert of my beeches,
I will thank you for the woodlands, . . . for the human world, at worst.’

Then, she smiled around right childly, then, she gazed around right queenly;
And I bowed—I could not answer! Alternated light and gloom— While as one who quells the lions, with a steady eye serenely,
She, with level fronting eyelids, assed out stately from the room.

Oh, the blessed woods of Sussex, I can hear them still around me,
With their leafy tide of greenery still rippling up the wind!
Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! Oh, the cruel love that bound me
Up against the boles of cedars, to be shamed where I pined!
Oh, the cursed woods of Sussex! Where the hunter’s dart has found me,
When a fair face and a tender voice had made me mad and blind!

In that ancient hall of Wycombe, thronged the numerous guests invited,
And the lovely London ladies trod the floors with gliding feet; And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted
All the air about the windows, with elastic laughters sweet.

For at eve, the open windows flung their light out on the terrace,
Which the floating orbs of curtains, did with gradual shadow sweep;
While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress,
Trembled downward through their snowy wings,at music
in their sleep.

And there evermore was music, both of instrument and singing,
Till the finches of the shrubberies, grew restless in the dark;
But the cedars stood up motionless, each in a moonlight ringing,
And the deer, half in the, glimmer strewed the hollows of the park.

And though sometimes she would bind me with her,silver-
corded speeches, To commix my words and laughter with the converse and the jest,-
Oft I sate apart, and gazing on the river, through the beeches,
Heard, as pure the swans swam down it, her pure voice o´erfloat the rest.

In the morning, horn of huntsman, hoof of steed and laugh of rider,
Spread out cheery from the court-yard, Spread out cheery from the courtyardtill we lost them in the hills;
While herself and other ladies, and her suitors left beside her,
Went a-wandering up the gardens, through the laurels and abeles

Thus, her foot upon the new-mown grasses-bareheaded-with the flowings
Of the virginal white vesture gathered closely to her throat
With the golden ringlets in her neck, just quickened by her going,
And appearing to breathe sun for air, and doubting if to float,--

With a branch of dewy maple, which her right hand held above her,
And which trembled a green shadow in betwixt her and the skies,--
As she turned her face in going, thus, she drew me on to love her,
And to study the deep meaning of the smile hid her eyes.

For her alone smiled constantly: her lips had serious sweetness,
And her front was calm-the dimple rarely rippled on her cheek:
But her deep blue eyes smiled constantly,-as if they had by fitness
Won the secret of a happy dream, she did not care to speak.

Thus she drew me the first morning, out across into the garden:
And I walked among her noble friends, and could not keep
behind;
Spake she unto all and unto me-'Behold, I am the warden,
Of the birds within these lindens, which are cages to their mind.

'But here, in this swarded circle, into which the lime-walk brings us-
Whence the beeches rounded greenly, standing away in reverent fear,-
I will let no music enter, saving what the fountain sings us,
Which the lilies round the basin, may seem pure enough to hear.

'And the air that waves the lilies, waves this slender jet of water,
Like a holy thought sent feebly up from soul of fasting saint!
Whereby lies a marble Silence, sleeping (Lough the sculptor wrought her)
So asleep, she is forgetting to say Hush!-a fancy quaint.

'Mark how heavy white her eyelids! not a dream between them lingers!
And the left hand's index droppeth from the lips upon the cheek:
And the right hand,--with the symbol rose held slack within the fingers--
Has fallen backward in the basin--yet this Silence will not speak

And the right hand,- with the symbol rose held slack within the finger,-
Has fallen backward in the basin- yet this Silence will not speak!

'That the essential meaning growing, may exceed the special symbol,
Is the thought, as I conceive it: it applies more high and low,-
Your true noblemen will often, through right nobleness, grow humble,
And assert an inward honour, by denying outward show.'

'Yes, our Silence,'said I, 'truly holds her symbol rose but slackly,
Yet she holds it- or would scarcely be a Silence to our ken!
And your nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly
In the presence of the social law, as most ignoble men.

'Let the poets dream such dreaming! Madam, in these British islands,
'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that exceeds:
Soon we shall have nought but symbol! and for statues like this Silence
Shall accept the rose's marble- in another case, the weed´s.'

'I let you dream,'she retorted, 'and I grant where'er you go, you
Find for things, names- shows for actions, and pure gold for honour clear;
But when all is run to symbol in the Social, I will throw you
The world´s book, which now reads drily, and sit down with Silence here.'

Half in playfulness she spoke, I thought, and half in indignation;
Her friends turned her words to laughter, while her lovers deemed her fair,-

With the trees round, not so distant, but you heard their vernal murmur,
And beheld in light and shadow the leaves in and outward move;
And the little fountain leaping toward the sun-heart to be warmer,
And recoiling backward, trembling with too much light above-

‘Tis a picture for remembrance! and thus, morning after morning,
Did I follow as she drew me, by the spirit, to her feet-
Why her greyhound followed also! dogs-we both were dogs for scorning-
To be sent back when she pleased it, and her path lay through the wheat. 150

And thus, morning after morning, spite of oath, and spite of sorrow,
Did I follow at her drawing, while the week-days passed along;
Just to feed the swans this noontide, or to see the fawns tomorrow,
Or to teach the hill-side echo, some sweet Tuscan in a song.

Ay, and sometimes on the hill-side, while we sate down in the gowans,
With the forest green behind us, and its shadow cast before;
And the river running under, and across it, from the rowans,
A brown partridge whirring near us, till we felt the air it bore,--

There, obedient to her praying, did I read aloud the poems
Made by Tuscan flutes, or instruments more various, of our own;
Read the pastoral parts of Spenser—or the subtle interflowings
Found in Petrarch’s sonnets—here’s the book—the leaf is folded down!—

Or at times a modern volume,--Wordsworth’s solemn-thoughted idyl,
Howitt’s ballad-dew, or Tennyson’s enchanted reverie,--
Or from Browning some ‘Pomegranate,’ which, if cut deep down the middle,
Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity!—

Or I read there sometimes, hoarsely, some new poem of my making—
Oh, your poets never read their own best verses to their worth,--
For the echo, in you, breaks upon the words which you are speaking,
And the chariot-wheels jar in the gate, through which you drive them forth.

After, when we were grown tired of books, the silence round us flinging
A slow arm of sweet compression, felt with beatings at the breast,--
She would break out, on a sudden, in a gush of woodland singing,
Like a child’s emotion in a god—a naiad tired of rest.

Oh, to see or hear her singing! Scarce I know which is divinest—
For her looks sing too—she modulates her gestures on the tune;
And her mouth stirs with the song, like song; and when the notes are finest,
‘Tis the eyes that shoot out vocal light, and seem to swell them on.

Then we talked—oh, how we talked! Her voice, so cadenced in the talking,
Made another singing—of the soul! a music without bars—
While the leafy sounds of woodlands, humming round where we were walking,
Brought interposition worthy-sweet,--as skies about the stars.

And she spake such good thoughts natural, as if she always thought them—
And had sympathies so ready, open, free as bird on branch,
Just as ready to fly east as west, whichever way besought them,
In the birchen wood a chirrup, or a cock-crow in the grange.

In her utmost lightness there is truth—and often she speaks lightly;
And she has a grace in being gay, which mourners even approve;
For the root of some grave earnest thought is understruckso rightly,
As to justify the foliage and the waving flowers above.

And she talked on—we talked truly! upon all things—
substance—shadow—
Of the sheep that browsed the grasses—of the reapers in the corn—
Of the little children from the schools, seen winding through the meadow—
Of the poor rich world beyond them, still kept poorer by its scorn!

So of men, and so, of letters— books are men of higher stature,
And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear!
So, of mankind in the abstract, which grows slowly into nature,
Yet will lift the cry of ‘progress,’ as it trod from sphere to sphere.

And her custom was to praise me, when I said,--‘The Age culls simples,
With a broad clown’s back turned broadly, to the glory of the stars—

This Page was last update: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 at 9:31:26 PM
This page was originally posted: 3/24/2002; 2:15:57 PM.
Copyright 2009 Lady Geraldine's Courtship

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