MY BEAUTIFUL LADY. INTRODUCTION.

In some there lies a sorrow too profound

To find a voice or to reveal itself

Throughout the strain of daily toil, or thought,

Or during converse born of souls allied,

As aught men understand. And though mayhap

Their cheeks will thin or droop; and wane their eyes’

Frank lustre; hair may lose its hue, or fall;

And health may slacken low in force; and they

Are older than the warrant of their years;

Yet they to others seem to gild their lives

With cheerfulness, and every duty tend,

As if their aspects told the truth within.

But they are not as others: not for them

The bounding pulse, and ardour of desire,

The rapture and the wonder in things new;

The hope that palpitating enters where

Perfection smiles on universal life;

Nor do they with elastic enterprise

Forecast delight in compassing results;

Nor, having won their ends, fall godlike back

And taste the calm completion of content.

But in a sober chilled grey atmosphere

Work out their lives; more various though they are

Than creatures in the unknown ocean depths,

Yet each in whom this vital grief has root

Is dull to what makes everything of worth.

And though, may be, a shallow bodily joy

Oft tingles through them at the breathing spring,

Or first-heard exultation of the lark;

Still that deep weight draws ever steadily

Their thoughts and passions back to secret woe.

Though, if endowed with light, heroic deeds

May be achieved; and if benignly bent

They may be treasured blessings through their lives;

Yet power and goodness are to them as dreams,

And they heed vaguely, if their waking sight

Be met with slanting storm against the pane,

Or sunshine glittering on the leaves that play

In purest blue of breezy summer morns.

Whence springs this well of mournfulness profound,

Unfathomable to plummet cast by man?

Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind

Heaving the ocean into maddened arms

That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks,

And scatter them, as if compacted slight

As little eggs boys star against a tree

In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable,

To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws,

The power that in the logging crocodiles’

Outrageous bulk puts evil fire of life?

That spouts from mountain-pyramids a flood

Of lava, overwhelming works and men

In burning, fetid ruin?— The power that stings

A city with a pestilence: or turns

The pretty babe, who in his mother's lap

Babbles her back the lavished kiss and laugh,

Through lusts and vassalage to obdurate sin,

Into a knife-armed midnight murderer?

Our lives are mysteries, and rarely scanned

As we read stories writ by mortal pen.

We can perchance but catch a straying weft

And trace the hinted texture here or there,

Of that stupendous loom weaving our fates.

Two parents, late in life, are haply blessed

With one bright child, a wonder in his years,

For loveliness and genius versatile:

Some common ill destroys him; parents, both,

Until their death, are left but living tombs

That hold the one dead image of their joy.

A man, the flower of honour, who has found

His well-beloved young daughter fled from home,

Fallen from her maidenhood, a nameless thing

Tainting his blood. A youth who throws the strength

Of his whole being into love for one

Answering him honeyed smiles, and leaves his land

For some far country, seeking wealth he hopes

Will grace her daintily with choice delights,

And on returning sees the honeyed smiles

Are sweetening other lips. A husband who

Has found that household curse, a faithless wife.

A thinker whose far-piercing care perceives

His nation goes the road that ends in shame.

A gracious woman whose reserve denies

The power to utter what consumes her heart.

Such instances ( and some a loss to know,

Which steadfast reticence will shield from those,

Debased or garrulous, whose hearts corrupt,

But learn the gloomy secrets of their kind

To poison-tip their wit, or grope and grin

With pharisaic laughter at disgrace ) —

Such instances as these demand no guide

To thrid the dismal issues from their source!

But others are there, lying fast concealed,

Dark, hopeless, and unutterably sad,

Which have not been, and never may be known.

Then we may well call happy one whose grief,

Mixed up with sacred memories of the past,

Can tell to others how the tempest rose,

That struck and left him lonely in the world;

And who, narrating, feels his sorrow soothed,

By that respect which love and sorrow claim.

It much behoves us all, but chiefly those

Whom fate has favoured with an easy trust,

To keep a bridle upon restless speech

And thought: and not in flagrant haste prejudge

The first presentment as the rounded truth.

For true it is, that rapid thoughts, and freak

Of skimming word, and glance, more frequently

Than either malice, settled hate, or scorn,

Support confusion, and pervert the right;

Set up the weakling in the strong man's place;

And yoke the great one's strength to idleness;

Pour gold into the squanderer's purse, and suck

The wealth, which is a power, from their control

Who would have turned it unto noble use.

And oftentimes a man will strike his friend,

By random verbiage, with sharper pain

Than could a foe, yet scarcely mean him wrong;

For none can strip this complex masquerade

And know who languishes with secret wounds.

They whom the brunt of war has maimed in limb,

Who lean on crutches to sustain their weight,

Are manifest to all; and reverence

For their misfortunes kindly gains them place:

But wounds, sometimes more deep and dangerous,

We may in careless jostle through the crowd,

Gall and oppress, because to us unknown.

Then, howsoever by our needs impelled,

Let us resolve to move in gentleness;

Judge mildly when we doubt; and pause awhile

Before injustice palpably proclaimed

Ere we let fall the judgment stroke: against

Their ignominious craft, who ever wait

To filch another's right, we will maintain

Majestic peace in silence; knowing well

Their craft takes something richer from themselves.

It is but seemly to respect the great;

But never let us fail toward lowly ones;

Respecting more, in that they lack the force

To claim it of the world. For souls there are

Of poor capacities, whose purpose holds,

Throughout their unregarded lives, a worth,

And earnest law of fixed integrity,

That were an honour even unto those

Whose genius marks the boundaries of our race.