All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of youth With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth Grasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!
V.
Fairy gold! moss and leaves! and the young Fairy Bride?
Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?
Say, O friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch'd Some pale and impalpable vapor, detach'd From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall O'er the light of a sweet serene star, until all The chill'd splendor reluctantly waned in the deep Of its own native heaven? Even so seem'd to creep O'er that fair and ethereal face, day by day, While the radiant vermeil, subsiding away, Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual veil Of a sadness unconscious.
The lady grew pale As silent her lord grew: and both, as they eyed Each the other askance, turn'd, and secretly sigh'd.
Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give?
True, we know what life is--but, alas! do we live?
The grammar of life we have gotten by heart, But life's self we have made a dead language--an art, Not a voice. Could we speak it, but once, as 'twas spoken When the silence of passion the first time was broken!
Cuvier knew the world better than Adam, no doubt;
But the last man, at best, was but learned about What the first, without learning, ENJOYED. What art thou To the man of to-day, O Leviathan, now?
A science. What wert thou to him that from ocean First beheld thee appear? A surprise,--an emotion!
When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart, When it thrills as it fills every animate part, Where lurks it? how works it? . . . We scarcely detect it.
But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it!
This accursed aesthetical, ethical age Hath so finger'd life's hornbook, so blurr'd every page, That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story With its fables of faery, its legends of glory, Is turn'd to a tedious instruction, not new To the children that read it insipidly through.
We know too much of Love ere we love. We can trace Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face When we see it at last. 'Tis the same little Cupid, With the same dimpled cheek, and the smile almost stupid, We have seen in our pictures, and stuck on our shelves, And copied a hundred times over, ourselves, And wherever we turn, and whatever we do, Still, that horrible sense of the deja connu!
VI.
Perchance 'twas the fault of the life that they led;
Perchance 'twas the fault of the novels they read;
Perchance 'twas a fault in themselves; I am bound not To say: this I know--that these two creatures found not In each other some sign they expected to find Of a something unnamed in the heart or the mind;
And, missing it, each felt a right to complain Of a sadness which each found no word to explain.
Whatever it was, the world noticed not it In the light-hearted beauty, the light-hearted wit.
Still, as once with the actors in Greece, 'tis the case, Each must speak to the crowd with a mask on his face.
Praise follow'd Matilda wherever she went, She was flatter'd. Can flattery purchase content?
Yes. While to its voice for a moment she listen'd, The young cheek still bloom'd and the soft eyes still glisten'd;
And her lord, when, like one of those light vivid things That glide down the gauzes of summer with wings Of rapturous radiance, unconscious she moved Through that buzz of inferior creatures, which proved Her beauty, their envy, one moment forgot, 'Mid the many charms there, the one charm that was not:
And when o'er her beauty enraptured he bow'd, (As they turn'd to each other, each flush'd from the crowd,)
And murmur'd those praises which yet seem'd more dear Than the praises of others had grown to her ear, She, too, ceased awhile her own fate to regret:
"Yes! . . . he loves me," she sigh'd; "this is love, then--and YET!"
VII.
Ah, that YET! fatal word! 'tis the moral of all Thought and felt, seen or done, in this world since the Fall!
It stands at the end of each sentence we learn;
It flits in the vista of all we discern;
It leads us, forever and ever, away To find in to-morrow what flies with to-day.
'Twas the same little fatal and mystical word That now, like a mirage, led my lady and lord To the waters of Ems from the waters of Marah;
Drooping Pilgrims in Fashion's blank, arid Sahara!
VIII.
At the same time, pursued by a spell much the same, To these waters two other worn pilgrims there came:
One a man, one a woman: just now, at the latter, As the Reader I mean by and by to look at her And judge for himself, I will not even glance.
IX.
Of the self-crown'd young kings of the Fashion in France Whose resplendent regalia so dazzled the sight, Whose horse was so perfect, whose boots were so bright, Who so hail'd in the salon, so mark'd in the Bois, Who so welcomed by all, as Eugene de Luvois?
Of all the smooth-brow'd premature debauchees In that town of all towns, where Debauchery sees On the forehead of youth her mark everywhere graven,--
In Paris I mean,--where the streets are all paven By those two fiends whom Milton saw bridging the way From Hell to this planet,--who, haughty and gay, The free rebel of life, bound or led by no law, Walk'd that causeway as bold as Eugene de Luvois?
Yes! he march'd through the great masquerade, loud of tongue, Bold of brow: but the motley he mask'd in, it hung So loose, trail'd so wide, and appear'd to impede So strangely at times the vex'd effort at speed, That a keen eye might guess it was made--not for him, But some brawler more stalwart of stature and limb.
That it irk'd him, in truth, you at times could divine, For when low was the music, and spilt was the wine, He would clutch at the garment, as though it oppress'd And stifled some impulse that choked in his breast.
X.
What! he, . . . the light sport of his frivolous ease!
Was he, too, a prey to a mortal disease?
My friend, hear a parable: ponder it well:
For a moral there is in the tale that I tell.
One evening I sat in the Palais Royal, And there, while I laugh'd at Grassot and Arnal, My eye fell on the face of a man at my side;
