Not in plain terms. Oft an unhappy thought,
Telling all is not well, falls from his soul
Like a diseasèd feather from the wing
Of a sick eagle; a scorched meteor-stone
Dropt from the ruined moon.
EDWARD.
CHARLES.
I walked with him upon a windy night;
We saw the streaming moon flee through the sky,
Pursued by all the dark and hungry clouds.
He stopped and said: "Weariness feeds on all.
God wearies, and so makes a universe,
And gathers angels round him.—He is weak;
I weary, and so wreak myself in verse,——
Away with scrannel-pipes. Oh, for mad War!
I'd give my next twelve years to head but once
Ten thousand horse in a victorious charge.
Give me some one to hate, and let me chase
Him through the zones, and finding him at last,
Make his accursed eyes leap on his cheeks,
And his face blacken, with one choking gripe."
EDWARD.
CHARLES.
He often said,
His strivings after Poesy and Fame
Were vain as turning blind eyes on the sun.
His Book came out; I told him that the world
Hailed him a Poet. He said, with feeble smile,
"I have arisen like a dawn—the world,
Like the touched Memnon, murmurs—that is all."
He said, as we were lying on the moss,
(A forest sounding o'er us, like a sea
Above two mermen seated on the sands,)
"Our human hearts are deeper than our souls,
And Love than Knowledge is diviner food—
Oh, Charles! if God will ever send to thee
A heart that loves thee, reverence that heart.
We think that Death is hard, when he can kill
An infant smiling in his very face:
Harder was I than Death.—In cup of sin
I did dissolve thee, thou most precious pearl,
Then drank thee up." We sat one eve,
Gazing in silence on the falling sun:
We saw him sink. Upon the silent world,
Like a fine veil, came down the tender gloom;
A dove came fluttering round the window, flew
Away, and then came fluttering back. He said,
"As that dove flutters round the casement, comes
A pale shape round my soul; I've done it wrong,
I never will be happy till I ope
My heart and take it in."—'Twas ever so;
To some strange sorrow all his thoughts did tend,
Like waves unto a shore. Dost know his grief?
EDWARD.