Ara
What is my life without you?
To be your knight
to fight for you
Is all that holds my will together
Unraveled, and dispossessed
by Distance, time and empty suffering
Now you are taken from me,
One comfort only can I find:
That I loved you then, not less than now
And thanked dear Heaven
you were mine.
……………………….
A year, a month, a day ago he might have cried; but this was not the time. Emotion and sentiment would not bring her back to him, nor would dashing his heart upon the rocks. The mind was the stronger instrument now, a bit cold, but maybe that was best. He gave it free rein to pursue its ends.
The poems showed him that indeed, both elements, love and hatred, yielding and aggression, lived inside him. And both were needed. Hadn't he felt them? Hadn't their constant battle for use and mastery tormented him? Yes! That was what had made him so miserable. Fool! It was simply (or merely) a question of knowing which to listen to at a given moment—-exerting supreme effort when called for, and having enough faith in God, or life, to accept the consequences of what was beyond human will to affect. Faith and disillusion, professed as different creeds, were one and the same, either half without the other like a man trying to stand on one leg.
With that he became calm again, knowing he must save his strength. Later that night he lit the candle and set it beside the picture of his wife, and prayed a short, fervent prayer to Whom he did not know. His own image was no longer important. He vowed to find his wife, however long it took, and to do what he could in the war, though he detested violence and a part of his prayer was that it would soon end.
The next day, the second of his confinement, passed without serious (personal) incident. That night he took one of the lozenges, knowing he would be unable to sleep without it. For the Morannon system, code-named Dracus by the Belgians, would be reached the following day, and they no longer moved in secret. The Alliance, apparently piercing their detection shields, had detached a fighter-destroyer group to intercept them. As near as anyone could tell, battle would be joined somewhere within the system itself.
In the morning he rose, and reported to the bridge, and with a hard bitter determination that grew out of and suppressed his anxiety, prepared himself for the fight. Because for all his introspection and self-doubt, there was another side of him, as yet only half realized.
Not for nothing had Dubcek made him his pupil; and not for nothing was he second officer to Mandlik. His military and psychological testing had revealed that whatever other characteristics he might possess, when cornered and left no option, he responded with a resourcefulness and tenacity that were almost off the scale. This fact was so striking in one of his (outwardly) skittish nature, that more than one of the military leaders who reviewed it (including Dubcek) went back to the examining psychologist to ask for an explanation.
The psychologist had told them simply, "It's no mistake. In ordinary circumstances he is much like Hamlet—-wavering, indecisive, introspective to a fault. But when pushed to the final need, somehow he raises himself to another level, and reacts with a courage and cunning that are. . .remarkable."