Of all persons now living I personally should most prefer to be enabled to converse freely with that high-bred, subtle-natured lady who follows me in my walks, who shares my meals and lies beside my fire. She has learned with ease to understand my speech, but I, in my gross sluggishness, have neglected to acquire her tongue, and yet how different a place this dull world would appear could I learn all she might tell me. What sights, sounds, and odours, what significances escaping my dull senses, might become open to me! A thousand times I have been aware of her pitying impatience of my slow-wittedness in matters so obvious to her keener intelligence. A whole world lies outside of my apprehension with which she is familiar, and all my life I shall suffer unappeased curiosity as to how she becomes aware of approaching changes in the weather; why a certain part of the wood is taboo. What is it that warns her of a death in my family? Why does a certain good and gentle woman fill her with loathing distrust, and what was the peculiar refinement of insult she received in her puppyhood from the family butcher, which has made it possible for her daily for six years to detect the sound of the butcher's wheels among many others while he is still not in sight, and daily produces in her a rage of resentment that no punishment, no offer of tidbits, has ever been able to allay?
All these things I shall never know. She shares my life, but I, regretfully, protestingly, must stand almost wholly outside of hers.
When we at last seriously take up the great task of articulate communication with the animals, a new world will swim into our ken beside which the discovery of America will seem but an unimportant event. Half of the unexplained puzzles of science will be solved with ease, and whole departments of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be opened to our astonished understandings.
Perhaps by our little dumb brothers we are still compassionately reckoned as the deaf and blind giant.
August 5.
Fever Dreams.
A thousand times the great clock's heart has beat—
A thousand, thousand times,
And ever at the hours the sudden, sweet,
Low, unexpected ringing of the chimes
Tells how the night doth slowly pass away.
The hissing snow fell through the air all day,
But with the dark did cease—
I hear the shivers of the frozen trees.
The night-lamp's gleam—though weak the flame and small—
Casts shadows giant tall
That to the ceiling crawl—
The cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fall
And nod this way and that against the wall.
Quiet the great dark house, and deeply sleep they all—
They held me fast, they could not hear the call
That I heard always—chill the winds did blow—
The skies were dark—the ways were white with snow—
He did not call—I wandered to think so.
But now they sleep, I will arise and go.
They think him dead, but his sweet voice I know.
I stretch my hands, my heart beats hard—his voice is sweet and low,
But muffled by the weight of earth, and hath a note of woe—
He calls to me: I cannot stay; I must arise and go—
I step out on the floor—
(How loud that nurse doth snore)
But I softly close the door.
I quickly pass from the outer door.
It is very, very cold!—
But he will me closely fold
With a tender clasping arm,
And still my deep alarm—
In his heart I shall be warm!
The snow is smooth as glass.
I scarcely leave a foot-print as I pass—
It is very cold, and the way is long, alas!
And they have buried him deep, so deep under the frozen grass.
It was cruel to bury him so deep;
He was not dead, he was only asleep—
He was not dead; it makes me weep
To think he is in this frozen ground—
Why does the moon whirl round and round!
My head is dizzy; I'm faint and ill—
Will no one make the moon stand still?
The foolish moon whirls round and round—
What is it that the pine trees know,
That they rustle and whisper together so?
Someone was buried under the snow
More than a thousand years ago!—
My long black shadow runs by my side.
Was it I, or my love that died
And was buried deeply under the snow
So many hundred years ago?
Oh! how can I reach him under the ground?
I am burning with fire, my head turns round.
He does not call me, I hear no sound—
Ah!—will no one come to me? I'm all alone,
The nurse does not hear, she's as deaf as a stone,
The walls of the grave together have grown,
The dead man lies still and makes no moan,
They have left me here with this corpse alone—!
His golden hair is tarnished with rust;
His eyes have withered and fallen to dust—
His subtle, secret, amber eyes;
The worms might have spared those amber eyes—
His lips are grey with dust and sunken;
His heart is cold, and his cheeks are shrunken—
He must be dead, so still he lies!
I lay in my bed and he called to me,
They held me, but it might not be
That we should rest so far apart,
And we have lain here, heart to heart,
Since I came out across the snow
More than a thousand years ago.