“Will you look at the date?”
“Seventeen hundred and ninety-three.‘ You are making game of me, Duncan. But the paper does look yellow and old.”
“I found it as you see it, in that book. It belonged to Lord Hilton’s brother. The verses are a translation of part of the poem beside which they lie—one by Von Salis, who died shortly before that date at the bottom. I will read them to you, and then show you something else that is strange about them. The poem is called Psyche’s Sorrow. Psyche means the soul, Alice.”
“I remember. You told me about her before, you know.”
“Psyche’s sighing all her prison darkens;
She is moaning for the far-off stars;
Fearing, hoping, every sound she hearkens—
Fate may now be breaking at her bars.
Bound, fast bound, are Psyche’s airy pinions:
High her heart, her mourning soft and low—
Knowing that in sultry pain’s dominions
Grow the palms that crown the victor’s brow;
That the empty hand the wreath encloses;
Earth’s cold winds but make the spirit brave;
Knowing that the briars bear the roses,
Golden flowers the waste deserted grave.
In the cypress-shade her myrtle groweth;
Much she loves, because she much hath borne;
Love-led, through the darksome way she goeth—
On to meet him in the breaking morn.
She can bear—”
“Here the translation ceases, you see; and then follows the date, with the words in German underneath it—‘How weary I am!’ Now what is strange, Alice, is, that this date is the very month and year in which I was born.”
She did not reply to this with anything beyond a mere assent. Her mind was fixed on the poem itself. She began to talk about it, and I was surprised to find how thoroughly she entered into it and understood it. She seemed to have crowded the growth of a lifetime into the last few months. At length I told her how unhappy I had felt for some time, at remaining in Lord Hilton’s house, as matters now were.
“Then you must go,” she said, quite quietly.
This troubled me.
“You do not mind it?”