At night she gave him this little poem, saying,--
"This is your poem, not mine, darling. I should never have thought of any thing so absurd myself."
"Couleur de Rose."
All things to-day "Couleur de rose,"
I see,--oh, why?
I know, and my dear love she knows,
Why, oh, why!
On both my eyes her lips she set,
All red and warm and dewy wet,
As she passed by.
The kiss did not my eyelids close,
But like a rosy vapor goes,
Where'er I sit, where'er I lie,
Before my every glance, and shows
All things to-day "Couleur de rose."Would it last thus? Alas, who knows?
Men ask and sigh:
They say it fades, "Couleur de rose."
Why, oh, why?
Without swift joy and sweet surprise,
Surely those lips upon my eyes
Could never lie,
Though both our heads were white as snows,
And though the bitterest storm that blows,
Of trouble and adversity,
Had bent us low: all life still shows
To eyes that love "Couleur de rose."
This sonnet, also, she persisted in calling Stephen's, and not her own, because he had asked her the question which had suggested it:--
Lovers' Thoughts.
"How feels the earth when, breaking from the night,
The sweet and sudden Dawn impatient spills
Her rosy colors all along the hills?
How feels the sea, as it turns sudden white,
And shines like molten silver in the light
Which pours from eastward when the full moon fills
Her time to rise?""I know not, love, what thrills
The earth, the sea, may feel. How should I know?
Except I guess by this,--the joy I feel
When sudden on my silence or my gloom
Thy presence bursts and lights the very room?
Then on my face doth not glad color steal
Like shining waves, or hill-tops' sunrise glow?"
One of the others was the poem of which I spoke once before, the poem which had been suggested to her by her desolate sense of homelessness on the first night of her arrival in Penfield. This poem had been widely copied after its first appearance in one of the magazines; and it had been more than once said of it, "Surely no one but a genuine outcast could have written such a poem as this." It was hard for Mercy's friends to associate the words with her. When she was asked how it happened that she wrote them, she exclaimed, "I did not write that poem, I lived it one night,--the night when I came to Penfield, and drove through these streets in the rain with mother. No vagabond in the world ever felt more forlorn than I did then."
The Outcast.
O sharp, cold wind, thou art my friend!
And thou, fierce rain, I need not dread
Thy wonted touch upon my head!
On, loving brothers! Wreak and spend
Your force on all these dwellings. Rend
These doors so pitilessly locked,
To keep the friendless out! Strike dead
The fires whose glow hath only mocked
By muffled rays the night where I,
The lonely outcast, freezing lie!Ha! If upon those doors to-night
I knocked, how well I know the stare,
The questioning, the mingled air
Of scorn and pity at the sight,
The wonder if it would be right
To give me alms of meat and bread!
And if I, reckless, standing there,
For once the truth imploring said,
That not for bread or meat I longed,
That such an alms my real need wronged,That I would fain come in, and sit
Beside their fire, and hear the voice
Of children; yea, and if my choice
Were free, and I dared mention it,
And some sweet child should think me fit
To hold a child upon my knee
One moment, would my soul rejoice,
More than to banquet royally,
And I the pulses of its wrist
Would kiss, as men the cross have kissed.Ha! Well the haughty stare I know
With which they'd say, "The man is mad!"
"What an impostor's face he had!"
"How insolent these beggars grow!"
Go to, ye happy people! Go!
My yearning is as fierce as hate.
Must my heart break, that yours be glad?
Will your turn come at last, though late?
I will not knock, I will pass by;
My comrades wait,--the wind, the rain.
Comrades, we'll run a race to-night!
The stakes may not seem much to gain:
The goal is not marked plain in sight;
But, comrades, understand,--if I
Drop dead, 't will be a victory!
These poems and many others Stephen carried with him wherever he went. To read them over was next to seeing Mercy. The poet was hardly less dear to him than the woman. He felt at times so removed from her by the great gulf which her genius all unconsciously seemed to create between herself and him that he doubted his own memories of her love, and needed to be reassured by gazing into her eyes, touching her hand, and listening to her voice. It seemed to him that, if this separation lasted much longer, he should lose all faith in the fact of their relation. Very impatient thoughts of poor old Mrs. Carr filled Stephen's thoughts in these days. Heretofore she had been no barrier to his happiness; her still and childlike presence was no restraint upon him; he had come to disregard it as he would the presence of an infant in a cradle. Therefore, he had, or thought he had, the kindest of feelings towards her; but now that her helpless paralyzed hands had the power to shut him away from Mercy, he hated her, as he had always hated every thing which stood between him and delight. Yet, had it been his duty to minister to her, he would have done it as gently, as faithfully, as Mercy herself. He would have spoken to her in the mildest and tenderest of tones, while in his heart he wished her dead. So far can a fine fastidiousness, allied to a sentiment of compassion, go towards making a man a consummate hypocrite.
Parson Dorrance came often to see Mercy, but always with Lizzy Hunter. By the subtle instinct of love, he knew that to see him thus, and see him often, would soonest win back for him his old place in Mercy's life. The one great desire he had left now was to regain that,--to see her again look up in his face with the frank, free, loving look which she always had had until that sad morning.
A strange incident happened to Mercy in these first weeks of her mother's illness. She was called to the door one morning by the message that a stranger wished to speak to her. She found standing there an elderly woman, with a sweet but care-worn face, who said eagerly, as soon as she appeared,--