Kathrina—A Poem

by J. G. Holland

"At what you see: and this! and this!" I said,
Planting a kiss upon each lovely cheek
Of my betrothed, that straightway bloomed with rose.
"What! are you blind, my aunt?"

"You silly fools!
I've seen it from the first," she answered me.
"No doubt you thought that you were very deep,
Very mysterious—all that sort of thing.
I've watched you, and if you, young man, had been
Aught but a coward, it had come before,
And saved some sleep o' nights to both of you.
But down upon your knees, for benison
Of one who loves you both."

We knelt, and then
She kissed us, leaving on our cheeks the tear
That sprang to brim the moment. Her shrewd eyes
That melted in the sympathy of love,
Would not meet ours again, but turned away,
And sought in solitude to drain themselves
Of their strange passion.

God forbid that I,
With weak and sacrilegious lips, betray
The confidence of love; or tear aside
The secrecy behind whose snowy folds
Honor and virgin modesty retire
For holiest communion! For the fire
Which burns upon that altar is of God.
Its tongues of flame, throughout all time and space,
Speak but one language, understood by all,
But sacred ever to the wedded hearts
That listen to their breathings.

In the deep hours of night
I left the cottage, brain and heart o'erfilled
With the ethereal vintage I had quaffed.
Disturbing not the drowsy ferryman,
I slipped his little wherry from the sand,
And in the star-sprent river lipped the oars
That pulled me homeward. The enchanting tide
Was smooth continuation of the dream
On which my spirit, holily afloat,
Had glided through long hours of happiness.
Earth, by the strange, delicious ecstasy,
Was changed to paradise; and something kin
To gratitude arose within my soul—
A fleeting passion, dying all too soon,
Lacking the root which faith alone can feed.

I touched the shore; but when my hasting feet
Started the homeward walk, there came a change.
Down from the quiet stars there fell a voice,
Heard in the innermost, that troubled me:
"She is not more than you: why worship her?
And she will die: what will remain for you?
You may die first, indeed: then what resource?
You have no sympathy with her in things
Ordained within, her conscience and her life
The things supreme: can there be marriage thus?
Is e'en such bliss as may be possible
Sure to be yours? Fate has a thousand hands
To dash your lifted cup."

With thoughts like these,
A vague uneasiness invaded me,
And toned the triumph of my passion, till,
Almost in anger, I exclaimed at last:
"This is reaction. I have flown too high
Above the healthy level, and I feel
The press of denser air. The equipoise
Of circumstance and feeling will be reached
All in good time. Rest and to-morrow's sun
Will bring the remedy, and, with the mists,
This cloud will pass away."

Then with clenched hands
I swore I would be happy,—that my soul
Should find its satisfaction in her love;
And that, if there should ever come a time
Of cold satiety, or I should find
Weakness or fault where I had thought was strength
And full perfection, I would e'en endow
Her poverty with all the hoarded wealth
Of my imagination, making her
The woman of my want, in plenitude
Of strength and loveliness.

The breezy days
Over whose waves my buoyant life careered,
Rolled to October, falling on its beach
With bursts of mellow music; and I leaped
Upon the longed-for shore; for, in that month,
My dear betrothed, deferring to the stress
Of my impatient wish, had promised me
Her hand in wedlock.

Ere the happy day
Dawned on the world, the world was draped in robes
Meet for the nuptials. Baths of sunny haze,
Steeping the ripened leaves from day to day,
And dainty kisses of the frost at night,
Joined in the subtile alchemy that wrought
Such miracles of change, that myriad trees
Which pranked the meads and clothed the forest glooms
Bloomed with the tints of Eden. Had the earth
Been splashed with blood of grapes from every clime,
Tinted from topaz to dim carbuncle,
Or orient ruby, it would not have been
Drenched with such waste of color. All the hues
The rainbow knows, and all that meet the eye
In flowers of field and garden, joined to tell
Each tree's close-folded secret. Side by side
Rose sister maples, some in amber gold,
Others incarnadine or tipped with flame;
And oaks that for a hundred years had stood,
And flouted one another through the storms—
Boasting their might—proclaimed their pique or pride
In dun, or dyes of Tyre. The sumac-leaves
Blazed with such scarlet that the crimson fruit
Which hung among their flames was touched to guise
Of dim and dying embers; while the hills
That met the sky at the horizon's rim—
Dabbled with rose among the evergreens,
Or stretching off in sweeps of clouted crimson—glowed
As if the archery of sunset clouds,
By squads and fierce battalions, had rained down
Its barbed and feathered fire, and left it fast
To advertise th' exploit.