I started with, and came to dwell at last
In the House Beautiful.”
“You, who would write ‘Resurgam’ o’er my dead,
The resurrection of my heart shall know.”
“For pain, that only lives in memory,
Like battle-scars, it is no pain to show.”
Then he goes on to recite a tale so like his own, that it needs scarce any change, but to substitute the names of himself, and those he loved, for the fictitious names we find in the poems. But, before making further quotation, the reader should be made acquainted with the circumstances which prompted those illuminated lines.
While Mr. Taylor was away, Miss Agnew gradually and surely declined in health, until consumption, with all its terrible certainty and serpent-like stealth, made her its victim. It was one of those unaccountable visitations which sometimes come to the young and beautiful in the midst of joy and perfect content. How sadly the news of her sickness fell upon the heart of her lover, and how tenderly and anxiously he prayed and waited for letters from her, which should contain better tidings, he has himself related. Pale and weak, she greeted him on his return from California, with the prediction that she could not live beyond the falling leaves. No skill, no tender nursing, no charm of an abiding love, could stay the hand of death, which, as unseen and secret as the decay in a rose, gradually stole away her color, her beauty, and her life.
He felt that he must lose her; and the whole world, which had before appeared so bright, became dark and chilly. The test showed that while his ambition led him to see the great nations of the earth, to write poems for posterity, and to write his name in italics on the scrolls of fame, there was one solace, one comfort, one desire, which included all the others and made them subservient. He was true to his plighted word. He had become noted and prosperous, while she had remained at the country farm-house in Kennett. He was the associate of Bryant, Greeley, Webster, and Willis; she, the companion of the farmers and Quakers of Chester County. But strong, manly, and honest, his love knew no abatement and his respect felt no check.
It is a touching picture—that simple, solemn marriage in the room of the patient, an almost helpless invalid! He came to redeem his pledge; and in that simple abode, with death standing just outside the door, with a bride scarce able to whisper that she took him for her lawful spouse, he became a husband. The dim, appealing eyes, the tender little flush in her cheek, the tremor of her thin hand, told the joy in her pure heart, but showed also that her happiness would be as brief as it was sincere.