Amiel's Journal.
"Too soon, too soon comes Death to show
We love more deeply than we know!
The rain that fell upon the height
Too gently to be called delight,
Within the dark vale reappears
As a wild cataract of tears;
And love in life should strive to see
Sometimes what love in death would be!"
Coventry Patmore.
AUGUST 30
"Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!
A something, light as air—a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken—
Oh! love that tempests never shook,
A breath, a touch like this has shaken;
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds—or like the stream
That smiling left the mountain's brow,
As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,
Breaks into floods, that part for ever.
O you that have the charge of Love,
Keep him in rosy bondage bound!"
Lalla Rookh, T. Moore.
AUGUST 31
"Love is the first and the last and the strongest bond in experience. It conquers distance, outlives all changes, bears the strain of the most diverse opinions."