"Wan Shine such smiles; as the evening sunlight falls
On a deserted house whose empty walls
No longer echo to the children's play,
Or voice of ruined inmates fled away;
Where wintry winds alone, with idle state,
Move the slow swinging of its rusty gate."
Her high-souled husband grieves to see her drooping under the jealous loss of her strength and beauty, and, in his undoubting love, unable to suspect that she fears to lose that love,
"Wonders evermore that beauty's loss
To such a soul should seem so sore a cross,
Until one evening in that quiet hush
That lulls the failing day, when all the gush
Of various sounds seem buried with the sun,
He told his thought.
As winter streamlets run,
Freed by some sudden thaw, and swift make way
Into the natural channels where they play,
So leaped her young heart to his tender tone,
So answering to his warmth, resumed her own;
And all her doubt and all her grief confest."
The unburdening of the sore, doubting heart and the tender, comforting, loving assurance of Claud is one of the choicest scenes in the poem. Never did youthful lover pour forth more impassioned utterances than fell from the lips of that true man and noble husband. He tells her that her beauty was but one of the "bright ripples dancing to the sun" glancing upon the silver stream of his happy life, and continues the metaphor:
"River of all my hopes thou wert and art;
The current of thy being bears my heart."
And last of all, when she, still incredulous of his unswerving faith, sighs her girlish doubts and moans for death, he with full heart and fervent words repeats his tale of love and makes profession of love's boldest offering, the sacrifice of his life, if it were the will of God, could she return again "to walk in beauty as she did before;" and then he whispers to her the thought that has arisen in his soul to answer the "wherefore" of the dreadful accident:
"It may be God, saw our careless life,
Not sinful, yet not blameless, my sweet wife
(Since all we thought of in our youth's bright May
Was but the coming joy from day to day),
Hath blotted out all joy to bid us learn
Now this is not our home; and make us turn
From the enchanted earth, where much was given,
To higher aims and a forgotten heaven."
It is no little comfort in this age of sensual worldliness and practical unbelief in the providence of God to find the voice of Christian philosophy sounding yet clear above the grovelling utterances of a too often degraded muse.
The third part of our poem continues and exemplifies this thought. This world is God's world; we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Bereavement, pain, unforeseen and unexplained sorrow belong to life, and play their part in schooling the soul to higher aims. The heart must learn to wait on God. "Peace will come in that day which is known unto the Lord," says the author of the Imitation of Christ. We, too, can bring our own experience to the proof, and know that a stronger hand and a wiser heart has led and loved us. We quote but one extract from this third part; it is the summary of the whole:
"All that our wisdom knows, or ever can,
Is this: that God hath pity upon man;
And when his Spirit shines in Holy Writ,
The great word COMFORTER comes after it."