"I forgive you for asking me," she said to Mr. Southard. "I dare say you want to hear my rhyme, and will think it very pretty. And she read:
Beating The Bars.
"0 morning air! O pale, pure fire!
Wrap and consume my bonds away.
This stifling mesh of sordid flesh
Shuts in my spirit from the day.
"Through sudden chinks the radiance blinks,
And drives the winged creature wild.
She hears rejoice each ringing voice,
She guesses at each happy child.
"In fleeting glints are shining hints
Of freer beings, good and glad;
Her dream can trace each lovely face,
Each form, in lofty beauty clad.
"She hears the beat of joyous feet
That break no flower, fear no thorn;
And almost feels the breeze that steals
From out the ever-growing morn.
"She hears the flow of voices low,
And strains to catch the half-known tongue.
She hears the gush of streams that rush
Their thrilling waters into one.
"With longing sighs, her baffled eyes
She sets where burn the unseen stars.
With frantic heats her wings she beats,
And breaks them on the stubborn bars.
"O light!' she cries, 'unseal mine eyes,
Or blind me in thine ardent glow.
O life and breath! O life in death!
O bonds! dissolve, and let me go.
"'Let drop this crust of cankering rust,
The only crown my brow hath won;
Shake off the sears of briny tears,
And dry my pinions in the sun!'"
"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Margaret.
"My dear," said Mrs. Lewis, "I do not mean it as a rule, but as an exception. That was written during my equinoctial."
Miss Hamilton waited for an explanation.
"You don't know it yet," the lady continued, "but you will learn in time that every woman has her line-gale. It usually comes between thirty and forty, sooner or later, and is more or less violent. After that, we settle down and let the snows fall on us."
Ending, she laughed a little; but there was a tightening of the lines about the mouth that showed at least remembered pain.
Margaret, going out, stopped to look over Mr. Southard's shoulder, drawn there by the absent, dreamy expression of his face. If he was painting backgrounds, she thought, what mountains of melting blue, what far-away waters, half cloud, half glitter, must be stealing to life beneath his hand!
He had placed a blank sheet on the easel, and was idly covering it with fragmentary improvisations. Under the heading of "synonyms" he had written, "Cogito quia sum, et sum quia cogito," the text illustrated by a drawing of a cat running round after her own tail.