More at the wonder than the loss aghast,
With huddled, unintelligible phrase,
And frighten’d eye,
And go your journey of all days
With not one kiss or a good-by,
And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d,
’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.”[[120]]
It goes without saying that such a loss must tell with incalculable force on a man of intense sensibility. Trials of this kind best prove a man. Some they crush; others they humiliate only to exalt. If we may judge by the silent testimony of the book before us, his great loss made this man greater. He felt, if not for the first time, more keenly than ever before, how uncertain and passing is all merely human happiness. The known Eros that had charmed his life suddenly passed away “with sudden, unintelligible phrase,” and in the darkness that fell upon his soul his humbled eyes were opened to the unknown Eros who was near him all the while.
But, beyond and beside this, between the publication of his earlier poems and the latest his conversion to the Catholic faith took place. So we judge, at least, from internal evidence in the books. Here was a new and most powerful agent introduced to act upon his nature. Moreover, the world had moved in the interval. Many and mighty changes had taken place in the world, and they did not pass unfelt or unobserved by the silent poet. But before we come to these we will give one more response to his questioning of the oracle before whom of all he burns his incense. In the “Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore” he sings joyously:
“Love, light for me