1860
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Part II, Canto III, Verse III [Final lines only]
-------------------------'And love ? ..'
'What was love, then ? . . . not calm, not secure - scarcely kind!
'But in one, all intensest emotions combined:
'Life and death: pain and rapture: the infinite sense
'Of something immortal, unknown, and immense?
'Thus, doubting her way, through the dark, the unknown,
The immeasurable, did she wander alone,
With the hush of night's infinite silence outspread
O'er the height of night's infinite heavens over-head.
There, silently crossing, recrossing the night
With faint, meteoric, miraculous light,
'he swift-shooting stars through the infinite burn'd,
And into the infmite ever return'd.
And, contemplating thus in herself the unknown,
O'er the heart of Matilda there darted and shone
Thoughts, enkindling like meteors the deeps, to expire
Not without leaving traces behind them in fire.
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IV
All absorb'd in the thoughts which fatigued her, a prey
To emotions restrain'd through the wearisome day,
The young wife, released, for a moment, from all
The day's busy-eyed and inquisitive thrall,
Instead of rejoining the others, no doubt
By this time in the salon assembled, stole out
Unobserved to the garden.
-----------------There, wandering at will,
She soon found herself, all alone, 'neath that still
And impalpable bower of lilacs, in which
The dark air with odours hung heavy and rich,
Like a soul that grows faint with desire.
---------------------'Twas the place
In which she so lately had sat, face to face
With her husband, - and her, the pale stranger detested,
Whose presence her heart like a plague had infested.
The whole spot with evil remembrance was haunted.
Through the darkness there rose on the heart which it daunted
Each dreary detail of that desolate day,
So full, and yet so incomplete. Far away
The acacias were muttering, like mischievous elves,
The whole story over again to themselves,
Each word, - and each word was a wound! By degrees
Her memory mingled its voice with the trees,
And the long-streaming sigh of the night wind among them
Sounded like the reproach which her own heart had flung them.
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V
[Three words in Greek]! All who grieve
With life's frustrate desire must, at moments, perceive,
Struggling under the infinite pressure of things,
The repining, imprison'd, and passionate wings
Of a restless, but ruin'd and impotent angel,
Searching, ever in vain, his own penal evangel.
He strikes with his shoulders the sides of the world;
He wails o'er the unwearied sea; and floats furl'd
In the sullen career of the storm; and again
His purpose dissolves, like a passion, in rain,
And relentfully, sighingly, wastes itself out.
A rainbow, a sunbeam, suffices to rout,
And refute, and perplex him. But most, when thy shade,
Sweet Spirit of Night, over all things is laid,
With a wistful self-pity, he peers through the bars
Of his penthouse, and watches his once native stars.
He seems to be touch'd at the heart with a sense
Of his own uncompanion'd, remote, and intense
Isolation; and fearfully feels where he may
For communion with man. Then his voice seems to say:
-' O child of a race by my ruin o'erthrown!
'O heart, bound to mine by a sorrow unknown I
'Upon me the Universe heavily lies, 'And I suffer! I suffer!'
And man's heart replies: 'I suffer! I suffer!'
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VI
----------------------Perchance (who can tell?)
Such a voice thro' the silence, the darkness, then fell
Like the whisper Eve heard, o'er Matilda's distraught
Troubled fancy, for ever suggesting the thought
Of that right which man's heart, as its ultimate right
To resist man's injustice, appears to invite, -
The right of reprisals.
--------------------An image uncertain,
And vague, dimly shaped itself forth on the curtain
Of the darkness around her. It came, and it went;
Through her senses a faint sense of peril it sent:
It pass'd and repass'd her; it went and it came
For ever returning; for ever the same;
And for ever more clearly defined; till her eyes
In that outline obscure could at last recognize
The man to whose image, the more and the more
That her heart, now aroused from its calm sleep of yore,
From her husband detach'd itself slowly, with pain,
Her thoughts had return'd, and return'd to, again,
As though by some secret indefinite law,-
The vigilant Frenchman -- Eugene de Luvois!
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1867
Part II, Canto II
In dialogue verses (e.g., Verse III), headings are changed from "Lord Alfred" to "Alfred", "The Countess" to "Lucile", etc.
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Part II, Canto III, Verse III [Final lines only]
----------------------------'And love? ...'
'What was love, then? . . . not calm, not secure- scarcely kind!
'But in one, all intensest emotions combined:
'Life and death: pain and rapture.
---------------------Thus wandering astray,
Led by doubt, through the darkness she wander'd away.
All silently crossing, recrossing the night,
With faint, meteoric, miraculous light,
The swift-shooting stars through the infinite burn'd,
And into the infinite ever return'd.
And silently o'er the obscure and unknown
In the heart of Matilda there darted and shone
Thoughts, enkindling like meteors the deeps,to expire,
Leaving traces behind them of tremulous fire.
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IV
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She enter'd that arbour of lilacs, in which
The dark air with odours hung heavy and rich,
Like a soul that grows faint with desire.
---------------------'Twas the place
In which she so lately had sat, face to face
With her husband, - and her, the pale stranger detested,
Whose presence her heart like a plague had infested.
The whole spot with evil remembrance was haunted.
Through the darkness there rose on the heart which it daunted
Each dreary detail of that desolate day,
So full, and yet so incomplete. Far away
The acacias were muttering, like mischievous elves,
The whole story over again to themselves,
Each word,-and each word was a wound! By degrees
Her memory mingled its voice with the trees.
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[1860 Verse V is deleted entirely]
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V
Like the whisper Eve heard, when she paused by the root
Of the sad tree of knowledge, and gazed on its fruit,
To the heart of Matilda the trees seem'd to hiss
Wild instructions, revealing man's last right, which is
The right of reprisals.
-----------------An image uncertain,
And vague, dimly shaped itself forth on the curtain
Of the darkness around her. It came, and it went;
Through her senses a faint sense of peril it sent:
It pass'd and repass'd her; it went and it came
For ever returning; for ever the same;
And for ever more clearly defined; till her eyes
In that outline obscure could at last recognize
The man to whose image, the more and the more
That her heart, now aroused from its calm sleep of yore,
From her husband detach'd itself slowly, with pain,
Her thoughts had return'd, and return'd to, again,
As though by some secret indefinite law,-
The vigilant Frenchman-Eugene de Luvois!
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1867 VI then follows 1860 VII, VII follows VIII, etc., to end of Canto |