I.
When first the red savage call'd Man strode, a king, Through the wilds of creation--the very first thing That his naked intelligence taught him to feel Was the shame of himself; and the wish to conceal Was the first step in art. From the apron which Eve In Eden sat down out of fig-leaves to weave, To the furbelow'd flounce and the broad crinoline Of my lady--you all know of course whom I mean--
This art of concealment has greatly increas'd.
A whole world lies cryptic in each human breast;
And that drama of passions as old as the hills, Which the moral of all men in each man fulfils, Is only reveal'd now and then to our eyes In the newspaper-files and the courts of assize.
II.
In the group seen so lately in sunlight assembled, 'Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough trembled, And the deep-bosom'd lilac, emparadising The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and sing, The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only, A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom;
Conversing at ease in the garden's green bosom, Like those who, when Florence was yet in her glories, Cheated death and kill'd time with Boccaccian stories.
But at length the long twilight more deeply grew shaded, And the fair night the rosy horizon invaded.
And the bee in the blossom, the bird on the bough, Through the shadowy garden were slumbering now.
The trees only, o'er every unvisited walk, Began on a sudden to whisper and talk.
And, as each little sprightly and garrulous leaf Woke up with an evident sense of relief, They all seem'd to be saying . . . "Once more we're alone, And, thank Heaven, those tiresome people are gone!"
III.
Through the deep blue concave of the luminous air, Large, loving, and languid, the stars here and there, Like the eyes of shy passionate women, look'd down O'er the dim world whose sole tender light was their own, When Matilda, alone, from her chamber descended, And enter'd the garden, unseen, unattended.
Her forehead was aching and parch'd, and her breast By a vague inexpressible sadness oppress'd:
A sadness which led her, she scarcely knew how, And she scarcely knew why . . . (save, indeed, that just now The house, out of which with a gasp she had fled Half stifled, seem'd ready to sink on her head) . . .
Out into the night air, the silence, the bright Boundless starlight, the cool isolation of night!
Her husband that day had look'd once in her face, And press'd both her hands in a silent embrace, And reproachfully noticed her recent dejection With a smile of kind wonder and tacit affection.
He, of late so indifferent and listless! . . . at last Was he startled and awed by the change which had pass'd O'er the once radiant face of his young wife? Whence came That long look of solicitous fondness? . . . the same Look and language of quiet affection--the look And the language, alas! which so often she took For pure love in the ****** repose of its purity--
Her own heart thus lull'd to a fatal security!
Ha! would he deceive her again by this kindness?
Had she been, then, O fool! in her innocent blindness, The sport of transparent illusion? ah folly!
And that feeling, so tranquil, so happy, so holy, She had taken, till then, in the heart, not alone Of her husband, but also, indeed, in her own, For true love, nothing else, after all, did it prove But a friendship profanely familiar?
"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.
IV.
She enter'd that arbor of lilacs, in which The dark air with odors 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.
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, Forever returning; forever the same;
And forever 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!
VI.
A light sound behind her. She trembled. By some Night-witchcraft her vision a fact had become.
On a sudden she felt, without turning to view, That a man was approaching behind her. She knew By the fluttering pulse which she could not restrain, And the quick-beating heart, that this man was Eugene.
Her first instinct was flight; but she felt her slight foot As heavy as though to the soil it had root.
And the Duke's voice retain'd her, like fear in a dream.
VII.
