XVII. FROM FELIX TO HONORIA.
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et me, Beloved, while gratitudeIs garrulous with coming good,Or ere the tongue of happinessBe silenced by your soft caress,Relate how, musing here of you,The clouds, the intermediate blue,The air that rings with larks, the graveAnd distant rumour of the wave,The solitary sailing skiff,The gusty corn-field on the cliff,The corn-flower by the crumbling ledge,Or, far-down at the shingle's edge,The sighing sea's recurrent crestBreaking, resign'd to its unrest,All whisper, to my home-sick thought,Of charms in you till now uncaught,Or only caught as dreams, to dieEre they were own'd by memory.High and ingenious DecreeOf joy-devising Deity!You whose ambition only isThe assurance that you make my bliss,(Hence my first debt of love to show,That you, past showing indeed do so!)Trust me the world, the firmament,With diverse-natured worlds besprent,Were rear'd in no mere undivineBoast of omnipotent design,The lion differing from the snakeBut for the trick of difference sake,And comets darting to and froBecause in circles planets go;But rather that sole love might beRefresh'd throughout eternityIn one sweet faith, for ever strange,Mirror'd by circumstantial change.For, more and more, do I perceiveThat everything is relativeTo you, and that there's not a star,Nor nothing in't, so strange or far,But, if 'twere scanned, 'twould chiefly meanSomewhat, till then, in you unseen,Something to make the bondage straitOf you and me more intimate,Some unguess'd opportunityOf nuptials in a new degree.But, oh, with what a novel forceYour best-conn'd beauties, by remorseOf absence, touch; and, in my heart,How bleeds afresh the youthful smartOf passion fond, despairing stillTo utter infinite goodwillBy worthy service! Yet I knowThat love is all that love can owe,And this to offer is no lessOf worth, in kind speech or caress,Than if my life-blood I should give.For good is God's prerogative,And Love's deed is but to prepareThe flatter'd, dear Belov'd to dareAcceptance of His gifts. When firstOn me your happy beauty burst,Honoria, verily it seem'dThat naught beyond you could be dream'dOf beauty and of heaven's delight.Zeal of an unknown infiniteYet bade me ever wish you moreBeatified than e'er before.Angelical, were your repliesTo my prophetic flatteries;And sweet was the compulsion strongThat drew me in the course alongOf heaven's increasing bright allure,With provocations fresh of yourVictorious capacity.Whither may love, so fledged, not fly?Did not mere Earth hold fast the stringOf this celestial soaring thing,So measure and make sensitive,And still, to the nerves, nice notice giveOf each minutest incrementOf such interminable ascent,The heart would lose all count, and beatUnconscious of a height so sweet,And the spirit-pursuing senses strainTheir steps on the starry track in vain!But, reading now the note just come,With news of you, the babes, and home,I think, and say, 'To-morrow eveWith kisses me will she receive;'And, thinking, for extreme delightOf love's extremes, I laugh outright.
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