IV. ISOLATION. TO MARGUERITE.
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e were apart: yet, day by day,I bade my heart more constant be.I bade it keep the world away,And grow a home for only thee;Nor feared but thy love likewise grew,Like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The fault was grave! I might have known,What far too soon, alas! I learned,--The heart can bind itself alone,And faith may oft be unreturned.Self-swayed our feelings ebb and swell.Thou lov’st no more. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!--And thou, thou lonely heart,Which never yet without remorseEven for a moment didst departFrom thy remote and spherèd courseTo haunt the place where passions reign,--Back to thy solitude again! Back! with the conscious thrill of shameWhich Luna felt, that summer-night,Flash through her pure immortal frame,When she forsook the starry heightTo hang o’er Endymion’s sleepUpon the pine-grown Latmian steep. Yet she, chaste queen, had never provedHow vain a thing is mortal love,Wandering in heaven, far removed;But thou hast long had place to proveThis truth,--to prove, and make thine own:“Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.” Or, if not quite alone, yet theyWhich touch thee are unmating things,--Ocean and clouds and night and day;Lorn autumns and triumphant springs;And life, and others’ joy and pain,And love, if love, of happier men. Of happier men; for they, at least,Have _dreamed_ two human hearts might blendIn one, and were through faith releasedFrom isolation without endProlonged; nor knew, although not lessAlone than thou, their loneliness.
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