Amours De Voyage Part 3

Drive me not out yet, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden, Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration!

Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ, Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort, Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?

XIII. Claude to Eustace.

Wherefore and how I am certain, I hardly can tell; but it IS so.

She doesn't like me, Eustace; I think she never will like me.

Is it my fault, as it is my misfortune, my ways are not her ways?

Is it my fault, that my habits and modes are dissimilar wholly?

'Tis not her fault; 'tis her nature, her virtue, to misapprehend them: 'Tis not her fault; 'tis her beautiful nature, not ever to know me.

Hopeless it seems,--yet I cannot, though hopeless, determine to leave it: She goes--therefore I go; she moves,--I move, not to lose her.

XIV. Claude to Eustace.

Oh, 'tisn't manly, of course, 'tisn't manly, this method of wooing; 'Tisn't the way very likely to win. For the woman, they tell you, Ever prefers the audacious, the wilful, the vehement hero; She has no heart for the timid, the sensitive soul; and for knowledge,-- Knowledge, O ye G.o.ds!--when did they appreciate knowledge?

Wherefore should they, either? I am sure I do not desire it.

Ah, and I feel too, Eustace, she cares not a t.i.ttle about me!

(Care about me, indeed! and do I really expect it?) But my manner offends; my ways are wholly repugnant; Every word that I utter estranges, hurts, and repels her; Every moment of bliss that I gain, in her exquisite presence, Slowly, surely, withdraws her, removes her, and severs her from me.

Not that I care very much!--any way I escape from the boy's own Folly, to which I am p.r.o.ne, of loving where it is easy.

Not that I mind very much! Why should I? I am not in love, and Am prepared, I think, if not by previous habit, Yet in the spirit beforehand for this and all that is like it; It is an easier matter for us contemplative creatures, Us upon whom the pressure of action is laid so lightly; We, discontented indeed with things in particular, idle, Sickly, complaining, by faith, in the vision of things in general, Manage to hold on our way without, like others around us, Seizing the nearest arm to comfort, help, and support us.

Yet, after all, my Eustace, I know but little about it.

All I can say for myself, for present alike and for past, is, Mary Trevellyn, Eustace, is certainly worth your acquaintance.

You couldn't come, I suppose, as far as Florence to see her?

XV. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ----.

...... To-morrow we're starting for Florence, Truly rejoiced, you may guess, to escape from republican terrors; Mr. C. and Papa to escort us; we by vettura Through Siena, and Georgy to follow and join us by Leghorn.

Then---- Ah, what shall I say, my dearest? I tremble in thinking!

You will imagine my feelings,--the blending of hope and of sorrow.

How can I bear to abandon Papa and Mamma and my Sisters?

Dearest Louise, indeed it is very alarming; but, trust me Ever, whatever may change, to remain your loving Georgina.

P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.

....... 'Do I like Mr. Claude any better?'

I am to tell you,--and, 'Pray, is it Susan or I that attract him?'

This he never has told, but Georgina could certainly ask him.

All I can say for myself is, alas! that he rather repels me.

There! I think him agreeable, but also a little repulsive.

So be content, dear Louisa; for one satisfactory marriage Surely will do in one year for the family you would establish Neither Susan nor I shall afford you the joy of a second.

P.S. by Georgina Trevellyn.

Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better; He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too s.h.i.+LLY-SHALLY,-- So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matte is going on fairly.

I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something.

Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!

Is it Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer, E'en amid clamour of arms, here in the city of old, Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden, Vainly 'mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget?

Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,-- He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go!

Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee!

She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!

Canto III.

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter's, and yet to the solemn Rotunda, Mingling with heroes and G.o.ds, yet to the Vatican Walls, Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us, Gathered and fixed to all time into one roofing supreme; Yet may we, thinking on these things, exclude what is meaner around us; Yet, at the worst of the worst, books and a chamber remain; Yet may we think, and forget, and possess our souls in resistance.-- Ah, but away from the stir, shouting, and gossip of war, Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle, Where, amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind, Where, under mulberry-branches, the diligent rivulet sparkles, Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply, Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated, Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,-- Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city, Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!

I. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,--on the way to Florence.

Why doesn't Mr. Claude come with us? you ask.--We don't know, You should know better than we. He talked of the Vatican marbles; But I can't wholly believe that this was the actual reason,-- He was so ready before, when we asked him to come and escort us.

Certainly he is odd, my dear Miss Roper. To change so Suddenly, just for a whim, was not quite fair to the party,-- Not quite right. I declare, I really almost am offended: I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a t.i.tle to be so.

Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly Wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness. But, oh, my Pen will not write any more;--let us say nothing further about it.

Yes, my dear Miss Roper, I certainly called him repulsive; So I think him, but cannot be sure I have used the expression Quite as your pupil should; yet he does most truly repel me.

Was it to you I made use of the word? or who was it told you?

Yes, repulsive; observe, it is but when he talks of ideas That he is quite unaffected, and free, and expansive, and easy; I could p.r.o.nounce him simply a cold intellectual being.-- When does he make advances?--He thinks that women should woo him; Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted.

She that should love him must look for small love in return,--like the ivy On the stone wall, must expect but a rigid and n.i.g.g.ard support, and E'en to get that must go searching all round with her humble embraces.

II. Claude to Eustace,--from Rome.

Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the furrow, Did it not truly accept as its summum and ultimum bonum That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in?

Would it have force to develop and open its young cotyledons, Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another?

Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence?

While from Ma.r.s.eilles in the steamer we voyage to Civita Vecchia, Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba, Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving p.o.o.p of the vessel, Looking around on the waste of the rus.h.i.+ng incurious billows, 'This is Nature,' I said: 'we are born as it were from her waters; Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for, Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge, Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed.'

This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the p.o.o.p of the steamer; And as unthinking I sat in the hall of the famed Ariadne, Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.

It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.

Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

III. Claude to Eustace.

Farewell, Politics, utterly! What can I do? I cannot Fight, you know; and to talk I am wholly ashamed. And although I Gnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers, What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters?

Cursing and scolding repel the a.s.sailants? No, it is idle; No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it.

Let the tail s.h.i.+ft for itself; I will bury my head. And what's the Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic?

Why not fight?--In the first place, I haven't so much as a musket; In the next, if I had, I shouldn't know how I should use it; In the third, just at present I'm studying ancient marbles; In the fourth, I consider I owe my life to my country; In the fifth--I forget, but four good reasons are ample.

Meantime, pray let 'em fight, and be killed. I delight in devotion.

So that I 'list not, hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!

Sanguis martyrum s.e.m.e.n Ecclesiae; though it would seem this Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind: Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere!