Outgrown

Dear, the pang is brief.

Do thy part,

Have thy pleasure! How perplexed

Grows belief!

Well, this cold clay clod

Was man's heart:

Crumble it, and what comes next?

Is it God?

999

Robert Browning [1812-1889]

OUTGROWN

NAY, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle; her love she has simply outgrown:

One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own.

Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There is much that my heart would say;

And you know we were children together, have quarreled and "made up" in play.

And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth,

As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our earlier youth.

Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the selfsame plane,

Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls should be parted again.

She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom of her life's early May;

And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day.

Nature never stands still, nor souls either: they ever go up or go down;

And hers has been steadily soaring-but how has it been with your own?

She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year:

The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere!

For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago,

Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves

is to grow.

Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer: but their vision is clearer as well;

Her voice has a tenderer cadence, but is pure as a silver bell.

Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked:

The white robes she wears are less white than the spirits with whom she has walked.

And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too, aspired and prayed?

Have

you looked upon

it undismayed?

evil unsullied? Have you conquered

Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and

the years have rolled on?

Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph of victory won?

Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood

Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood?

Go measure yourself by her standard; look back on the years that have fled:

Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that the love of her girlhood is dead.

She cannot look down to her lover: her love, like her soul,

aspires;

He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle

its holy fires.

A Tragedy

ΙΟΟΙ

Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship I have ventured to tell you the truth,

As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly as I might in our earlier

youth.

Julia C. R. Dorr [1825

A TRAGEDY

AMONG his books he sits all day
To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,

His silly, stupid wife;

The world seems tasteless, dead and done—
An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
Of light upon the lawn;

I sometimes walk and watch it there
Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
The books he loves to read;

I only have a heart and hand
He does not seem to need.

He calls me "Child"-lays on my hair
Thin fingers, cold and mild;

Oh! God of Love, who answers prayer,

I wish I were a child!

And no one sees and no one knows
(He least would know or see),
That ere Love gathers next year's rose

Death will have gathered me.

Edith Nesbit [1858

LEFT BEHIND

IT was the autumn of the year;

The strawberry-leaves were red and sere;
October's airs were fresh and chill,
When, pausing on the windy hill,
The hill that overlooks the sea,
You talked confidingly to me,-
Me whom your keen, artistic sight
Has not yet learned to read aright,
Since I have veiled my heart from you,
And loved you better than you knew.

You told me of your toilsome past;
The tardy honors won at last,
The trials borne, the conquests gained,
The longed-for boon of Fame attained;
I knew that every victory

But lifted you away from me,
That every step of high emprise
But left me lowlier in your eyes;
I watched the distance as it grew,
And loved you better than you knew.

You did not see the bitter trace
Of anguish sweep across my face;
You did not hear my proud heart beat,
Heavy and slow, beneath your feet;
You thought of triumphs still unwon,
Of glorious deeds as yet undone;
And I, the while you talked to me,
I watched the gulls float lonesomely,

Till lost amid the hungry blue,

And loved you better than you knew.

You walk the sunny side of fate;

The wise world smiles, and calls you great;

The golden fruitage of success

Drops at your feet in plenteousness;

And you have blessings manifold:—

Renown and power and friends and gold,—

The Forsaken Merman

They build a wall between us twain,
Which may not be thrown down again,
Alas! for I, the long years through,
Have loved you better than you knew.

Your life's proud aim, your art's high truth,
Have kept the promise of your youth;

And while you won the crown, which now
Breaks into bloom upon your brow,
My soul cried strongly out to you
Across the ocean's yearning blue,
While, unremembered and afar,
I watched you, as I watch a star
Through darkness struggling into view,
And loved you better than you knew.

I used to dream in all these years
Of patient faith and silent tears,

That Love's strong hand would put aside
The barriers of place and pride,

Would reach the pathless darkness through,
And draw me softly up to you;

But that is past. If you should stray
Beside my grave, some future day,
Perchance the violets o'er my dust
Will half betray their buried trust,
And say, their blue eyes full of dew,
"She loved you better than you knew."

1003

Elizabeth Akers [1832-1911]

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN

COME, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!