On her pallid cheek and forehead came a color and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.

And she turned,—­her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs;
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes,—­

Saying, “I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;”
Saying, “Dost thou love me, cousin?” weeping, “I have loved thee long.”

Love took up the glass of time, and turned it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.

Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper thronged my pulses with the fulness of the spring.

Many an evening by the water did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.

O my cousin, shallow-hearted!  O my Amy, mine no more! 
O the dreary, dreary moorland!  O the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,—­
Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy?—­having known me; to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be:  thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy,—­think not they are glazed with wine. 
Go to him; it is thy duty,—­kiss him; take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is over wrought,—­
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand,—­
Better thou wert dead before me, though I slew thee with my hand.

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace,
Rolled in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth! 
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature’s rule
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!

Well—­’t is well that I should bluster!—­Hadst thou less unworthy proved,
Would to God—­for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit? 
I will pluck it from my bosom, though my heart be at the root.