Lucile | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by Donald Lainson, [email protected].

LUCILE
by Owen Meredith

"Why, let the stricken deer go weep. The hart ungalled play: For some
must watch, while some must sleep; Thus runs the world away."
Hamlet.

DEDICATION.
TO MY FATHER.
I dedicate to you a work, which is submitted to the public with a
diffidence and hesitation proportioned to the novelty of the effort it
represents. For in this poem I have abandoned those forms of verse

with which I had most familiarized my thoughts, and have endeavored
to follow a path on which I could discover no footprints before me,
either to guide or to warn.
There is a moment of profound discouragement which succeeds to
prolonged effort; when, the labor which has become a habit having
ceased, we miss the sustaining sense of its companionship, and stand,
with a feeling of strangeness and embarrassment, before the abrupt and
naked result. As regards myself, in the present instance, the force of all
such sensations is increased by the circumstances to which I have
referred. And in this moment of discouragement and doubt, my heart
instinctively turns to you, from whom it has so often sought, from
whom it has never failed to receive, support.
I do not inscribe to you this book because it contains anything that is
worthy of the beloved and honored name with which I thus seek to
associate it; nor yet because I would avail myself of a vulgar pretext to
display in public an affection that is best honored by the silence which
it renders sacred.
Feelings only such as those with which, in days when there existed for
me no critic less gentle than yourself, I brought to you my childish
manuscripts; feelings only such as those which have, in later years,
associated with your heart all that has moved or occupied my
own,--lead me once more to seek assurance from the grasp of that hand
which has hitherto been my guide and comfort through the life I owe to
you.
And as in childhood, when existence had no toil beyond the day's
simple lesson, no ambition beyond the neighboring approval of the
night, I brought to you the morning's task for the evening's sanction, so
now I bring to you this self-appointed taskwork of maturer years; less
confident indeed of your approval, but not less confident of your love;
and anxious only to realize your presence between myself and the
public, and to mingle with those severer voices to whose final sentence
I submit my work the beloved and gracious accents of your own.
OWEN MEREDITH.

LUCILE

PART I.
CANTO I.
I.
LETTER FROM THE COMTESSE DE NEVERS TO LORD
ALFRED VARGRAVE.
"I hear from Bigorre you are there. I am told You are going to marry
Miss Darcy. Of old, So long since you may have forgotten it now
(When we parted as friends, soon mere strangers to grow), Your last
words recorded a pledge--what you will-- A promise--the time is now
come to fulfil. The letters I ask you, my lord, to return, I desire to
receive from your hand. You discern My reasons, which, therefore, I
need not explain. The distance to Luchon is short. I remain A month in
these mountains. Miss Darcy, perchance, Will forego one brief page
from the summer romance Of her courtship, and spare you one day
from your place At her feet, in the light of her fair English face. I desire
nothing more, and trust you will feel I desire nothing much. "Your
friend always, "LUCILE."
II.
Now in May Fair, of course,--in the fair month of May-- When life is
abundant, and busy, and gay: When the markets of London are noisy
about Young ladies, and strawberries,--"only just out;" Fresh
strawberries sold under all the house-eaves, And young ladies on sale
for the strawberry-leaves: When cards, invitations, and three-cornered
notes Fly about like white butterflies--gay little motes In the sunbeam
of Fashion; and even Blue Books Take a heavy-wing'd flight, and grow
busy as rooks; And the postman (that Genius, indifferent and stern,

Who shakes out even-handed to all, from his urn, Those lots which so
often decide