Victories of Love | Page 4

a wide influence for good.
H. M.
THE VICTORIES OF LOVE. BOOK I.
I. FROM FREDERICK GRAHAM.
Mother, I smile at your alarms!
I own, indeed, my Cousin's charms,

But, like all nursery maladies,
Love is not badly taken twice.
Have
you forgotten Charlotte Hayes,
My playmate in the pleasant days

At Knatchley, and her sister, Anne,
The twins, so made on the same

plan,
That one wore blue, the other white,
To mark them to their
father's sight;
And how, at Knatchley harvesting,
You bade me kiss
her in the ring,
Like Anne and all the others? You,
That never of
my sickness knew,
Will laugh, yet had I the disease,
And gravely, if
the signs are these:
As, ere the Spring has any power,
The almond branch all turns to
flower,
Though not a leaf is out, so she
The bloom of life provoked
in me
And, hard till then and selfish, I
Was thenceforth nought but
sanctity
And service: life was mere delight
In being wholly good
and right,
As she was; just, without a slur;
Honouring myself no
less than her;
Obeying, in the loneliest place,
Ev'n to the slightest
gesture, grace,
Assured that one so fair, so true,
He only served that
was so too.
For me, hence weak towards the weak,
No more the
unnested blackbird's shriek
Startled the light-leaved wood; on high

Wander'd the gadding butterfly,
Unscared by my flung cap; the bee,

Rifling the hollyhock in glee,
Was no more trapp'd with his own
flower,
And for his honey slain. Her power,
From great things even
to the grass
Through which the unfenced footways pass,
Was law,
and that which keeps the law,
Cherubic gaiety and awe;
Day was
her doing, and the lark
Had reason for his song; the dark
In
anagram innumerous spelt
Her name with stars that throbb'd and felt;

'Twas the sad summit of delight
To wake and weep for her at night;

She turn'd to triumph or to shame
The strife of every childish game;

The heart would come into my throat
At rosebuds; howsoe'er
remote,
In opposition or consent,
Each thing, or person, or event,

Or seeming neutral howsoe'er,
All, in the live, electric air,
Awoke,
took aspect, and confess'd
In her a centre of unrest,
Yea, stocks and
stones within me bred
Anxieties of joy and dread.
O, bright apocalyptic sky
O'erarching childhood! Far and nigh

Mystery and obscuration none,
Yet nowhere any moon or sun!

What reason for these sighs? What hope,
Daunting with its audacious

scope
The disconcerted heart, affects
These ceremonies and
respects?
Why stratagems in everything?
Why, why not kiss her in
the ring?
'Tis nothing strange that warriors bold,
Whose fierce,
forecasting eyes behold
The city they desire to sack,
Humbly begin
their proud attack
By delving ditches two miles off,
Aware how the
fair place would scoff
At hasty wooing; but, O child,
Why thus
approach thy playmate mild?
One morning, when it flush'd my thought
That, what in me such
wonder wrought
Was call'd, in men and women, love,
And, sick
with vanity thereof,
I, saying loud, 'I love her,' told
My secret to
myself, behold
A crisis in my mystery!
For, suddenly, I seem'd to
be
Whirl'd round, and bound with showers of threads,
As when the
furious spider sheds
Captivity upon the fly
To still his buzzing till
he die;
Only, with me, the bonds that flew,
Enfolding, thrill'd me
through and through
With bliss beyond aught heaven can have,
And
pride to dream myself her slave.
A long, green slip of wilder'd land,
With Knatchley Wood on either
hand,
Sunder'd our home from hers. This day
Glad was I as I went
her way.
I stretch'd my arms to the sky, and sprang
O'er the elastic
sod, and sang
'I love her, love her!' to an air
Which with the words
came then and there;
And even now, when I would know
All was
not always dull and low,
I mind me awhile of the sweet strain
Love
taught me in that lonely lane.
Such glories fade, with no more mark

Than when the sunset dies to
dark.
They pass, the rapture and the grace
Ineffable, their only trace

A heart which, having felt no less
Than pure and perfect happiness,

Is duly dainty of delight;
A patient, poignant appetite
For
pleasures that exceed so much
The poor things which the world calls
such.
That, when these lure it, then you may
The lion with a wisp of
hay.

That Charlotte, whom we scarcely knew
From Anne but by her
ribbons blue,
Was loved, Anne less than look'd at, shows
That
liking still by favour goes!
This Love is a Divinity,
And holds his
high election free
Of human merit; or let's say,
A child by ladies
call'd to play,
But careless of their becks and wiles,
Till, seeing one
who sits and smiles
Like any else, yet only charms,
He cries to
come into her arms.
Then, for my Cousins, fear me not!
None ever
loved because he ought.
Fatal were else this graceful house,
So full
of light from ladies' brows.
There's Mary; Heaven in her appears

Like sunshine through the shower's bright tears;
Mildred's of Earth,
yet happier far
Than most men's thoughts of Heaven are;
But, for
Honoria, Heaven and Earth
Seal'd amity in her sweet birth.
The
noble Girl! With whom she talks
She knights first with her smile; she
walks,
Stands, dances, to such sweet effect,
Alone she seems to
move erect.
The brightest and the chastest brow
Rules o'er a cheek
which seems to show
That love, as a mere vague