What with trusting myself and seeking support from within me, Almost I could believe I had gained a religious assurance, Formed in my own poor soul a great moral basis to rest on.
Ah, but indeed I see, I feel it factitious entirely;I refuse, reject, and put it utterly from me;I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them;Fact shall be fact for me, and the Truth the Truth as ever, Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful.-Off, and depart to the void, thou subtle, fanatical tempter!
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I shall behold thee again (is it so?) at a new visitation, O ill genius thou! I shall at my life's dissolution (When the pulses are weak, and the feeble light of the reason Flickers, an unfed flame retiring slow from the socket), Low on a sick-bed laid, hear one, as it were, at the doorway, And, looking up, see thee standing by, looking emptily at me;I shall entreat thee then, though now I dare to refuse thee,--Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying.--Well, I will see thee again, and while I can, will repel thee.
VI. Claude to Eustace.
Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken, Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost il Moro;--Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice.
I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit Moping and mourning here,--for her, and myself much smaller.
Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?
Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour, And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy, Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour?
All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome nor Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the Wreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor.
Whither depart the brave?--God knows; I certainly do not.
VII. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.
He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it.
You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him, If he perhaps should return;--but that is surely unlikely.
Has he not written to you?--he did not know your direction.
Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going!
Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you.
If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so?
Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?--O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!--You have written to Florence;--your friends would certainly find him.
Might you not write to him ?--but yet it is so little likely!
I shall expect nothing more.--Ever yours, your affectionate Mary.
VIII. Claude to Eustace.
I cannot stay at Florence, not even to wait for a letter.
Galleries only oppress me. Remembrance of hope I had cherished (Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first time)Lies like a sword in my soul. I am more a coward than ever, Chicken-hearted, past thought. The caffes and waiters distress me.
All is unkind, and, alas! I am ready for anyone's kindness.
Oh, I knew it of old, and knew it, I thought, to perfection, If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness It is the need of it,--it is this sad, self-defeating dependence.
Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you.
But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose.
All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something.
Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, Is not I WILL, but I MUST. I must,--I must,--and I do it.
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After all, do I know that I really cared so about her?