|
From Susan: A Poem of Degrees HER Master gave the signal, with a look: | |
Then, timidly as if afraid, she took | |
In her rough hands the Laureates dainty book, | |
And straight began. But when she did begin, | |
Her own mute sense of poesy within | 5 |
Broke forth to hail the poet, and to greet | |
His graceful fancies and the accents sweet | |
In which they are expressed. Oh, lately lost, | |
Long loved, long honored, and whose Captains post | |
No living bard is competent to fill | 10 |
How strange, to the deep heart that now is still, | |
And to the vanished hand, and to the ear | |
Whose soft melodious measures are so dear | |
To us who cannot rival themhow strange, | |
If thou, the lord of such a various range, | 15 |
Hadst heard this new voice telling Ardens tale! | |
For this was no prim maiden, scant and pale, | |
Full of weak sentiment, and thin delight | |
In pretty rhymes, who mars the resonant might | |
Of noble verse with arts rhetorical | 20 |
And simulated frenzy: not at all! | |
This was a peasant woman; large and strong, | |
Redhanded, ignorant, unused to song | |
Accustomed rather to the rudest prose. | |
And yet, there lived within her rustic clothes | 25 |
A heart as true as Ardens; and a brain, | |
Keener than his, that counts it false and vain | |
To seem aught else than simply what she is. | |
How singular, her faculty of bliss! | |
Bliss in her servile work; bliss deep and full | 30 |
In things beyond the vision of the dull, | |
Whateer their rank: things beautiful as these | |
Sonorous lines and solemn harmonies | |
Suiting the tale they tell of; bliss in love | |
Ah, chiefly that! which lifts her soul above | 35 |
Its common life, and gives to labors coarse | |
Such fervor of imaginative force | |
As makes a passion of her basest toil. | |
Surely this servant-dress was but a foil | |
To her more lofty being! As she read, | 40 |
Her accent was as pure, and all she said | |
As full of interest and of varied grace | |
As were the changeful moods, that oer her face | |
Passed, like swift clouds across a windy sky, | |
At each sad stage of Enochs history. | 45 |
Such ease, such pathos, such abandonment | |
To what she uttered, moulded as she went | |
Her soft sweet voice, and with such self-control | |
Did she, interpreting the poets soul, | |
Bridle her own, that when the tale was done | 50 |
I looked at her, amazed: she seemed like one | |
Who from some sphere of music had come down, | |
And donned the white cap and the cotton gown | |
As if to show how much of skill and art | |
May dwell unthought of, in the humblest heart. | 55 |
Yet there was no great mystery to tell: | |
She felt it deeply, so she read it well. | |
|