The intuitive decision of a bright And thorough-edged intellect to part Error from crime a prudence to withholdThe laws of marriage character'd in gold Upon the blanched tablets of her heart A love still burning upward giving light To read those laws an accent very low In blandishment, but a most silver flow Of subtle-paced counsel in distress, Right to the heart and brain, though undescried, Winning its way with extreme gentleness Thro' all the outworks of suspicious pride — A courage to endure and to obey – A hate of gossip parlance, and of sway, The queen of marriage, a most perfect wife. The mellow'd reflex of a winter moon A clear stream flowing with a muddy one, Till in its onward current it absorbs With swifter movement and in purer light The vexed eddies of its wayward brother — A leaning and upbearing parasite, Clothing the stem, which else had fallen quite, With cluster'd flower-bells and ambrosial orbs, Of rich fruit-bunches leaning on each other— Shadow forth thee:-the world hath not another (Though all her fairest forms are types of thee, And thou of God in thy great charity) Of such a finish'd chasten'd purity. MARIANA. "Mariana in the moated grange."— Measure for Measure. I. WITH blackest moss the flower-plots Were thickly crusted, one and all, That held the peach to the garden-wall. Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange, She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary; I would that I were dead!" II. Her tears fell with the dews at even; Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide. After the flitting of the bats, When thickest dark did trance the sky, She drew her casement-curtain by, And glanced athwart the glooming flats. She only said, "The night is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!" III. Upon the middle of the night, Waking she heard the night-fowl crow : The cock sung out an hour ere light: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her without hope of change, : In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn About the lonely moated grange. She only said, "The day is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!" IV. About a stone-cast from the wall A sluice with blacken'd waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small, Hard by a poplar shook alway, All silver-green with gnarled bark, She only said, "My life is dreary, I would that I were dead!" |