Poems by William Dean Howells Part 17

A ROMANCE OF TRAVEL.

1862.

BERTHA--_Writing from Venice_.

I.

On your heart I feign myself fallen--ah, heavier burden, Darling, of sorrow and pain than ever shall rest there! I take you Into these friendless arms of mine, that you cannot escape me; Closer and closer I fold you, and tell you all, and you listen Just as you used at home, and you let my sobs and my silence Speak, when the words will not come--and you understand and forgive me.

--Ah! no, no! but I write, with the wretched bravado of distance, What you must read unmoved by the pity too far for entreaty.

II.

Well, I could never have loved him, but when he sought me and asked me,-- When to the men that offered their lives, the love of a woman Seemed so little to give!--I promised the love that he asked me, Sent him to war with my kiss on his lips, and thought him my hero.

Afterward came the doubt, and out of long question, self-knowledge,-- Came that great defeat, and the heart of the nation was withered; Mine leaped high with the awful relief won of death. But the horror, Then, of the crime that was wrought in that guilty moment of rapture,-- Guilty as if my will had winged the bullet that struck him,-- Clung to me day and night, and dreaming I saw him forever, Looking through battle-smoke with sorrowful eyes of upbraiding, Or, in the moonlight lying gray, or dimly approaching, Holding toward me his arms, that still held nearer and nearer, Folded about me at last ... and I would I had died in the fever!-- Better then than now, and better than ever hereafter!

III.

Weary as some illusion of fever to me was the ocean-- Storm-swept, scourged with bitter rains, and wandering always Onward from sky to sky with endless processions of surges, Knowing not life nor death, but since the light was, the first day, Only enduring unrest till the darkness possess it, the last day.

Over its desolate depths we voyaged away from all living: All the world behind us waned into vaguest remoteness; Names, and faces, and scenes recurred like that broken remembrance Of the anterior, bodiless life of the spirit,--the trouble Of a bewildered brain, or the touch of the Hand that created,-- And when the ocean ceased at last like a faded illusion, Europe itself seemed only a vision of eld and of sadness.

Naught but the dark in my soul remained to me constant and real, Growing and taking the thoughts bereft of happier uses, Blotting all sense of lapse from the days that with swift iteration Were and were not. They fable the bright days the fleetest: These that had nothing to give, that had nothing to bring or to promise, Went as one day alone. For me was no alternation Save from my dull despair to wild and reckless rebellion, When the regret for my sin was turned to ruthless self-pity-- When I hated him whose love had made me its victim, Through his faith and my falsehood yet claiming me. Then I was smitten With so great remorse, such grief for him, and compa.s.sion, That, if he could have come back to me, I had welcomed and loved him More than man ever was loved. Alas, for me that another Holds his place in my heart evermore! Alas, that I listened When the words, whose daring lured my spirit and lulled it, Seemed to take my blame away with my will of resistance!

Do not make haste to condemn me: my will was the will of a woman,-- Fain to be broken by love. Yet unto the last I endeavored What I could to be faithful still to the past and my penance; And as we stood that night in the old Roman garden together-- By the fountain whose pa.s.sionate tears but now had implored me In his pleading voice--and he waited my answer, I told him All that had been before of delusion and guilt, and conjured him Not to darken his fate with mine. The costly endeavor Only was subtler betrayal. O me, from the pang of confession, Sprang what strange delight, as I tore from its lurking that horror-- Brooded upon so long--with the hope that at last I might see it Through his eyes, unblurred by the tears that disordered my vision!

Oh, with what rapturous triumph I humbled my spirit before him, That he might lift me and soothe me, and make that dreary remembrance, All this confused present, seem only some sickness of fancy, Only a morbid folly, no certain and actual trouble!

If from that refuge I fled with words of too feeble denial-- Bade him hate me, with sobs that entreated his tenderest pity, Moved mute lips and left the meaningless farewell unuttered-- She that never has loved, alone can wholly condemn me.

IV.

How could he other than follow? My heart had bidden him follow, Nor had my lips forbidden; and Rome yet glimmered behind me, When my soul yearned towards his from the sudden forlornness of absence.

Everywhere his face looked from vanis.h.i.+ng glimpses of faces, Everywhere his voice reached my senses in fugitive cadence.

Sick, through the storied cities, with wretched hopes, and upbraidings Of my own heart for its hopes, I went from wonder to wonder, Blind to them all, or only beholding them wronged, and related, Through some trick of wayward thought, to myself and my trouble.

Not surprise nor regret, but a fierce, precipitate gladness Sent the blood to my throbbing heart when I found him in Venice.

"Waiting for you," he whispered; "you would so." I answered him nothing.

V.

Father, whose humor grows more silent and ever more absent (Changed in all but love for me since the death of my mother), Willing to see me contented at last, and trusting us wholly, Left us together alone in our world of love and of beauty.

So, by noon and by night, we two have wandered in Venice, Where the beautiful lives in vivid and constant caprices, Yet, where the charm is so perfect that nothing fantastic surprises More than in dreams, and one's life with the life of the city is blended In a luxurious calm, and the tumult without and beyond it Seems but the emptiest fable of vain aspiration and labor.

Yes, from all that makes this Venice sole among cities, Peerless forever,--the still lagoons that sleep in the sunlight, Lulled by their island-bells; the night's mysterious waters Lit through their shadowy depths by stems of splendor, that blossom Into the lamps that float, like flamy lotuses, over; Narrow and secret ca.n.a.ls, that dimly gleaming and glooming Under palace-walls and numberless arches of bridges, List no sound but the dip of the gondolier's oar and his warning Cried from corner to corner; the sad, superb Ca.n.a.lazzo Mirroring marvellous grandeur and beauty, and dreaming of glory Out of the empty homes of her lords departed; the footways Wandering sunless between the walls of the houses, and stealing Glimpses, through rusted cancelli, of lurking greenness of gardens, Wild-grown flowers and broken statues and mouldering frescos; Thoroughfares filled with traffic, and throngs ever ebbing and flowing To and from the heart of the city, whose pride and devotion, Lifting high the bells of St. Mark's like prayers unto heaven, Stretch a marble embrace of palaces toward the cathedral Orient, gorgeous, and flushed with color and light, like the morning!-- From the lingering waste that is not yet ruin in Venice, And her phantasmal show, through all, of being and doing-- Came a strange joy to us, untouched by regret for the idle Days without yesterdays that died into nights without morrows.

Here, in our paradise of love we reigned, new-created, As in the youth of the world, in the days before evil and conscience.

Ah! in our fair, lost world was neither fearing nor doubting, Neither the sickness of old remorse nor the gloom of foreboding,-- Only the glad surrender of all individual being Unto him whom I loved, and in whose tender possession, Fate-free, my soul reposed from its anguish.

--Of these things I write you As of another's experience; part of my own they no longer Seem to me now, through the doom that darkens the past like the future.

VI.

Golden the sunset gleamed, above the city behind us, Out of a city of clouds as fairy and lovely as Venice, While we looked at the fis.h.i.+ng-tails of purple and yellow Far on the rim of the sea, whose light and musical surges Broke along the sands with a faint, reiterant sadness.

But, when the sails had darkened into black wings, through the twilight Sweeping away into night--past the broken tombs of the Hebrews Homeward we sauntered slowly, through dew-sweet, blossomy alleys; So drew near the boat by errant and careless approaches, Entered, and left with indolent pulses the Lido behind us.

All the sunset had paled, and the campanili of Venice Rose like the masts of a mighty fleet moored there in the water.

Lights flashed furtively to and fro through the deepening twilight.

Ma.s.sed in one thick shade lay the Gardens; the numberless islands Lay like shadows upon the lagoons. And on us as we loitered By their enchanted coasts, a spell of ineffable sweetness Fell and made us at one with them; and silent and blissful Shadows we seemed, that drifted on through a being of shadow, Vague, indistinct to ourselves, unbounded by hope or remembrance.

Yet we knew the beautiful night, as it grew from the evening: Far beneath us and far above us the vault of the heavens Glittered and darkened; and now the moon, that had haunted the daylight Thin and pallid, dimmed the stars with her fulness of splendor, And over all the lagoons fell the silvery rain of the moonbeams, As in the song the young girls sang while their gondolas pa.s.sed us,-- Sang in the joy of love, or youth's desire of loving.

Balmy night of the South! O perfect night of the Summer!

Night of the distant dark, of the near and tender effulgence!-- How from my despair are thy peace and loveliness frightened!

For, while our boat lay there at the will of the light undulations, Idle as if our mood imbued and controlled it, yet ever Seeming to bear us on athwart those s.h.i.+ning expanses Out to s.h.i.+ning seas beyond pursuit or returning-- There, while we lingered, and lingered, and would not break from our rapture, Down the mirrored night another gondola drifted Nearer and slowly nearer our own, and moonlighted faces Stared. And that sweet trance grew a rigid and dreadful possession, Which, if no dream indeed, yet mocked with such semblance of dreaming, That, as it happens in dreams, when a dear face, stooping to kiss us, Takes, ere the lips have touched, some malign and horrible aspect, _His_ face faded away, and the face of the Dead--of that other-- Flashed on mine, and writhing, through every change of emotion,-- Wild amaze and scorn, accusation and pitiless mocking,-- Vanished into the swoon whose blackness encompa.s.sed and hid me.

PHILIP--_To Bertha_.

I am not sure, I own, that if first I had seen my delusion When I saw _you_, last night, I should be so ready to give you Now your promises back, and hold myself nothing above you, That it is mine to offer a freedom you never could ask for.

Yet, believe me, indeed, from no bitter heart I release you: You are as free of me now as though I had died in the battle, Or as I never had lived. Nay, if it is mine to forgive you, Go without share of the blame that could hardly be all upon your side.

Ghosts are not sensitive things; yet, after my death in the papers, Sometimes a harrowing doubt a.s.sailed this impalpable essence: Had I done so well to plead my cause at that moment, When your consent must be yielded less to the lover than soldier?

"Not so well," I was answered by that ethereal conscience Ghosts have about them, "and not so n.o.bly or wisely as might be."

--Truly, I loved you, then, as now I love you no longer.

I was a prisoner then, and this doubt in the languor of sickness Came; and it clung to my convalescence, and grew to the purpose, After my days of captivity ended, to seek you and solve it, And, if I haply had erred, to undo the wrong, and release you.

Well, you have solved me the doubt. I dare to trust that you wept me, Just a little, at first, when you heard of me dead in the battle?

For we were plighted, you know, and even in this saintly humor, I would scarce like to believe that my loss had merely relieved you.

Yet, I say, it was prudent and well not to wait for my coming Back from the dead. If it may be I sometimes had cherished a fancy That I had won some right to the palm with the pang of the martyr,-- Fondly intended, perhaps, some splendor of self-abnegation,-- Doubtless all that was a folly which merciful chances have spared me.

No, I am far from complaining that Circ.u.mstance coolly has ordered Matters of tragic fate in such a commonplace fas.h.i.+on.

How do I know, indeed, that the easiest isn't the best way?

Friendly adieux end this note, and our little comedy with it.

f.a.n.n.y--_To Clara_.

I.

Yes, I promised to write, but how shall I write to you, darling?

Venice we reached last Monday, wild for ca.n.a.ls and for color, Palaces, prisons, lagoons, and gondolas, bravoes, and moonlight, All the mysterious, dreadful, beautiful things in existence.

Fred had joined us at Naples, insuff'rably knowing and travelled, Wise in the prices of things and great at tempestuous bargains, Rich in the costly nothing our youthful travellers buy here, At a prodigious outlay of time and money and trouble; Utter confusion of facts, and talking the wildest of pictures,-- Pyramids, battle-fields, bills, and examinations of luggage, Pa.s.sports, policemen, porters, and how he got through his tobacco,-- Ignorant, handsome, full-bearded, brown, and good-natured as ever: Annie thinks him perfect, and I well enough for a brother.

Also, a friend of Fred's came with us from Naples to Venice; And, altogether, I think, we are rather agreeable people, For we've been taking our pleasure at all times in perfect good-humor; Which is an excellent thing that you'll understand when you've travelled, Seen Recreation dead-beat and cross, and learnt what a burden Frescos, for instance, can be, and, in general, what an affliction Life is apt to become among the antiques and old masters.

Venice we've thoroughly done, and it's perfectly true of the pictures-- t.i.tians and Tintorettos, and Palmas and Paul Veroneses; Neither are gondolas fictions, but verities, hea.r.s.e-like and swan-like, Quite as the heart could wish. And one finds, to one's infinite comfort, Venice just as unique as one's fondest visions have made it: Palaces and mosquitoes rise from the water together, And, in the city's streets, the salt-sea is ebbing and flowing Several inches or more.

--Ah! let me not wrong thee, O Venice!

Fairest, forlornest, and saddest of all the cities, and dearest!

Dear, for my heart has won here deep peace from cruel confusion; And in this lucent air, whose night is but tenderer noon-day, Fear is forever dead, and hope has put on the immortal!

--There! and you need not laugh. I'm coming to something directly.

One thing: I've bought you a chain of the famous fabric of Venice-- Something peculiar and quaint, and of such a delicate texture That you must wear it embroidered upon a riband of velvet, If you would have the effect of its exquisite fineness and beauty.

"Isn't it very frail?" I asked of the workman who made it.

"Strong enough, if you will, to bind a lover, signora,"-- With an expensive smile. 'Twas bought near the Bridge of Rialto.

(Shylock, you know.) In our shopping, Aunt May and Fred do the talking: Fred begins always in French, with the most delicious effront'ry, Only to end in profoundest humiliation and English.

Aunt, however, scorns to speak any tongue but Italian: "Quanto per these ones here?" and "What did you say was the prezzo?"

"Ah! troppo caro! _Too much!_ No, no! Don't I _tell_ you it's troppo?"

All the while insists that the gondolieri shall show us What she calls t.i.tian's palazzo, and pines for the house of Oth.e.l.lo.