And knowing that the coming days
Would strip her features of their mask,
That duty then would speak her praise,
And love become a loyal task,
Save he should find beneath the glaze
His fiery love of her had spread,
Diviner things he had not seen,
She feared her woman's heart and head
Were armed with charms and powers too mean
To win the boon she coveted.
But still she saw and held her plan,
And fear made way for springing hope.
If she was man's, then hers was man:
Both held their own in even scope;
And then and there her life began.
LOVE'S PHILOSOPHIES.
I.
A wife is like an unknown sea;--
Least known to him who thinks he knows
Where all the shores of promise be,
Where lie the islands of repose,
And where the rocks that he must flee.
Capricious winds, uncertain tides,
Drive the young sailor on and on,
Till all his charts and all his guides
Prove false, and vain conceit is gone,
And only docile love abides.
Where lay the shallows of the maid,
No plummet line the wife may sound;
Where round the sunny islands played
The pulses of the great profound,
Lies low the treacherous everglade.
And sailing, he becomes, perforce,
Discoverer of a lovely world;
And finds, whate'er may be his course,
Green lands within white seas impearled,
And streams of unsuspected source
Which feed with gold delicious fruits,
Kept by unguessed Hesperides,
Or cool the lips of gentle brutes
That breed and browse among the trees
Whose wind-tossed limbs and leaves are lutes,
The maiden free, the maiden wed,
Can never, never be the same.
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