Vanity Fair

“It is not that speech of yesterday,” he continued, “which moves you. That is but the pretext, Amelia, or I have loved you and watched you for fifteen years in vain. Have I not learned in that time to read all your feelings and look into your thoughts? I know what your heart is capable of: it can cling faithfully to a recollection and cherish a fancy, but it can’t feel such an attachment as mine deserves to mate with, and such as I would have won from a woman more generous than you. No, you are not worthy of the love which I have devoted to you. I knew all along that the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning; that I was a fool, with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your little feeble remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw. I find no fault with you. You are very good- natured, and have done your best, but you couldn’t—you couldn’t reach up to the height of the attachment which I bore you, and which a loftier soul than yours might have been proud to share. Good-bye, Amelia! I have watched your struggle. Let it end. We are both weary of it.”

Amelia stood scared and silent as William thus suddenly broke the chain by which she held him and declared his independence and superiority. He had placed himself at her feet so long that the poor little woman had been accustomed to trample upon him. She didn’t wish to marry him, but she wished to keep him. She wished to give him nothing, but that he should give her all. It is a bargain not unfrequently levied in love.

Nothing much seems to change!

Nothing much seems to change!
She sat there, looking at the sea.
The bows were swaying lest
Her brows break a sweat disturbing.
The lapping waves were gentle on the pier
Lest a drop of them touches her skin silky.
The birds were quiet, unusually,
May not their flapping break this moment for me.
Seems they were moved too to rapture then.
I had a seen a perfect picture alive.
She turned around and our souls met.
I made her mine and it became perfection.
I knew not what the look meant.
The bleakness of the lone shore was gone,
The yearnings seem to have fled to where
I was headed. Toward a perfect love.
Yes, she loves you, you vastness, I know.
You will live to feel it again, while I will go.
To the next life, away this one fulfilled.
It is dullness now, it is dullness now.

Was it you?

Who lent fire to my wings?
When I was an ugly duckiling,
Paddling hard below the waterline.
When I was awkward and shy
To fly, to explore and to express.

I am now a falcon, that
Roves the skies in proud loneliness
The sky too big for its strength
The earth too low to fly about.
The roar of the winds yet sways it not.

The sea is too wide for this ship.
Yet it chugs on its course straight
The dawns and the dusks occur on it
As late as nature ordains a change.
The storms never have their say.

This vista never changed but, for ages.
The same gliding beauty across the
Vast plain made live by the deep river.
The beholder far across on the horizon
Never noticed to protest the dull skyline.

But the book keeps the poetry flowing.
The verses never wavered in purpose.
You keep occurring in them
Like the sun and the moon,
Lighting up those bleak passages.

Was it you then?

The Dusk's Doing

I was riding down the slippery road
When I thought to compose this ode.
The sun was setting into the abyss
When I realized my heart amiss.
The flies were all around, with
The dance seeking the light of death.
Life was all around me, rejoice galore.
Another day stolen from the embracing
Goddess of death, escaped bracing.
The drizzle was talking to me verses
My lips were singing the praises
My hands were raised to salute
The music that flowed from the flute.
Oh what beauty I saw in the dusk.
To the heavens my heart bounds
When pray the mind is unbound.
Isn’t it all in the mind
Our world and our way?