Come, have you written anything of late?
What, poet, not a sonnet, good or bad?
Hand me that purple volume from the shelf!
Not Tennyson—the next—a poet too—
The gentler Browning; how I hoard them both!
You've read her masterpiece-her Geraldine?
Her Duchess May-that has the antique ring?
She's great, because she's earnest.
Throbs through her sentences, and so they live.
LINA. Ah, here's a poem that is talked of much;
You know it surely-Bertha in the Lane?
What think you of it? Sure you know it, sister?
The tale's a wild one-
-not a jot from life-
It must be fancied. On her dying bed,
The elder of two sisters,-as 'twere I,
You listening, sobs into the younger's ears
The untold sorrow that had made her die,
Heart-broken-how, hedge-hidden, in the lane
That names the tale, her own betroth'd she heard
Wooing her sister-both so false to her;
How she had locked this sorrow in her heart
From all but heaven, and in her tender love
For this false sister, she had made them one,
And died to bless them,-blessing them, content.
What think you of the story? Vivian, you?
Surely a touching one, with tenderest love,
And woman's noblest teachings over-brimm'd;
One to fill eyes with purifying tears,
And leave all hearts but better'd? Come,-I'd hear
A poet's judgment of a poet's tale;
Mind, of the tale-the story; for its form,
Spare our poor ears a talk of rhymes and rules
Obey'd or broken.
But echo your opinion? Who can praise
Of angel meekness? Who can
This patient sufferer was no puling fool
To take her wrongs so lightly? Do you so?
What thinks our Helen? Does she think so too?
What not a word? Why, it is but a tale
We talk of, sister-it is but a tale;
There never was a sister was so false.
Nor ever yet a man, forsworn, so base
As to make a sister turn a sister's days
To bitterness. Have you a word for them?
VIVIAN. O Lina, Lina, 'tis an erring world,
A world where all must suffer and forgive
Much-evil, call it—who would win to heaven.
And for this story that this poet tells,
Might there not, Lina, might there not be said
Something-a something even for those who erred?
Say that a man who thinks he truly loves,
And in that thought has pledged his faith to one,
While yet he can change
The whole earth is truth's altar. Palter not;
There's not an instant but we front a God,
Here-everywhere. Think you think you that heaven,
Heaven asks of where and when a lie is lied,
And holds speech nothing, spoken in the sight of God,
And for eternity, false-true or false
As eternity shall teach each soul to learn?
O palter not; faith plighted 'neath a roof,
On some square feet, made holy by a priest,
Is not a whit more damning, being broke,
Than troth sworn freely elsewhere on God's earth,
That God has blessed and sanctified himself.
VIVIAN. I did not say I did not blame
Loathe-hate- -curse-curse
But fouler in the sister, base of heart
(Give me that water!) she that did not spurn him
At the first breath of his baseness, but could plot,
And plot, and plot, against a sister's heart,
Stealing the very thing that made life sweet,
Without which life were but a thirst for the grave,
And days but lived for vengeance.
VIVIAN.
Look! your sister faints!
Helen-sweet Helen-drink, sweet Helen-Helen!
Sprinkle her forehead-Lina-Lina—mercy !
LINA. Mercy? I? Why it's but a poet's tale―
Is't not-we talked of? You excusing breach
Of oaths, and those who broke them-I but speaking
Even as my nature prompts me ;—I'm not one,
You know, for boudoir nicety of phrase-
And spoke, in natural words, what such a baseness
Would move me to-not being perfection quite,
And weakness, like this wonder in the song,
But a mere woman- —flesh, and blood, and fire—
That, stung, will sting, and trodden on, will turn.
It moved her strangely, though. What could so move her?
Well, here's Ninette, and, as I like not scenes,
I'll to the sunshine, and henceforth take care
To criticize my favourites and their songs,
Seeing we treat them so as if they were truths,
By myself. Au revoir! see-she's coming to.
'Tis a neat little garret au sixième; cares
Don't trouble themselves to mount so many stairs.
So it's said by Béranger and others in song;
Well, sometimes they're right perhaps, but sometimes they're wrong.
O quite of the people are sorrow and
As soon as to palaces, here they'll come in.
St. Antoine's as dear to them—ay, just as dear
As the gilded saloons of the Tuileries near.
In fact, though they home with the Emperor I grant,
They just as soon hobnob with misery and want.
Here now, perhaps, to this still little home,
With its bed in the corner, they've recently come.
Though you'd doubt it, to look at the two figures there,
Who motionless sit with a strange vacant air.
Hand in hand, two quaint maskers, a girl and boy, young,
Too tired to undress, there themselves they have flung.
As they danced from to-night's ball, and yelled through the street,
Quainter masks in our Paris you'd not often meet.
He, a skeleton-she-here all whims are allowed—
The semblance of death, in her straight-flowing shroud.
How still there and ghastly they sit, and how deep
And terrible, one scarce knows why, is their sleep!
There they sit gay and blank-eyed. and never they move;
Ah! if not mere slumber, but death it should prove!
How merrily through the mad dances they'd flown,
As if they but lived for wild frolic alone!
But as they out-did even the wildest, they knew
"Twas the last masked ball that their eyes would view.
He was a student-a milliner she;
Three years or so since they met in a spree.
You know well our Paris-our quartier well;
A student yourself once, its ways need I tell?
They struck up a friendship forthwith-Celestine
And Auguste-and at night never separate were seen.
When his lectures were finished-her day's work was done,
Their day then began, with the moon for their sun.
Then for living,—they didn't hold living the rest;
Then only they lived when together and blessed.
And a student and grisette, you know, knowing such,
To make them supremely blest never need much.
A few francs for a dinner and vin ordinaire,
Then for pleasure and mad frolic just anywhere.
A roam round the Boulevards, quays, or lit streets,
Where surely the eye something wonderful meets.
As a conjuror's marvels with cup and brass ball,
Or five piled-up tumblers—a child high on all.
Even the streets are amusing-the crowds and the fops,
The faces-the dresses-the cafés-the shops.
Or, if on the quays, you stay, once and again,
To see the moon silver Notre Dame and the Seine.
Then the Champs Elysées are Elysian with lights,
And buzzing with chatter and heavenly with sights.
And the Cafés Chantant with light jest and laugh ring,
Except when the talkers are hushed while they sing.
Then the play—the Porte Martin-the Opera Comique,
These, when francs can be found for them, often they seek.
But the dances--the balls at the Château Mabille !
Always there there the full rush of young life they feel.
Never dull there or weary—at care there they scoff;
If they know him elsewhere, here he's waltz'd or polk'd off.
But the Carnival-heaven of all heavens! we ask
Why joy should be trebly joy under a mask?
And can't tell; but that 'tis so no one can deny,
If seeming saints do so
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