But shall I tell her eyes more bright,
Though bright her own may beam,
Will fling a deeper spell to-night
_Upon me in my dream_?'"
I hesitated. "Let me stop here, Major Favraud, I counsel you," I
interpolated, earnestly; but he only rejoined:
"No, no! proceed, I entreat you! it is very beautiful--very touching,
too!" Speaking calmly, and slacking rein, so that the grating of the
wheels among the stems of the scarlet _lychnis_, that grew in immense
patches on our road, might not disturb his sense of hearing, which,
by-the-way, was exquisitely nice and fastidious.
"As you please, then;" and I continued the recitation.
"'How shall I woo her? I will try
The charms of olden time,
And swear by earth, and sea, and sky,
And rave in prose and rhyme--
And I will tell her, when I bent
My knee in other years,
I was not half so _eloquent_;
I could not speak--_for tears_!'"
I watched him narrowly; the spell was working now; the poet's hand was
sweeping, with a gust of power, that harp of a thousand strings, the
wondrous human heart! And I again pursued, in suppressed tones of
heart-felt emotion, the pathetic strain that he had evoked with an idea
of its frivolity alone:
"'How shall I woo her? I will bow
Before the holy shrine,
And pray the prayer, and vow the vow,
And press her lips to mine--And
I will tell her, when she starts
From passion's thrilling kiss,
That _memory_ to many hearts
Is dearer far than bliss!'"
It was reserved for the concluding verse to unnerve him completely; a
verse which I rendered with all the pathos of which I was capable, with
a view to its final effect, I confess:
"'Away! away! the chords are mute,
The bond is rent in twain;
You _cannot_ wake the silent lute,
Or clasp its links again.
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