Stay! As I now behold thee remain thou evermore in my memory!
From thy lips the last inspired sound hath burst forth--thine eyes do
not gleam and flash, they are dusky, weighted with happiness, with the
blissful consciousness of that beauty to which thou hast succeeded in
giving expression,--of that beauty in quest of which thou stretchest
forth, as it were, thy triumphant, thine exhausted hands!
What light, more delicate and pure than the sunlight, hath been diffused
over all thy limbs, over the tiniest folds of thy garments?
What god, with his caressing inflatus, hath tossed back thy dishevelled
curls?
His kiss burneth on thy brow, grown pale as marble!
Here it is--the open secret, the secret of poetry, of life, of love!
Here it is, here it is--immortality! There is no other immortality--and
no other is needed.--At this moment thou art deathless.
I will pass,--and again thou art a pinch of dust, a woman, a child....
But what is that to thee!--At this moment thou hast become loftier than
all transitory, temporal things, thou hast stepped out of their
sphere.--This _thy_ moment will never end.
Stay! And let me be the sharer of thy immortality, drop into my soul the
reflection of thine eternity!
November, 1879.