1.
Ah, let us love while yet we may,
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.
2.
Ah, let us love, while of the fire
Time hath not yet bereft us
With years our warmer thoughts expire,
Till only ice is left us!
3.
We'll fly the bleak world's bitter air
A brighter home shall win us;
And if our hearts grow weary there,
We'll find a world within us.
4.
They preach that passion fades each hour,
That nought will pall like pleasure;
My bee, if Love's so frail a flower,
Oh, haste to hive its treasure.
5.
Wait not the hour, when all the mind
Shall to the crowd be given;
For links, which to the million bind,
Shall from the one be riven.
6.
But let us love while yet we may
Our summer is decaying;
And woe to hearts which, in their gray
December, go a-maying.
The next day Emily rose ill and feverish. In the absence of Falkland,
her mind always awoke to the full sense of the guilt she had incurred.
She had been brought up in the strictest, even the most fastidious,
principles; and her nature was so pure, that merely to err appeared like
a change in existence--like an entrance into some new and unknown world,
from which she shrank back, in terror, to herself.
Judge, then, if she easily habituated her mind to its present
degradation. She sat, that morning, pale and listless; her book lay
unopened before her; her eyes were fixed upon the ground, heavy with
suppressed tears. Mrs. St. John entered: no one else was in the room.
She sat by her, and took her hand. Her countenance was scarcely less
colourless than Emily's, but its expression was more calm and composed.
"It is not too late, Emily," she said; "you have done much that you
should repent--nothing to render repentance unavailing. Forgive me, if I
speak to you on this subject. It is time--in a few days your fate will
be decided. I have looked on, though hitherto I have been silent: I have
witnessed that eye when it dwelt upon you; I have heard that voice when
it spoke to your heart. None ever resisted their influence long: do you
imagine that you are the first who have found the power? Pardon me,
pardon me, I beseech you, my dearest friend, if I pain you. I have known
you from your childhood, and I only wish to preserve you spotless to your
old age."
Emily wept, without replying. Mrs. St. John continued to argue and
expostulate. What is so wavering as passion? When, at last, Mrs. St.
John ceased, and Emily shed upon her bosom the hot tears of her anguish
and repentance, she imagined that her resolution was taken, and that she
could almost have vowed an eternal separation from her lover; Falkland
came that evening, and she loved him more madly than before.
Mrs. St. John was not in the saloon when Falkland entered. Lady Margaret
was reading the well-known story of Lady T----- and the Duchess of ---,
in which an agreement had been made and kept, that the one who died first
should return once more to the survivor. As Lady Margaret spoke
laughingly of the anecdote, Emily, who was watching Falkland's
countenance, was struck with the dark and sudden shade which fell over
it. He moved in silence towards the window where Emily was sitting. "Do
you believe," she said, with a faint smile, "in the possibility of such
an event?" "I believe--though I reject--nothing!" replied Falkland, "but
I would give worlds for such a proof that death does not destroy."
"Surely," said Emily, "you do not deny that evidence of our immortality
which we gather from the Scriptures?--are they not all that a voice from
the dead could be?" Falkland was silent for a few moments: he did not
seem to hear the question; his eyes dwelt upon vacancy; and when he at
last spoke, it was rather in commune with himself than in answer to her.
"I have watched," said he, in a low internal tone, "over the tomb: I have
called, in the agony of my heart, unto her--who slept beneath; I would
have dissolved my very soul into a spell, could it have summoned before
me for one, one moment the being who had once been the spirit of my life!
I have been, as it were, entranced with the intensity of my own
adjuration; I have gazed upon the empty air, and worked upon my mind to
fill it with imaginings; I have called aloud unto the winds and tasked my
soul to waken their silence to reply. All was a waste--a stillness--an
infinity--without a wanderer or a voice! The dead answered me not, when
I invoked them; and in the vigils of the still night I looked from the
rank grass and the mouldering stones to the Eternal Heavens, as man looks
from decay to immortality! Oh! that awful magnificence of repose--that
living sleep--that breathing yet unrevealing divinity, spread over those
still worlds! To them also I poured my thoughts--but in a whisper. I
did not dare to breathe aloud the unhallowed anguish of my mind to the
majesty of the unsympathising stars! In the vast order of creation--in
the midst of the stupendous system of universal life, my doubt and
inquiry were murmured forth--a voice crying in the wilderness and
returning without an echo unanswered unto myself!"
The deep light of the summer moon shone over Falkland's countenance,
which Emily gazed on, as she listened, almost tremblingly, to his words.
His brow was knit and hueless, and the large drops gathered slowly over
it, as if wrung from the strained yet impotent tension of the thoughts
within. Emily drew nearer to him--she laid her hand upon his own.
"Listen to me," she said: "if a herald from the grave could satisfy your
doubt, I would gladly die that I might return to you!" "Beware," said
Falkland, with an agitated but solemn voice; "the words, now so lightly
spoken, may be registered on high." "Be it so!" replied Emily firmly,
and she felt what she said. Her love penetrated beyond the tomb, and she
would have forfeited all here for their union hereafter.
"In my earliest youth," said Falkland, more calmly than he had yet
spoken, "I found in the present and the past of this world enough to
direct my attention to the futurity of another: if I did not credit all
with the enthusiast, I had no sympathies with the scorner: I sat myself
down to examine and reflect: I pored alike over the pages of the
philosopher and the theologian; I was neither baffled by the subtleties
nor deterred by the contradictions of either. As men first ascertained
the geography of the earth by observing the signs of the heavens, I did
homage to the Unknown God, and sought from that worship to inquire into
the reasonings of mankind. I did not confine myself to books--all things
breathing or inanimate constituted my study. From death itself I
endeavoured to extract its secret; and whole nights I have sat in the
crowded asylums of the dying, watching the last spark flutter and decay.
Men die away as in sleep, without effort, or struggle, or emotion. I
have looked on their countenances a moment before death, and the serenity
of repose was upon them, waxing only more deep as it approached that
slumber which, is never broken: the breath grew gentler and gentler, till
the lips it came from fell from each other, and all was hushed; the light
had departed from the cloud, but the cloud itself, gray, cold, altered as
it seemed, was as before. They died and made no sign. They had left the
labyrinth without bequeathing us its clew. It is in vain that I have
sent my spirit into the land of shadows--it has borne back no witnesses
of its inquiry. As Newton said of himself, 'I picked up a few shells by
the seashore, but the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.'"
There was a long pause. Lady Margaret had sat down to chess with the
Spaniard. No look was upon the lovers: their eyes met, and with that one
glance the whole current of their thoughts was changed. The blood, which
a moment before had left Falkland's cheek so colourless, rushed back to
it again. The love which had so penetrated and pervaded his whole
system, and which abstruser and colder reflection had just calmed,
thrilled through his frame with redoubled power. As if by an involuntary
and mutual impulse, their lips met: he threw his arm round her; he
strained her to his bosom. "Dark as my thoughts are," he whispered,
"evil as has been my life, will you not yet soothe the one, and guide the
other? My Emily! my love! the Heaven to the tumultuous ocean of my
heart--will you not be mine--mine only--wholly--and for ever?" She did
not answer--she did not turn from his embrace. Her cheek flushed as his
breath stole over it, and her bosom heaved beneath the arm which
encircled that empire so devoted to him. "Speak one word, only one
word," he continued to whisper: "will you not be mine? Are you not mine
at heart even at this moment?" Her head sank upon his bosom. Those deep
and eloquent eyes looked up to his through their dark lashes. "I will be
yours," she murmured: "I am at your mercy; I have no longer any
existence but in you. My only fear is, that I shall cease to be worthy
of your love!"
Falkland pressed his lips once more to her own: it was his only answer,
and the last seal to their compact. As they stood before the open
lattice, the still and unconscious moon looked down upon that record of
guilt. There was not a cloud in the heaven to dim her purity: the very
winds of night had hushed themselves to do her homage: all was silent but
their hearts. They stood beneath the calm and holy skies, a guilty and
devoted pair--a fearful contrast of the sin and turbulence of this
unquiet earth to the passionless serenity of the eternal heaven. The
same stars, that for thousands of unfathomed years had looked upon the
changes of this nether world, gleamed pale, and pure, and steadfast upon
their burning but transitory vow. In a few years what of the
condemnation or the recorders of that vow would remain? From other lips,
on that spot, other oaths might be plighted; new pledges of unchangeable
fidelity exchanged: and, year after year, in each succession of scene and
time, the same stars will look from the mystery of their untracked and
impenetrable home, to mock, as now, with their immutability, the
variations and shadows of mankind!