Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
“Kassandra.”
(Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)
“Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of
wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I
left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!”
“Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices
unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a
fiend. Titan, canst thou weep?”
“I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside
our own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood
and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing
worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the
heart that loves!”
“The heart,” answered the mystic, coldly; “ay, for five thousand years I
have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!”
“Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
terror and red with blood, still foretold that, even in the dungeon, and
before the deathsman, I,--I had the power to save them both!”
“But at some unconjectured and most fatal sacrifice to thyself.”
“To myself! Icy sage, there is no self in love! I go. Nay, alone: I
want thee not. I want now no other guide but the human instincts of
affection. No cave so dark, no solitude so vast, as to conceal her.
Though mine art fail me; though the stars heed me not; though space,
with its shining myriads, is again to me but the azure void,--I return
but to love and youth and hope! When have they ever failed to triumph
and to save!”