And then she told me such a long, sad tale,
Of how great store she placed upon his life;
And how they two had thought the self-same thing:
She knew each inner chamber in his heart,
And what key could unlock it; and she named
First one and then another of our friends,
Whom she could never love as him she loved.
Then sigh’d she: “Ah, Pauline, had you explored
The world about, with all its barren wastes,
And found one little nook; and had you work’d
And till’d it well, and form’d a garden there;
And had you watch’d the plantlets grow until
Their dainty bowers bent over you with shade,
All sweet with bursting buds and carolling birds,
What could you think of one who came and stript
Your life of this, the thing that so you prized?—
Alas, and what could I,—if any power
Should wrest from me my Haydn, all that soil
Where spring all hopes that bless my lonely hours,
And make it sweet for me to live my life,—
What could I think of her? Though you, Pauline,
You have not known and tired of many men.
You have not search’d, as I have, through the world”—
“Nay, sister, I have not,” I said.
Then she—
“Quite right: and cannot yet know love, true love.
Kept close at school you were, and hard it was;
And harder still to-day that you must wait,
As I have done,—at your age too. But yet
Right love is ripe love. Life must be exposed
In sun and storm—to frost and bruising too:
The fruit grows mellow by and by alone.”
“Why, dear,” said I, “I think that I can love!
You know what Haydn sings,—that maids, like flowers,
Are sweetest, pluck’d when in the bud?”
“There now,
You always will be quoting him!” she cried,—
“Because, forsooth, a man, your first man-friend!
Yet, not compared by you with other men,
How know you him, what sort of man he is?—
Girls unsophisticated are like bees:
They buzz for all, and yet sip all their sweets
From the first flowery lips that open to them.”