Читать книгу The Angel in the House - Coventry Patmore - Страница 6

Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,

   In common and in holy course,

He fails, in spite of prayer and vow

   And agonies of faith and force;

Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails

   To righteous life, his virtuous deeds

Lack beauty, virtue’s badge; she fails

   More graciously than he succeeds.

Her spirit, compact of gentleness,

   If Heaven postpones or grants her pray’r,

Conceives no pride in its success,

   And in its failure no despair;

But his, enamour’d of its hurt,

   Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,

Crows from the dunghill of desert,

   And wags its ugly wings for pride.

He’s never young nor ripe; she grows

   More infantine, auroral, mild,

And still the more she lives and knows

   The lovelier she’s express’d a child.

Say that she wants the will of man

   To conquer fame, not check’d by cross,

Nor moved when others bless or ban;

   She wants but what to have were loss.

Or say she wants the patient brain

   To track shy truth; her facile wit

At that which he hunts down with pain

   Flies straight, and does exactly hit.

Were she but half of what she is,

   He twice himself, mere love alone,

Her special crown, as truth is his,

   Gives title to the worthier throne;

For love is substance, truth the form;

   Truth without love were less than nought;

But blindest love is sweet and warm,

   And full of truth not shaped by thought,

And therefore in herself she stands

   Adorn’d with undeficient grace,

Her happy virtues taking hands,

   Each smiling in another’s face.

So, dancing round the Tree of Life,

   They make an Eden in her breast,

While his, disjointed and at strife,

   Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.

If fate Love’s dear ambition mar,

   And load his breast with hopeless pain,

And seem to blot out sun and star,

   Love, won or lost, is countless gain;

His sorrow boasts a secret bliss

   Which sorrow of itself beguiles,

And Love in tears too noble is

   For pity, save of Love in smiles.

But, looking backward through his tears,

   With vision of maturer scope,

How often one dead joy appears

   The platform of some better hope!

And, let us own, the sharpest smart

   Which human patience may endure

Pays light for that which leaves the heart

   More generous, dignified, and pure.

They safely walk in darkest ways

   Whose youth is lighted from above,

Where, through the senses’ silvery haze,

   Dawns the veil’d moon of nuptial love.

Who is the happy husband?  He

   Who, scanning his unwedded life,

Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,

   ’Twas faithful to his future wife.

Fatal in force, yet gentle in will,

   Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,

For, like the kindly lodestone, still

   She’s drawn herself by what she attracts.

I went not to the Dean’s unbid:

   I would not have my mystery,

From her so delicately hid,

   The guess of gossips at their tea.

A long, long week, and not once there,

   Had made my spirit sick and faint,

And lack-love, foul as love is fair,

   Perverted all things to complaint.

How vain the world had grown to be!

   How mean all people and their ways,

How ignorant their sympathy,

   And how impertinent their praise;

What they for virtuousness esteem’d,

   How far removed from heavenly right;

What pettiness their trouble seem’d,

   How undelightful their delight;

To my necessity how strange

   The sunshine and the song of birds;

How dull the clouds’ continual change,

   How foolishly content the herds;

How unaccountable the law

   Which bade me sit in blindness here,

While she, the sun by which I saw,

   Shed splendour in an idle sphere!

And then I kiss’d her stolen glove,

   And sigh’d to reckon and define

The modes of martyrdom in love,

   And how far each one might be mine.

I thought how love, whose vast estate

   Is earth and air and sun and sea,

Encounters oft the beggar’s fate,

   Despised on score of poverty;

How Heaven, inscrutable in this,

   Lets the gross general make or mar

The destiny of love, which is

   So tender and particular;

How nature, as unnatural

   And contradicting nature’s source,

Which is but love, seems most of all

   Well-pleased to harry true love’s course;

How, many times, it comes to pass

   That trifling shades of temperament,

Affecting only one, alas,

   Not love, but love’s success prevent;

How manners often falsely paint

   The man; how passionate respect,

Hid by itself, may bear the taint

   Of coldness and a dull neglect;

And how a little outward dust

   Can a clear merit quite o’ercloud,

And make her fatally unjust,

   And him desire a darker shroud;

How senseless opportunity

   Gives baser men the better chance;

How powers, adverse else, agree

   To cheat her in her ignorance;

How Heaven its very self conspires

   With man and nature against love,

As pleased to couple cross desires,

   And cross where they themselves approve.

Wretched were life, if the end were now!

   But this gives tears to dry despair,

Faith shall be blest, we know not how,

   And love fulfill’d, we know not where.

While thus I grieved, and kiss’d her glove,

   My man brought in her note to say,

Papa had hid her send his love,

   And would I dine with them next day?

They had learn’d and practised Purcell’s glee,

   To sing it by to-morrow night.

The Postscript was: Her sisters and she

   Inclosed some violets, blue and white;

She and her sisters found them where

   I wager’d once no violets grew;

So they had won the gloves.  And there

   The violets lay, two white, one blue.