Claude to Eustace

Let me, then, bear to forget her. I will not cling to her falsely:Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation.I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember;I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me,Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, andNever ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others.Is she not changing herself?--the old image would only delude me.I will be bold, too, and change,--if it must be. Yet if in all things,Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only,I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;--I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way,Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her.

Utterly vain is, alas! this attempt at the Absolute,--wholly!I, who believed not in her, because I would fain believe nothing,Have to believe as I may, with a wilful, unmeaning acceptance.I, who refused to enfasten the roots of my floating existenceIn the rich earth, cling now to the hard, naked rock that is left me,--Ah! she was worthy, Eustace,--and that, indeed, is my comfort,--Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given her.

Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send, and the chance thatTakes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without askingWhether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,--Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a BeingIn a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,--So in your image I turn to an ens rationis of friendship,Even so write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise.

There was a time, methought it was but lately departed,When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it;Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender.There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early,Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted,But it is all over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field inWhose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested.It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it.Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless.

Comfort has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city,Comfort--how do you think?--with a barrel-organ to bring it.Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered,All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune,Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying.Ah, there is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful,Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune.Comfort it was at least; and I must take without questionComfort, however it come, in the dreary streets of the city.

What with trusting myself and seeking support from within me,Almost I could believe I had gained a religious assurance,Formed in my own poor soul a great moral basis to rest on.Ah, but indeed I see, I feel it factitious entirely;I refuse, reject, and put it utterly from me;I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them;Fact shall be fact for me, and the Truth the Truth as ever,Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful.-Off, and depart to the void, thou subtle, fanatical tempter!

I shall behold thee again (is it so?) at a new visitation,O ill genius thou! I shall at my life's dissolution(When the pulses are weak, and the feeble light of the reasonFlickers, an unfed flame retiring slow from the socket),Low on a sick-bed laid, hear one, as it were, at the doorway,And, looking up, see thee standing by, looking emptily at me;I shall entreat thee then, though now I dare to refuse thee,--Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying.--Well, I will see thee again, and while I can, will repel thee.

Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken,Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost il Moro;--Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice.I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sitMoping and mourning here,--for her, and myself much smaller.Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angelsUnto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour,And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moistureWiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy,Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour?All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome norItaly; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament theWreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor.Whither depart the brave?--God knows; I certainly do not.