Honoria

Grown weary with a week’s exileFrom those fair friends, I rode to seeThe church-restorings; lounged awhile,And met the Dean; was ask’d to tea,And found their cousin, Frederick GrahamAt Honor’s side. Was I concern’d,If, when she sang, his colour came,That mine, as with a buffet, burn’d?A man to please a girl! thought I,Retorting his forced smiles, the shroudsOf wrath, so hid as she was by,Sweet moon between her lighted clouds!

Whether this Cousin was the causeI know not, but I seem’d to see,The first time then, how fair she was,How much the fairest of the three.Each stopp’d to let the other go;But, time-bound, he arose the first.Stay’d he in Sarum long? If soI hoped to see him at the Hurst.No: he had call’d here, on his wayTo Portsmouth, where the Arrogant,His ship, was; he should leave next day,For two years’ cruise in the Levant.

Had love in her yet struck its germs?I watch’d. Her farewell show’d me plainShe loved, on the majestic termsThat she should not be loved again;And so her cousin, parting, felt.Hope in his voice and eye was dead.Compassion did my malice melt;Then went I home to a restless bed.I, who admired her too, could seeHis infinite remorse at thisGreat mystery, that she should beSo beautiful, yet not be his,And, pitying, long’d to plead his part;But scarce could tell, so strange my whim,Whether the weight upon my heartWas sorrow for myself or him.

She was all mildness; yet ’twas writIn all her grace, most legibly,‘He that’s for heaven itself unfit,Let him not hope to merit me.’And such a challenge, quite apartFrom thoughts of love, humbled, and thusTo sweet repentance moved my heart,And made me more magnanimous,And led me to review my life,Inquiring where in aught the least,If question were of her for wife,Ill might be mended, hope increas’d.Not that I soar’d so far aboveMyself, as this great hope to dare;And yet I well foresaw that loveMight hope where reason must despair;And, half-resenting the sweet prideWhich would not ask me to admire,‘Oh,’ to my secret heart I sigh’d,‘That I were worthy to desire!’

As drowsiness my brain reliev’d,A shrill defiance of all to arms,Shriek’d by the stable-cock, receiv’dAn angry answer from three farms.And, then, I dream’d that I, her knight,A clarion’s haughty pathos heard,And rode securely to the fight,Cased in the scarf she had conferr’d;And there, the bristling lists behind,Saw many, and vanquish’d all I sawOf her unnumber’d cousin-kind,In Navy, Army, Church, and Law;Smitten, the warriors somehow turn’dTo Sarum choristers, whose song,Mix’d with celestial sorrow, yearn’dWith joy no memory can prolong;And phantasms as absurd and sweetMerged each in each in endless chace,And everywhere I seem’d to meetThe haunting fairness of her face.