DUST are our frames; and, gilded dust, our pride Looks only for a moment whole and sound; Like that long-buried body of the king, Found lying with his urns and ornaments, Which at a touch of light, an air of heaven, Slipt into ashes and was found no more.
Here is a story which in rougher shape Came from a grizzled cripple, whom I saw Sunning himself in a waste field alone
Old, and a mine of memories - who had served,
Long since, a bygone Rector of the place, And been himself a part of what he told.
SIR AYLMER AYLMER that almighty man, The county God—in whose capacious hall, Hung with a hundred shields, the family-tree Sprang from the midriff of a prostrate king— Whose blazing wyvern weathercock'd the spire, Stood from his walls and wing'd his entry-gates And swang besides on many a windy sign Whose eyes from under a pyramidal head Saw from his windows nothing save his own What lovelier of his own had he than her, His only child, his Edith, whom he loved As heiress and not heir regretfully? But, "he that marries her marries her name," This fiat somewhat soothed himself and wife, His wife a faded beauty of the Baths, Insipid as the Queen upon a card; Her all of thought and bearing hardly more Than his own shadow in a sickly sun.
A land of hops and poppy-mingled corn, Little about it stirring save a brook! A sleepy land where under the same wheel The same old rut would deepen year by year; Where almost all the village had one name;
Where Aylmer follow'd Aylmer at the Hall And Averill Averill at the Rectory
Thrice over; so that Rectory and Hall, Bound in an immemorial intimacy,
Were open to each other; tho' to dream
That Love could bind them closer well had made The hoar hair of the Baronet bristle up With horror, worse than had he heard his priest Preach an inverted scripture, sons of men Daughters of God; so sleepy was the land.
And might not Averill, had he will'd it so, Somewhere beneath his own low range of roofs, Have also set his many-shielded tree? There was an Aylmer-Averill marriage once, When the red rose was redder than itself,
And York's white rose as red as Lancaster's,
With wounded peace which each had prick'd to death.
"Not proven" Averill said, or laughingly
"Some other race of Averills,”—prov'n or no,
What cared he? what, if other or the same?
He lean'd not on his fathers but himself.
But Leolin, his brother, living oft
With Averill, and a year or two before Call'd to the bar, but ever call'd away By one low voice to one dear neighborhood, Would often, in his walks with Edith, claim A distant kinship to the gracious blood That shook the heart of Edith hearing him.
Sanguine he was: a but less vivid hue Than of that islet in the chestnut-bloom Flamed in his cheek; and eager eyes, that still Took joyful note of all things joyful, beam'd, Beneath a manelike mass of rolling gold, Their best and brightest, when they dwelt on hers, Edith, whose pensive beauty, perfect else, But subject to the season or the mood, Shone like a mystic star between the less And greater glory varying to and fro, We know not wherefore; bounteously made, And yet so finely, that a troublous touch Thinn'd, or would seem to thin her in a day, A joyous to dilate, as toward the light. And these had been together from the first.
Leolin's first nurse was, five years after, hers: So much the boy foreran; but when his date Doubled her own, for want of playmates, he (Since Averill was a decade and a half His elder, and their parents underground) Had tost his ball and flown his kite, and roll'd His hoop to pleasure Edith, with her dipt Against the rush of the air in the prone swing, Made blossom-ball or daisy-chain, arranged Her garden, sow'd her name and kept it green In living letters, told her fairy-tales, Show'd her the fairy footings on the grass, The little dells of cowslip, fairy palms, The petty mare's-tail forest, fairy pines Or from the tiny pitted target blew What look'd a flight of fairy arrows aim'd All at one mark, all hitting: make-believes For Edith and himself: or else he forged, But that was later, boyish histories Of battle, bold adventure, dungeon, wreck, Flights, terrors, sudden rescues, and true love Crown'd after trial; sketches rude and faint, But where a passion yet unborn perhaps Lay hidden as the music of the moon Sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale. And thus together, save for college-times Or Temple-eaten terms, a couple, fair As ever painter painted, poet sang,
Or Heav'n in lavish bounty moulded, grew. And more and more, the maiden woman-grown, He wasted hours with Averill; there, when first The tented winter-field was broken up Into that phalanx of the summer spears
That soon should wear the garland; there again When burr and bine were gather'd; lastly there At Christmas; ever welcome at the Hall, On whose dull sameness his full tide of youth Broke with a phosphorescence cheering even My lady; and the Baronet yet had laid No bar between them: dull and self-involved, Tall and erect, but bending from his height With half-allowing smiles for all the world, And mighty courteous in the main his pride Lay deeper than to wear it as his ring — He, like an Aylmer in his Aylmerism,
Would care no more for Leolin's walking with her Than for his old Newfoundland's, when they ran To loose him at the stables, for he rose
Twofooted at the limit of his chain,
Roaring to make a third: and how should Love, Whom the cross- s-lightnings of four chance-met eyes Flash into fiery life from nothing, follow
Such dear familiarities of dawn?
Seldom, but when he does, Master of all.
So these young hearts not knowing that they loved, Not she at least, nor conscious of a bar
Between them, nor by plight or broken ring Bound, but an immemorial intimacy, Wander'd at will, but oft accompanied By Averill: his, a brother's love, that hung With wings of brooding shelter o'er her peace, Might have been other, save for Leolin's - Who knows? but so they wander'd, hour by hour Gather'd the blossom that rebloom'd, and drank The magic cup that fill'd itself anew.
A whisper half reveal'd her to herself. For out beyond her lodges, where the brook Vocal, with here and there a silence, ran By sallowy rims, arose the laborers' homes, A frequent haunt of Edith, on low knolls That dimpling died into each other, huts At random scatter'd, each a nest in bloom. Her art, her hand, her counsel all had wrought About them here was one that, summer-blanch'd, Was parcel-bearded with the traveller's joy In Autumn, parcel ivy-clad; and here The warm-blue breathings of a hidden hearth Broke from a bower of vine and honeysuckle: One look'd all rose-tree, and another wore A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars: This had a rosy sea of gillyflowers
About it; this, a milky-way on earth,
Like visions in the Northern dreamer's heavens, A lily-avenue climbing to the doors;
One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves
A summer-burial deep in hollyhocks;
Each, its own charm; and Edith's everywhere; And Edith ever visitant with him,
A but less loved than Edith, of her poor:
For she so lowly-lovely and so loving, Queenly responsive when the loyal hand Rose from the clay it work'd in as she past, Not sowing hedgerow texts and passing by, Nor dealing goodly counsel from a height That makes the lowest hate it, but a voice Of comfort and an open hand of help, A splendid presence flattering the poor roofs Revered as theirs, but kindlier than themselves To ailing wife or wailing infancy
Or old bedridden palsy, — was adored; He, loved for her and for himself. Having the warmth and muscle of the heart, A childly way with children, and a laugh Ringing like proven golden coinage true, Were no false passport to that easy realin, Where once with Leolin at her side the girl, Nursing a child, and turning to the warmth The tender pink five-beaded baby-soles,
Heard the good mother softly whisper, "Bless, God bless 'em marriages are made in Heaven."
A flash of semi-jealousy clear'd it to her. My lady's Indian kinsman, unannounced, With half a score of swarthy faces came. His own, tho' keen and bold and soldierly, Sear'd by the close ecliptic, was not fair; Fairer his talk, a tongue that ruled the hour, Tho' seeming boastful: so when first he dash'd Into the chronicle of a deedful day, Sir Aylmer half forgot his lazy smile Of patron, "Good! my lady's kinsman! good!" My lady with her fingers interlock'd, And rotatory thumbs on silken knees, Call'd all her vital spirits into each ear To listen: unawares they flitted off, Busying themselves about the flowerage That stood from out a stiff brocade in which, The meteor of a splendid season, she, Once with this kinsman, ah so long ago, Stept thro' the stately minuet of those days: But Edith's eager fancy hurried with him Snatch'd thro' the perilous passes of his life: Till Leolin, ever watchful of her eye,
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