"O Soeur Seraphine, are you happy?"
"Eugene, What is happier than to have hoped not in vain?"
She answer'd,--"And you?"
"Yes."
"You do not repent?"
"No."
"Thank Heaven!" she murmur'd. He musingly bent His looks on the sunset, and somewhat apart Where he stood, sigh'd, as though to his innermost heart, "O bless'd are they, amongst whom I was not, Whose morning unclouded, without stain or spot, Predicts a pure evening; who, sunlike, in light Have traversed, unsullied, the world, and set bright!"
But she in response, "Mark yon ship far away, Asleep on the wave, in the last light of day, With all its hush'd thunders shut up! Would you know A thought which came to me a few days ago, Whilst watching those ships? . . . When the great Ship of Life Surviving, though shatter'd, the tumult and strife Of earth's angry element,--masts broken short, Decks drench'd, bulwarks beaten--drives safe into port;
When the Pilot of Galilee, seen on the strand, Stretches over the waters a welcoming hand;
When, heeding no longer the sea's baffled roar, The mariner turns to his rest evermore;
What will then be the answer the helmsman must give?
Will it be . . . 'Lo our log-book! Thus once did we live In the zones of the South; thus we traversed the seas Of the Orient; there dwelt with the Hesperides;
Thence follow'd the west wind; here, eastward we turn'd;
The stars fail'd us there; just here land we discern'd On our lee; there the storm overtook us at last;
That day went the bowsprit, the next day the mast;
There the mermen came round us, and there we saw bask A siren?' The Captain of Port will he ask Any one of such questions? I cannot think so!
But . . . 'What is the last Bill of Health you can show?'
Not--How fared the soul through the trials she pass'd?
But--What is the state of that soul at the last?"
"May it be so!" he sigh'd. "There the sun drops, behold!"
And indeed, whilst he spoke all the purple and gold In the west had turn'd ashen, save one fading strip Of light that yet gleam'd from the dark nether lip Of a long reef of cloud; and o'er sullen ravines And ridges the raw damps were hanging white screens Of melancholy mist.
"Nunc dimittis?" she said.
"O God of the living! whilst yet 'mid the dead And the dying we stand here alive, and thy days Returning, admit space for prayer and for praise, In both these confirm us!
"The helmsman, Eugene, Needs the compass to steer by. Pray always. Again We two part: each to work out Heaven's will: you, I trust, In the world's ample witness; and I, as I must, In secret and silence: you, love, fame, await;
Me, sorrow and sickness. We meet at one gate When all's over. The ways they are many and wide, And seldom are two ways the same. Side by side May we stand at the same little door when all's done!
The ways they are many, the end it is one.
He that knocketh shall enter: who asks shall obtain:
And who seeketh, he findeth. Remember, Eugene!"
She turn'd to depart.
"Whither? whither?" . . . he said.
She stretch'd forth her hand where, already outspread On the darken'd horizon, remotely they saw The French camp-fires kindling.
