Carl Ritter

O hadst thou seen Carl Ritter, wan and pale,
Walking at eve with melancholy mien,
Drinking the music of the nightingale,
With fierce delight, where on the current green
Of Leipsic's moat the water-lilies sail
In snowy fleets, thou wouldst have burned, I ween,
To know somewhat of the sad history
Of that wild foot-step and dejected eye.

Love — who could doubt it? — in his being wrought
Hotly and hopelessly; and he had rued,
But all too late, the passion's sultry drought,
Which dried youth's wells that cannot be renewed.
And there he walks, or rather runs, by thought,
Like old Actseon by his dogs, pursued;
So is it ever: love-sick hearts confound
The world within them with the world around.

How bright is evening on the battle-plain
Which spreads round Leipsic like a misty sea!

A thousand larks drop down into the grain,
Foregoing one by one their minstrelsy:
Sickness and age returns of strength might gain
From objects, all so tranquil and so free;
But for the ills of unrequited love
There is no balm, but mercy from above.
See how the rose and eglantine are threading
Through all the openings in the acacia leaves!
The massive chestnuts their vwhite flowers are shedding
On the still moat; the red verbena weaves
Mats for the lawn we are so rudely treading:
Nought in this garden, save Carl Bitter, grieves,
And he is not from his unquiet wooed
By the sweet sights wherewith he is pursued.

O evening! softest power! hast thou no wind —
From violet bank or trellised rose no sigh,
Which might this clasping load of thought unbind,
Touching some other, brighter memory,
Or lingering of pure childhood in his mind,
To quell the wildfire of that gentle eye?
See how he flits, as though this garden glade
Elysium were, and he a pensive shade.

The moon-beam sleeps upon the dusky grass,
And with kind equity brings out to light
Daisies, in constellations, which did pass
Unnoticed when more showy things were bright,
And each time that you look again, the mass
Is clearer grown, more silvery and more white;
Still round and round, and by the slimy moat,
Mid trees and flowers Carl Ritter seems to float.

Student! when wilt thou go unto thy books, —
Or dost thou peace in these calm shades discover?
See how with brushing 'gainst the lilac nooks,
Thy dress with blossoms is besprent all over!
How still! save now and then among the rooks
From bough to bough one, restless, seems to hover.
Yet, in and out, like some dusk-pinioned bird,
Carl sails with footsteps scarcely to be heard.

There is a square in Leipsic, to the west,
A sunny place with soft acacias planted,
With one quaint gable taller than the rest,
Which Carl inhabited, or rather haunted;
With telescopes and some few volumes blest,
The love-sick man had all in life he wanted;
For where love rules, there is in heart and eye
A constant, if not true, simplicity.

Hither, when midnight three full hours was passed,
And starlight had grown weary and outworn,
And when the moat by blue mist could be traced
Among the lilac thickets, — Carl was borne,
By impulse, rather than by will at last,
Cold and fatigued, and therefore less forlorn.
The sharp sound of the key within the lock,
Shook the still square with momentary shock.

The sun is up; the larks are in full choir;
How perfectly they sing — how perfectly!
And o'er the champaign many a hazy spire
Shoots up from out the undulating sea
Of the green corn; and wavering, like a fire,
Far off there is a single chestnut tree;
There will I tell what I of Carl have heard
In triple falls of rhyme, and simple word.

And in the pauses of the song we may
Be soothed to meditation by the bees,
While the blue sky between the leaves doth play,
Parted and closed at will by this soft breeze:
And Leipsic, with red roofs and turrets gay,
Blended with churches, ramparted with trees,
May seem a show more touching and more fair,
Because that stricken heart is drooping there.

There, mid his books, Carl withers like a flower,
Alternately by love consumed, and ruth
That he should so have wasted hour by hour
The fresh and genial faculties of youth,
Which ever draw their beauty and all power
From cheerfulness, the foster-child of truth.
They who, when young, are spendthrifts of sweet sadness,
Lose unawares the spring of later gladness.

Yet Carl, as they who knew him best could say,
In middle life was not an idle man;
Philology half filled his studious day,
And eastern grammars would he fondly scan;
While with the suffering poor his heart found play
In many a kind device and secret plan.
Thus did he light's best hours for duty keep,
And gave to love but what he stole from sleep.

At Madgeburg, within the Minster-yard,
From the great tawny Elbe not far remote,
There stands a house detached; the eye is barred
All access to thaf jealous shaded spot,
Whose habitants are kept in pleasant ward
In the small ring of their close garden-plot;
And there the murmur of the neighboring quay
Dwells, like the humming of a drowsy bee.

If privileged to enter, you might see
How the laburnum its gilt pendants swung
All inwards to a sweet-breathed walnut tree,
To which a trumpet honeysuckle clung,
And up whose stem the turf crept amorously,
Framing a mossy slope, on which was flung
A drooping shade, with leafy curtains drawn
All round, a natural tent upon the lawn.

It was a lowly place, a sylvan home
Within the city; and there Blanca dwelt,
Carl's widowed mother, and to her had come
A friend of early years, one who had felt
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The same bereavement; and they two would roam
Through the cool minster's aisles, and often knelt,
The only week-day worshippers, alone,
Screened from chance eyes by some sepulchral stone.
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And in the morning, punctual to the hour
When o'er the lawn the minster's shade was cast,
The two meek dames, like seamen with no power
To leave the deck, their narrow garden paced.
At sunset Blanca watered every flower,
Always the trumpet honeysuckle last,
While with keen search Autonia nipped away.
The blooms that were unsightly through decay.

And round them neatness reigned to an excess
At which a busy man might smile, well-pleased,
And not in shallow scorn;, for mournfulness
Must wreak itself on trifles, to be eased
By dissipating thought; the laying stress
On little things the heart hath often teased
From greater griefs, and hath deluded sorrow
By giving forward interests to the morrow.

Habit was their absorbing virtue, test
And measure of all goodness; order grew
A superstition, carefully confessed
By services minute the whole day through.
Yet scorn not thou the widows: greatly blest
Are they who, by observance meek and true,
Duty, albeit of. least dimensions, fill
With large affections and submissive will.

Within this narrow ring of joy and fear
Antonia's daughter, like a radiant star,
Wandered, or banished from her proper sphere,
Did with the plants divide the matron's care;
For her plain virtues she to them was dear,
And what of higher bent they could not share
They took on faith, and loved her all the more
Because to her lone height they could not soar.

Her hair hung down in ringlets long and pale;
She was not lovely — so the world would say —
But yet so delicate, a summer gale
Might almost waft the sylph-like flower away:
Her voice, for one of form so very frail,
Was full of depth and richness; and there lay
Couched in its fervid tones, an evidence
Of somewhat more than met the outward sense.

And momentary feeling would excite
Within her eyes a look of bold command,
A fire, from time to time revealed, whiqh might
By some quick deed, as by enchanter's wand,
Transform her being, to the withering light
Of jealousy and vengeful passion fanned.
This smothered heat, in look and accent breathed,
Was from her sire's Calabrian blood bequeathed.

Else never was there on the earth a maid,
More gentle than the orphan Helena,
Nor one with mien more gracefully arrayed
In lovely self-distrust, that could give way
With sweet facility; a pensive shade,
Almost a trick of melancholy, lay
Deep in her, blending lowly thoughts with high,
As though it were her being's harmony.

Maids are there whom with wonder we behold,
Frail, bending creatures, drooping evermore
Beneath the pressure of soft thoughts; yet bold,
And ready on undaunted wing to soar
Into life's highest regions, and unfold
Strength and resistance, and a hidden core
Of hardy virtues, which, like spirits, start
From some unknown abyss within the heart.

Hearts are they which an unkind word may break,
Yet with an inward faculty of pride,
Or power which might a chaster title take,
When to nobility of thought allied; —
Hearts whose sublime endurance nought can shake,
By womanly devotion sanctified, —
Women who have men's burden strangely borne
Without one feminine gentleness forsworn.

And such was Helena. But in our youth
Ofttimes a circumstance or incident
Lurks, overlaid, as though it were in sooth
A thing for no great end or purpose meant;
To which belongs a destiny and truth
Hereafter verified, whereby the bent
Of our first years is strained, their promise lost,
The under-current mounting uppermost.

And fearful is the agency of love
In these transfigurations of the heart:
On it all passions are constrained to move, —
The point from which a second life must start.
And with fair Helena did it so prove;
It set her childish being far apart,
And woke, as spring wakes flowers from out the earth,
The slumbering fires of her Italian birth.

But all unconscious then of that dread power,
Tender, nay languid, from excessive shade,
Yet the more lustrous, grew that lily-flower,
No kindred nigh to whom it might unlade
The dew within its cup, a fertile shower
Of confidence and sweet repinings, made
To flow upon the friendships of our youth,
Lest feeling, overfed, become untruth.

Fair Helena! she grew from day to day,
As in a convent, all unmurmuring;
And not an image to her heart found way
Which did not from that narrow household spring.
The turf which 'neath the drooping walnut lay
Was not a softer, more alluring thing,
Than, in her bower disclosed, this pensive maiden,
Her spirit with unconscious beauty laden.

Ah me! it was a most endearing sight
To see how self-suspicion ever strove,
Yet vainly, in her thoughts; she felt delight,
But whence she knew not, somewhat too of love
More than was asked of her in filial right.
She brooded o'er herself like some lone dove,
Or eastern shepherdess her fountain keeping,
Beneath a palm-tree's cloud-like shadow sleeping.

Thus life stood still with her; 'twas scarce forlorn,
For there was no abiding sense of want,
Save that a trouble or a joy half-born,
And a blind hope, so oft love's pursuivant,
Rose in her dreams and woke with her at morn,
And somehow more and more her heart did haunt, —
A presage, to our youthful spirit dear,
Of some new world of change and fortune near.

Thus Carl and Helena grew side by side
Through childhood's long and uneventful years,
Playmates, in all endearing tasks allied:
Joys were not joys, and hopes were almost fears,
To one, unless received and magnified
"Within the other's heart; from smiles and tears,
The income of our youth, the pair laid by
Hoards of sweet thought and fragrant memory.

One difference there was; young Helena
Called Carl her brother, while the tender boy
Gave her the name of sister; and there lay
In that distinction a deep-seated joy,
Though why they knew not; but their minds would play
With this one separation, and would toy
With the soft syllables, as though to strain
Such sweetness from them as they might contain.

Childhood to boyhood rose: Carl's studies now
Were in another and more manly vein:
And from the one distinction soon did flow
Surmises of great evils, to restrain
The two swift growths of joy; yet even so,
It grew more dear when it brought more of pain:
And brother now to Helena became
A something fuller than a tender name.

So far they had been like a mated pair
Of childish hearts, betrothed in infancy;
As in earth's simple days they ofttimes were,
Grafting the step of love upon a tie
Hallowed of God, that it might fasten there
As a true growth of natural piety, —
A wise deceit,' which made a brother's name
For years a spell love's wild excess to tame.

O rarest leaf in fortune's golden book!
O sweetest trap! to win a gentle maid,
On whom our earthly innocence did look
As on a sister, with whom we have played,
Erred, wept, and striven, and have many a nook
Of pensive recollections, in whose shade
A covert love may grow, a furtive plant,
Spreading like lilies in a woodland haunt!

The self-paired flowers of wedded infancy.
Which shape themselves into each other's growth,
By fate are often frustrated, and die
O'ershadowed in ungenial ground, as loath
With their pure native grace to feed the eye
Which blights them with its love, as passion doth:-
Ah! cruel sires! who thus transplant a flower
Which throve so well beneath a humbler bower!

How lightly mounts the tyrant love his throne!
No pomp of installation there doth move.
And thus with Carl the gentle thrall had grown
To a sweet bondage, while his passion wove
Dreams which cold hope would scarcely dare to own
'Twere long to tell how from a brother's love
That passion shot, and grew in depth and length,
Fed hourly with fresh increases of strength.

When Carl to Leipsic went, how passing strange
Was the new melancholy of farewell,
Nor without sweetness in the interchange
Of murmured words, which inwardly did swell
Too large for utterance then, or of a range
Too wide, too free, for bashful tongue to tell.
Poor Helena! no words which she could borrow
Would half fulfill the measure of her sorrow.

And her love ripened fast in loneliness;
Yet it appeared the same old love to her,
Run wild for want of speech, and through the stress
Of absence: she grew somewhat waywarder
Than heretofore; and oft could not repress
The rising image and the sudden stir
Of tenderness which made the tears to flow;
And still she deemed it right it should be so.

Antonia saw it not; she gathered still
The blooms the honeysuckle shed away.
Kind Blanca as devoutly did fulfil
Her round of modest duties every day.
Alas! for age, if those hearts lose the skill
To know true love who once have been his prey!
Ah me! it is a grief to mark how soon
Noon wipes the morning out, and evening noon.

Poor Helena! in her sweet sickness lone,
Her thoughts in some vague radiance ever whirled,
Now first and fully in her heart had grown
The barren knowledge that there was a world,
A misty Somewhere whither Carl had gone:
Then with the walnut boughs close round her funed,
The bees oft soothed her as she did recline,
Blowing the trumpets of the eglantine.

Carl, upon change and youthful perils cast,
The stern ordeal bravely did endure;
And virtue, rooted in a simple past,
Grew from each shock more lovly, yet more suie.
That sister-love, that image bright and chaste,
Enshrined within his fancy kept him pure:
Yet much he learned, and much did now appear,
Which made the future doubtful and unclear.

The more he thought the more he loved; and yet
The more he loved the more did Helena
Seem at a boundless distance from him set;
And rocks and thorny brakes obscured the way
Which love must tread: then he would vainly fret
At his own scruples, and deplore the day
When good and evil, now more clearly known,
Burst through the fence of youth, and broke it down.

E'en where there is no guilt the world is strong
To uncrown our youth's simplicity, and make
The right so near a neighbor to the wrong,
That it will oft constrain us to forsake
Our blameless ends, lest they perchance, through long
Vicinity, of evil should partake:
The good we once suspected to be ill
Its holy mission doth but half fulfil.

Carl thought of Helena, o'er whom had passed
Now barely sixteen summers; to her eye
The world could but appear a sunny waste,
Whose glistening sands did round their household lie;
And he beheld how oft love was abased
Before the fresh-seen world, how it would die
From a vexed mind, how ill with joys it fared
Which had not been with other joys compared.

And was it right? thus in his solitude
He daily reasoned — that so young a maid
Should be by stealth and at advantage wooed,
And her affections prematurely laid
Beneath a weight of bonds, full oft bedewed
By after tears, when from home's twilight shade
On the bright world such hearts are captive thrown,
Ere they have yet the effects of freedom known.

And do not choice and will belong of right
To all young hearts, though by self-love denied,
Whose passion is not a most pure delight
Fed from itself, but is a growth of pride,
A base usurper in love's angry sight,
By generous restraints unsanctified?
Alas for youth! its love is oft a dream,
Born of wild wish and hungry self-esteem.

Therefore shall Helena go forth still free;
(He little knew how she had all forsworn
In his behalf her maiden liberty)
Into the world she shall be gaily borne
And its brave sights and goodly fortunes see;
Yes, she shall see, and for her brother scorn
All the delights and lures that are therein;
And thus will I my bride, my sister, win!

So reasoned Ca,rl: and manfully he strove
Passion and judgment on one line to train:
Love mocked at him, and still the more it throve,
As though such arts it might full well disdain:
And strange to say he did more wildly love,
As he of inward calmness more did gain.
Ah! piteous lot a tender heart to wither,
When love can be both calm and wild together!

Deem not his reasonings cold, untrue to love:
Not unimpassioned is the sober eye
Of meek self-sacrifice, though it reprove
Fierce ardors. Ah! life's plain reality
Is stranger than romance, and far above
The tame inventions of old chivalry.
Woe worth the heart which cannot nobly win
Love's knighthood by foregoing self therein!

Ere Carl once more to Magdeburg returned
The meek Antonia died; and though at first
Poor Helena for her lost mother mourned
With vehemence, as though her heart would burst,
Yet, when her sorrow spent itself, she burned
Still more with love, and in her bosom nursed
A fire which now no sister-love could be,
Though still the name beguiled her pleasingly.

And Blanca bade the damsel call her mother;
'Twould soothe her grief the kindly matron thought;
And she was soothed; for by this she could smother
The hints which lonely musing often brought:
And Carl seemed now by double right her brother;
Thus self-deceit most innocently wrought,
Feeding on contraries, and with sweet skill
Assimilating all things to its will.

The minster clock tolled four: " He will come soon.
Oh! has it not been a most weary day?
And yet he said he should arrive at noon."
(And Blanca smiled to hear young Helena)
" How we will roam these evenings of dear June,
And see the moonlight on the Elbe-stream play!
And now our nightly meal once more must be,
As in old times, beneath the walnut-tree."

Thus thought to thought the happy maiden strung
With a coherence of her own, and some
Sweet thoughts that were not trusted to her tongue,
Sweet thoughts which ever would unbidden come,
And yet when come were cherished. Blanca hung
Carl's bullfinch in the walnut's dusky dome:
Even she was won to quiet, — so the thought
Of Carl's return in her affections wrought.

At length he came, the exile, the estranged,
Came to the cottage and the walnut-tree.
The happy maid! Oh how her fancy ranged
When words, entangled in wild thoughts, got free: —

How he was changed, and yet he was not changed,
But only at first sight had seemed to be.
She said and then unsaid a hundred things,
Which were to Carl the fanning of love's wings.
And he was changed, she saw that he was so;
He bore himself to her with courtesy,
Which was like coldness after the warm glow
Of his old manner; she could not descry
In his grave blandishments the genial flow
Of playful freedom: there was in his eye
A tenderness oh! how unlike her own;
Carl was too much, too much a brother grown!

Ah, Helena! the golden hour was come,
The long-sought meeting; 'twas a mournful night,
Vacant and chilling, like a sudden gloom
Upon a radiant scene; all joy, all light
Were gone, and love half-prophesied its doom:
Still a blind feeling rose, — perchance 'twas right
He should so act: and yet with weeping eyes,
She was full fain to have it otherwise.

O 'tis too sad a song to sing: — they both
In wistful silence let the years go by:
Carl might have spoken, but was bravely loth
To make his gain of her lost liberty.
Eacli deemed the other's love was but a growth
Of childhood's old familiarity;
And thus all life grew round them like a snare,
And dark years rose from years that had been fair.

Then Blanca went to heaven; and Helena
Nursed mid swift growths of loneliness her love,
With other grief than filial pined away,
Until she was a sight hard hearts to move.
Then burst the light on Carl, like break of day,
The minster's shadow frowning from above:
But she thought pity, not true love was meant,
And so, poor soul! for his sake smiled dissent.

Thus to two gentle souls all life was blurred
Into one indistinguishable blot;
Two destinies had hung upon a word,
And out of love that word was spoken not;
And when it came, time, life, and hearts had stirred
From the right place and the appointed spot.
To others the cross-purpose was as light,
To them the sun had sunk for life in night.

They did not die of broken hearts, like some;
But thepwere larger from being broken, drew
More hearts of others to them as a home,
And made their sympathy and work more true.
They are still young, although old age has come,
For sorrow spurs them still to efforts new:
And they are now, centres of placid powei,
Doing the world's work bravely at this hour!