Diogenes of London (collection)/My Lady
MY LADY
HER complexion is so exquisitely fair that there is no comparison for it; to look for one would be to dis- honour her loveliness. It is strange that though she is so dear to me I cannot describe her with precision. I am conscious that she is fairer than I know, for my sight dims a little in regarding her; her beauty is blurred for me in its own irradiance. As I near her eyes, which are the full centre of her glory, a haze sets in, bedewing her mistily. I am content to know her thus, though I should wrong her great perfection. I would not have you think her pale or waxen; for those eyes and her canopy of hair are full of colour, and her cheeks are softly tinted. I cannot give you any image of her for the infirmity of words. I have put about to describe her, but there are no terms for her; her loveliness is new to the world with herself. Her face is so delicately beautiful that I cannot separate its characters; in itself it is an ultimate thought. Yet from each one of her features I should know her face, they are so rare to me. When I look at her I am conscious mainly of her eyes, though should I meet them not the rest fills me so divinely that when at last she glances to me my delight flows over in esteem. Observing the conduct of others, I wonder sometimes if aught is wrong with my vision that I see her so lustrous when they can be placid. I know not why she should be different from her fellows. Of her dress I can tell but little, for its contemplation would lead me from her face. Yet they say, it meetly clothes a gracious body. If it is meet for hers, there is no higher praise for it.
I would not you held mine to be a common affection; yet I am at a loss in bare words to prove it above the general enchantment. If you could see her, it would be the argument. Her favour has ordered my life so wonderfully as to make me a stranger to myself. I have desires and feelings greater than you would attribute to to our mortal clay; and I am constrained to put my delicate sensations into poor thoughts, and these into poorer language. I have grown subtler since I met her. I have not yet resolved the secret of my fascination; she makes of my heart and mind a dim confusion. When she speaks I marvel to find her material; her voice distresses me with its reminder that there are times when others listen to it and not I. I do not know whether it is this or the turn of her head moves me most; I thrill at both; but when her eyes touch me she has no other magic. I discern her smile afar, and then I rejoice with her. Her happiness has illumined the whole street for me ere she has turned the corner. In my thought I watch her by the hours in her daily progress, hanging upon her changes with tremulous delight, till I have forgot her bodily absence. I have striven at times to conceive a being of a finer mould, but my imagination has foundered in the venture. The most ingenious of my suppositions was pitiful beside her. I would keep all harm from her, though, as she holds me, so surely must she hold all else within her orders. My reverence would protect her even from myself. When her skirts have swept by me I have been minded to take them to me, but have shrunk back lest the perfidy of my kiss should taint her. I fear to pluck my rose out of the morning lest perchance it bloom sweeter on the stem. And yet I would have her always by me; the departing rustle of her gown is a dirge for me. I bear about with me the marks of my passion, so that to my friends I am become as a fool. I am grown so inseparable from her in my thoughts that I am become her shadow; to recall her image is to see my own stark face. I am fallen into a byword to myself because of her: she stands between me and the immediate concerns of life. Time has laid me under heavy bonds, who was from the first a captive. I have no thought or feeling through the day that does not turn to her. Her soul stands now for mine; there is but one between us, and that is hers. At nights I summon her picture to me ere I fall asleep; her vision drifts before me till morning. In the dawn I take her from my heart, and regard her lineaments with dispassionate remoteness. I call her then my dream and my illusion, and vow to live more sanely, as one who knows the gross roots of human affection. But this thought of treason passes in the second, and I fall to crying that the world is mad, not I. I have sworn that the secrets of the earth are ignoble, but at her smile I have forsworn myself. It is odd so exquisite a sentiment as mine should be of human derivation. I am aware that you will hold my rapture to be compound of final instincts, clear, catholic, unmarvellous. But there are deep mysteries in this tangle of Nature. I will deny all earthliness in her. There is naught but Heaven anigh the transfigured soul. I am grown loftier now. I am grown graver too. I have become the prey of fell terrors. Each day an added impulse makes my life more ethereal; each day my eyes are more familiar with her beauty, my lips with her name. But each day, too, I have the burden of a new fear, that she must meet the chances of the world. I dread the night for its dark vicissitudes; I have a horror of the uncertainties of day. There is a word I dare not whisper to myself; it is a spectre stalking through my heart. There are such fears abroad in my life that I am a quaking coward. I ponder daily upon mortality. Will not God who has given such goodliness preserve it? I set out with a vain glory that I had found this pearl; I am now the humblest of His creatures supplicating mercy.