Then was it, as I turn’d about, by chance, I came on Elbert; and my whole soul rose To dash at him its briny bitterness. Is he here, thought I,—he to whom, alas, The very potion, poisoning all my hopes, Will prove the sparkling nectar of success, And bring good cheer, though bringing death to me?— Then let him share it!—Still, my wiser pride The purpose check’d, and balancing rash hate With hateful prudence, closed his opening smile But with a frown that would not welcome him. With any truth to self, so argued I, I could do nothing else; nor could abide A town that held him. So I left the town; And so these friends of mine, so prized of old, And I had parted,—not as friends would part, With love’s high zenith fever’d like the skies Where eve has rent from them a fervid sun, Then cool’d and calm’d in starlight sprinkled thick Until the sun come back. We crack’d apart, Like icebergs drifting southward, join’d no more, And sunn’d alone the while they melt away. XLII. No need is there that here I should recall— I would not if I could—my suffering. From Elbert, best of friends, my nobler self, My soul of virtue and my heart of love, What cause could rightly tear me?—Asking this, My heart rose up from reason to rebel; Indignant to have found a theory That dared to hold an innate impulse down; While will, caught there, betwixt the heart and head, Each charge would bear, and yet forbear to act. And Edith, peerless Edith! how my soul Would struggle to forget her! Struggling thus, How fair her form, conjured by raving thought, Would rise, a Venus o’er my sea of sighs, Till I would bend, and seem to plead anon To be forgiven for forgetting her! And then, how would I tear her traits apart; And pluck the petals from each budding grace And hope its naked stem some trace would show, Too void of beauty, to suggest again The bloom and sweetness of the life I loved. Alas, but while I wrought for this alone, How would her virtues but the more unfold!— Like God’s own glory flowering in the skies, That those detect who would not find it there, But, when they test the stars, have dealt with light. XLIII. I wrought and rested; it was all in vain. My highest consolation was the hope That hard-earn’d sleep might hold me long in dreams Where evermore my soul might with her dwell, Though every morn I seem’d yet more alone. Awake, asleep, throned constant o’er my heart, I served this image all intangible, This photographic fantasy of truth, This fairy nothingness of vanish’d fact, A shape to love, minute yet mighty still, To senses nothing, but to spirit all. XLIV.