Words kind as these (We could have braced ourselves against them else) Threw wide, like spells, each passage to our hearts That caution should have guarded. “We knew not Our own minds, poor young pair,” they said. “At least, Our love could wait: meantime, whose love could claim Our trust, like theirs whose treasure lay in us?” XXIX. And then to me alone they spoke of Haydn:— “He passionate had been:—how knew I when His passion might be turn’d against myself? And he had sinn’d, so sorely, sorely sinn’d:— How could one thus defame the Church and priest? And did my love for him suggest such words, Or should my love hereafter sanction them, Might not his wrong prove mine?—If I should yield, Be won by his unbridled words, might not My act confirm his trust in thought uncheck’d? And thought uncheck’d,—it oft more danger fronts Than does the uncheck’d steed, whose frenzied flight Defies the rein, and, dashing down a road Straight deathward, trails his luckless driver on, Whirl’d powerless to prevent all as a babe.” I spake of Haydn’s love. They bade me think “How often love that loses earthly friends, Comes back from all things outward toward itself; And finding self, finds heaven’s design within? Did not I know that loss and gain are both Sent here to aid the worth of inner traits And change the phases of the spirit’s growth?— Each passing season circling round a tree Leaves, clasping it, a ring; the rings remain, So seasons past remain about the soul: And men can trace its former life far less By tales the tongue may tell, than by the range And reach of that which circumscribes the mood, Including or excluding right or wrong.” XXX. And then they added: “Might it not be found That loss of my love was the very means Design’d by Providence for Haydn’s good?” To this I could but answer that “his love Seem’d Providential too, a holy thing.” They only frown’d, and said: “The Prince of Ill Came oft robed like an angel of the light;— Why not like love?—The only holy thing, Such proven to be, was Christ. And what of Him When moved by love?—of His great sacrifice!— And did I really prize this Haydn so, Would love prompt naught in me!” And thus they talk’d, Till, welcoming doubt, my faith succumb’d to it; And all the love once making me so proud, Whose growth, I thought, would be so sweet and fair, Stung like a very thistle in my soul; Each breath of theirs would blow its prickles keen, And sow its pestering seedlets far and wide O’er every pleasing prospect of my life. XXXI.