And Haydn then, when found, appear’d so sad. “Ah,” sigh’d he, “we two souls were fitted so To match each other. Here, where jars the world, And all goes contrary, where every sun That ripes this, withers that; and every storm That brings refreshment here, sends deluge there, We two, exceptions to the general rule, Like living miracles (is love fulfill’d A miracle indeed?), seem’d born to draw The self-same tale of weal or woe from each. I saw but last night, darling, in my dreams, Our spirits journeying through this under gloom: And hand in hand they walk’d; and over them, As over limner’d seraphs, did there hang A halo, love reflected. By its glow The gloom about grew brightness: while far off, In clearest lines, the path passed up and on.— Pauline, but heed me: once again, I pray (If ever once I pray’d to God above), Blot not this light from all my future life.” XLIX. “Ah, Haydn,” said I, “would you have me change? What soul shall dwell on God’s most holy hill But he ‘that sweareth to his own hurt,’ yes, ‘And changeth not’?” “But yet,” he said, “but yet If you were wrong to swear? How can it be That any project so against the soul— Each instinct of one’s nature—should be right?” “Yet nature,” said I, “may be but corrupt. What is this instinct, that it should not lie? If one should feel the instinct of the lamb While skipping to welcome the butcher’s knife That waits to slaughter it, would he be wise To follow instinct?” “Why not?” answer’d he: “The lamb was made that it might die for man: It follows instinct and dies easily. The soul was made that it might live for God: It follows instinct and lives happily. The cases differ thus. May there not be Some depth, beyond the reach of mortal sight, Within whose grooves unseen our spirits glide Unconscious of the balancings of will? God’s touch may be too subtle to be sensed. May it not stir beneath all conscious powers, A spontaneity that moves the soul As instinct moves the body?—Ah, to me, Love seems an instinct that impels them both.” “How so?” I ask’d, in hope to guide his thought Toward sacrifice. “You wish me then,” he said, “To turn philosopher for you?—I will. This love, in morals based on faith in man, And in religion on our faith in God, Seems, in its essence, an experience Not wholly feeling, yet not wholly thought,— Not all of body, yet not all of soul, Of what we are or what we are to be,— But more akin to marriage, within self, Of our two separate natures, form and spirit. God meant them to be join’d: when wedded thus, One rests content, the other waits in hope.”