"Oh! modesty! my dear; hem! modesty! Spare me these blushes! I have not at hand The printed catalogue of qualities Which give you inspiration, and decline The personal rehearsal." "You mistake," She answered, smiling. "Not for modesty; And as for blushes, they're not patent yet. But frankly, soberly, I ask you this: Have you a quality of heart or brain Which makes you lovable, and in my eyes A man to be admired, that was not born Quick in your blood? Pray, have you anything Which you did not inherit? Who to me Furnished my husband? By what happy law Was all that was the finest, noblest, best In those who gave you life, bestowed on you? You have your father's form, your father's brain: You have your mother's eyes, your mother's heart. Those twain produced a man for me to love, Out of themselves. I am obliged to them For the most precious good the round earth holds, Transmitted by a law that slew them both. It was not sin, or shame, for them to die Just as they died. They passed with whiter hands Up to The Throne than he who wantonly Murders a sparrow. When your mother prayed She prayed for the suspension of the law By which from Eve, the mother of the race, She had received the grace and loveliness Which made her precious to your heart--the law By which alone she could convey these gifts To others of her blood. Your daughter's face Is beautiful, her soul is pure and sweet, By largess of this law. Could God subvert, To meet her wish, though shaped in agony, The law which, since the life of man began In life of God, has kept the channel clear For His own blood, that it might bless the last Of all the generations as the first? What could He more than give her liberty-- When reason lay in torture or in wreck, And life was death--to part with stainless hand The tie that held her from his loving breast?" If God himself had dropped her words from heaven. They had not reached with surer plummet-plunge The depths of my conviction. I was dumb; I opened not my mouth; but left her side, And sought the crowded street. I felt that all Delusions, subterfuges, self-deceits, By which my soul had shut itself from God, Were stripped away, and that no barrier Was interposed between us which was not My own hand's building. Never, nevermore, Could I hold God in blame, or deem myself A guiltless, injured creature. I could see That I was hard, implacable, unjust; And that by force of wilful choice I held Myself from God; for no impulsion came To seek his face and favor. Nay, I feared And fought such incidence, as enemy Of all my plans.