Zanoni — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

of thee; in every ray that trembles on the water, that smiles upon the leaves, I behold but a likeness to thine eyes. What is this change, that alters not only myself, but the face of the whole universe ?

How instantaneously leaped into life the power with which thou swayest my heart in its ebb and flow. Thousands were around me, and I saw but thee. That was the night in which I first entered upon the world which crowds life into a drama, and has no language but music. How strangely and how suddenly with thee became that world evermore connected! What the delusion of the stage was to others, thy presence was to me. My life, too, seemed to centre into those short hours, and from thy lips I heard a music, mute to all ears but mine. I sit in the room where my father dwelt. Here, on that happy night, forgetting why they were so happy, I shrunk into the shadow, and sought to guess what thou wert to me; and my mother’s low voice woke me, and I crept to my father’s side, close —close, from _ fear of my own thoughts. “Ah! sweet and sad was the morrow to that night, when thy lips warned me of the future. An orphan now, — what is there that lives for me to think of, to dream upon, to revere, but thou! “ How tenderly thou hast rebuked me for the grievous wrong that my thoughts did thee! Why should I have shuddered to feel thee glancing upon my thoughts like the beam on the solitary tree, to which thou didst once liken me so well? It was — it was, that, like the tree, I struggled for the light, and the light came. They tell me of love, and my very life of the stage breathes the language of love into my lips. No; again and again, I know that is not the love that I feel for thee! — it is

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not a passion, it is a thought! I ask not to be loved again. I murmur not that thy words are stern and thy looks are cold. I ask not if I have rivals; I sigh not to be fair in thine eyes. It is my spirit that would blend itself with thine. I would give worlds, though we were apart, though oceans rolled between us, to know the hour in which thy gaze was lifted to the stars, —in which thy heart poured itself in prayer. They tell me thou art more beautiful than the marble images that are fairer than all human forms; but I have never dared to gaze steadfastly on thy face, that memory might compare thee with the rest. Only thine eyes and thy soft, calm smile haunt me; as when I look upon the moon, all that passes into my heart is her silent light. “ Often, when the air is calm, I have thought that I hear the strains of my father’s music; often, though long stilled in the grave, have they waked me from the dreams of the solemn night. Methinks, ere thou comest to me that I hear them herald thy approach. Methinks I hear them wail and moan, when I sink back into myself on seeing thee depart. Thou art of that musie, — its spirit, its genius. My father must have guessed at thee and thy native regions, when the winds hushed to listen to his tones, and the world deemed him mad! I hear, where I sit, the far murmur of the sea. Murmur on, ye blessed waters! The waves are the pulses of the shore. They beat with the gladness of the morning wind, — so beats my heart in the freshness and light that make He the Bignatts of thee!

7 « Often i in my childhood | Heme Boren and bes for what I was born; and my soul answered my heart and

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said, * Thou wert born to worship!’ Yes; I know why the real world has ever seemed to me so false and cold. I know why the world of the stage charmed and dazzled me. I know why it was so sweet to sit apart and gaze my whole being into the distant heavens. My nature is not formed for this life, happy though that life seem to others. It is its very want to have ever before it some image loftier than itself! Stranger, in what realm above, when the grave is past, shall my soul, hour after hour, worship at the same source as thine ?

“Tn the gardens of my neighbor there is a small fountain. J stood by it this morning after sunrise. How it sprung up, with its eager spray, to the sunbeams! And then I thought that I should see thee again this day, and so sprung my heart to the new morning which thou bringest me from the skies. “T have seen, I have listened to thee again. How bold I have become! I ran on with my childlike thoughts and stories, my recollections of the past, as if I had known thee from an infant. Suddenly the idea of my presumption struck me. I stopped, and timidly sought thine eyes. “*Well, and when you found that the nightingale refused to sing? ? — “*Ah!’ Isaid, ‘ what to thee this history of the heart of a child?’ “¢ Viola,’ didst thou answer, with that voice, so inexpressibly calm and earnest! —* Viola, the darkness of a child’s heart is often but the shadow of a star. Speak on! And thy nightingale, when they caught and caged it, refused to sing?’ “* And I placed the cage yonder, amidst the vine-

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