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From “Susan: A Poem of Degrees”
HER Master gave the signal, with a look: | |
| Then, timidly as if afraid, she took | |
| In her rough hands the Laureate’s dainty book, | |
| And straight began. But when she did begin, | |
| Her own mute sense of poesy within | 5 |
| Broke forth to hail the poet, and to greet | |
| His graceful fancies and the accents sweet | |
| In which they are expressed. Oh, lately lost, | |
| Long loved, long honored, and whose Captain’s post | |
| No living bard is competent to fill— | 10 |
| How strange, to the deep heart that now is still, | |
| And to the vanished hand, and to the ear | |
| Whose soft melodious measures are so dear | |
| To us who cannot rival them—how strange, | |
| If thou, the lord of such a various range, | 15 |
| Hadst heard this new voice telling Arden’s tale! | |
| For this was no prim maiden, scant and pale, | |
| Full of weak sentiment, and thin delight | |
| In pretty rhymes, who mars the resonant might | |
| Of noble verse with arts rhetorical | 20 |
| And simulated frenzy: not at all! | |
| This was a peasant woman; large and strong, | |
| Redhanded, ignorant, unused to song— | |
| Accustomed rather to the rudest prose. | |
| And yet, there lived within her rustic clothes | 25 |
| A heart as true as Arden’s; and a brain, | |
| Keener than his, that counts it false and vain | |
| To seem aught else than simply what she is. | |
| How singular, her faculty of bliss! | |
| Bliss in her servile work; bliss deep and full | 30 |
| In things beyond the vision of the dull, | |
| Whate’er their rank: things beautiful as these | |
| Sonorous lines and solemn harmonies | |
| Suiting the tale they tell of; bliss in love— | |
| Ah, chiefly that! which lifts her soul above | 35 |
| Its common life, and gives to labors coarse | |
| Such fervor of imaginative force | |
| As makes a passion of her basest toil. | |
| Surely this servant-dress was but a foil | |
| To her more lofty being! As she read, | 40 |
| Her accent was as pure, and all she said | |
| As full of interest and of varied grace | |
| As were the changeful moods, that o’er her face | |
| Passed, like swift clouds across a windy sky, | |
| At each sad stage of Enoch’s history. | 45 |
| Such ease, such pathos, such abandonment | |
| To what she uttered, moulded as she went | |
| Her soft sweet voice, and with such self-control | |
| Did she, interpreting the poet’s soul, | |
| Bridle her own, that when the tale was done | 50 |
| I looked at her, amazed: she seemed like one | |
| Who from some sphere of music had come down, | |
| And donned the white cap and the cotton gown | |
| As if to show how much of skill and art | |
| May dwell unthought of, in the humblest heart. | 55 |
| Yet there was no great mystery to tell: | |
| She felt it deeply, so she read it well. | |
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