C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From Prologue to ‘The Wanderer’
By E. Robert Bulwer, Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith) (1831–1891)
O
When woman joins herself to man; and man
Assumes the full-lived woman, to complete
The end of life, since human life began!
When in the perfect bliss of union
Body and soul triumphal rapture claim,
When there’s a spirit in blood, in spirit a flame,
And earth’s lone hemispheres glow, fused in one!
The mystic’s musing fancy. Did there ever
Two perfect souls in perfect forms belong
Perfectly to each other? Never, never!
Perilous were such moments, for a touch
Might mar their clear perfection. Exquisite
Even for the peril of their frail delight.
Such things man feigns; such seeks: but finds not such.
And when our love is fully risen within us,
Round the first object doth it overflow,
Which, be it fair or foul, is sure to win us
Out of ourselves. We clothe with our own nature
The man or woman its first want doth find.
The leafless prop with our own buds we bind,
And hide in blossoms; fill the empty feature
Which keep the mark of our own choice upon
The chosen; bless each fault whose spot protects
Our choice from possible confusion
With the world’s other creatures; we believe them
What most we wish, the more we find they are not;
Our choice once made, with our own choice we war not;
We worship them for what ourselves we give them.
The unworthy one from our reluctant arms,
We die with that lost love to other loves,
And turn to its defects from other charms.
And nobler forms, where moved those forms, may move
With lingering looks: our cold farewells we wave them.
We loved our lost loves for the love we gave them,
And not for anything they gave our love.
Trust nothing to the recompense of Chance,
Which deals with novel forms. This falling rhyme
Fails from the flowery steeps of old romance
Down that abyss which Memory droops above;
And gazing out of hopelessness down there,
I see the shadow creep through Youth’s gold hair
And white Death watching over red-lipped Love.