Hexameters
William, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear Dorothea!
Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table ;
Place it on table or desk ; and your right hands loosely half-closing,
Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,
Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkйd left hand,
Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger ;
Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo ;
And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.
This is a galloping measure ; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!
All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the staghounds,
Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still onwards,
I would full fain pull in my hard-mouthed runaway hunter ;
But our English Spondeans are clumsy yet impotent curb-reins ;
And so to make him go slowly, no way left have I but to lame him.
William,
Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister!
Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant,
Long, long, comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us.
O! it is all too far to send to you mockeries idle :
Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my belovйd!
Feverish and wakeful I lie, I am weary of feeling and thinking.
Every thought is worn down, I am weary, yet cannot be vacant.
Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing,
Gnawing behind in my head, and wandering and throbbing about me,
Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the beat of the boding night-spider.
I forget the beginning of the line :
[Image][Image][Image][Image][Image] … my eyes are a burthen,
Now unwillingly closed, now open and aching with darkness.
O!
Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him ;
Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother ;
Him that smiled in his gladness as a babe that smiles in its slumber ;
Even for him it exists, it moves and stirs in its prison ;
Lives with a separate life, and ‘Is it a Spirit?’ he murmurs :
‘Sure, it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language.’
There was a great deal more, which I have forgotten. … The last line
Which I wrote, I remember, and write it for the truth of the sentiment,
Scarcely less true in company than in pain and solitude :
William, my head and my heart! dear William and dear Dorothea!
You have all in each other ; but I am lonely, and want you!
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