LADY GERALDINE'S COURTSHIP.
237
And I walked on, step by step, along the level of my passion—
Oh my soul I and passed the doorway to her face, and never feared.
He had left her,—peradventure, when my footstep proved my coming—
But for her—she half arose, then sate—grew scarlet and grew pale:
Oh, she trembled!—'tis so always with a worldly man or woman,
In the presence of true spirits—what else can they do but quail?
Oh, she fluttered like a tame bird, in among its forest-brothers,
Far too strong for it! then drooping, bowed her face upon her hands—
And I spake out wildly, fiercely, brutal truths of her and others!
I, she planted in the desert, swathed her, windlike, with my sands.
