XIV.
We may dwell content in a lowly cot, wearing our homespun gray,
Neighbored by robins and lambs alone and the squirrels across the way,
Disprizing wealth and keeping aloof from the breakneck race of greed,
Our brows unbeaded by hard-wrung sweat; but in time of a dear one’s need
Money is freedom,—’tis wings, ’tis power, ’tis verily life indeed,—
Oft do we watch our darlings droop in the merciless Northern blast
Knowing we well might save them if fortune would only cast
In our way the means to carry them far where zephyrs auroral blow—
What the rich spend oft in a single feast—if only ’twere ours—but no!
’Tis ours instead to watch next spring the grass on a new grave grow!
Saville herself wrote bravely the letters summoning over the land
The skill that hath earned the right to come at only a Crœsus’ command,
And she quietly waited the verdict; she had written with steady hand
And heard with uneager impassive face the words of the surgeon bland:
There was every warrant for deeming the eyeballs’ nubilous blur
A mere superficial obstruction; he would confident even aver
They should see complete restoration; and Saville gave sign of no stir
In her pulse at this gospel of light to him, of dark everlasting to her,
And never her fingers faltered through many a day and night
To bathe with lustral lotions and to number the drops aright.
And as one death-doomed by a mortal ill, knowing his sojourn is brief,
Wastes never the precious moments in useless repining and grief,
But rather endeavors to sweeten each hour, to make its scarce-hoped-for boon
Something to sweetly recall ’mid the dark he reluctant must enter so soon,
So Saville grudged every atom of time she did not with Kyrle commune.
She little had practiced the ways of the world, this cloistered immured Saville,
But now she set snares for the bird Renown, and the journals began to fill
With notes of Kyrle’s long hid sketches, praise of his wonderful skill,
Predictions of his renascence and greater triumphs in store,
So that he gleefully laughed as she read, reminding her o’er and o’er
How she had said in her very first words that if he would only adore
The Fairy Saville all things of good would serfs at his beckoning be,
“And first ’twas Love and then ’twas Wealth, dear heart, that thou gavest me,
And now ’tis Fame, and Vision draws nigh, lured to mine eyes by thee!”
And he said ’twas strange to reflect indeed that if he had been alone
Throughout the term of his blindness, if God had not made her known
To his cankered heart, ’twas certain the mordant malevolent tone
Of his mind would have tainted his later life, projecting through future days
When the hand’s sleight wedded to strength of purpose should fill the world with his praise,
And had marred his work with an atheist’s doubt of God and His questionless ways.
But e’en as he strayed, a bewildered child, where the tide swirled over the beach,
A starry seraph had caught his hand and guided him safe out of reach
Of the waves seductive of unbelief and their low insidious speech,
Whispering, “God is over us all, and He cares for His children each!”
And he said that often it frightful seemed that aught should hinder or ban
Our life of a minute’s duration, should shorten the firefly span
Of effort and strength and passionate zeal for truth allotted to man,—
But it had been well for himself to pause,—in the interval he had thought,
Had won experience deep and rich that should in his work be wrought,
And he could not thank her in all his life for the wonderful things she had taught,—
Henceforth his pictures should sing of her, Saville their dominant tone,
Merely the pigments and tactile skill, the outward shell, were his own,
While the essence informing, the spirit divine, that was Saville’s alone!
And he had fought down his impious wish: Though helped by Angelico’s shade
To worthily trace her portrait, he was certain that if he essayed
So high a task great Jove would smite and the thunderbolts make him afraid!
