- end_line
- 1666
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1603
- text
- Venus' transit now;--lo! a new planet there;--and behind all, an
infinite starry nebulousness, as if thy being were backgrounded by some
spangled vail of mystery."
Is Lucy deaf to all these ravings of his lyric love? Why looks she down,
and vibrates so; and why now from her over-charged lids, drops such warm
drops as these? No joy now in Lucy's eyes, and seeming tremor on her
lips.
"Ah! thou too ardent and impetuous Pierre!"
"Nay, thou too moist and changeful April! know'st thou not, that the
moist and changeful April is followed by the glad, assured, and
showerless joy of June? And this, Lucy, this day should be thy June,
even as it is the earth's?"
"Ah Pierre! not June to me. But say, are not the sweets of June made
sweet by the April tears?"
"Ay, love! but here fall more drops,--more and more;--these showers are
longer than beseem the April, and pertain not to the June."
"June! June!--thou bride's month of the summer,--following the spring's
sweet courtship of the earth,--my June, my June is yet to come!"
"Oh! yet to come, but fixedly decreed;--good as come, and better."
"Then no flower that, in the bud, the April showers have nurtured; no
such flower may untimely perish, ere the June unfolds it? Ye will not
swear that, Pierre?"
"The audacious immortalities of divinest love are in me; and I now swear
to thee all the immutable eternities of joyfulness, that ever woman
dreamed of, in this dream-house of the earth. A god decrees to thee
unchangeable felicity; and to me, the unchallenged possession of thee
and them, for my inalienable fief.--Do I rave? Look on me, Lucy; think
on me, girl."
"Thou art young, and beautiful, and strong; and a joyful manliness
invests thee, Pierre; and thy intrepid heart never yet felt the touch of
fear;--But--"
"But what?"
"Ah, my best Pierre!"
"With kisses I will suck thy secret from thy cheek!--but what?"
"Let us hie homeward, Pierre. Some nameless sadness, faintness,
strangely comes to me. Foretaste I feel of endless dreariness. Tell me
once more the story of that face, Pierre,--that mysterious, haunting
face, which thou once told'st me, thou didst thrice vainly try to shun.
Blue is the sky, oh, bland the air, Pierre;--but--tell me the story of
the face,--the dark-eyed, lustrous, imploring, mournful face, that so
mystically paled, and shrunk at thine. Ah, Pierre, sometimes I have
thought,--never will I wed with my best Pierre, until the riddle of that
face be known. Tell me, tell me, Pierre;--as a fixed basilisk, with eyes
of steady, flaming mournfulness, that face this instant fastens me."
"Bewitched! bewitched!--Cursed be the hour I acted on the thought, that
Love hath no reserves. Never should I have told thee the story of that
face, Lucy. I have bared myself too much to thee. Oh, never should Love
know all!"
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