Atma - A Romance

The quiet days were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, and

his strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watch

our ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It was

the waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountain

crest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot across

the welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dying

season. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, and

birds of passage took their flight. Atma marked these things, and often

withdrew to lament.

One evening they watched the shadows lengthening. Atma's heart was

oppressed, but Bertram looked on the shifting scene with happy undaunted

smile. In voice pathetic only from mortal weakness and strong with

immortality he said: "When mists and dreams and shadows flee,

And happy hills so far and high

Bend low in benedicite,

I know the break of day is nigh.

Thus have I watched in daisied mead

A grayer heaven bending low,

And heard the music of a brook

In meet response more softly flow,

Until at mystic signal given

From realm entranced the spell was riven,

The sunbeams glanced,

The wavelets danced,

And gladness spread from earth to heaven.

This little flower

Right bravely blooming at my feet

So dainty, sweet,

Has missed the spirit of the hour.

But stay, the tender calyx thrills,

It feels the silence of the hills,

Behold it droops, in haste to be

At one with that hushed company."

Atma: "Not day, but night, beloved friend,

Long doleful night,

The shadows of the eve portend."

Bertram: "Watcher unseeing! what of the night!

'Tis past and gone.

I know th' advance and joy of light!

Look how for it all things put on

Such hues as in comparison

The earth and sky to darkness turn,

Hues of the sard, and chrysolite

And sapphire herald in the morn."

Atma: "Ah! woe is me for day so quickly past,

For morning fled, and noontide unexpressed."

Bertram: "The subtly-quickening breath of morn

my inmost being is borne,

And I behold th' unearthly train

Of solemn splendours that pertain

To seraph state,

Such as our glories symbolize.

They sweep in countless bright convoys

Athwart my blissful view, they seem

Completion of all pleasure known

Or loved, and of our fairest dream

End and interpretation."

Atma: "Let be, my friend; so it be morn to thee

I make no moan, though thy day's dawn shall be

Night of desertion and lament to me."