Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/38

 MARK TWAIN

I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no mean ing, and that I have only written in thought:

Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;

Thy gentle words stir poison there; Thou hast disturbed the only rest That was the portion of despair. Subdued to duty s hard control,

I could have borne my wayward lot: The chains that bind this ruined soul

Had cankered then, but crushed it not.

This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its sur passing excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than the color of an autumnal sunset.

Then it did not refer to his wife. That is plain; otherwise he would have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and ruddy Italian poets during a month.

The biography observes that portions of this letter &quot;read like the tired moaning of a wounded crea ture.&quot; Guesses at the nature of the wound are permissible; we will hazard one.

Read by the light of Shelley s previous history, his letter seems to be the cry of a tortured con science. Until this time it was a conscience that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an ungenerous, or

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