Lewis. Ah, turn away those swarthy diamonds’ blaze!Mine eyes are dizzy, and my faint sense reelsIn the rich fragrance of those purple tresses.Oh, to be thus, and thus, day after day!To sleep, and wake, and find it yet no dream—My atmosphere, my hourly food, such blissAs to have dreamt of, five short years agone,Had seemed a mad conceit.

Eliz. Five years agone?

Lewis. I know not; for upon our marriage-dayI slipped from time into eternity;Where each day teems with centuries of life,And centuries were but one wedding morn.

Eliz. Lewis, I am too happy! floating higherThan e’er my will had dared to soar, though able;But circumstance, which is the will of God,Beguiled my cowardice to that, which, darling,I found most natural, when I feared it most.Love would have had no strangeness in mine eyes,Save from the prejudice which others taught me—They should know best. Yet now this wedlock seemsA second infancy’s baptismal robe,A heaven, my spirit’s antenatal home,Lost in blind pining girlhood—found now, found![Aside] What have I said? Do I blaspheme? Alas!I neither made these thoughts, nor can unmake them.

Lewis. Ay, marriage is the life-long miracle,The self-begetting wonder, daily fresh;The Eden, where the spirit and the fleshAre one again, and new-born souls walk free,And name in mystic language all things new,Naked, and not ashamed. [Eliz. hides her face.]

Eliz. O God! were that true!

[Clasps him round the neck.]

There, there, no more—I love thee, and I love thee, and I love thee—More than rich thoughts can dream, or mad lips speak;But how, or why, whether with soul or body,I will not know. Thou art mine.—Why question further?[Aside] Ay if I fall by loving, I will love,And be degraded!—how? by my own troth-plight?No, but my thinking that I fall.—’Tis writtenThat whatsoe’er is not of faith is sin.—O Jesu Lord! Hast Thou not made me thus?Mercy! My brain will burst: I cannot leave him!

Lewis. Beloved, if I went away to war—

Eliz. O God! More wars? More partings?

Lewis. Nay, my sister—My trust but longs to glory in its surety:What would’st thou do?

Eliz. What I have done already.Have I not followed thee, through drought and frost,Through flooded swamps, rough glens, and wasted lands,Even while I panted most with thy dear loanOf double life?

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