And woke a deep desire to bear her part
Of love and sorrow in the larger life
As sister, helper,--nay, perhaps as wife;--
For such vague instincts, after all, are human,
And Elfinhart herself was but a woman.
And yet, for all this new desire, I doubt
If Elfinhart would e'er have spoken out,
And told the fairies of her wish to leave them,
(A wish her conscious heart well knew would grieve them),
If in the ripening of her silent thought
A still voice had not whispered that she ought
To leave that world of love and mirth and beauty,
To share man's burden in this world of duty.
(There's anticlimax for you! Most provoking,
Just when you thought that I was only joking,
Or idly fingering the poet's laurel,
To find my story threatens to be moral!
But as for morals, though in verse we scout them,
In life we somehow can't get on without them;
So if I don't insert a moral distich
Once in a while, I can't be realistic;--
And in this tale, I solemnly aver,
My one wish is to tell things as they were!
But not _all_ things; time flies, and art is long,
And I must hurry onward with my song.)
How Elfinhart at last told what she wanted,
And what the fairies said, please take for granted.
She prayed, they yielded; Elfinhart full loth
To leave, as they to let her go, but both
Agreeing that this bitter thing must be;