]
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 written
That 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 loan
Of double life?
Lewis. My saint! but what if I bid thee
To be my seneschal, and here with prayers,
With sober thrift, and noble bounty shine,
Alone and peerless? And suppose--nay, start not--
I only said suppose--the war was long,
Our camps far off, and that some winter, love,
Or two, pent back this Eden stream, where now
Joys upon joys like sunlit ripples pass,
Alike, yet ever new.
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