Seraphine, are you happy?"
"Eugene,
What is happier than to have hoped not in vain?"
She answer'd,--"And you?"
"Yes."
"You do not repent?"
"No."
"Thank Heaven!" she murmur'd. He musingly bent
His looks on the sunset, and somewhat apart
Where he stood, sigh'd, as though to his innermost heart,
"O bless'd are they, amongst whom I was not,
Whose morning unclouded, without stain or spot,
Predicts a pure evening; who, sunlike, in light
Have traversed, unsullied, the world, and set bright!"
But she in response, "Mark yon ship far away,
Asleep on the wave, in the last light of day,
With all its hush'd thunders shut up! Would you know
A thought which came to me a few days ago,
Whilst watching those ships?... When the great Ship of Life
Surviving, though shatter'd, the tumult and strife
Of earth's angry element,--masts broken short,
Decks drench'd, bulwarks beaten--drives safe into port;
When the Pilot of Galilee, seen on the strand,
Stretches over the waters a welcoming hand;
When, heeding no longer the sea's baffled roar,
The mariner turns to his rest evermore;
What will then be the answer the helmsman must give?
Will it be... 'Lo our log-book! Thus once did we live
In the zones of the South; thus we traversed the seas
Of the Orient; there dwelt with the Hesperides;
Thence follow'd the west wind; here, eastward we turn'd;
The stars fail'd us there; just here land we discern'd
On our lee; there the storm overtook us at last;
That day went the bowsprit, the next day the mast;
There the mermen came round us, and there we saw bask
A siren?' The Captain of Port will he ask
Any one of such questions? I cannot think so!
But... 'What is the last Bill of Health you can show?'
Not--How fared the soul through the trials she pass'd?
But--What is the state of that soul at the last?"

"May it be so!" he sigh'd. "There the sun drops, behold!"
And indeed, whilst he spoke all the purple and gold
In the west had turn'd ashen, save one fading strip
Of light that yet gleam'd from the dark nether lip
Of a long reef of cloud; and o'er sullen ravines
And ridges the raw damps were hanging white screens
Of