Jenny

“Vengeance of Jenny’s case! Fie on her! Never name her, child!”—Mrs. Quickly

Lazy laughing languid Jenny,

Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,

Whose head upon my knee to-night

Rests for a while, as if grown light

With all our dances and the sound

To which the wild tunes spun you round:

Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen

Of kisses which the blush between

Could hardly make much daintier;

Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair

Is countless gold incomparable:

Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell

Of Love’s exuberant hotbed:—Nay,

Poor flower left torn since yesterday

Until to-morrow leave you bare;

Poor handful of bright spring-water

Flung in the whirlpool’s shrieking face;

Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace

Thus with your head upon my knee;—

Whose person or whose purse may be

The lodestar of your reverie?

This room of yours, my Jenny, looks

A change from mine so full of books,

Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,

So many captive hours of youth,—

The hours they thieve from day and night

To make one’s cherished work come right,

And leave it wrong for all their theft,

Even as to-night my work has left:

Until I vowed that since my brain

And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,

My feet should have some dancing too:—

And thus it was I met with you.

Well, I suppose ’twas hard to part,

For here I am. And now, sweetheart,

You seem too tired to get to bed.

It was a careless life I led

When rooms like this were scarce so strange

Not long ago. What breeds the change,—

The many aims or the few years?

Because to-night it all appears

Something I do not know again.

The cloud’s not danced out of my brain,—

The cloud that made it turn and swim

While hour by hour the books grew dim.

Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—

For all your wealth of loosened hair,

Your silk ungirdled and unlac’d

And warm sweets open to the waist,

All golden in the lamplight’s gleam,—

You know not what a book you seem,

Half-read by lightning in a dream!

How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,

And I should be ashamed to say:—

Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!

But while my thought runs on like this

With wasteful whims more than enough,

I wonder what you’re thinking of.

If of myself you think at all,

What is the thought?—conjectural

On sorry matters best unsolved?—

Or inly is each grace revolved

To fit me with a lure?—or (sad

To think!) perhaps you’re merely glad

That I’m not drunk or ruffianly

And let you rest upon my knee.

For sometimes, were the truth confess’d,

You’re thankful for a little rest,—

Glad from the crush to rest within,

From the heart-sickness and the din

Where envy’s voice at virtue’s pitch

Mocks you because your gown is rich;

And from the pale girl’s dumb rebuke,

Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look

Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak,

And other nights than yours bespeak;

And from the wise unchildish elf,

To schoolmate lesser than himself

Pointing you out, what thing you are:—

Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,

From shame and shame’s outbraving too,

Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—

But most from the hatefulness of man

Who spares not to end what he began,

Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,

Who, having used you at his will,

Thrusts you aside, as when I dine

I serve the dishes and the wine.

Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up:

I’ve filled our glasses, let us sup,

And do not let me think of you,

Lest shame of yours suffice for two.

What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep

Your head there, so you do not sleep;

But that the weariness may pass

And leave you merry, take this glass.

Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless’d

If ne’er in rings it had been dress’d

Nor ever by a glove conceal’d!

Behold the lilies of the field,

They toil not neither do they spin;

(So doth the ancient text begin,—

Not of such rest as one of these

Can share.) Another rest and ease.

Along each summer-sated path

From its new lord the garden hath,

Than that whose spring in blessings ran

Which praised the bounteous husbandman,

Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,

The lilies sickened unto death.

What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?

Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread

Like winter on the garden-bed.

But you had roses left in May,—

They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,

But must your roses die, and those

Their purfled buds that should unclose?

Even so; the leaves are curled apart,

Still red as from the broken heart,

And here’s the naked stem of thorns.

Nay, nay mere words. Here nothing warns

As yet of winter. Sickness here

Or want alone could waken fear,—

Nothing but passion wrings a tear.

Except when there may rise unsought

Haply at times a passing thought

Of the old days which seem to be

Much older than any history

That is written in any book;

When she would lie in fields and look

Along the ground through the blown grass,

And wonder where the city was,

Far out of sight, whose broil and bale

They told her then for a child’s tale.

Jenny, you know the city now,

A child can tell the tale there, how

Some things which are not yet enroll’d

In market-lists are bought and sold

Even till the early Sunday light,

When Saturday night is market-night

Everywhere, be it dry or wet,

And market-night in the Haymarket.

Our learned London children know,

Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;

Have seen your lifted silken skirt

Advertise dainties through the dirt;

Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke

On virtue; and have learned your look

When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare

Along the streets alone, and there,

Round the long park, across the bridge,

The cold lamps at the pavement’s edge

Wind on together and apart,

A fiery serpent for your heart.

Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!

Suppose I were to think aloud,—

What if to her all this were said?

Why, as a volume seldom read

Being opened halfway shuts again,

So might the pages of her brain

Be parted at such words, and thence

Close back upon the dusty sense.

For is there hue or shape defin’d

In Jenny’s desecrated mind,

Where all contagious currents meet,

A Lethe of the middle street?

Nay, it reflects not any face,

Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,

But as they coil those eddies clot,

And night and day remembers not.

Why, Jenny, you’re asleep at last!—

Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—

So young and soft and tired; so fair,

With chin thus nestled in your hair,

Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue

As if some sky of dreams shone through!

Just as another woman sleeps!

Enough to throw one’s thoughts in heaps

Of doubt and horror,—what to say

Or think,—this awful secret sway,

The potter’s power over the clay!

Of the same lump (it has been said)

For honour and dishonour made,

Two sister vessels. Here is one.

My cousin Nell is fond of fun,

And fond of dress, and change, and praise,

So mere a woman in her ways:

And if her sweet eyes rich in youth

Are like her lips that tell the truth,

My cousin Nell is fond of love.

And she’s the girl I’m proudest of.

Who does not prize her, guard her well?

The love of change, in cousin Nell,

Shall find the best and hold it dear:

The unconquered mirth turn quieter

Not through her own, through others’ woe:

The conscious pride of beauty glow

Beside another’s pride in her,

One little part of all they share.

For Love himself shall ripen these

In a kind of soil to just increase

Through years of fertilizing peace.

Of the same lump (as it is said)

For honour and dishonour made,

Two sister vessels. Here is one.

It makes a goblin of the sun.

So pure,—so fall’n! How dare to think

Of the first common kindred link?

Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn

It seems that all things take their turn;

And who shall say but this fair tree

May need, in changes that may be,

Your children’s children’s charity?

Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn’d!

Shall no man hold his pride forewarn’d

Till in the end, the Day of Days,

At Judgement, one of his own race,

As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—

His daughter, with his mother’s eyes?

How Jenny’s clock ticks on the shelf!

Might not the dial scorn itself

That has such hours to register?

Yet as to me, even so to her

Are golden sun and silver moon,

In daily largesse of earth’s boon,

Counted for life-coins to one tune.

And if, as blindfold fates are toss’d,

Through some one man this life be lost,

Shall soul not somehow pray for soul?

Fair shines the gilded aureole

In which our highest painters place

Some living woman’s simple face.

And the stilled features thus descried

As Jenny’s long throat droops aside,—

The shadows where the cheeks are thin,

And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—

Whit Raffael’s, Leonardo’s hand

To show them to men’s souls, might stand,

Whole ages long, the whole world through,

For preachings of what God can do.

What has man done here? How atone,

Great God, for this which man has done?

And for the body and soul which by

Man’s pitiless doom must now comply

With lifelong hell, what lullaby

Of sweet forgetful second birth

Remains? All dark. No sign on earth

What measure of God’s rest endows

The many mansions of his house.

If but a woman’s heart might see

Such erring heart unerringly

For once! But that can never be.

Like a rose shut in a book

In which pure women may not look,

For its base pages claim control

To crush the flower within the soul;

Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,

Pale as transparent psyche-wings,

To the vile text, are traced such things

As might make lady’s cheek indeed