The Courtship of Miles Standish

Thus for a while he stood, and mused by the shore of the ocean, / Thinking of many things, and most of all of Priscilla; / And as if thought had the power to draw to itself, like the loadstone, / Whatsoever it touches, by subtile laws of its nature, / Lo! as he turned to depart, Priscilla was standing beside him.

"Are you so much offended, you will not speak to me? " said she. / "Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading / Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward, / Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum? / Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying / What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it; / For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion, / That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble / Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, / Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together. / Yesterday I was shocked, when I heard you speak of Miles Standish, / Praising his virtues, transforming his very defects into virtues, / Praising his courage and strength, and even his fighting in Flanders, / As if by fighting alone you could win the heart of a woman, / Quite overlooking yourself and the rest, in exalting your hero. / Therefore I spake as I did, by an irresistible impulse. / You will forgive me, I hope, for the sake of the friendship between us, / Which is too true and too sacred to be so easily broken! " / Thereupon answered John Alden, the scholar, the friend of Miles Standish: / "I was not angry with you, with myself alone I was angry, / Seeing how badly I managed the matter I had in my keeping. " / "No! " interrupted the maiden, with answer prompt and decisive; / "No; you were angry with me, for speaking so frankly and freely. / It was wrong, I acknowledge; for it is the fate of a woman / Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, / Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. / Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women / Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers / Running through caverns of darkness, unheard, unseen, and unfruitful, / Chafing their channels of stone, with endless and profitless murmurs. " / Thereupon answered John Alden, the young man, the lover of women: / "Heaven forbid it, Priscilla; and truly they seem to me always / More like the beautiful rivers that watered the garden of Eden, / More like the river Euphrates, through deserts of Havilah flowing, / Filling the land with delight, and memories sweet of the garden! " / "Ah, by these words, I can see," again interrupted the maiden, / "How very little you prize me, or care for what I am saying. / When from the depths of my heart, in pain and with secret misgiving, / Frankly I speak to you, asking for sympathy only and kindness, / Straightway you take up my words, that are plain and direct and in earnest, / Turn them away from their meaning, and answer with flattering phrases. / This is not right, is not just, is not true to the best that is in you; / For I know and esteem you, and feel that your nature is noble, / Lifting mine up to a higher, a more ethereal level. / Therefore I value your friendship, and feel it perhaps the more keenly / If you say aught that implies I am only as one among many, / If you make use of those common and complimentary phrases / Most men think so fine, in dealing and speaking with women, / But which women reject as insipid, if not as insulting."