Ishmael's Woe

And with another's crime, my birth
She taunted me as little worth,
Because, forsooth, I could not claim
The lawful heirship of my name;
Yet were a few short summers mine,
My name should more than ever shine,
With honors all my own!

--Byron.

Ishmael sat in the shadows of his room overwhelmed with shame and sorrow
and despair. He had heard every cruel word; they had entered his ears
and pierced his heart. And not only for himself he bowed his head and
sorrowed and despaired, but for her; for her, proud, selfish, sinful,
but loving, and oh, how fatally beloved!

It was not only that he worshiped her with a blind idolatry, and knew
that she returned his passion with equal strength and fervor, and that
she would have waited for him long years, and married him at last but
for the cloud upon his birth. It was not this--not his own misery that
crushed him, nor even her present wretchedness that prostrated him--no!
but it was the awful, shapeless shadow of some infinite unutterable woe
is Claudia's future, and into which she was blindly rushing, that
overwhelmed him. Oh, to have saved her from this woe, he would gladly
have laid down his life!

The door opened and Jim, his especial waiter, entered with two lighted
candles on a tray. He sat them on the table and was leaving the room,
when Ishmael recalled him. What I am about to relate is a trifle
perhaps, but it will serve to show the perfect beauty of that nature
which, in the midst of its own great sorrow, could think of the small
wants of another.