The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P.

THE POEMS OF SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BAR^T.

The slight plank creaks—high mount the waves and high,
Hark! with the tempest's shrieks the human cry!
Upon the bridge but one man now!——

THE NEW TIMON.

LONDON ROUTLEDGE, WARNE AND ROUTLEDGE FARRINGDON STREET.

THE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART. M.P.

A NEW EDITION

LONDON:
ROUTLEDGE, WARNE, & ROUTLEDGE,
FARRINGDON STEEET;
NEW YORK: 56, WALKER STREET.
1860.

PREFATORY NOTE.

In this collection of the Author's Poems will be found some not before printed, and some entirely re-written from the more imperfect productions of earlier years. Few, if any, that have previously appeared, have escaped revision and alteration.

CONTENTS.

THE NEW TIMON.

I.

O'er royal London, in luxuriant May,
While lamps yet twinkled, dawning crept the day.
Home from the hell the pale-eyed gamester steals;
Home from the ball flash jaded Beauty's wheels;
The lean grimalkin, who, since night began,
Hath hymn'd to love amidst the wrath of man,
Scared from his raptures by the morning star,
Flits finely by, and threads the area bar;
From fields suburban rolls the early cart;
As rests the revel, so awakes the mart.
Transfusing Mocha from the beans within,
Bright by the crossing gleams the alchemic tin,—
There halts the craftsman; there, with envious sigh,
The houseless vagrant looks, and limps foot-weary by.

Behold that street,—the Omphalos of Town!
Where the grim palace wears the prison's frown,
As mindful still, amidst a gaudier race,
Of the veil'd Genius of the mournful Place—
Of floors no majesty but Griefs had trod,
And weary limbs that only knelt to God.[A]

What tales, what morals, of the elder day—
If stones had language—could that street convey!
Why yell the human bloodhounds panting there?—
To drown the Stuart's last forgiving prayer.[B]
Again the bloodhounds!—whither would they run?
To lick the feet of Stuart's ribald son.
There, through the dusk-red towers, amidst his ring
Of Vans and Mynheers, rode the Dutchman king;
And there—did England's Goneril thrill to hear
The shouts that triumph'd o'er her crownless Lear?
There, where the gaslight streams on Crockford's door,
Bluff Henry chuckled at the jests of More;
There, where you gaze upon the last H. B.,
Swift paused, and mutter'd, "Shall I have that see?"
There, where yon pile, for party's common weal,
Knits votes that serve, with hearts abhorring, Peel,
Blunt Walpole seized, and roughly bought, his man;—
Or, tired of Polly, St. John lounged to Anne.
Well, let the world change on,—still must endure
While Earth is Earth, one changeless race—the Poor!
Within that street, on yonder threshold stone,
What sits as stone-like?—Penury, claim thine own!
She sate, the homeless wanderer,—with calm eyes
Looking through tears, yet lifted to the skies;
Wistful, but patient, sorrowful, but mild,
As asking God when He would claim his child.
A face too youthful for so hush'd a grief;—
The worm that gnaw'd the core had spared the leaf;
Though worn the cheek, with hunger, or with care,
Yet still the soft fresh childlike bloom was there;
And each might touch you with an equal gloom,
The youth, the care, the hunger, and the bloom;—
As if, when round the cradle of the child
With lavish gifts the gentler fairies smiled,
One vengeful sprite, forgotten as the guest,
Had breathed a spell to disenchant the rest,
And prove how slight each favour, else divine,
If wroth the Urganda of the Golden Mine!

Now, as the houseless sate, and up the sky
Dawn to day strengthen'd, pass'd a stranger by:
He saw and halted;—she beheld him not—
All round them slept, and silence wrapt the spot.
To this new-comer Nature had denied
The gifts that graced the outcast crouch'd beside:
With orient suns his cheek was swarth and grim,
And low the form, though lightly shaped the limb;
Yet life glow'd vigorous in that deep-set eye,
With a calm force that dared you to defy;
And the strong foot was planted on the stone
Firm as a gnome's upon his mountain throne;
Simple his garb, yet what the wealthy wear,
And conscious power gave lordship to his air.

Lone in the Babel thus the maid and man;
Long he gazed silent, and at last began:
"Poor homeless outcast—dost thou see me stand
Close by thy side, yet beg not? Stretch thy hand."
The voice was stern, abrupt, yet full and deep:
The outcast heard, and started as from sleep,
And meekly rose, and stretch'd the hand and sought
To murmur thanks—the murmur fail'd the thought.
He took the slight thin hand within his own:
"This hand hath nought of honest labour known;
And yet methinks thou'rt honest!—speak, my child."
And his face broke to beauty as it smiled.
But her unconscious eyes, cast down the while,
Met not the heart that open'd in the smile:
Again the murmur rose, and died in air.
"Nay, what thy mother and her home, and where?"
Lo, with those words, the rigid ice that lay
Layer upon layer within, dissolves away,
And tears come rushing from o'erchargèd eyes:—
"There is my mother—there her home—the skies!"
Oh, in that burst, what depth of lone distress!
O desolation of the motherless!
Yet through the anguish how survived the trust,
Home in the skies, though in the grave the dust!
The man was moved, and silence fell again;
Upsprung the sun—Light re-assumed the reign;—
Love ruled on high! Below, the twain that share
Men's builded empires—Mammon and Despair!

At length, with pitying eye and soothing tone,
The stranger spoke: "Thy bitterer grief mine own;
Amidst the million, lonely as thou art,
Mine the full coffers, but the beggar'd heart.
Yet Gold—earth's demon, when unshared, receives
God's breath, and grows a god, when it relieves.
Trust still our common Father, orphan one,
And He shall guide thee, if thou trust the son.
Nay, follow, child." And on with passive feet,
Ghost-like she follow'd through the death-like street.
They paused at last a stately pile before;
The drowsy porter oped the noiseless door;
The girl stood wistful still without;—the pause
The guide divined, and thus rebuked the cause:—
"Enter, no tempter let thy penury fear;
I have a sister, and her home is here."

II.

And who the wanderer that hath shelter won
Beneath the roof of Fortune's favour'd son?
Ill stars predoom'd her, and she stole to birth
Fresh from the Heaven,—Law's outcast on the earth;
The child of Love betraying and betray'd,
The blossom open'd in the Upas shade;—
So ran the rumour; if the rumour lied,
The humble mother wept, but not denied:
Ne'er had the infant's slumber known a rest
On childhood's native shield—a father's breast.
Dead or neglectful, 'twas to her the same; }
But, oh, how dear!—yea, dearer for the shame, }
All that God hallows in a mother's name! }
Here, one proud refuge from a world's disdain,
Here the lost empress half resumes her reign;—
Here the deep-fallen Eve sees Eden's skies
Smile on the desert from the cherub's eyes.
Sweet to each human heart the right to love;
But 'tis the deluge consecrates the dove;
And haply scorn yet more the child endears,
Cradled in misery, and baptized with tears.

Each then the all on earth unto the other,—
The sinless infant and the erring mother:
The one soon lost the smile which childhood wears,
Chill'd by the gloom it marvels at—but shares;
The other, by that purest love made pure,
Learn'd to redeem, by labouring to endure;
Who can divine what hidden music lies
In the frail reed, till winds awake its sighs?

Hard was their life, and lonely was their hearth;
There, kindness brought no holiday of mirth;
No kindred visited, no playmate came;—
Joy, the proud worldling, shunn'd the child of shame!
Yet in the lesson which, at stolen whiles,
'Twixt care and care, the respite-hour beguiles,
The mother's mind the polish'd trace betrays }
Of early culture and serener days; }
And gentle birth still moulds the delicate phrase. }
By converse, more than books (for books too poor),
Learn'd Lucy more than books themselves insure;
For if, in truth, the mother's heart had err'd,
Pure now the life, and holy was the word:
The fallen state no grov'ling change had wrought;
Meek if the bearing, lofty was the thought;
So much of noble in the lore instill'd,
You felt the soul had ne'er the error will'd;—
That fraud alone had duped its wings astray
From their true instinct tow'rds empyreal day.
Thus life itself, if sadd'ning, still refined,
And through the heart the culture reach'd the mind.
As to the moon the tides attracted move,
So flow'd the intellect beneath the love.—
To nurse the sickness, to assuage the care,
To charm the sigh into the happier prayer;
Forestall the unutter'd wish with ready guess;
Wise in the exquisite tact of tenderness!
These Lucy's study;—and, in grateful looks,
Seraphs write lessons more divine than books.

So dawn'd her youth:—Youth, Nature's holiday!
Fair time, which dreams so gently steal away;
When Life—dark volume, with its opening leaf
Of Joy,—through fable dupes us into grief—
Tells of a golden Arcady;—and then
Read on,—comes truth;—the Iron world of men!
But from her life thy opening poet page
Was torn!—Its record had no Golden Age.

Behold her by the couch, on bended knees!
There the wan mother—there the last disease!
Dread to the poor the least suspense of health,—
Their hands their friends, their labour all their wealth:
Let the wheel rest from toil a single sun,
And all the humble clock-work is undone.
The custom lost, the drain upon the hoard,
The debt that sweeps the fragment from the board,
How mark the hunger round thee, and be brave—
Foresee thy orphan, and not fear the grave?
Lower and ever lower in the grade
Of penury fell the mother and the maid,
Till the grim close; when, as the midnight rain
Drove to the pallet through the broken pane,
The dying murmur'd: "Near,—thy hand,—more near!
I am not what scorn deem'd,—yet not severe
The doom which leaves me, in the hour of death,
The right to bless thee with my parting breath—
These, worn till now, wear thou, his daughter. Live
To see thy sire, and tell him—I forgive!"
Cold the child thrills beneath the hands that press
Her bended neck—slow slackens the caress—
Loud the roof rattles with the stormy gust;
The grief is silent, and the love is dust;
From the spent fuel God's bright spark is flown;
And there the Motherless, and Death—alone!

Then fell a happy darkness o'er the mind;—
That trance, that pause, the tempest leaves behind:
Still, with a timid step, around she crept,
And sigh'd, "She sleeps!" and smiled. Too well she slept!
Dark strangers enter'd in the squalid cell;
Rude hirelings placed the pauper in the shell;
Harsh voices question'd of the name and age;
Ev'n paupers live upon the parish page.
She answers not, or sighs, and smiles, and keeps
The same meek language:—"Hush! my mother sleeps."
They thrust some scanty pence into her palm,
And led her forth, scarce marv'ling at her calm;
And bade her work, not beg—be good, and shun
All bad companions—so their work was done,
And the wreck left to drift amidst the roar
Of the Great Ocean with the rocky shore.

And thou hast found the shelter!—from thine eyes
Melt the long shadows. Dawn is in the skies.
Low on the earth, while Night endures,—unguess'd
Hope folds the wing and slumbers on its nest;
Let but a sunbeam to the world be given—
And hark—it singeth at the gates of Heaven!

III.

Yet o'er that house there hung a solemn gloom;
The step fell timid in each gorgeous room,
Vast, sumptuous, dreary as some Eastern pile,
Where mutes keep watch—a home without a smile;
Still as if silence reign'd there, like a law,
And left to pomp no attribute but awe;
Save when the swell of sombre festival
Jarr'd into joy the melancholy hall,
So some chance wind in mournful autumn wrings
Discordant notes, although from music-strings.
Wild were the wealthy master's moods and strange,
As one whose humour found its food in change;
Now for whole days content apart to dwell
With books and thought—his world the student's cell;
And now, with guests around the glittering board,
The hermit-Timon shone the Athenian lord.
There bloom'd the bright ephemerals of the hour,
Whom the fierce ferment forces into flower,
The gorgeous nurslings of the social life,
Sprung from our hotbeds—Vanity and Strife!
Lords of the senate, wrestlers for the state,
Grey-hair'd in youth, exhausted, worn,—and great;
Pale Book-men,—charming only in their style;
And Poets, jaundiced with eternal bile;—
All the poor Titans our Cocytus claims,
With tortured livers, and immortal names:—
Such made the guests, Amphitryons well may boast,
But still the student travail'd in the host;—
These were the living books he loved to read,
Keys to his lore, and comments on his creed.
From them he rose with more confirm'd disdain
Of the thorn-chaplet and the gilded chain.
Oft, from such stately revels, to the shed
Where Hunger couch'd, the same dark impulse led;
Intent, the Babel, Art has built, to trace,
Here scan the height, and there explore the base;
That structure call'd "The Civilized," as vain
As its old symbol on the Shinar plain,
Where Pride collects the bricks and slime, and then
But builds the city to divide the men;
Swift comes the antique curse,—smites one from one,
Rends the great bond, and leaves the pile undone.

Man will o'er muse—when musing on mankind:
The vast expanse defeats the searching mind,
Blent in one mass each varying height and hue:—
Wouldst thou seize Nature, Artist?—bound the view!
But He, in truth, is banish'd from the ties
That curb the ardent, and content the wise;
From the pent heart the bubbling passions sweep,
To spread in aimless circles o'er the deep.

Still in extremes—in each was still betray'd
A soul at discord with the part it play'd;
A soul in social elements misplaced,
Bruised by the grate and yearning for the waste,
And wearing custom, as a pard the chain,
Now with dull torpor, now with fierce disdain.

All who approach'd him by that spell were bound,
Which nobler natures weave themselves around:
Those stars which make their own charm'd atmosphere;
Not wholly love, but yet more love than fear,
A mystic influence, which, we know not why,
Makes some on earth seem portions of our sky.

In truth, our Morvale (such his name) could boast
Those kinglier virtues which subject us most;
The ear inclined to every voice of grief,
The hand that oped spontaneous to relief,
The heart, whose impulse stay'd not for the mind }
To freeze to doubt what charity enjoin'd, }
But sprang to man's warm instinct for mankind; }
Honour, truth's life-sap, with pervading power
Nurturing the stem to crown it with the flower;
And that true daring not alone to those
Whom fault or fate has marshall'd into foes;
But the rare valour that confronts with scorn
The monster shape, of Vice and Folly born,
Which some "the World," and some "Opinion," call,
Own'd by no heart, and yet enslaving all;
The bastard charter of the social state,
Which crowns the base to ostracise the great;
The eternal quack upon the itinerant stage,
This the "good Public," that "the enlighten'd Age,"
Ready alike to worship and revile,
To build the altar, or to light the pile;
Now "Down with Stuart and the Reign of Sin,"
Now "Long live Charles the Second and Nell Gwynne;"
Now mad for patriots—hot for revolution,
Now all for hanging and the Constitution.
Honour to him, who, self-complete, if lone,
Carves to the grave one pathway all his own;
And, heeding nought that men may think or say,
Asks but his soul if doubtful of the way.

IV.

Such was the better nature Morvale show'd;
Now view the contrast which the worse bestow'd.
Large was his learning, yet so vague and mix'd
It guided less the reason than unfix'd;
The dauntless impulse and the kingly will,
Prompted to good, but leapt the checks to ill;
Quick in revenge, and passionately proud,
His brightest hour still shone forth from a cloud,
And none conjecture on the next could form—
So play'd the sunbeam on the verge of storm.

Still young—not youthful—life had pass'd through all
Age sighs, and smiles, and trembles to recall.
From childhood fatherless and lone begun
His fiery race, beneath as fierce a sun,
Where all extremes of Love and Horror are,
Soft Camdeo's lotos bark, grim Moloch's gory car;
Where basks the noonday luminously calm,
O'er eldest grot and immemorial palm;
And in the grot, the Goddess of the Dead
And the couch'd strangler, list the wanderer's tread,
And where the palm leaves stir with breeze-like sigh,
Sports the fell serpent with his deathful eye.

Midst the exuberant life of that fierce zone,
Uncurb'd, self-will'd to man had Morvale grown.
His sire (the offspring of an Indian maid
And English chief), whose orient hues betray'd
The Varna Sankara[C] of the mix'd embrace.
Carved by his sword a charter from disgrace;
Assumed the father's name, the Christian's life,
And his sins cursed him with an English wife:
A haughty dame, whose discontented charms
That merchant, Hymen, bargain'd to his arms.
In war he fell: his wife—the bondage o'er,
Loath'd the dark pledge the abhorrèd nuptials bore—
Yet young, her face more genial wedlock won,
And one bright daughter made more loath'd the son.
Widow'd anew, for London's native air,
And two tall footmen, sigh'd the jointured fair:
Wealth hers, why longer from its use exiled?—
She fled the land and the abandon'd child;
Yet oft the first-born, 'midst the swarthier race,
Gazed round and miss'd the fair unloving face.
In vain the coldness, nay, the hate had been,
Hate, by the eyes that love, is rarely seen.

Yet more he miss'd the playmate, sister, child,
With looks that ever on his own had smiled;
With rosy lips, caressing and caress'd;
Led by his hand and cradled on his breast:
But, as the cloud conceals and breaks in flame,
The gloom of youth the fire of man became.
Not his the dreams that studious life allows,
"Under the shade of melancholy boughs,"—
Dreams that to lids the Muse anoints belong,—
Rocking the passions on soft waves of song:
No poet he; adventure, wandering, strife,
War and the chase, wrung poetry from life.

One day a man, who call'd his father "friend,"
Told o'er his rupees and perceived his end.
Life's business done—a million made—what still
Remain'd on earth? Wealth's last caprice—a Will!
The man was childless—but the world was wide;
He thought on Morvale, made his will,—and died.
They sought and found the unsuspecting heir
Crouch'd in the shade that near'd the tiger's lair;
His gun beside, the jungle round him—wild,
Lawless and fierce as Hagar's wandering child:—
To this fresh nature the sleek life deceased
Left the bright plunder of the ravaged East.

Much wealth brings want,—that hunger of the heart
Which comes when Nature man deserts for Art:
His northern blood, his English name, create
Strife in the soul, till then resign'd to fate;
The social world with blander falsehood graced,
Smiles on his hopes, and lures him from the waste.
Alas! the taint that sunburnt brow bespeaks,
Divides the Half-Caste from the world he seeks:
In him proud Europe sees the Paria's birth,
And haughty Juno spurns his barren hearth.
Half heathen, and half savage,—all estranged
Amidst his kind, the Ishmael roved unchanged.

Small need to track his course from year to year,
Till wearied passion paused in its career:
Youth goads us on to action; lore of men
Brings thought—thought books—books quiet; well, and then?
Alas! we move but in the Hebrews' ring;[D]
Our onward steps but back the landmarks bring,
Until some few at least escape the thrall,
And breathe the space beyond the flaming wall:
Feel the large freedom which in faith is given,
And poise the wings that shall possess the heaven.

He sought his mother. She, intent to shun,
Closed that last refuge on the homeless son,
Till death approach'd, and Conscience, that sad star,
Which heralds night, and plays but on the bar
Of the Eternal Gate,—laid bare the crime,
And woke the soul upon the brink of time.
Haply if close, too closely, we would read
That sibyl page, the motive of the deed,
Remorse for him her life abandon'd, weaves
Fear for the dearer one her death bereaves;
And penitent lines consign'd, with eager prayer,
The lorn Calantha to a brother's care.
Not till long moons had waned in distant skies,
O'er the last mandate wept the Indian's eyes;
But the lost sister lived, the flower of yore
Bloom'd from the grave,—and earth was sweet once more;
Fair Florence holds the heart he yearns to meet;
Swift, when heart yearns to heart, how swift the feet!
Well, and those arms have clasp'd a sister now!
Thy tears have fallen on a sister's brow!
Alas! a sister's heart thy doom forbade;
Thy lot as lonely, and thy hearth as sad.
Is that pale shade the Peri-child in truth,
Who shone, like Morning, on the hills of Youth?
Is that cold voice the same that rang through air,
Blithe as the bird sings in rebuke of care?

Certes, to those who might more closely mark,
That dove brought nought of gladness to his ark;
No loving step, to meet him homeward, flew;
Still at his voice her pale cheek paler grew.
The greeting kiss, the tender trustful talk,—
Arm link'd in arm—the dear familiar walk;
The sweet domestic interchange of cares,
Memories and hopes—this union was not theirs.
Partly perchance the jealous laws that guard
The Eastern maids, their equal commune barr'd;
For still, in much the antique creed retain'd
Its hold, and India in the Alien reign'd:
That superstitious love which would secure
What the heart worships, for the world too pure;
And wrap with solemn mystery and divine,
From the crowd's gaze, the idol and the shrine,
In him was instinct,—generous if austere;
More priestly reverence, than dishonouring fear.
Yet wherefore shun no less, if this were all,
His lonely chamber than his crowded hall?
For days, for weeks, perchance, unseen, aloof
Far as the poles, beneath one common roof,
She drew around her the cold spells, which part
From forward sympathies the unsocial heart.
Yet, strange to say, each seem'd to each still dear;
And love in her but curb'd by stronger fear;
And love in him by some mysterious pride,
That sought the natural tenderness to hide:
Did she but name him, you beheld her raise
Moist eyes to heaven, as one who inly prays.
News of her varying health he daily sought,
And his mood alter'd with the tidings brought:
If worse than wonted, it was sad to view
That stern man's trembling lip and waning hue,—
Sad, yet the sadness with an awe was blent,—
No words e'er gave the struggling passion vent;
And still that passion seem'd not grief alone,
Some curse seem'd labouring in the stifled groan:
Some angrier chord the mix'd emotion wrench'd;
The brow was darken'd, and the hand was clench'd.

There was a mystery that defied the guess,
In so much love, and so much tenderness.
What sword, invisible to human eyes,
So sternly sever'd Nature's closest ties:
To leave each yearning unto each—apart—
All ice the commune, and all warmth the heart?

V.

But how gain'd she, whom pity strange and rare
Gave the night's refuge,—more than refuge there?
At morn the orphan hostess had received
The orphan outcast,—heard her and believed,—
And Lucy wept her thanks, and turn'd to part;
But the sad tale had touch'd a woman's heart.
Calantha's youth was lone, her nature kind,
She knew no friend—she sigh'd a friend to find;
That chasten'd speech, the grace so simply worn,
Bespoke the nurture of the gentle-born;
And so she gazed upon the weeping guest,
Check'd the intended alms, and murmur'd "Rest,
For both are orphans,—I should shelter thee,
And, weep no more—thy smile shall comfort me."

Thus Lucy rested—finding day by day
Her grateful heart the saving hand repay.
Calantha loved her as the sad alone
Love what consoles them;—in that life her own
Seem'd to revive, and even hope to flower:
Ah, over Sorrow Youth has such sweet power!
The very menials linger'd as they went,
To spy the fairy to their dwelling sent,
To list her light step on the stair, or hark
Her song;—yes, now the dove was in the ark!
Ev'n the cold Morvale, spell'd at last, was found
Within the circle drawn his guest around;
Less rare his visits to Calantha grew,
And her eye shrunk less coldly from his view
The presence of the gentle third one brought
Respite to memory, gave fresh play to thought;
And as some child to strifeful parents sent,
Laps the long discord in its own content,
This happy creature seem'd to reach that home,
To say—"Love enters where the guileless come!"
It was not mirth, for mirth she was too still;
It was not wit, wit leaves the heart more chill;
But that continuous sweetness, which with ease
Pleases all round it, from the wish to please,—
This was the charm that Lucy's smile bestow'd;
The waves' fresh ripple from deep fountains flow'd;—
Below exhaustless gratitude,—above,
Woman's meek temper, childhood's ready love.

Yet oft, when night reprieved the tender care,
And lonely thought stole musing on to prayer;
As some fair lake reflects, when day is o'er,
With clearer wave from farther glades the shore,
So, her still heart remember'd sorrows glass'd;
And o'er its hush lay trembling all the past,
Again she sees a mother's gentle face;
Again she feels a mother's soft embrace;
Again a mother's sigh of pain she hears,
And starts—till lo, the spell dissolves in tears!
Tears that too well the faithful grief reveal,
Which smiles, by day made duties, would conceal.

VI.

It was a noon of summer in its glow,
And all was life, but London's life, below;
As by the open casement half reclined
Calantha's languid form;—a gentle wind
Brought to her cheek a bloom unwonted there,
And stirr'd the light wave of the golden hair.
Hers was a beauty that made sad the eye,
Lovely in fading, like a twilight sky;
The shape so finely, delicately frail,
As form'd for climes unruffled by a gale;
The lustrous eye, through which looks forth the soul,
Bright and more brightly as it nears the goal;
The fever'd counterfeit of healthful bloom,
The rose so living yet so near the tomb;
The veil the Funeral Genius lends his bride,
When, fair as Love, he steals her to his side,
And leads her on till at the nuptial porch,
He murmurs, "Know me now!" and lowers the torch.
What made more sad the outward form's decay,
A soul of genius glimmer'd through the clay;
Oft through the languor of disease would break
That life of light Parnassian dreamers seek;
And music trembled on each aspen leaf
Of the boughs drooping o'er the fount of grief.

Genius has so much youth no care can kill;
Death seems unnatural when it sighs—"Be still."
That wealth, which Nature prodigally gave,
Shall Life but garner for its heir the Grave?
What noble hearts that treasure might have bless'd!
How large the realm that mind should have possess'd!
Love in the wife, and wisdom in the friend,
And earnest purpose for a generous end,
And glowing sympathy for thoughts of power
And playful fancy for the lighter hour;
All lost, all cavern'd in the sunless gloom
Of some dark memory, beetling o'er the tomb;—
Like bright-wing'd fairies, whom the hostile gnome
Has spell'd and dungeon'd in his rocky home,
The wanderer hears the solitary moan,
Nor dreams the fairy in the sullen stone.

Contrasting this worn frame and weary breast,
Fresh as a morn of April bloom'd the guest:
April has tears, and mists the morn array;
The mists foretell the sun,—the tears the May.
Lo, as from care to care the soother glides,
How the home brightens where the heart presides!
Now hovering, bird-like, o'er the flowers,—at times
Pausing to chant Calantha's favourite rhymes,
Or smooth the uneasy pillow with light hand;
Or watch the eye, forestalling the demand,
Complete in every heavenly art—above
All, save the genius of inventive love.

The window open'd on that breadth of green,
To half the pomp of elder days the scene.
Gaze to thy left—there the Plantagenet
Look'd on the lists for Norman knighthood set;[E]
Bright issued forth, where yonder archway glooms,
Banner and trump, and steed, and waves of plumes,
As with light heart rides wanton Anne to brave
Tudor's grim love, the purple and the grave.
Gaze to the right, where now—neat, white, and low,
The modest Palace looks like Brunswick Row;[F]
There, echoed once the merriest orgies known,
Since the frank Norman won grave Harold's throne;
There, bloom'd the mulberry groves, beneath whose shade
His easy loves the royal Rowley made;
Where Villiers flaunted, and where Sedley sung,
And wit's loose diamonds dropp'd from Wilmot's tongue!
All at rest now—all dust!—wave flows on wave;
But the sea dries not!—what to us the grave?
It brings no real homily, we sigh,
Pause for awhile and murmur, "All must die!"
Then rush to pleasure, action, sin once more,
Swell the loud tide, and fret unto the shore.

And o'er the altered scene Calantha's eye
Roves listless—yet Time's Great the passers by!
Along the road still fleet the men whose names
Live in the talk the moment's glory claims.
There, for the hot Pancratia of Debate
Pass the keen wrestlers for that palm,—the State.
Now, "on his humble but his faithful steed,"
Sir Robert rides—he never rides at speed—
Careful his seat, and circumspect his gaze;
And still the cautious trot the cautious mind betrays.
Wise is thy heed!—how stout soe'er his back,
Thy weight has oft proved fatal to thy hack![G]
Next, with loose rein and careless canter view
Our man of men, the Prince of Waterloo;
O'er the firm brow the hat as firmly press'd,
The firm shape rigid in the button'd vest;
Within—the iron which the fire has proved,
And the close Sparta of a mind unmoved!

Not his the wealth to some large natures lent,
Divinely lavish, even where misspent,
That liberal sunshine of exuberant soul,
Thought, sense, affection, warming up the whole;
The heat and affluence of a genial power,
Rank in the weed as vivid in the flower;
Hush'd at command his veriest passions halt,
Drill'd is each virtue, disciplined each fault;
Warm if his blood—he reasons while he glows,
Admits the pleasure—ne'er the folly knows;
If Vulcan for our Mars a snare had set,
He had won the Venus, but escaped the net;
His eye ne'er wrong, if circumscribed the sight,
Widen the prospect and it ne'er is right,
Seen through the telescope of habit still,
States seem a camp, and all the world—a drill!

Yet oh, how few his faults, how pure his mind,
Beside his fellow-conquerors of mankind;
How knightly seems the iron image, shown
By Marlborough's tomb, or lost Napoleon's throne!
Cold if his lips, no smile of fraud they wear,
Stern if his heart, still "Man" is graven there;
No guile—no crime his step to greatness made,
No freedom trampled, and no trust betray'd;
The eternal "I" was not his law—he rose
Without one art that honour might oppose,
And leaves a human, if a hero's, name,
To curb ambition while it lights to fame.

But who, scarce less by every gazer eyed,
Walks yonder, swinging with a stalwart stride?
With that vast bulk of chest and limb assign'd
So oft to men who subjugate their kind;
So sturdy Cromwell push'd broad-shoulder'd on;
So burly Luther breasted Babylon;
So brawny Cleon bawl'd his Agora down;
And large-limb'd Mahmoud clutch'd a Prophet's crown!

Ay, mark him well! the schemer's subtle eye,
The stage-mime's plastic lip your search defy—
He, like Lysander, never deems it sin
To eke the lion's with the fox's skin;
Vain every mesh this Proteus to enthrall,
He breaks no statute, and he creeps through all;—
First to the mass that valiant truth to tell,
"Rebellion's art is never to rebel,—
Elude all danger but defy all laws,"—
He stands himself the Safe Sublime he draws!
In him behold all contrasts which belong
To minds abased, but passions roused, by wrong;
The blood all fervour, and the brain all guile,
The patriot's bluntness, and the bondsman's wile.
One after one the lords of time advance,—
Here Stanley meets,—how Stanley scorns, the glance!
The brilliant chief, irregularly great,
Frank, haughty, rash,—the Rupert of Debate;
Nor gout, nor toil, his freshness can destroy,
And Time still leaves all Eton in the boy;—
First in the class, and keenest in the ring,
He saps like Gladstone, and he fights like Spring;
Ev'n at the feast, his pluck pervades the board,
And dauntless game-cocks symbolize their lord.
Lo where atilt at friend—if barr'd from foe—
He scours the ground, and volunteers the blow,
And, tired with conquest over Dan and Snob,
Plants a sly bruiser on the nose of Bob;
Decorous Bob, too friendly to reprove,
Suggests fresh fighting in the next remove,
And prompts his chum, in hopes the vein to cool,
To the prim benches of the Upper School:

Yet who not listens, with delighted smile,
To the pure Saxon of that silver style;
In the clear style a heart as clear is seen,
Prompt to the rash—revolting from the mean.

Next cool, and all unconscious of reproach,
Comes the calm "Johnny who upset the coach."[H]
How form'd to lead, if not too proud to please,—
His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze.
Like or dislike, he does not care a jot;
He wants your vote, but your affection not;
Yet human hearts need sun, as well as oats,
So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes.—
And while his doctrines ripen day by day,
His frost-nipp'd party pines itself away;—
From the starved wretch its own loved child we steal—
And "Free Trade" chirrups on the lap of Peel![I]—
But see our statesman when the steam is on,
And languid Johnny glows to glorious John!
When Hampden's thought, by Falkland's muses dress'd,
Lights the pale cheek, and swells the generous breast;
When the pent heat expands the quickening soul,—
And foremost in the race the wheels of genius roll!

VII.

What gives the Past the haunting charms that please
Sage, scholar, bard?—The shades of men like these!
Seen in our walks;—with vulgar blame or praise,
Reviled or worshipp'd as our faction sways:
Some centuries hence, and from that praise or blame,
As light from vapour, breaks the steady flame,
And the trite Present which, while acted, seems
Time's dullest prose,—fades in the land of dreams,
Gods spring from dust, and Hero-Worship wakes
Out of that Past the humble Present makes.
And yet, what matter to ourselves the Great?
What the heart touches—that controls our fate!
From the full galaxy we turn to one,
Dim to all else, but to ourselves the sun;
And still, to each, some poor, obscurest life,
Breathes all the bliss, or kindles all the strife.
Wake up the countless dead!—ask every ghost
Whose influence tortured or consoled the most:
How each pale spectre of the host would turn
From the fresh laurel and the glorious urn,
To point where rots beneath a nameless stone,
Some heart in which had ebb'd and flow'd its own!

So one by one, Calantha listlessly
Beheld and heeded not the Great pass by.
But now, why sudden that electric start?
She stands—the pale lips soundless, yet apart!
She stands, with claspèd hands and strainèd eye—
A moment's silence—one convulsive cry,
And sinking to the earth, a seeming death
Smites into chill suspense the senses and the breath:
Quick by the unconscious hostess knelt the guest,
Bathed the wan brows, and loosed the stifling vest;
As loosed the vest,—like one whose sleep of fear
Is keen with dreams that warn of danger near,—
Calantha's hand repell'd the friendly care,
And faintly clasp'd some token hoarded there,
Perchance some witness of the untold grief,—
Some sainted relic of a lost belief,
Some mournful talisman, whose touch recalls
The ghost of time in Memory's desolate halls,
And, like the vessels that, of old, enshrined
The soil of lands the exile left behind,—
Holds all youth rescues from that native shore
Of hope and passion, life shall tread no more.

Calantha wakes, but not to sense restored,
The mind still trembled on the jarring chord,
And troubled reason flicker'd in the eye,
As gleams and wanes a star in some perturbèd sky.
Yet still, through all the fever of the brain,
Terror, more strong, can Frenzy's self restrain.
Few are her words, and if at times they seem
To touch the dark truths shadow'd on her dream,
She starts, with whitening lip—looks round in fear,
And murmurs, "Nay! my brother did not hear!"
Then smiles, as if the fear were laid at rest,
And clasps the token treasured at her breast,
And whispers, "Lucy, guard my sleep;—they say
That sleep is faithless, and that dreams betray!"

Yet oft the while—to watch without the door,
The brother's step glides noiseless o'er the floor,—
There meekly waits, until the welcome ray
Of Lucy's smile gives comfort to the day,
Till Lucy's whisper murmurs, "Be of cheer,"
And Pity dupes Affection's willing ear.
Once, and but once, within the room he crept,
When all was silent, and they deem'd she slept,
Not softer to the infant's cradle steals
The mother's step;—she hears not, yet she feels,
As by strange instinct, the approach;—her frame
Convulsed and shuddering as he nearer came;
Till the wild cry,—the waiving hand convey
The frantic prayer, so bitter to obey;
And with stern brow, belying the wrung heart,
And voiceless lips compress'd, he turns him to depart.

VIII.

Much wondering Lucy mused,—nor yet could find
Why one so mournful shrunk from one so kind.
Awe that had chill'd the gratitude she felt
For Morvale, now in pity learn'd to melt:
This tender patience in a man so stern,
This love untiring—fear the sole return,
This rough exterior, with this gentle breast,
Awoke a sympathy that would not rest;
The wistful eye, the changing lip, the tone
Whose accents droop'd, or gladden'd, from her own,
Haunted the woman's heart, which ever heaves
Its echo back to every sound that grieves.
Light as the gossamer its tissue spins
O'er freshest dews when summer morn begins,
Will Fancy weave its airy web above
The dews of Pity, in the dawn of Love.—
At length, Calantha's reason wakes;—the strife
Calms back,—the soul re-settles to the life.
Freed from her post, flies Lucy to rejoice
The anxious heart, so wistful for her voice;
Not at his wonted watch the brother found,
She seeks his door—no answer to her sound;
She halts in vain, till, eager to begin
The joyous tale, the bright shape glides within.
For the first time beheld, she views the lone
And gloomy rooms the master calls his own;
Not there the luxury elsewhere, which enthralls
With pomp the gazer in the rich man's halls;
Strange arms of Eastern warfare, quaintly piled,
Betray'd the man's fierce memory of the child,—
And litter'd books, in mystic scrolls enshrined
The solemn Sibyl of the elder Ind.
The girl treads fearful on the dismal floors,
And with amazèd eye the gloomy lair explores;
Thus, as some Peri strays where, couch'd in cells
With gods dethroned, the brooding Afrite dwells,
From room to room her fairy footsteps glide,
Till, lo! she starts to see him by her side.—
With crimson cheek, and downcast eyes, that quail
Beneath his own, she hurries the glad tale,
Then turns to part—but as she turns, still round
She looks,—and lingers on the magic ground,
And eyes each antique relic with the wild
Half-pleased, half-timorous, wonder of a child;
And as a child's the lonely inmate saw,
And smiled to see the pleasure and the awe;
And soften'd into kindness his deep tone,
And drew her hand, half-shrinking, in his own,
And said, "Nay, pause and task the showman's skill,
What moves thee most?—come, question me at will."

Listening she linger'd, and she knew not why
Time's wing so swiftly never seem'd to fly;
Never before unto her gaze reveal'd
The Eastern fire, the Eastern calm conceal'd:
Child of the sun, and native of the waste,
Cramp'd in the formal chains it had embraced,
His heart leapt back to its old haunts afar,
As leaps the lion from the captive bar;
And, as each token flash'd upon the mind,
Back the bold deeds that life had left behind,
The dark eye blazed, the rich words roll'd along,
Vivid as light, and eloquent as song;
At length, with sudden pause, he check'd the stream,
And his soul darken'd from the gorgeous dream.
"So," with sad voice he said, "my youth went by,
Fresh was the wave, if fitful was the sky;
What is my manhood?—curl'd and congeal'd,
A stagnant water in a barren field:
Gall'd with strange customs,—in the crowd alone;
And courting bloodless hearts that freeze my own.
In the far lands, where first I breathed the air,—
Smile if thou wilt,—this rugged form was fair,
For the swift foot, strong arm, bold heart give grace
To man, when danger girds man's dwelling-place,—
Thou seest the daughter of my mother, now,
Shrinks from the outcast branded on my brow;
My boyhood tamed the panther in his den,
The wild beast feels man's kindness more than men.
Like with its like, they say, will intertwine,—
I have not tamed one human heart to mine!"—
He paused abruptly. Thrice his listener sought
To shape consoling speech from soothing thought,
But thrice she fail'd, and thrice the colour came
And went, as tenderness was check'd by shame!
At length her dove-like eyes to his she raised,
And all the comfort words forbade, she gazed;
Moved by her childlike pity, but too dark
In hopeless thought than pity more to mark;
"Infant," he murmur'd, "not for others flow
The tears the wise, how hard soe'er, must know;
As yet, the Eden of a guileless breast,
Opes a frank home to every angel guest;
Soft Eve, look round!—The world in which thou art
Distrusts the angel, nor unlocks the heart—
Thy time will come!"—

He spoke, and from her side
Was gone,—the heart his wisdom wrong'd replied!

PART THE SECOND.

I.

London, I take thee to a Poet's heart!
For those who seek, a Helicon thou art.
Let schoolboy Strephons bleat of flocks and fields,
Each street of thine a loftier Idyl yields;
Fed by all life, and fann'd by every wind,
There burns the quenchless Poetry—Mankind!
Yet not for me the Olympiad of the gay,
The reeking Season's dusty holiday:—
Soon as its summer pomp the mead assumes,
And Flora wanders through her world of blooms,
Vain the hot field-days of the vex'd debate,
When Sirius reigns,—let Tapeworm rule the state!
Vain Devon's cards, and Lansdowne's social feast,
Wit but fatigues, and Beauty's reign hath ceased.
His mission done, the monk regains his cell;
Nor even Douro's matchless face can spell.
Far from Man's works, escaped to God's, I fly,
And breathe the luxury of a smokeless sky.
Me, the still "London," not the restless "Town"
(The light plume fluttering o'er the helmèd crown),
Delights;—for there the grave Romance hath shed
Its hues; and air grows solemn with the Dead.
If, where the Lord of Rivers parts the throng,
And eastward glides by buried halls along,
My steps are led, I linger, and restore
To the changed wave the poet-shapes of yore;
See the gilt barge, and hear the fated king
Prompt the first mavis of our Minstrel spring;[J]
Or mark, with mitred Nevile,[K] the array }
Of arms and craft alarm "the Silent way," }
The Boar of Gloucester, hungering, scents his prey! }
Or, landward, trace where thieves their festive hall
Hold by the dens of Law,[L] (worst thief of all!)
The antique Temple of the armèd Zeal
That wore the cross a mantle to the steel;
Time's dreary void the kindling dream supplies,
The walls expand, the shadowy towers arise,
And forth, as when by Richard's lion side,
For Christ and Fame, the Warrior-Phantoms ride!
Or if, less grave with thought, less rich with lore,
The later scenes, the lighter steps explore,
If through the haunts of living splendour led—
Has the quick Muse no empire but the Dead?
In each keen face, by Care or Pleasure worn,
Grief claims her sigh, or Vice invites her scorn;
And every human brow that veils a thought
Conceals the Castaly which Shakespeare sought.

II.

Amidst the crowd (what time the glowing Hours
Strew, as they glide, the summer world with flowers),
Who fly the solitude of sweets to drown
Nature's still whisper in the roar of Town;
Who tread with jaded step the weary mill—
Grind at the wheel, and call it "Pleasure" still;—
Gay without mirth, fatigued without employ,
Slaves to the joyless phantom of a joy;—
Amidst this crowd was one who, absent long,
And late return'd, outshone the meaner throng;
And, truth to speak, in him were blent the rays
Which form a halo in the vulgar gaze;
Howden's fair beauty, Beaufort's princely grace,
Hertford's broad lands, and Courtney's vaunted race;
And Pembroke's learning in that polish'd page,
Writ by the Grace, 'the Manners and the Age!'
Still with sufficient youth to please the heart,
But old enough for mastery in the art;—
Renown'd for conquests in those isles which lie
In rosy seas beneath a Cnidian sky,
Where the soft Goddess yokes her willing doves,
And meets invasion with a host of Loves;
Yet not unlaurell'd in the war of wile
Which won Ulysses grave Minerva's smile,
For those deep arts the diplomat was known
Which mould the lips that whisper round a throne.

Long in the numbing hands of Law had lain
Arden's proud earldom, Arden's wide domain.
Kinsman with kinsman, race with race had vied
To snatch the prize, and in the struggle died;
Till all the rights the crowd of heirs made dim,
Death clear'd—and solved the tangled skein in him.
There was but ONE who in the bastard fame
Wealth gives its darlings, rivall'd Arden's name:
A rival rarely seen—felt everywhere,
With soul that circled bounty like the air,
Simple himself, but regal in his train,
Lavish of stores he seem'd but to disdain;
To art a Medici—to want a god,
Life's rougher paths grew level where he trod.
Much Arden (Arden had a subtle mind,
Which sought in all philosophy to find)
Loved to compare the different means by which
Enjoyment yields a harvest to the rich—
Himself already marvell'd to behold
How soon trite custom wears the gleam from gold;
Well, was his rival happier from its use
Than he (his candour whisper'd) from abuse?
He long'd to know this Morvale, and to learn:
They met—grew friends—the Sybarite and the stern.
Each had some fields in common: mostly those
From which the plant of human friendship grows.
Each had known strong vicissitudes in life;
The present ease, and the remember'd strife.
Each, though from differing causes, nursed a mind
At war with Fate, and chafed against his kind.
Each with a searching eye had sought to scan
The solemn Future, soul predicts to man;
And each forgot how, cloud-like passions mar,
In the vex'd wave, the mirror of the star;—
How all the unquiet thoughts which life supplies
May swell the ocean but to veil the skies;
And dark to Man may grow the heaven that smiled
On the clear vision Nature gave the Child.
Each, too, in each, where varying most they seem,
Found that which fed half envy, half esteem.
As stood the Pilgrim of the waste before
The stream that parted from the enchanted shore,
Though on the opposing margent of the wave
Those fairy boughs but seeming fruitage gave;
Though his stern manhood in its simple power,
If cross'd the barrier, soon had scorn'd the bower;
Yet, as some monk, whom holier cloisters shade,
Views from afar the glittering cavalcade,
And sighs, as sense against his will recalls
Fame's knightly lists and Pleasure's festive halls,—
So, while the conscience chid, the charm enchain'd,
And the heart envied what the soul disdain'd.

While Arden's nature in his friend's could find
An untaught force that awed his subtler mind—
Awed, yet allured;—that Eastern calm of eye
And mien—a mantle and a majesty,
At once concealing all the strife below
It shames the pride of lofty hearts to show,
And robing Art's lone outlaw with the air
Of nameless state the lords of Nature wear;—
This kingly mien contrasting this mean form,
This calm exterior with this heart of storm,
Touch'd with vague interest, undefined and strange,
The world's quick pupil whose career was change.

Forth from the crowded streets one summer day, }
Rode the new friends; and cool and silent lay }
Through shadowy lanes the chance-directed way. }
As with slow pace and slacken'd rein they rode,
Men's wonted talk to deeper converse flow'd.

"Think'st thou," said Arden, "that the Care, whose speed
Climbs the tall bark and mounts the flying steed,
And (still to quote old Horace) hovers round
Our fretted roofs, forbears yon village ground?—
Think'st thou that Toil drives trouble from the door;
And does God's sun shine brightest on the Poor?"

"I know not," answer'd Morvale, "but I know
Each state feels envy for the state below;
Kings for their subjects—for the obscure, the great:
The smallest circle guards the happiest state.
Earth's real wealth is in the heart;—in truth,
As life looks brightest in the eyes of youth,
So simple wants—the simple state most far
From that entangled maze in which we are,
Seem unto nations what youth is to man,"—

"'When wild in woods the noble savage ran,'"
Said Arden, smiling. "Well, we disagree;
Even youth itself reflects no charms for me;
And all the shade upon my life bestow'd
Spreads from the myrtle which my boyhood sow'd."
His bright face fell,—he sigh'd. "And canst thou guess
Why all once coveted now fails to bless?—
Why all around me palls upon the eye,
And the heart saddens in the summer sky?
It is that youth expended life too soon:
A morn too glowing sets in storm at noon."

"Nay," answer'd Morvale, gently, "hast thou tried
That second youth, to which ev'n follies guide;
Which to the wanderer Sense, when tired and spent,
Proclaims the fount by which to fix the tent?
The heart but rests when sense forbears to roam;
We win back freshness when Love smiles on Home;—
Home not to thee, O happy one! denied." }
}
"To me of all," the impatient listener cried, }
"Thy words but probe the wounds I vainly hide; }
That which I pine for, thou hast pictured now;—
The hearth, the home, the altar, and the vow;
The tranquil love, unintertwined with shame;
The child's sweet kiss;—the Father's holy name;
The link to lengthen a time-honour'd line;—
These not for me, and yet these should be mine."
"If," said the Indian, "counsel could avail,
Or pity soothe, a friend invites thy tale."

"Alas!" sigh'd Arden, "nor confession's balm
Can heal, nor wisdom whisper back to calm.
Yet hear the tale—thou wilt esteem me less—
But Grief, the Egoist, yearneth to confess.
I tell of guilt—and guilt all men must own,
Who but avow the loves their youth has known.
Preach as we will, in this wrong world of ours,
Man's fate and woman's are contending powers;
Each strives to dupe the other in the game,—
Guilt to the victor—to the vanquish'd shame!"
He paused, and noting how austerely gloom'd
His friend's dark visage, blush'd, and thus resumed.
"Nay, I approve not of the code I find,
Not less the wrong to which the world is kind.
But, to be frank, how oft with praise we scan
Men's actions only when they deal with man;
Lo, gallant Lovelace, free from every art
That stains the honour or defiles the heart,—
With men;—but how, if woman the pursuit?
What lies degrade him, and what frauds pollute;
Yet still to Lovelace either sex is mild,
And new Clarissas only sigh—'How wild!'"

"Enough," said Morvale; "I perforce believe:
Strong Adam owns no equal in his Eve;
But worse the bondage in your bland disguise;
Europe destroys,—kind Asia only buys!
If dull the Harem, yet its roof protects,
And Power, when sated, still its slave respects.
With you, ev'n pity fades away with love,—
No gilded cage gives refuge to the dove;
Worse than the sin the curse it leaves behind:
Here the crush'd heart, or there the poison'd mind,—
Your streets a charnel or a market made,
For the lorn hunger, or the loathsome trade.
Pardon,—Pass on!"
"Behold, the Preface done,"
Arden resumed, "now opens Chapter One!"

III.
LORD ARDEN'S TALE.

"Rear'd in a court, a man while yet a boy,
Hermes said 'Rise,' and Venus sigh'd 'Enjoy;'
My earlier dreams, like tints in rainbows given,
Caught from the Muse, glow'd but in clasping heaven;
The bird-like instinct of a sphere afar
Pined for the air, and chafed against the bar.
But can to Guelphs Augustan tastes belong?
Or Georgium Sidus look benign on song?
My short-lived Muse the ungenial climate tried,
Breathed some faint warbles, caught a cold, and died!
Wise kinsmen whisper'd 'Hush! forewarn'd in time;
The feet that rise are not the feet of Rhyme;
Your cards are good, but all is in the lead,
Play out the heart, and you are lost indeed:
Leave verse, my boy, to unaspiring men—
The eagle's pinion never sheds a pen!'

"So fled the Muse! What left the Muse behind?
The aimless fancy and the restless mind;
The eyes, still won by whatsoe'er was bright,
But lost the star's to prize the diamond's light.
Man, like the child, accepts the bauble boon.
And clasps the coral where he ask'd the moon.
Forbid the pomp and royalty of heaven,—
To the born Poet still the earth is given;
Duped by each glare in which Corruption seems
To give the glory imaged on his dreams:
Thus, what had been the thirst for deathless fame,
Grew the fierce hunger for the Moment's name;
Ambition placed its hard desires in Power,
And saw no Jove but in the Golden Shower.
No miser I—no niggard of the store—
The end Olympus, but the means the ore:
I look'd below—there Lazarus crawl'd disdain'd;
I look'd aloft—there, who but Dives reign'd?
He who would make the steeps of power his home,
Must mask the Titan till he rules the Gnome.
If I insist on this, my soul's disease,
Excuse for fault thy practised sight foresees:
It makes the moral of my tale, in truth,
And boyhood sow'd the poison of my youth.

"Meanwhile men praised, and women smiled;—the wing,
Bow'd from the height, still bask'd beneath the spring.
Pass by the Paphian follies of that day,—
When true love comes, it is to close our May.
Well, ere my boyish holiday was o'er,
The grim god came, and mirth was mine no more:
A well-born pauper, I seem'd doom'd to live
By what great men to well-born paupers give:
I had an uncle high in power and state,
Who ruled three kingdoms' and one nephew's fate.
This uncle loved, as English thanes will all,
An autumn's respite in his rural hall;
In slaughtering game, relax'd his rigid breast;
And so,—behold me martyr'd to his guest!

IV.

"Wandering, one day, in discontented mood
By a clear brook—through grassy solitude,
Leading the dance of light waves chanting low—
A little world of sunshine seem'd to grow
Out from the landscape—as with sudden spring
From bosk and brake—leapt the stream glittering.
Lo, the meek home, its porch with roses twined,
Green sward before, a sacred tower behind;
On the green sward the year's last flowers were gay,
And the last glory of the golden day
Paused on the spire, that, shining, soar'd to cleave
Those clouds, the loveliest, that precede the eve.

"Along the bank, beneath the bowering tree,
Young fairies play'd—young voices laugh'd in glee;
One voice more mellow'd in its silver sound,
Yet blithe as rang the gladdest on the ground;
One shape more ripen'd, one sweet face more fair,
Yet not less happy, the Titania there.
Soft voice, fair face, I hear, I see ye still!
Shades and dim echoes from the blissful hill
Behind me left, to cast but darkness o'er
The waste slow-lengthening to the grave before!

"So Love was born. With love invention came;
I won my entrance, but conceal'd my name.
A village priest her father, poor and wise,
In aught that clears to mortal sight the skies,
But blind and simple as a child to all
The things that pass upon the earth we crawl;
The mask'd Lothario to his eyes appear'd
A student youth, by Alma Mater rear'd
The word to preach, the hunger to endure,
And see Ambition close upon a Cure;—
A modest youth, who own'd his learning slight,
And brought his taper to the master's light.
This tale believed, the good man's harmless pride
Was pleased the bashful neophyte to guide:
Spread out his books, and, moved to pity, press'd
The backward pupil to the daily guest.

"So from a neighbouring valley, where they deem
My home, each noon I cross the happy stream,
And hail the eyes already watchful grown,
And clasp the hand that trembles in my own;
But not for guilt had I conceal'd my name,
The young warm passion nursed no thought of shame;
The spell that bound ennobled while it charm'd,
And Romeo's love Lothario's guile disarm'd;
And vain the guile had been!—impure desire
Round that chaste light but hover'd to expire:
Her angel nature found its own defence,
Ev'n in the instincts of its innocence;
As that sweet plant which opens every hue
Of its frank heart to eyes content to view,
But folds its leaves and shrinks in coy disdain
From the least touch that would the bloom profane.
Link'd with the woman's Meekness, side by side,
Stood, not to lose but guard the angel, Pride;
Pride, with the shield for honour, not the heart,
Sacred from stain, not proof against the dart.
Brief,—then, such love it was my lot to win
As sways a life to every grief but—sin.

V.

"Yet in the light of day to win and wed,
To boast a bride, yet not to own a shed;
To doom the famine, yet proclaim the bliss,
And seal the ruin in the nuptial kiss;—
Love shunn'd such madness for the loved one's sake;
What course could Prudence sanction Love to take?
Lenient I knew my kinsman to a vice;
But, oh, to folly Cato less precise!
And all my future, in my kinsman bound,
Shadow'd his humours—smiled in him or frown'd;
But uncles still, however high in state, }
Are mortal men—and Youth has hope to wait, }
And Love a conqueror's confidence in Fate.— }
A secret Hymen reconciled in one
Caution and bliss—if Mary could be won?
Hard task!—I said it was my lot to win
Sway o'er a life for grief;—this was not sin.
To her I told my name, rank, doubts, and fears,
And urged the prayer too long denied with tears—
'Reject'st thou still,' I cried, 'well, then to me
The pride to offer all life holds to thee;
I go to tell my love, proclaim my choice—
Clasp want, mar fate, meet ruin, and rejoice,
So that, at least, when next we meet, thy sigh
Shall own this truth—"He better loved than I."'

"With that, her hand upon my own she laid,
Look'd in my eyes—the sacrifice was made;
Alas, she had no mother!—Nature moved
That heart to this—she trusted, for she loved!

"I had a friend of lowlier birth than mine,
The sunnier spot allured the trailing vine.
My rising fortunes had the southern air,
And fruit might bless the plant that clamber'd there.
My smooth Clanalbin!—shrewd, if smooth, was he,
His soul was prudent, though his life was free;
Scapin to serve, and Machiavel to plot,
Red-hair'd, thin-lipp'd, sly, supple,—and a Scot!
To him the double project I confide,
To cloak the rite, and yet to clasp the bride;
Long he resisted—solemnly he warn'd,
And urged the perils love had seen and scorn'd.
At length subdued, he groan'd a slow consent,
And pledged a genius practised to invent.
A priest was found—a license was procured,
Due witness hired, and secrecy assured;
All this his task:—'tis o'er;—and Mary's life
Bound up in one who dares not call her wife!

"Alas—alas, why on the fatal brink
Of the abyss—doth not the instinct shrink?
The meaner tribe the coming storm foresees—
In the still calm the bird divines the breeze—
The ox that grazes shuns the poison-weed—
The unseen tiger frights afar the steed—
To man alone no kind foreboding shows
The latent horror or the ambush'd foes;
O'er each blind moment hangs the funeral pall,
Heaven shines, earth smiles—and night descends on all!

"But I!—fond reader of imagined skies,
Foretold my future in those stars—her eyes!
O heavenly Moon, circling with magic hues
And mystic beauty all thy beams suffuse,
Is not in love thine own fair secret seen?
Love smooths the rugged—love exalts the mean:
Love in each ray inspires the hush'd alarm,
Love silvers every shadow into charm.

VI.

"O lonely beech, beneath whose bowering shade
The tryst, encircling Paradise, was made,
How the heart heard afar the hurrying feet,
And swell'd to breathless words—'At last we meet!'
But Autumn fades—dark Winter comes, and then
Fate from Elysium calls me back to men;
We part!—not equal is the anguish;—she
Parts with all earth in that farewell to me;
For not the grate more bars the veilèd nun
From the fair world with which her soul has done,
Than love the heart, that vows, without recall,
To one,—fame, honour, memory, hope, and all!
But I!—behold me in the dazzling strife,
The gaud, the pomp, the joyous roar of life,—
Man, with man's heart insatiate, ever stirr'd
By the crowd's breath to conflict with the herd;
Which never long one thought alone can sway,—
The dream fades from us when we leap to-day.
New scenes surround me, new ambitions seize,—
All life one fever,—who defy disease?—
Each touch contagion:—living with the rest,
The world's large pulse keeps time in every breast.
Yet still for her—for her alone, methought,
Its web of schemes the vulgar labour wrought:
To ransom fate—to soar, from serfdom, free,
Snap the strong chains of high-born penury;
And, grown as bold to earth as to the skies,
Proclaim the bliss of happy human ties:—
So, ever scheming, the soothed conscience deem'd!
Fate smiled, and speeded all for which I schemed.
My noble kinsman saw with grave applause
My sober'd moods, too wise to guess the cause.
''Tis well,' said he, one evening; 'you have caught
From me the ardour of the patriot's thought;
No more distinguish'd in the modes of vice,
Forsworn the race-course, and disdain'd the dice:
A nobler race, a mightier game await
The soul that sets its cast upon the state.
Thoughtful, poor, calm, yet eager; such, in truth,
He who is great in age should be in youth,
Lo, your commencement!'

"And my kinsman set
Before the eyes it brighten'd—the Gazette!
Oh, how triumphant, Calendar of Fame!
Halo'd in type, emerged the aspirant's name!

"'We send you second to a court, 'tis true;
Small, as befits a diplomat so new,'
Quoth my wise kinsman: 'but requiring all
Your natural gifts;—to rise not is to fall!
And harkye, stripling, you are handsome, young,
Active, ambitious, and from statesmen sprung!
Wed well—add wealth to power by me possess'd,
And sleep on roses,—I will find the rest!
But one false step,—pshaw, boy! I do not preach
Of saws and morals, his own code to each,—
By one false step, I mean one foolish thing,
And the wax melts, my Icarus, from your wing!
Let not the heart the watchful mind betray,—
Enough!—no answer!—sail the First of May!'

"Here, then, from vapour broke at last the sun!
Station, career, fame, fortune, all begun!
Now, greater need than ever to conceal
The secret spring that moved the speeding wheel;
And half forgetting that I wish'd forgot,
Each thought divides the absent from my lot.
One night, escaped my kinsman's hall, which blazed
With dames who smiled, and garter'd peers who praised,
I seek my lonely home,—ascend the stair,—
Gain my dim room,—what stranger daunts me there?
A grey old man!—I froze his look before; }
The Gorgon's eye scarce fix'd its victim more,— }
The bride's sad father on the bridegroom's floor! }
In the brief pause, how terrible and fast,
As on the drowning seaman, rush'd the past!
How had he learn'd my name,—abode,—the tie
That bound?—for all spoke lightning in his eye.
Lo, on the secret in whose darkness lay
Power, future, fortune, pour'd the hateful ray!
Thus silence ceased.

"'When first my home you deign'd
To seek, what found you?—cheeks no tears had stain'd!
Untroubled hearts, and conscience clear as day:
And lips that loved, where now they fear, to pray:
'Twixt kin and kin, sweet commune undefiled—
The grateful father—the confiding child!
What now that home?—behold! its change may speak
In hair thus silver'd—in this furrow'd cheek!
My child'—(he paused, and in his voice, not eyes,
Tears seek the vent indignant pride denies)
'My child—God pardon me!—I was too proud
To call her "daughter!"—what shall call the crowd?
Man—man, she cowers beneath a Father's eye,
And shuns his blessing—with one wish to die;
And I that death-bed will resign'd endure
If—speak the word—the soul that parts is pure?'

"'Who dares deny it?' I began, but check'd
In the warm burst—cold wisdom hiss'd—'Reflect;
Thy fears had outstripp'd truth—as yet unknown,
The vows, the bond!—are these for thee to own?'
The father mark'd my pause, and changing cheek,
'Go on!—why falter if the truth thou speak?'
"Who dares deny it?"—Thou!—thy lip—thine eye—
Thy heart—thy conscience—these are what deny?
O Heaven, that I were not thy priest!'

"His look
Grew stern and dark—the natural Adam shook
The reverend form an instant;—like a charm
The pious memory stay'd the lifted arm;
And shrunk to self-rebuke the threatening word,
'Man's not my weapons—I thy servant, Lord!'
Moved, I replied—'Could love suffice alone }
In this hard world,—the love to thee made known, }
A bliss to cherish, 'twere a pride to own: }
And if I pause, and if I falter—yet
I hide no shame, I strive with no regret.
Believe mine honour—wait the ripening hour;
Time hides the germ, the season brings the flower.'
Wildly he cried—'What words are these?—but one
Sentence I ask—her sire should call thee son!
Hist, let the heavens but hear us!—in her life
Another lives—if pure she is thy wife!
Now answer!'

I had answer'd, as became
The native manhood and the knightly name;
But shall I own it? the suspicious chill,
The world-wise know, froze up the arrested will.
Whose but her lips, sworn never to betray,
Had fail'd their oath, and dragg'd my name to day?
True, she had left the veil upon the shrine,
But set the snare to make confession mine.
Thus half resentment, half disdain, repell'd
The man's frank justice, and the truth withheld.
Yet, so invoked, I scorn'd at least the lie,
And met the question with this proud reply:—
'If thou dost doubt thy child, depart secure,
My love is sinless, and her soul is pure.
This by mine honour, and to Heaven, I swear!
Dost thou ask more?—then bid thy child declare;
What she proclaims as truth, myself will own;
What she withholds, alike I leave unknown;
What she demands, I am prepared to yield;
Now doubt or spurn me—but my lips are seal'd.'
I ceased, and stood with haughty mien and eye,
That seem'd all further question to defy;
He gazed, as if still spell'd in hope or fear,
And hungering for the word that fail'd the ear.
At last, and half unconscious, in the thrall
Of the cold awe, he groan'd—

'And is this all?
Courage, poor child—there may be justice yet—
Justice, Heaven, justice!'

With this doubtful threat
He turn'd, was gone!—that look of stern despair,
The uncertain footstep tottering down the stair,
The clapping door; and then that void and chill,
Which would be silence, were the conscience still;
That sense of something gone, we would recall;
The soul's dim stun before it feels its fall.

VII.

"Next day, the sire my noble kinsman sought;
One ruling senates must be just, he thought.
What chanced, untold—what follow'd may declare: }
Behold me summon'd to my uncle's chair! }
See his cold eye—I saw my ruin there! }
I saw and shrunk not, for a sullen pride
Embraced alike the kinsman and the bride:
Scorn'd here, the seeming snare by cunning set;
And there, coarse thraldom, with rebellion met.

"Brief was my Lord—

'An old man tells me, sir,
You woo his child, to wed her you demur;
Who knows, perhaps (and such his shrewd surmise),
The noose is knit—you but conceal the ties!
Please to inform me, ere I go to court,
How stands the matter?—sir, my time is short.'

"'My Lord,' I answer'd, with unquailing brow,
'Not to such ears should youth its faults avow;
And grant me pardon if I boldly speak,
Youth may have secrets honour shuns to seek.
I own I love, proclaim that love as pure!
If this be sin—its sentence I endure.
All else belongs unto that solemn shrine,
In the veil'd heart, which manhood holds divine.
Men's hearths are sacred, so our laws decree;
Are hearts less sacred? mine at least is free.
Suspect, disown, forsake me, if thou wilt;
I prize the freedom where thou seest the guilt.'
My kinsman's hand half-shaded the keen eye,
Which glanced askant;—he paused in his reply.
At length, perchance, his practised wit foresaw
Threats could not shake where interest fail'd to awe;
And judged it wise to construe for the best
The all I hid, the little I confess'd;
Calmly he answer'd—

'Sir, I like this heat;
Duper or duped, a well-bred man's discreet;
Take but this hint (one can't have all in life),
You lose the uncle if you win the wife.
In this, you choose Rank, Station, Power, Career;
In that, Bills, Babies,—and the Bench, I fear.
Hush;—'the least said' (old proverb, sir, but true!)—
As yet your fault indulgently I view.
Words,—notes (sad stuff!)—some promise rashly made—
Action for breach—that scandal must be stay'd.
I trust such scrapes will teach you to beware;
'Twill cost some hundreds—that be my affair.
Depart at once—to-morrow—nay, to-day:
When fairly gone, there will be less to pay!'
So spoke the Statesman, whom experience told
The weight of passion in the scales of gold.
Pleased I escape, but how reprieve enjoy?
One word from her distrusted could destroy!
Yet that distrust the whispering heart belied,
Self ceased, and anger into pity died;
I thought of Mary in her desolate hour,
And shudder'd at the blast, and trembled for the flower.
Why not go seek her?—chide the impatient snare; }
Or if faith linger'd, win it to forbear? }
Now was the time, no jealous father there! }
Swift as the thought impell'd me, I obey'd!
'Tis night; once more I greet the moonlit shade;
Once more I see the happy murmuring rill;
The white cot bower'd beneath the pastoral hill!
An April night, when, after sparkling showers,
The dewy gems betray the cradled flowers,
As if some sylphid, startled from her bed
In the rath blossom by the mortal's tread,
Had left behind her pearly coronal.—
Bright shone the stars on Earth's green banquet-hall;
You seem'd, abroad, to see, to feel, to hear
The new life flushing through the virgin year;
The visible growth—the freshness and the balm;
The pulse of Nature throbbing through the calm;
As wakeful, over every happy thing,
Watch'd through the hush the Earth's young mother—Spring!
Calm from the lattice shot a steady ray; }
Calm on the sward its silvery lustre lay; }
And reach'd, to glad the glancing waves at play. }
I stood and gazed within the quiet room;—
Gazed on her cheek;—there, spring had lost its bloom!
Alone she sate! Alone!—that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known,
Of hope laid waste, knells in that word—Alone!

"Who contemplates, aspires, or dreams, is not
Alone: he peoples with rich thoughts the spot.
The only loneliness—how dark and blind!—
Is that where fancy cannot dupe the mind;
Where the heart, sick, despondent, tired with all,
Looks joyless round, and sees the dungeon wall;
When even God is silent, and the curse
Of torpor settles on the universe;
When prayer is powerless, and one sense of dearth
Abysses all, save solitude, on earth!
So sate the bride!—the drooping form, the eye
Vacant, yet fix'd,—that air which Misery,
The heart's Medusa, hardens into stone,
Sculptured the Death which dwelleth in the lone!
Oh, the wild burst of joy,—the life that came }
Swift, brightening, bounding through the lips and frame, }
When o'er the floors I stole, and whisper'd soft her name! }
'Come—come at last! Oh, rapture!'
Who can say
Why meaner natures hold mysterious sway
Over the nobler? Why mine orb malign
Ruled as a fate a spirit so divine;
Giving or light or darkness all its own
Unto a star so near the Sapphire Throne?

"'So thou art come!'
'Hush! say whose lips reveal'd
All these soft traitors swore to guard conceal'd—
Our love—my name?'
'Not I—not I—thy wife!
No, truth to thee more dear than fame, than life:
A friend, my father's friend, the secret told;
How guess'd I know not. Oh! if Love controll'd
My heart that hour—that bitter hour—when, there
Bent that old man who——Husband, hear my prayer
Have mercy on my father!—break, oh, break
This crushing silence!—bid his daughter speak,
And say, Thou'rt not dishonour'd?'

'If thou wilt,
Tell all;—dishonour not alone in guilt!
Men's eyes dishonour in the fallen see;—
Speak, and dishonour thou inflict'st on me:
The debt, the want, the beggary, and the shame,—
The pauper branded on the noble's name!
Speak and inflict—I still can spurn—the doom;
Unveil the altar to prepare the tomb!
I, who already in my grasp behold,
Bright from Hesperian fields, the fruit of gold,
By which alone the glorious prize we gain,
Foil'd of the goal will die upon the plain.
I own two brides, both dear alike, and see
In one Ambition—in the other Thee:
Destroy thy rival, and to her destroy'd
Succeeds despair to make the world a void.'
Then, with stern frankness to that shrinking ear,
I told my hopes,—in her my only fear;
Told, with a cheek no humbling blushes dyed,
How met the sire—how unavow'd the bride!
'Thus have I wrong'd—this cruel silence mine;
And now be truth, and truth is vengeance, thine!'
I ceased to speak; lo, she had ceased to weep;
Her white lips writhed, as Suffering in its sleep;
And o'er the frame a tremulous shudder went,
As every life-stream to the source was sent:
The very sense seem'd absent from the look,
And with the Heart, its temple, Reason shook!
So there was silence; such a silence broods
In winter nights, o'er frost-bound solitudes,
Darkness, and ice, and stillness all in one,—
The silence without life, the withering without sun.
But o'er that silence, as at night's full noon,
Through breathless cloud, shimmers the sudden moon;
A sad but heavenly smile a moment stirr'd,
And heralded the martyr's patient word:
'Fear not; pursue thy way to fortune, fame;
I will not soil thy glory with my shame.
Betray! avenge!—For ever, until thou
Proclaim the bond and ratify the vow,
Closed in this heart, as lamps within the tomb,
Shall waste the light, that lives amidst the gloom,—
That lives, for oh! the day shall come at length,
Though late, though slow,—(give hope, for hope is strength!)—
When, from a father's breast no more exiled,
The wife may ask forgiveness for the child?'"

VIII.

"And so you parted?" with a moisten'd eye,
Said Morvale;—"nay, man, spare me the reply;
Too much the Eve has moved me——"
"Not to feel
That for the serpent which thy looks reveal,"
Said Arden, sadly smiling; "yet in truth,
See how the grey world grafts its age on youth;
See how we learn to prize the bullion Vice,
Coin'd in all shapes, yet still but Avarice;
The stamp may vary,—you the coin may call
'Ambition,' 'Power,' 'Success,'—but Gold is all.
Mine is the memoir of a selfish age:
Turn every leaf—slight difference in the page;
Through each, the same fierce struggle to secure
Earth's one great end—distinction from the Poor;
All our true wealth, like alchemists of old,
Fused in the furnace—for a grain of gold.

IX.

"Well then, we parted,—to make brief the tale,
I take my orders, and my leave, set sail;
For weeks, for months, fond letters, long nor few,
Keep hope alive with love for ever new:
If she had suffer'd, she betray'd it not;
All save one sweetness—'that we loved' forgot.
She never named her father;—once indeed
The name was writ, but blurr'd;—it was decreed
That she should fill the martyr-measure,—hide
Not the dart only, but the bleeding side,
And, wholly generous in the offering made,
Veil even sorrow, lest it should upbraid.

"At length one letter came—the last; more blest
In faith, in love, false hope, than all the rest;
But at the close some hastier lines appear,
Tremblingly writ, and stain'd with many a tear,
In which, less said than timorously implied
(The maid still blushing through the secret bride),
I heard her heart through that far distance beat:
The hour Eve's happiest daughter dreads to meet,—
The hour of Nature's agony was nigh,—
Husband and father, false one, where was I?

"Slow day on slow day, unrevealing, crept,
And still its ice the freezing silence kept:
Fear seized my soul, I could no longer brook
The voiceless darkness which the daylight took.
I feign'd excuse for absence;—left the shore:
Fair blow the winds;—behold her home once more!

"Her home! a desert! Still, though rank and wild,
On the rank grass the heedless floweret smiled;
Still by the porch you heard the ungrateful bee;
Still brawl'd the brooklet's unremembering glee;
But they—the souls of the sweet pastoral ground?
Green o'er the father rose the sullen mound!
Amidst his poor he slept; his end was known,—
Life's record rounded with the funeral stone:
But she?—but Mary?—but my child?—what dews
Fall on their graves?—what herbs which heaven renews
Pall their pure clay?—Oh! were it mine at least
To weep, belovèd, where your relics rest!—
Bear with me, Morvale,—pity if you can—
These thoughts unman me—no, they prove me man!"
"Man of the cities," with a mutter'd scorn,
Groan'd the stern Nomad from the lands of Morn,—
"Man of the sleek, far-looking prudence, which
Beggars life's May, life's Autumn to enrich;
Which, the deed doing, halts not in its course,
But, the deed done, finds comfort in remorse.
Man, in whom sentiment, the bloodless shade
Of noble passion, alternates with trade,—
Hard in his error—feeble in his tears,
And huckstering love, yet prattling of the spheres!"
So mused the sombre savage, till the pale
And self-gnaw'd worldling nerved him to his tale:—
"The hireling watch'd the bed where Mary lay,
In stranger arms my first-born saw the day.
Below,—unseen his travail, all unknown
His war with Nature, sate the sire alone:
He had not thrust the one he still believed,
If silent, sinless, or in sin deceived—
He had not thrust her from a father's door;
So Shame came in, and cower'd upon the floor,
And face to face with Shame, he sate to hear
The groan above bring torture to his ear.
In that sad night, when the young mother slept,
Forth from his door the elder mourner crept;
Absent for days, none knowing whither bent,
Till back return'd abruptly as he went.
With a swift tremulous stride he climb'd the stair, }
Through the closed chamber gleam'd his silver hair, }
And Mary heard his voice soft—pitying—as in prayer! }
'Child, child, I was too hard!—But woe is wild;
Now I know all!—again I clasp my child!'
Within his arms, upon his heart again
His Mary lay, and strove for words in vain;
She strove for words, but better spoke through tears
The love the heart through silence vents and hears.

"All this I gather'd from the nurse, who saw
The scene, which dews from hireling eyes could draw;
So far;—her sob the pastor heard, and turn'd,
Waved his wan hand, nor what more chanced she learn'd.

"Next morn in death the happier father lay,
From sleep to Heaven his soul had pass'd away;
He had but lived to pardon and to bless
His child;—emotion kills in its excess,
And that task done, why longer on the rack
Stretch the worn frame?—God's mercy call'd him back.
The day they buried him, while yet the strife
Of sense and memory raged for death and life
In Mary's shatter'd brain, her father's friend,
Whose hand, perchance, had sped him to his end,
Whose zeal officious had explored, reveal'd
My name, the half, worse half, of all conceal'd,
Sought her, and saw alone: When gone, a change
Came o'er the victim, terrible and strange;
All grief seem'd hush'd—a stern tranquillity
Calm'd the wan brow and fix'd the glassy eye;
She spoke not, moved not, wept not,—on her breast
Slept Earth's new stranger—not more deep its rest.
They fear'd her in that mood—with noiseless tread
Stole from the room; and, ere the morn, she fled.
Gone the young Mother with her babe!—no trace;
As the wind goes, she vanish'd from the place;
They search'd the darkness of the wood, they pried
Into the secrets of the tempting tide,
In vain,—unseen on earth as in the wave,
Where life found refuge or despair a grave."
"And is this all?" said Morvale—
"No, my thought
Guess'd at the clue; her father's friend I sought,
A stern hard man, of Calvin's iron mould,
And yet I moved him, and his tale he told.
It seem'd (by me unmark'd), amidst the rest,
My uncle's board had known this homely guest.
Our evil star had led the guest, one day,
Where through the lone glade wound our lovers' way,
To view, with Age's hard, suspecting eyes,
The high-born courtier in the student's guise.
Thus, when the father, startled to vague fears,
By his child's waning cheek and unrevealing tears,
First to his brother priest for counsel came,
He urged stern question—track'd the grief to shame,
Guess'd the undoer, and disclosed the name.

"Time went—the priest had still a steady trust
In Mary's honour; but, to mine unjust,
Divined some fraud—explored, and found a clue,
There had been marriage, if the rites were due;
Had learn'd Clanalbin's name, as one whose eye
Had seen, whose witness might attest the tie.
This news to Mary's father was convey'd
The eve her infant on her heart was laid.

"That night he left his home, he did not rest
Till found Clanalbin—'Well, and he confess'd?'
I cried impatient;—my informer's eye
Flash'd fire—'Confess'd the fraud,' was his reply.
'The fraud!'—'The impious form, the vile disguise!
Mock priest, false marriage, hell's whole woof of lies!'
'Lies!—had the sound earth open'd its abyss
Beneath my feet, my soul had shudder'd less.
Lies!—but not mine!—his own!—not mine such ill.
O wife, I fly—to right, avenge, and claim thee still!'"
"Thy hand—I wrong'd thee," Morvale falter'd, while
His strong heart heaved—"Thou didst avenge the guile?
Thou found'st thy friend—thy witness—well! and he?"—
"Had spoken truth, the truth of perfidy.
This man had loved me in his own dark way,
Loved for past kindness in our wilder day,
Loved for the future, which, obscure for him,
Link'd with my fate, with that grew bright or dim.
I told thee how he warr'd with my intent,
The strong dissuasion, and the slow consent:
The slow consent but veil'd the labour'd wile;
That I might yet be great, he grovell'd to be vile.
'Twas a false Hymen—a mock priest—and she
The pure, dishonour'd—the dishonourer free!

"This then the tale that, while it snapp'd the chord,
Still to the father's heart the child restored;
This told to her by the hard zealot's tongue,
Had the last hope from spoil'd existence wrung;
Had driven the outcast through the waste to roam,
And with the altar shatter'd ev'n the home.
No! trust ev'n then,—ev'n then, hope, was not o'er:
One morn the wanderer reach'd Clanalbin's door.
O steadfast saint! amidst the lightning's scathe,
Still to the anchor clung the lingerer Faith;
Still through the tempest of a darken'd brain,
Where misery gnaw'd and memory rack'd in vain,
The last lone angel that deserts the grief
Of noble souls, survived and smiled,—Belief!
There had she come, herself myself to know,
And bow'd the head, and waited for the blow!
What matter how the villain soothed, or sought
To mask the crime?—enough that it was wrought;
She heard in silence,—when all said, all learn'd,
Still silent linger'd; then a flush return'd
To the pale cheek,—the Woman and the Wrong
Rear'd the light form,—the voice came clear and strong.
'Tell him my father's grave is closed; the dread
Of shame sleeps with him—dying with the dead:
Tell him on earth we meet no more;—in vain
Would he redress the wrong, and clear the stain,
His child is nameless; and his bride—what now
To her, too late, the mockery of the vow?
I was his wife—his equal;—to endure
Earth's slander? Yes!—because my soul was pure!
Now, were he kneeling here,—fame, fortune won,—
My pride would bar him from the fallen one.
Say this; if more he seek my fate, reply—
'Once stain the ermine, and its fate—to die!'
I need not tell thee if my fury burst
Against the wretch—the accurser—the accurst!
I need not tell thee if I sought each trace
That lured false hope to woe's lorn resting-place;
If, when all vain,—gold, toil, and art essay'd,
Still in my sunlight stalk'd the avenging shade,
Lost to my life for ever;—on the ground
Where dwell the spectres,—Conscience—ever found!"

X.

"True was the preface to thy gloomy tale;
Pity can soothe not—counsel not avail,"
Said Morvale, moodily. "What bliss foregone!
What years of rich life wasted! What a throne
In the arch-heaven abandon'd! And for what?
Darkness and gold!—the slave's most slavish lot!
Thy choice forsook the light—the day divine—
God's loving air—for bondage and the mine!
Oh! what delight to struggle side by side
With one loved soother!—up the steep to guide
Her steps—as clinging to thy hardier form,
She treads the thorn and smiles upon the storm!
And when firm will and gallant heart had won
The hill-top opening to the steadfast sun,
Look o'er the perils of the vanquish'd way,
And bless the toil through which the victory lay,
And murmur—'Which the sweeter fate, to dare
With thee the evil, or with thee to share
The good?' Nay, haunting must thine error be;
Thee Camdeo gave the blest Amrita tree,[M]
The ambrosia of the gods,—to scorn the prize,
And choose the Champac[N] for its golden dyes:
Thou hast forsaken—(thou must bear the grief)—
The immortal fruitage for the withering leaf!"

"Nay," answer'd Arden, writhing, "cease to chide;
Who taunts the ordeal should the fire have tried.
If Fortune's priests had train'd thy soul, like mine, }
To worship Fortune's as the holiest shrine, }
Perchance my error, cynic, had been thine!" }

"Pardon," said Morvale; "and my taunt to shame,
Know me thus weak,—I envy while I blame;
Thou hast been loved! And had I err'd like thee;
Mine had been crime, from which thy soul is free,
Thy gentler breast the traitor could forgive——"
"Never!" cried Arden—
"Does the Traitor live?"
And as the ear that hissing whisper thrill'd,
That calm stern eye the very life-blood chill'd;
For there, the instinct Cain bequeath'd us spoke,
And from the chain the wild's fierce savage broke.
"O yes!" the fiery Alien thus renew'd;
"I know how holy life by law is view'd;
I know how all life's glory may be marr'd,
If safe the clay, which, as life's all, ye guard.
Law—Law! what is it but the word for gold?
Revenge is crime, if taken—Law if sold!
Vile tongues, vile scribes, may rot your name away,
But Law protects you,—with a fine to pay!
The child dishonour'd, the adulterous wife,
Gold requites all, save this base garment—life!
So, life alone is sacred!—so, your law
Hems the worm's carcass with a godhead's awe:
So, if some mighty wrong with black despair
Blots out your sun, and taints to plague the air;
If with a human impulse shrinks the soul
Back from the dross which compensates the whole;
If from the babbling court, the legal toil,
And the lash'd lackey's guerdon, ye recoil,
And seize your vengeance with your own right arm,
How every dastard quivers with alarm!
Mine be the heart, that can itself defend—
Hate to the foe, devotion to the friend!—
The fearless trust, and the relentless strife:
Honour unsold, and wrong avenged with life!"
He ceased, with trembling lip and haughty crest,
The native heathen labouring in the breast!
As waves some pine, with all its storm of boughs,
O'er the black gulf Norwegian winds arouse,
Shook that strong spirit, gloomy and sublime,
Bending with troubled thought above the abyss of crime!

XI.

Long was the silence, till to calm restored
The moody Indian and the startled lord.
"And yet," resumed the first, with softer mien,
And lip that smiled, half mocking, yet serene,
"Not long thy sorrow dimm'd thy life;—unless
Men's envy wrong thee, thou mightst more confess
Of loves, perchance as true and as deceived;
Of rose-wreaths wither'd in the hands that weaved.
Talk to the world of Arden's dazzling lord, }
And tales of joyous love go round the board; }
Who, though adoring less, by beauty more adored?" }

"Ill dost thou read the human heart, my friend,
If bounding man's life with the novel's end;
Where lovers married, ever after love—
To birds alone the turtle and the dove!
Where wicked men (if I be of the gang)
Repent, turn hermits, or cut throats and hang!
Our souls repent,—our lives but rarely change;
Grief halts awhile, then goads us on to range.
More woo'd than wooing, scarce I feign'd to feel—
What magic to the magnet draws the steel?
Wealth soon grew mine, the parasital fame
Conceal'd the nature while it deck'd the name;
Kinsman on kinsman died, each death brought gold;
In birth, wealth, fame, strange charms the sex behold!
The outward grace the life of courts bestows,
The tongue that learns unconsciously to gloze,
All drew to mine the fates I could but mar;
And Aphroditè was my native star!
Forgive the boast, not blessings these, but banes,
If spring sows only flowers, small fruit the autumn gains!
I mark my grave coevals gather round
Their harvest-home, with sheaves for garners bound;
And I, that planted but the garden, see
How the blooms fade! no harvest waits for me!"

"Yet didst thou never love again? as o'er
The soft stream, gliding by the enamell'd shore,
Didst thou ne'er pause, and in some lovelier vale
Moor thy light prow, and furl thy silken sail?"
"But once," said Arden; "years on years had fled,
And half it soothed to think my Mary dead.
For I had sworn (could faith, could honour less?)
My hearth at least to priestly loneliness;
To wed no other while she lived, and be,
If found at last, for late atonement free.
I kept the vow, till this ambiguous doom,
Half wed, half widow'd, took a funeral gloom;
So many years had pass'd, no tidings gain'd,
The chance so slight that yet the earth retain'd,
At length, though doubtful, I believed that time
Had from the altar ta'en the ban of crime.
Impulse, occasion, what you will, at last
Seized one warm moment to abjure the past.

XII.

"Far other, she, who charm'd me thus awhile,
Thought in each glance, and mind in every smile;
Genius was hers, with all the Iris dyes
That paint on cloud the arch that spans the skies;
Wild in caprice, impassion'd, and yet coy,
Woman when mournful, a frank child in joy;
The Phidian dream, in one concentring all }
The thousand spells with which the charmers thrall, }
And pleasing most the eye which years begin to pall. }
I do not say I loved her as, in truth,
We only love when life is in its youth;
But here at least I thought to fix my doom,
And from the weary waste reclaim a home.
Enough I loved, to woo, to win, to bind
To her my fate, if Heaven had so assign'd!
The nuptial day was fix'd, the plighting kiss
Glow'd on my lips;—that moment the abyss,
Which, hid by moss-grown time, yet yawn'd as wide
Beneath my feet, divorced me from her side.
A letter came—Clanalbin's hand; what made
Treason so bold to brave the man betray'd?
I break the seal—O Heaven! my Mary yet
Lived; in want's weeds the wretch his victim met;
Track'd to her home (a beggar's squalid cell!), }
Told all the penitence that lips could tell: }
'Come back and plead thyself, and all may yet be well!' }
Had I a choice? could I delay to choose?—
Here conscience dragg'd me, there it might excuse.

"Few hurried lines, obscurely dark with all
The war within, my later vows recall,
Breathe passionate prayer—for hopeless pardon sue,
And shape soft words to soothe the stern adieu.
So, as some soul the beckoning ghost obeys,
The haunting shadow of the vanish'd days
Lures to the grave of Youth my charmèd tread,
And sighs, 'At length thou shalt appease the Dead!'

"Scarce had I reach'd the shores of England, ere
New pomps spring round me,—I am Arden's heir!
The last pretender to the princely line,
Whose flag had waved from towers in Palestine,
Borne to our dark Walhalla,—left me poor
In all which sheds a blessing on the boor.—
Yes, thou art right! how, at each sickening grasp
For the heart's food, had gold befool'd my clasp!
Gorged with a satrap's treasure, the soul's dearth
Envied the pauper crawling to his hearth."
"But Mary—she—thy wife before Heaven's eye?"
"Lost as before!" was Arden's anguish-cry;
"Not beggary, famine—not her child (for whom,
What could she hope from earth?—as stern a doom!)
Could bow the steel of that proud chastity,
Which scorn'd as alms the atonement due from me!
Out of the sense of wrong her grandeur grown,
She look'd on shame from Sorrow as a throne.
Once more more she fled;—no sign!—again the same
Vain track—vain chase!—Not here was I to blame!"

"Thou track the outcast!" mutter'd Morvale!—"No!
Too far from Luxury lies the world of Woe!"

"Henceforth," sigh'd Arden, "hope, aim, end, confined
To one—my heart, if tortured, is resign'd;
So lately seen, oh! sure she liveth yet!
Once found—oh! strong thine eloquence, Regret!
The palace and the coronal, the gauds
With which our vanity our will defrauds,—
These may not tempt her, but the simple words
'I love thee still,' will touch on surer chords,
And youth rush back with that young melody,
To the lone moonlight and the trysting-tree!"

As the tale ceased, the fields behind them lay,—
The huge town once more open'd on the way;
The whir of wheels, the galliard cavalcade;
The crowd of pleasure, and the roar of trade;
The solemn abbey soaring through the dun
And reeking air, in which sunk slow the sun;
The dusky trees, the sultry flakes of green;
The haunts where Fashion yawns away the spleen;—
Vista on vista widens to reveal
Ease on the wing, and Labour at the wheel!
The friends grew silent in that common roar,
The Real around them, the Ideal o'er;
So the peculiar life of each, the unseen
Core of our being—what we are, have been—
The spirit of our memory and our soul
Sink from the sight, when merged amidst the whole;
Yet atom atom never can absorb,
Each drop moves rounded in its separate orb.

PART THE THIRD.

I.

Lord Arden's tale robb'd Morvale's couch of sleep,
The star still trembled on the troubled deep,
O'er the waste ocean gleam'd its chilling glance,
To make more dark the desolate expanse.

This contrast of a fate, but vex'd by gales
Faint with too full a balm from Rhodian Vales;[O]
This light of life all squander'd upon one
Round whom hearts moved, as planets round a sun,
Mocks the lone doom his barren years endure,
As wasted treasure but insults the poor.
Back on his soul no faithful echoes cast
Those tones which make the music of the past.
No memories hallow, and no dreams restore
Love's lute, far heard from Youth's Hesperian shore;—
The flowers that Arden trampled on the sod,
Still left the odour where the step had trod;
Those flowers, so wasted!—had for him but smiled
One bud,—its breath had perfumed all the wild!
He own'd the moral of the reveller's life,
So Christian warriors own the sin of strife,—
But, oh! how few can lift the soul above
Earth's twin-born rulers,—Fame and Woman's Love!

Just in that time, of all most drear, upon
Fate's barren hill-tops, gleam'd the coming sun;
From nature's face the veil of night withdrawn,
Earth smiled, and Heaven was open'd in the dawn!

How chanced this change?—how chances all below?
What sways the life the moment doth bestow:
An impulse, instinct, look, touch, word, or sigh—
Unlocks the Hades, or reveals the sky.

II.

'Twas eve; Calantha had resumed again
The wonted life, recaptured to its chain;
In the calm chamber, Morvale sat, and eyed
Lucy's lithe shape, that seem'd on air to glide;
Eyed with complacent, not impassion'd, gaze;
So Age looks on, where some fair Childhood plays:
Far as soars Childhood from dim Age's scope,
Beauty to him who links it not with hope!

"Sing me, sweet Lucy," said Calantha, "sing
Our favourite song—'The Maiden and the King.'
Brother, thou lov'st not music, or, at least,
But some wild war-song that recalls the East.
Who loves not music, still may pause to hark
Nature's free gladness hymning in the lark:
As sings the bird sings Lucy! all her art
A voice in which you listen to a heart."

A blush of fear, a coy reluctant "nay"
Avail her not—thus ran the simple lay:—

THE MAIDEN AND THE KING.

I.

"And far as sweep the seas below,
My sails are on the deep;
And far as yonder eagles go,
My flag on every keep.

"Why o'er the rebel world within
Extendeth not the chart?
No sail can reach—no arms can win
The kingdom of a heart!"

So sigh'd the king—the linden near;
A listener heard the sigh,
And thus the heart he did not hear,
Breathed back the soft reply:—

II.

"And far as sweep the seas below,
His sails are on the deep;
And far as yonder eagles go,
His flag on every keep;

"Love, thou art not a king alone,
Both slave and king thou art!
Who seeks to sway, must stoop to own
The kingdom of a heart!"

So sigh'd the Maid, the linden near,
Beneath the lonely sky;
Oh, lonely not!—for angels hear
The humblest human sigh!

III.

His ships are vanish'd from the main,
His banners from the keep;
The carnage triumphs on the plain;
The tempest on the deep.

"The purple and the crown are mine"—
An Outlaw sigh'd—"no more;
But still as greenly grows the vine
Around the cottage door!

"Rest for the weary pilgrim, Maid,
And water from the spring!"
Before the humble cottage pray'd
The Man that was a King.

Oh, was the threshold that he cross'd
The gate to fairy ground?
He would not for the kingdom lost,
Have changed the kingdom found!

Divine interpreter thou art, O Song!
To thee all secrets of all hearts belong!
How had the lay, as in a mirror, glass'd
The sullen present and the joyless past,
Lock'd in the cloister of that lonely soul!—
Ere the song ceased, to Lucy's side he stole,
And, with the closing cadence, mournfully
Lifted his doubtful gaze:—so eye met eye.

If thou hast loved, re-ope the magic book;
Say, do its annals date not from a look?
In which two hearts, unguess'd perchance before,
Rush'd each to each, and were as two no more;
While all thy being—by some Power, above
Its will constrain'd—sigh'd, trembling, "This is Love."

A look! and lo! they knew themselves alone!
Calantha's place was void—the witness gone;
They had not mark'd her sad step glide away,
When in sweet silence sank, less sweet, the lay;
For unto both abruptly came the hour
When springs the rose-fence round the fairy bower;
When earth shut out, all life transferr'd to one,
Each other life seems cloud before the sun;
It comes, it goes, we know if it depart
But by the warmer light and quicken'd heart.

And what then chanced? O, leave not told, but guess'd;
Is Love a god?—a temple, then, the breast!
Not to the crowd in cold detail allow
Its delicate worship, its mysterious vow!
Around the first sweet homage in the shrine
Let the veil fall, and but the Pure divine!
Coy as the violet shrinking from the sun,
The blush of Virgin Youth first woo'd and won;
And scarce less holy from the vulgar ear
The tone that trembles but with noble fear:
Near to God's throne the solemn stars that move
The proud to meekness, and the pure to love!

Let days pass on; nor count how many swell
The episode of Life's hack chronicle!
Changed the abode, of late so stern and drear,
How doth the change speak—"Love hath enter'd here!"
How lightly sounds the footfall on the floor!
How jocund rings sweet laughter, hush'd no more!
Wide from two hearts made happy, wide and far,
Circles the light in which they breathe and are;
Liberal as noontide streams the ambient ray,
And fills each crevice in the world with day.

And changed is Lucy! where the downcast eye,
And the meek fear, when that dark man was by?
Lo! as young Una thrall'd the forest-king,
She leads the savage in her silken string;
Plays with the strength to her in service shown,
And mounts with infant whim the woman's throne!
Charm'd from his lonely moods and brooding mind,
And bound by one to union with his kind,
No more the wild man thirsted for the waste;
No more, 'mid joy, a joyless one, misplaced;
His very form assumed unwonted grace,
And bliss gave more than beauty to his face:
Let but delighted thought from all things cull
Sweet food and fair—hiving the Beautiful,
And lo! the form shall brighten with the soul!
The gods bloom only by joy's nectar bowl.

Nor deem it strange that Lucy fail'd to trace }
In that dark brow, the birthright of disgrace, }
And Europe's ban on Earth's primeval race. }

Were she less pure, less harmless, less the child,
Not on the savage had the soft one smiled.
Ev'n as the young Venetian loved the Moor,
Love gains the shrine when Pity opes the door;
Love like the Poet, whom it teaches, where
Round it the Homely dwells, invents the Fair;
And takes a halo from the air it gilds
To crown a Seraph for the Heaven it builds.
And both were children in this world of ours,
Maiden and savage! the same mountain flowers,
Not trimm'd in gardens, not exchanged their hues,
Fresh from the natural sun and hardy dews,
For the faint fragrance and the sickly dyes
Which, Art calls forth by walling out the skies:
So children both, each seem'd to have forgot
How poor the maid's—how rich the lover's lot;
Ne'er did the ignorant Indian pause in fear,
Lest friends should pity, and lest foes should sneer.
"What will the world say?"—question safe and sage;
The parrot's world should be his gilded cage;
But fly, frank wilding, with free wings unfurl'd,
Where thy mate carols—there, behold thy world!
And stranger still that no decorous pride
Warn'd her, the beggar, from the rich man's side.
Sneer, ye world-wise, and deem her ignorance art;
She saw her wealth (and blush'd not) in her heart!—
Saw through the glare of gold his lonely breast;
He had but gold, and hers was all the rest.

Pleased in the bliss to her, alas! denied, }
Calantha hail'd her brother's plighted bride: }
"Glad thou the heart which I made sad," she sigh'd. }
Since Arden's tale, but once the friends had met,
Nor known to one the other's rapture yet;
Some fancied clue, some hope awhile restored,
Had from the Babel lured the brilliant lord.
The wonted commune Morvale fail'd to miss,—
We want no confidant in happiness.

Baffled, and sick of hope, wealth, life, and all,
One night return'd the noble to his hall;
He found some lines, stern, brief, in Morvale's hand,—
Brief with dark meaning,—stern with rude command,—
Bidding his instant presence. Arden weigh'd }
Each word; some threat was in each word convey'd; }
A chill shot through his heart—foreboding he obey'd. }

III.

What caused the mandate?—wherefore do I shrink?
The stream runs on,—why tarry at the brink?
Nay, let us halt, and in the pause between
Sorrow and joy, behold the quiet scene;—
The chamber stately in that calm repose,
Which Time's serene, sweet conqueror, Art bestows;
There, in bright shapes which claim our homage still,
Live the grand exiles from the Olympian Hill;
Still the pale Queen Cithæron forests know,
Turns the proud eye, and lifts the deathful bow;
Still on the vast brow of the father-god,
Hangs the hush'd thunder of the awful nod;
Still fair, as when on Ida's mountain seen,
By Troy's young shepherd, Beauty's bashful Queen;
Still Ind's divine Iacchus laughing weaves
His crown of clustering grapes and glossy leaves;
Still thou, Arch-type of Song, ordain'd to soothe
The rest of Heroes, and with deathless youth
Crown the Celestial Brotherhood—dost hold,
Brimm'd with the drink of gods, the urn of gold!

All live again! The Art which images
Man's noblest conquest, as it slowly frees
Thought out of matter, labouring patient on,
Till springs a god-world from reluctant stone,
Charm'd Morvale more than all the pomp and glow
With which the Painter limns a world we know.

'Twas noon, and broken by the gentle gloom
Of coolest draperies, through the shadowy room,
In moted shaft aslant, the curious ray
Forced lingering in, through tiers of flowers, its way,
Glanced on the lute (just hush'd, to leave behind
Elysian dreams, the music of the mind),
Play'd round the songstress, and with warmer flush
Steep'd the young cheek, unconscious of its blush,
And fell, as if in worship, at thy base,
O sculptured Psyche[P] of the soul-lit face,
Bending to earth resign'd the mournful eye,
Since earth must prove the pathway to the sky;
Doom'd here, below, Love's footprint to explore }
Till Jove relents, the destined wandering o'er, }
And in celestial halls, Soul meets with Love once more.[Q] }

And, side by side, the lovers sat,—their words
Low mix'd with notes from Lucy's joyous birds,
Sole witnesses and fit—those airy things,
That, 'midst the bars, can still unfold the wings,
And soothe the cell with language, learn'd above;
As the caged bird—so on the earth is love!
Their talk was of the future; from the height
Of Hope, they saw the landscape bathed in light,
And, where the golden dimness veil'd the gaze,
Guess'd out the spot, and mark'd the sites of happy days;
Till silence came, and the full sense and power
Of the blest Present,—the rich-laden Hour
That overshadow'd them, as some hush'd tree
With mellow fruitage bending heavily,—
What time, beneath the tender gloom reclined,
Dies on the lap of summer-noon the wind!

Roused from the lulling spell with startled blush
At such strange power in silence, to the hush
The maid restored the music, while she sought
Fresh banks for that sweet river—loving thought.

"Tell me," she said, "if not too near the gloom
Of some sad tale, the rash desire presume;
What severs so the chords that should entwine
With one warm bond our sister's heart and thine?
Why does she love yet dread thee? what the grief
That shrinks from utterance and disdains relief?
Hast thou not been too stern?—nay, pardon! nay,
Let thy words chide me,—not thy looks dismay!"
"Not unto thee, beneath whose starry eye
Each wild wave hushes, did my looks reply;
They were the answer to mine own dark thought,
Which back the grief, thy smile had banish'd, brought.

"Well—to the secrets of my soul thy love
Hath such sweet right, I lift the veil above
Home's shattered gods, and show what wounds belong
To writhing honour and revengeless wrong.—

"Rear'd in the desert, round its rugged child,
All we call life, group'd, menacing and wild;
But to man's soul there is an inner life;
There, one soft vision smiled away the strife!
A fairy shape, that seem'd afar to stand
On the lost shores of Youth—the Fairy land;
A voice that call'd me 'brother;'—years had fled
Since my rough breast had pillow'd that sweet head,
Yet still my heart throbb'd with the pressure; still
Tears, such as mothers know, my eyes would fill;
Prayers, such as fathers pray, my soul would breathe;
The oak were sere but for that jasmine-wreath!
At length, wealth came; my footsteps left the wild,—
Again we met:—to woman grown the child:
How did we meet?—that heart to me was dead!
The bird, far heard amidst the waste was fled!
With earthlier fires that breast had learn'd to burn;
And what yet left? but ashes in the urn:
Woo'd and abandon'd! all of love, hope, soul
Lavish'd—now lifeless!—well, were this the whole!
But the good name—the virgin's pure renown—
Woman's white robe, and Honour's starry crown,
Lost, lost, for ever!"

O'er his visage past
His trembling hand,—then, hurriedly and fast,
As one who from the knife of torture swerves,
Then spurns the pang, as pride the weakness nerves,
Resumed—"As yet that secret was withheld,
All that I saw, was sorrow that repell'd,—
A dreary apathy, whose death-like chill
Froze back my heart and left us sever'd still.

"One night I fled that hard indifferent eye;
To crowds, the heart that Home rejects, will fly!—
Gay glides the dance, soft music fills the hall:
I fled, to find, the loneliness through all!
Thou know'st but half a brother's bond I claim,—
My mother's daughter bears her father's name;
My mother's heart had long denied her son,
And loath'd the tie that pride had taught to shun.
My sister's lips, forbid the bond to own,
Left the scorn'd life, a brother breathed, unknown.[R]
Not even yet the alien blood confest;
Who, in the swart hues of the Eastern guest
And unfamiliar name, could kindred trace
With the young Beauty of the Northern Race?—
Calm in the crowd I stood, when hark, a word
Smote on my ear, and stunn'd the soul that heard!
A sound, with withering laughter muttered o'er,
Blistering the name—O God!—a sister bore;
Nought clear, and nought defined, save scorn alone,—
Not heard the name scorn coupled with her own;
Somewhat of nuptials fix'd, of broken ties,
The foul cause hinted in the vile surmise,
The gallant's fame for conquests, lightly won,
For homes dishonour'd, and for hearts undone:
Not one alone on whom my wrath could seize,
From lip to lip the dizzying slander flees;
No single ribald separate from the herd,
Through the blent hum one stinging tumult stirr'd;
One felt, unseen, infection circling there
A bodiless venom in the common air,
And as the air impalpable!—so seem
The undistinguished terrors of a dream,
Now clear, now dim, transform'd from shape to shape,
The gibbering spectres scare us and escape.

"Fearful the commune, in that dismal night,
Between the souls which could no more unite,—
The lawful anger and the shaming fears,
Man's iron question, woman's burning tears;
All that, once utter'd, rend for aye the ties
Of the close bond God fashion'd in the skies.
I learn'd at last,—for 'midst my wrath, deep trust
In what I loved, left even passion just;
And I believed the word, the lip, the eye,
That to my horrid question flash'd reply;—
I learn'd at last that but the name was stain'd,
Honour was wreck'd, but Purity remain'd.
Oh pardon, pardon!—if a doubt that sears,
A word that stains, profane such holy ears!
So, oft amidst my loneliness, my heart
Hath communed with itself, and groan'd apart,—
Recall'd that night, and in its fierce despair,
Shaped some full vengeance from the desert air,—
That I forgot what angel, new from Heaven,
Sweet spotless listener, to my side was given!

"But who the recreant lover?—this, in vain
My question sought; that truth not hard to gain;
And my brow darken'd as I breathed the threat
Fierce in her shrinking ear, 'that wrath should reach him yet!'
I left her speechless; when the morning came, }
With the fierce pang, writhed the self-tortured frame, }
The poison hid by Woe, drain'd by despairing Shame. }

"Few words, half-blurr'd by shame, the motive clear'd,
For the false wooer, not herself, she feared;
'Accept,' she wrote 'O brother, sternly just,
The life I yield,—but holy be my dust!
Hear my last words, for, them Death sanctify!
Forbear his life for whom it soothes to die.
And let my thought, the memory of old time,
The soul that flees the stain, nor knew the crime,
Strike down thine arm! and see me in the tomb,
Stand, like a ghost, between Revenge and Doom!'

"I bent, in agony and awe, above
The broken idol of my boyhood's love.
Echo'd each groan and writhed with every throe,
And cried, 'Live yet! O dove, but brood below,
Hide with thy wings the vengeance and the guilt,
And give my soul thy softness if thou wilt!'
And, as I spoke, the heavy eye unclosed,
The hand press'd mine, and in the clasp reposed,
The wan lip smiled, the weak frame seem'd to win
Strange power against the torture-fire within;
The leach's skill the heart's strong impulse sped,
She lived—she lived:—And my revenge was dead!

"She lived!—and, clasp'd within my arms, I vow'd
To leave the secret in its thunder-shroud,
To shun all question, to refuse all clue,
And close each hope that honour deems its due;
But while she lived!—the weak vow halted there,
Her life the shield to that it tainted mine to spare!

"But to have walk'd into the thronging street,
But to have sought the haunt where babblers meet,
But to have pluck'd one idler by the sleeve,
And asked, 'who woo'd yon fairhair'd bride, to leave?'
And street, and haunt, and every idler's tongue,
Had given the name with which the slander rung—
To me alone,—to me of all the throng,
The unnatural silence mask'd the face of wrong.
But I had sworn! and, of myself in dread,
From the loath'd scene, from mine own wrath, I fled.

"We left the land, in this a home we find.
Home! by our hearth the cleaving curse is shrined!
Distrust in her—and shame in me; and all
The unspoken past cold present hours recal;
And unconfiding hearts, and smiles but rife
With the bland hollowness of formal life!
In vain my sacrifice, she fears me still!
Vain her reprieve;—grief barr'd from vent can kill.
And then, and then (O joy through agony!)
My oath absolves me, and my arm is free!
The lofty soul may oft forgive, I own,
The lighter wrong that smites itself alone;
But vile the nature, that when wrong hath marr'd
All the rich life it was our boast to guard
But weeps the broken heart and blasted name;—
Here the mean pardon were the manhood's shame;
And I were vilest of the vile, to live
To see Calantha's grave—and to forgive:
Forgive!"

There hung such hate upon that word,
The weeping listener shudder'd as she heard,
And sobb'd—

"Hush, hush! lest Man's eternal Foe }
Hear thee, and tempt! Oh, never may'st thou know }
Beside one deed of Guilt—how blest is guiltless Woe!" }
Then, close, and closer, clinging to his side,
Frank as the child, and tender as the bride,
Words—looks—and tears themselves combine the balm,
Lull the fierce pang, and steal the soul to calm!
As holy herbs (that rocks with verdure wreathe,
And fill with sweets the summer air they breathe,)
In winter wither, only to reveal
Diviner virtues—charged with powers to heal,
So are the thoughts of Love!—if Heaven is fair,
Blooms for the earth, and perfumes for the air;—
Is the Heaven dark?—doth sorrow sear the leaf?
They fade from joy to anodynes for grief!
From theme to theme she lures his thought afar,
From the dark haunt in which its demons are;
And with the gentle instinct which divines
Interest more strong than aught which Self entwines
With its own suffering—changed the course of tears,
And led him, child-like, through her own young years.
The silent sorrows of a patient mind—
Grief's loveliest poem, a soft soul resign'd,
Charm'd and aroused——
"O tell me more!" he cried;
"Ev'n from the infant let me trace the bride.
Of thy dear life I am a miser grown,
And grudge each smile that did not gild my own;
Look back—thy Father? Canst thou not recal
His kiss, his voice? Fair orphan! tell me all."

"My Father? No!" sigh'd Lucy; "at that name
Still o'er my mother's cheek the fever came;
Thus, from the record of each earlier year,
That household tie moved less of love than fear;
Some wild mysterious awe, some undefined
Instinct of woe was with the name entwined.
Lived he?—I knew not; knew not till the last
Sad hours, when Memory struggled to the Past,
And she—my dying mother—to my breast
Clasp'd these twain relics—let them speak the rest!"
With that, for words no more she could command,
She placed a scroll—a portrait—in his hand;
And overcome by memories that could brook
Not ev'n love's comfort,—veil'd her troubled look,
And glided swiftly thence. Nor he detain'd:
Spell bound, his gaze upon the portrait strain'd:
That brow—those features! that bright lip, which smiled
Forth from the likeness!—Found Lord Arden's child!
The picture spoke as if from Mary's tomb,
Death in the smile and mockery in the bloom.
The scroll, unseal'd—address'd the obscurer name
That Arden bore, ere lands and lordship came;
And at the close, to which the Indian's eyes }
Hurried, these words:— }
"In peace thy Mary dies; }
Forgive her sternness in her sacrifice! }
It had one merit—that I loved! and till
Each pulse is hush'd shall love, yet fly, thee still.
Now take thy child! and when she clings with pride
To the strong shelter of a father's side,
Tell her, a mother bought the priceless right
To bless unblushing her she gave to light;
Bought it as those who would redeem a past
Must buy—by penance, faithful to the last.
Thorns in each path, a grave the only goal,
Glides mine, atoning, to my father's soul!"

What at this swift revealment—dark and fast
As fleets the cloud-wrack, o'er the Indian past?
No more is Lucy free with her sweet dower }
Of love and youth! Another has the power }
To bar the solemn rite, to blast the marriage bower. }
"Will this proud Saxon of the princely line
Yield his heart's gem to alien hands like mine?
What though the blot denies his rank its heir: }
The more his pride will bid his love repair }
By loftiest nuptials—O supreme despair! }
Shall I divulge the secret! shall I rear,
Myself, the barrier,—and the bliss so near?"

He scorn'd himself, and raised his drooping crest:
"Mine be Man's honour—leave to God the rest!"
As thus his high resolve, a sudden cry }
Startled his heart. He turn'd: Calantha by! }
Why on the portrait glares her haggard eye? }

"Whose likeness this? Thou know'st not, brother? speak!
What mean that clouded brow—that changing cheek?
Thou know'st not!"
"Yes!"
And as the answer came,
With Death's strong terror shook the sister's frame,
A bitterer pang, an icier shudder, ran
Through his fierce nature—
"Dost thou know the man?
Ha! his own tale! O dull and blinded! how,
Flash upon flash, descends the lightning now!
Thou, his forsaken—his! And I—who—nay!
Look up Calantha; for, befal what may,
He shall——"
The promise, or the threat, was said
To ears already deafen'd as the dead!
His arm but breaks the fall: the panting breast
Yet heaves convulsive through the stifling vest.
The robe, relax'd, bids doubt—if doubt yet be—
Merge the last gleam in starless certainty!
Lo there, the fatal gift of love and woe
Miming without the image graved below—
The same each likeness by each sufferer worn,
Or differing but as noonday from the morn.
In Lucy's portrait, manhood's earliest youth
Shone from the clear eye with a light like truth.
There, play'd that fearless smile with which we meet
The sward that hides the swamp before our feet;
The bright on-looking to the Future, ere
Our sins reflect their own dark shadows there:—
Calantha's portrait spoke of one in whom,
Young yet in years; the heart had lost its bloom;
The lip of joy the lip of pride had grown;
It smiled—the smile we love to trust had flown.
In the collected eye and lofty mien
The graver power experience brings was seen;
Beautiful both; and if the manlier face
Had lost youth's candid and luxuriant grace,
A charm as fatal as the first it wore,
Pleased less—and yet enchain'd and haunted more.

And this the man to whom his heart had moved!
Whose hand he had clasp'd, whose child he loved!—he loved!
This, out of all the universe—O Fate!
This, the dark orb, round which revolved his hate;
This, the swart star malign, whose baleful ray
Ruled in his House of Life; and day by day,
And hour by hour, upon the tortured past
One withering, ruthless, demon influence cast!
There writhes the victim—there, unmasking, now
The invoked Alecto frowns from Arden's brow.
O'er that fierce nature, roused so late from sleep,
Course the black thoughts, and lash to storm the deep.
Love flies dismay'd—the sweet delusions, drawn
By Hope, fade ghost-like in the lurid dawn;
As when along the parch'd Arabian gloom
Life prostrate falls before the dread Simoom,
No human mercy the strong whirlwind faced,
And its wrath reign'd sole monarch of the waste!

IV.

The Hours steal on. Like spectres, to and fro
Hurry hush'd footsteps through the house of woe.
That nameless chill, which tells of life that dies,
Broods o'er the chamber where Calantha lies.

The Hours steal on—and o'er the unquiet might
Of the great Babel—reigns, dishallow'd, Night.
Not, as o'er Nature's world, She comes, to keep
Beneath the stars her solemn tryst with Sleep,
When move the twin-born Genii side by side,
And steal from earth its demons where they glide;
Lull'd the spent Toil—seal'd Sorrow's heavy eyes,
And dreams restore the dews of Paradise;
But Night, discrown'd and sever'd from her twin,
No pause for Travail, no repose for Sin,
Vex'd by one chafed rebellion to her sway,
Flits o'er the lamp-lit streets—a phantom day!
Alone sat Morvale in the House of Gloom,
Alone—no! Death was in the darken'd room;
All hush'd save where, at distance faintly heard,
Lucy's low sob the depth of silence stirr'd;
Or where, without, the swift wheels hurrying by,
Bear those who live—as if life could not die.
Alone he sat! and in his breast began
Earth's deadliest strife—the Angel with the Man!
Not his the light war with its feeble rage
Which prudent scruples with faint passions wage,
(The small heart-conflicts which disturb the wise,
Whom reason succours when the anger tries,
Such as to this meek social ring belong,
In conscience weak, but in discretion strong;)
But that known only to man's franker state,
In love a demigod—a fiend in hate,
Him, not the reason but the instincts lead,
Prompt in the impulse, ruthless in the deed.

And if the wrong might seem too weak a cause
For the fell hate—not his were Europe's laws.—
Some think dishonour, if it halt at crime,
A stingless asp,—what injury in the slime?
As if but this poor clay—this crumbling coil
Of dust for graves—were all the foul can soil!
As if the form were not the type (nor more
Than the mere type) of what chaste souls adore!
That Woman-Royalty, a spotless name,
For sires to boast—for sons unborn to claim,
That heavenly purity of thought—as free
From shame as sin, the soul's virginity,
If these be lost—why what remains?—the form?
Has that such worth?—Go, envy then the worm!

And well to him may such belief belong,
And India's memories blacken more the wrong;
In Eastern lands, by tritest tales convey'd,
How Honour guards from sight itself the maid;
Home's solemn mystery, jealous of a breath,
Screen'd by religion, and begirt with death:—
Again he cower'd beneath the hissing tongue,
Again the gibe of scurril laughter rung,
Again the Plague-breath air itself defiled,
And Mockery grinn'd upon his mother's child!
All the heart's chaste religion overthrown,
And slander scrawl'd upon the altar-stone!

And if that memory pause, what shapes succeed?
The martyr leaning on the broken reed!
The life slow-poison'd in the thoughts that shed
Shame o'er the joyless earth;—and there, the dead!
Marvel not ye, the soft, the fair, the young,
Whose thoughts are chords to Love's sweet music strung,
Whose life the sterner genius—Hate, has spared,
If on his soul no torch but Atè's glared!
If in the foe was lost to sight the bride,
The foe's meek child!—that memory was denied!
The face, the tale, the sorrow, and the love, }
All fled—all blotted from the breast: Above }
The Deluge not one refuge for the Dove! }
There is no Lethé like one guilty dream,
It drowns all life that nears the leaden stream;
And if the guilt seem sacred to the creed,
Between the stars and earth, but stands the Deed!
So in his breast the Titan feud began:
Which shall prevail—the Angel or the Man?

The Injurer comes! the lone light breaking o'er }
The gloom, waves flickering to the open door, }
And Arden's step is on the fatal floor! }
Around he gazed, and hush'd his breath,—for Fear
Cast its own shadow on the wall,—a drear
And ominous prescience of the Death-king there
Breathed its chill horror to the heavy air;
O'er yon recess—which bars with draperied pall
The baffled gaze—the unbroken shadows fall.
The lurid embers on the hearth burn low;
The clicking time-piece sounds distinct and slow;
And the roused instinct hate's suspense foreshows
In the pale Indian's lock'd and grim repose.

So Arden enter'd, and thus spoke; the while
His restless eye belied his ready smile:
"Return'd, I find thy mandate, and attend
To hear a mystery, or to serve a friend."
"Or front a foe!"
A stifled voice replied.
O'er Arden's temples flush'd the knightly pride.
"What means that word, which jars, not daunts, the ear?
I own no foe,—if foe there be, no fear."

"Pause and take heed—then with as firm a sound
Disdain the danger—when the foe is found!
What, if thou had'st a sister, whom the grave
To thy sole charge—a sacred orphan—gave—
What, if a traitor had, with mocking vows,
Won the warm heart, and woo'd the plighted spouse,
Then left—a scoff;—what, if his evil fame,
Alone sufficed to blast the virgin name,
What—hourly gazing on a life forlorn,
Amidst a solitude wall'd round with scorn,
Shame at the core—death gnawing at the cheek—
What, from the suitor, would the brother seek?"

"Wert thou that brother," with unsteady voice,
Arden replied: "not doubtful were thy choice:
Were I that Suitor——"
"Ay?"
"I would prepare
To front the vengeance, or—the wrong repair."

"Yes"—hiss'd the Indian—"front that mimic strife,
That coward's die, which leaves to chance the life;
That mockery of all justice, framed to cheat
Right of its due—such vengeance thou wouldst meet!—
Be Europe's justice blind and insecure!
Stern Ind asks more—her son's revenge is sure!
'Repair the wrong!'—Ay, in the Grave be wed!
Hark! the Ghost calls thee to the bridal bed!
Come (nay, this once thy hand!)—come!—from the shrine
I draw the veil!—Calantha, he is thine!
Man, see thy victim!—dust!—Joy—Peace and Fame, }
These murder'd first—the blow that smote the frame }
Was the most merciful!—at length it came. }
Here, by the corpse to which thy steps are led,
Beside thee, murderer, stands the brother of the Dead!"

Brave was Lord Arden—brave as ever be
Thor's northern sons—the Island Chivalry;
But in that hour strange terror froze his blood,
Those fierce eyes mark'd him shiver as he stood;
But oh! more awful than the living foe
That frown'd beside—the Dead that smiled below!
That smile which greets the shadow-peopled shore,
Which says to Sorrow—"Thou canst wound no more!"
Which says to Love that would rejoin—"Await!"
Which says to Wrong that would redeem—"Too late!"
That lingering halo of our closing skies
Cold with the sunset never more to rise!

Though his gay conscience many a heavier crime
Than this had borne, and drifted off to Time;
Though this but sport with a fond heart which Fate
Had given to master, but denied to mate,
Yet seem'd it as in that least sin arose
The shapes of all that Memory's deeps disclose;
The general phantom of a life whose waste
Had spoil'd each bloom by which its path was traced,
Sporting at will, and moulding sport to art,
With that sad holiness—the Human Heart!
Upon his lip the vain excuses died,
In vain his manhood struggled for its pride;
Up from the dead, with one convulsive throe,
He turn'd his gaze, and voiceless faced his foe:
Still, as if changed by horror into stone,
He saw those eyes glare doom upon his own;
Saw that remorseless hand glide sternly slow
To the bright steel the robe half hid below,—
Near, and more near, he felt the fiery breath
Breathe on his cheek; the air was hot with death,
And yet he sought nor flight—nor strove for prayer,
As one chance-led into a lion's lair,
Who sees his fate, nor deems submission shame,—
Unarm'd to combat, and unskill'd to tame,
What could this social world afford its child,
Against the roused Nemæan of the wild!

A lifted arm—a gleaming steel—a cry
Of savage vengeance!—swiftly—suddenly,
As through two clouds a star—on the dread time
Shone forth an angel face and check'd the startled crime!
She stood, the maiden guest, the plighted bride,
The victim's daughter, by the madman's side;
Her airy clasp upon the murtherous arm,
Her pure eyes chaining with a solemn charm:
Like some blest thought of mercy, on a soul
Brooding on blood—the holy Image stole!
And, as a maniac in his fellest hour
Lull'd by a look whose calmness is its power,
Backward the Indian quail'd—and dropp'd the blade!—
To see the foeman kneeling to the maid;
As with new awe and wilder, Arden cried,
"Out from the grave, O com'st thou, injured bride!"
Then with a bound he reach'd the Indian—
"Lo!
I tempt thy fury, and invite thy blow;
But, by man's rights o'er men,—oh, speak! whose eyes
Ope, on life's brink, my youth's lost paradise?
The same—the same—(look, look!)—the same—lip, brow,
Form, aspect,—all and each—fresh, fair as now,
Bloom'd my heart's bride!"—
Silent the Indian heard,
Nor seem'd to feel the grasp, nor heed the word!
As when some storm-beat argosy glides free
From its vain wrath,—subsides a baffled sea,—
His heaving breast calm'd back—the tempest fell,
And the smooth surface veil'd the inward hell.
Yet his eye, resting on the wondering maid,
Somewhat of woe, perchance remorse, betray'd,
And grew to doubtful trouble—as it saw
Her aspect brightening slowly from its awe,
Gazing on Arden till shone out commix'd,
Doubt, hope, and joy, in the sweet eyes thus fix'd;—
Till on her memory all the portrait smil'd,
And voice came forth, "O Father, bless thy child!"

As from the rock the bright wave leaps to day,
The mighty instinct forced its living way:
No need of further words;—all clear—all told;
A father's arms the happy child enfold:
Nature alone was audible!—and air
Stirr'd with the gush of tears, and gasps of murmur'd prayer!

Motionless stands the Indian; on his breast,
As one the death-shaft pierces, droops his crest;
His hands are clasp'd—one moment the sharp thrill
Shakes his strong limbs;—then all once more is still;
And form and aspect the firm calmness take
Which clothes his kindred savage at the stake.
So—as she turn'd her looks—the woe behind
That quiet mask, the girl's quick heart divined,—
"Father!" she cried—"Not all, not all on me
Lavish thy blessings!—Him, who saved me, see!
Him who from want—from famine—from a doom,
Frowning with terrors darker than the tomb,
Preserved thy child!"

Before the Indian's feet }
She fell, and murmur'd—"Bliss is incomplete }
Unless thy heart can share—thy lips can greet!" }
Again the firm frame quiver'd;—roused again,
The bruisëd eagle struggled from the chain;
Till words found way, and with the effort grew
Man's crowning strength—Man's evil to subdue.

"Foeman—'tis past!—lo, in the strife between
Thy world and mine, the eternal victory seen!
Thou, with light arts, my realm hast overthrown,
And, see, revenge but threats to bless thine own!
My home is desolate—my hearth a grave—
The Heaven one hour that seem'd like justice gave,
The arm is raised, the sacrifice prepared—
The altar kindles, and the victim's—spared!
Free as before to smite and to destroy,
Thou com'st to slaughter to depart in joy!

"From the wayside yon drooping flower I bore;
Warm'd at my heart—its root grew to the core,
Dear as its kindred bloom seen through the bar
By some long-thrall'd, and loneliest prisoner—
Now comes the garden's Lord, transplants the flower,
And spoils the dungeon to enrich the bower?

"So be it, law—and the world's rights are thine
Lost the stern comfort, Nature's law and mine!
She calls thee 'Father,' and the long deferr'd,
Long-look'd for vengeance, withers at the word!
Take back thy child! Earth's gods to thee belong! }
To me the iron of the sense of wrong }
Heaven makes the heart which Earth oppresses—strong!" }

"Not so,—not so we part! O husband!" cried
The Girl's full soul—"Divorce not thus thy bride!
Yes, Father, yes!—in woe thy Lucy won
This generous heart; shall joy not leave us one?"

A moment Arden paused in mute surprise
(How charm'd that outcast Beauty's blinded eyes?)
Then, with the impulse of the human thought,
Prompt to atonement for the evil wrought,
"Hear her!" he said—"her words her father's heart
Echoes.—Not so—nor ever, may ye part!
Nobly, hast thou an elder right than mine
Won to this treasure;—still its care be thine;
Withhold thy pardon if thou wilt,—but take
The holiest offering wrong to man can make!"

Slowly the Indian lifts his joyless head,
Pointing with slow hand to the present dead,
And from slow lips comes heavily the breath:
"Behold, between us evermore—is Death!"

"Maiden, recal my tale;—thou clasp'st the hand
Which shuts the Exile from the promised land;
Can the dead victim's brother, undefiled,
From him who slew the sister take the child!"
With that, he bent him o'er the shuddering maid,
On her fair looks a solemn hand he laid;
Lifted eyes, tearless still—but dark with all
The cloud, that not in such soft dews can fall:
"If to the Dead an offering still must be,
All vengeance calls for be fulfill'd in me!
I make myself the victim!—Thou dread Power
Guiding to guilt the slow chastising hour,
Far from the injurer's hearth by her made pure,
Let this lone roof thy thunder-stroke allure!—

"Go hence—(nay, near me not!) behold!—the kind
Oblivion closes round her darken'd mind;
If, when she wake, it be awhile for grief,
Soon dries the rain-drop on the April leaf!"

He said, and vanish'd, with a noiseless tread,
Within the folds which curtain'd round the dead!
So, the stern Dervish of the East inters
His sullen soul with Death in sepulchres!

His new-found prize, while yet th' unconscious sense
Sleeps in the mercy of the brief suspense,
With gliding feet, the Father steals away.
Grief bends alone above the lonely clay;
But over grief and death th' Eternal Eye
Shines down,—and Hope lives ever in the sky.

PART THE FOURTH.

I.

To Joy's brisk ear there's music in the throng;
Glorious the life of cities to the strong!
What myriad charms, all differing, smile for all
The hardier Masks in the Great Carnival!
Amidst the vast disguise, some sign betrays
To each the appointed pleasure in the maze;
Ambition, pleasure, love, applause, and gold,
Allure the young, and baby[S] yet the old.
For here, the old, if nerves and stubborn will
Defy Experience, linger, youthful still,
Haunt the same rounds of idlesse, or of toil
That lure the freshest footsteps to the soil,
Still sway the Fashion or control the State,
Gay at the ball, or fierce at the debate.
It is not youth, it is the zest of life }
Surviving youth—in age itself as rife, }
That fits the Babel and enjoys the strife; }
But not for you our world's bright tumults are,
Soft natures, born beneath the Hesperus star,—
To us, the storm is but the native breath;
To you, the quickening of the gale is death;
Leave Strife to battle with its changeful clime,
And seek the peace which saves the weak, in time!
Not Man's but Nature's world be yours!—The shade
Where, all unseen, the cushat's nest is made,
Less lone to you than pomps which but bestow
The tinkling cymbal and the painted show.

The lights of revel flash from Arden's halls;
There, throng the shapes that troop where Comus calls;
But not Sabrina more apart and lone
From the loud joy, on her pure coral throne,
Than thou, sad maiden!—round the holy tide
Swell the gay notes, the airy dancers glide;
But o'er the shadowy grot the waters roll,
And shut the revel from the unconscious soul!

What rank has noblest, manhood's grace most fair,
Bend low to her now hail'd as Arden's heir?
If rumour doubts the birthright to his name,
The father's wealth redeems the mother's shame;
And kindly thoughts o'er lordly pride prevail,
"The Earl's best lands are not in the entail!"

How Arden loved his child!—how spoke that love
Of those dead worlds the light herb waves above;
Layer upon layer—those strata of the past,
Those gone creations buried in the last!
Their bloom, their life, their glory past away,
Speak in this relic of a vanish'd day.
There, in that guileless face, revived anew
The visions glistening through life's morning dew,
Fair Hope, pure Honour, undefilëd Truth—
The young shape stood before him as his youth![T]
And in this love his chastisement was found—
The thorns he had planted, here enclosed him round;
He, whom to see had been to love,—in vain
Here loved; that heart no answer gave again—
It lived upon the past,—it dwelt afar,
This new-found bond from what it loved the bar.
Her conscience chid, yet, while it chid, her thought
Still the cold past, to freeze the present, brought;
How love the sire round whom such shadows throng,
The mother's death-bed and the lover's wrong?
The dazzling gifts, which had through life beguiled
All other souls, are powerless with his child.
Vain the melodious tongue, and vain the mind,
Sparkling and free as wavelets in the wind;
The roseate wreath the handmaid Graces twine
Round sternest hearts,—soft infant, breaks on thine;
Child, candid, simple, frank, to her allied,
Far more, the nature sever'd from her side,
With its fresh instincts and wild verdure, fann'd
By fragrant winds, from haunted Fable-land;
Than all the garden graces which betray
By the bough's riches the worn tree's decay.
What charms the ear of Childhood?—not the page
Of that romance which wins the sober sage;
Not the dark truths, like warning ghosts, which pass
Along the pilgrim path of Rasselas;
Not wit's wrought crystal which, so coldly clear,
Reflects, in Zadig, learning's icy sneer;
Unreasoning, wondering, stronger far the thrall
Of Aimée's cave,[U] or young Aladdin's hall;
And so the childhood of the heart will find }
Charms in the poem of a child-like mind, }
To which the vision of the world is blind! }
Ev'n as the savage, 'midst the desert's gloom,
Sees, hid from us, the golden fruitage bloom,
And, where the arid silence wraps us all,
Lists the soft lapse of the glad waterfall!

So Lucy loved not Arden!—vainly yearn
His moisten'd eyes;—Can softness be so stern?
That soul how gentle! but that smile how cold!
A marble shape the parent arms enfold!
No hurrying footstep bounds his own to meet,
No joyous smiles with morning's welcome greet,
Not him that heart—so bless'd with love—can bless, }
Lost the pure Eden of a child's caress; }
He saw—he felt, and suffer'd powerless! }
Remorse seized on him;—his gay spirit quail'd;
The cloud crept on,—it gather'd, it prevail'd.
The spectre of the past—the martyr bride,
Sat at his board, and glided by his side;
Sigh'd, "With the dead, Love the Consoler dies,"
And spoke his sentence in his child's cold eyes!
And now a strange and strong desire was born, }
With the young instinct of life's credulous morn, }
In that long sceptic-breast, so world-corrupt and worn. }

From the rank soil in which grim London shrouds
Her dead,—the green halls of the ghastly crowds—
To bear his Mary's dust; the dust to lay
By the clear rill, beside her father's clay,
Amidst those scenes which saw the rapture-strife
And growth of passion—life's sweet storm of life,
Consign the silent pulse, the mouldering heart,
Deaf to the joy to meet—the woe to part;
Rounding and binding there as into one
Sad page, the tale of all beneath the sun;
And there, before that grave—beneath the beam
Of the lone stars, and by that starlit stream,
To lead the pledge of the fresh morn of love,
And while the pardoning skies seem'd soft above,
Murmur, "For her sake, her, who, reconciled,
Hears us in heaven, give me thy heart, my child!"
But first—before his conscious soul could dare
For the consoling balm to pour the prayer,
Alone the shadows of the past to brave,
Alone to commune with the accusing grave,
And shrive repentance of its haunting gloom
Before Life's true Confessional—the Tomb;—
Such made his dream!—Oh! not in vain the creed
Of old that knit atonement with the dead!
The penitent offering, the lustrating tide,
The wandering, haunted, hopeful homicide,
Who sees the spot to which the furies urge,
Where halt the hell-hounds, and where drops the scourge,
And the appeased Manes pitying sigh—
"Thou hast atoned! once more enjoy the sky!"

Such made the dream he rushes to fulfil!—
Round the new mound babbled the living rill;
A name, the name that Arden's wife should bear,
Sculptured the late and vain repentance there.
O'er the same bridge which once to rapture led,
Went the same steps their pathway to the dead:
Night after night the same lone shadow gave
A tremulous darkness to the hurrying wave;
Lost,—and then, lengthening from the neighbouring yews,
Dimm'd the wan shimmer of the moonlit dews,
Then gain'd a grave;—and from the mound was thrown,
Still as the shadow of yon funeral stone!

II.

Meanwhile to Morvale!—Sorrow, like the wind
Through trees, stirs varying o'er each human mind;
Uprooting some, from some it doth but strew
Blossom and leaf, which spring restores anew;
From some, but shakes rich powers unknown in calm,
And wakes the trouble to extract the balm.
Let weaker natures suffer and despair,
Great souls snatch vigour from the stormy air;
Grief not the languor,—Grief the action brings;
And clouds the horizon but to nerve the wings.

Up from his heavy thought, one dawning day,
The Indian, silent, rose, and went his way;
Palace and pomp and wealth and ease resign'd, }
As one new-born, he plunged amidst his kind, }
Whither, with what intent, he scarce divined. }
He turn'd to see, through mists obscure and dun,
The domes and spires of the vex'd Babylon;
Before him smiled the mead and waved the corn,
And Nature's music swell'd the hymns of Morn.
A sense of freedom, of the large escape
From the pent walls our customs round us shape;
The imperfect sympathies which curse the few,
Who ne'er the chase the many join pursue;
The trite convention, with its cold control,
Which thralls the habit, yet not links the soul;
—The sense of freedom pass'd into his breast,
But found no hope it flatter'd and caress'd;
So the sad captive, when at length made free,
Shrinks from the sunlight he had pined to see;
Feels on the limb the custom of the chain,
Each step a struggle and each breath a pain,
And knows—return'd unto the world too late,
No smile shall greet him at his lonely gate;
Seal'd every eye, of old that watch'd and wept;
The world he knew has vanish'd while he slept!

He wander'd on, alone, on foot,—alone,
As in the waste his earlier steps had known.
Forth went the peasant—Adam's curse begun;—
Home went the peasant in the western sun;
He heard the bleating fold, the lowing herd,
The last shrill carol of the nestling bird!
He saw the rare lights of the hamlet gleam
And fade;—the stars grow stiller on the stream;
Swart, by the woodland, cower'd the gipsy tent
Whence peer'd dark eyes that watch'd him as he went—
He paused and turn'd:—Him more the outlaws charm
Than the trim hostel and the happy farm.
Strangers, like him, from antique lands afar,
Aliens untamed where'er their wanderings are,
High Syrian sires of old;[V]—dark fragments torn
From the great creed of Isis,—now forlorn
In rags—all earth their foe, and day by day
Worn in the strife with social Jove away—
Wretched, 'tis true, yet less enslaved, their strife,
Than our false peace with all this masque of life,
Convention's lies,—the league with Custom made,
The crimes of glory, and the frauds of trade.
Rest and rude food the lawless Nomads yield;
The dews rise ghost-like from the whitening field,
And ghost-like on the wanderer glides the sleep
Through which the phantom Dreams their witching Sabbat keep!

At dawn, while yet, around the Indian, lay
The dark, fantastic groups,—resumed the way;
Before his steps the landscape spreads more free
And fresh from man;—ev'n as a broadening sea,
When, more and more the harbour left behind,
The lone sail drifts before the strengthening wind.
Behold the sun!—how stately from the East,
Bright from God's presence, comes the glorious Priest!
Deck'd as beseems the Mighty One to whom
Heaven gives the charge to hallow and illume!
How, as he comes,—through the Great Temple, Earth,
Peels the rich Jubilee of grateful mirth!
The infant flowers their odour-censers swinging,
Through aislëd glades Air's Anthem-Chorus ringing;
While, like some soul lifted aloft by love,
High and alone the sky-lark halts above,
High, o'er the sparkling dews, the glittering corn,
Hymns his frank happiness and hails the morn!

He stands upon the green hill's lighted brow,
And sees the world at smiling peace below,
Hamlet and farm, and thy best type, Desire
Of the sad Heart,—the heaven-ascending spire!

He stood and mused, and thus his musing ran:—
"How strong, how feeble, is thine art, O Man!
Thou coverest Earth with wonders—at thy hand
Curbs the meek water, blooms the subject land:
Why halts thy magic here?—Why only deck'd
Earth's sterile surface, mournful Architect?
Why art thou powerless o'er the world within?
Why raise the Eden, yet retain the sin?
Why, while the earth, thou but enjoy'st an hour,
Proclaims thy splendour and attests thy power,
Why o'er the spirit does thy sorcery cease?—
Lo the sweet landscape round thee lull'd in peace!
Why wakes each heart to sorrow, care, and strife?
Why with yon temple so at war the life?
Why all so slight the variance, or in grief
Or guilt,—the sum of suffering and relief,
Between the desert's son whose wild content
Redeems no waste, enthralls no element,
And ye the Magians?—ye the giant birth
Of Lore and Science—Brahmins of the Earth?
Behold the calm steer drinking in the stream,
Behold the glad bird glancing in the beam.
Say, know ye pleasure,—ye, the Eternal Heirs
Of stars and spheres—life's calm content, like theirs?
Your stores enrich, your powers exalt, the few,
And curse the millions wealth and power subdue;
And ev'n the few!—what lord of luxury knows
The joy in strife, the sweetness in repose,
Which bless the houseless Arab?—Still behind }
Ease waits Disgust, and with the falling wind }
Droop the dull sails ordain'd to speed the mind. }
Increasing wants the sum of care increase,
The piled-up knowledge but sepulchres peace,
Ye quell the instincts, the free love, frank hate,
And bid hard Reason hold the scales of Fate—
What is your gain?—from each slain instinct springs
A hydra passion, poisoning while it stings;
Free love, foul lust;—the frank hate's manly strife
A plotting mask'd dissimulating life;—
Truth flies the world—one falsehood taints the sky
Each form a phantom, and each word a lie!

"Yet what am I?—the crush'd and baffled foe,
Who dared the strife, yet would denounce the blow.
What arms had I against this world to wield?
What mail the naked savage heart to shield?
To this hoar world I brought the trusts of youth,
Warm zeal for men, and fix'd repose in truth—
Amongst the young I look'd for young desires,
Love which adores, and Honour which aspires—
Amongst the old, for souls set free from all
The earthlier chains which young desires enthrall,
Serene and gentle both to soothe and chide,
The sires to pity, yet the seers to guide—
And lo! this civilised and boasted plan,
This order'd ring and harmony of man,
One hideous, cynic, levelling orgy, where
Youth Age's ice, and Age Youth's fever share—
The unwrinkled brow, the calculating brain,
The passion balanced with the weights of gain,
And Age more hotly clutching than the boy
At the lewd bauble and the gilded toy.

"Why should I murmur?—why accuse the strong?
I own Earth's law—the conquer'd are the wrong,
Am I ambitious?—in this world I stand
Closed from the race, an Alien in the land.
Dare I to love?—O soul, O heart, forget
That dream, that frenzy!—what is left me yet?
Revenge!"—His dark eyes flash'd—yet straightway died
The passionate lightning—"No!—revenge denied!
All the wild man in the tame slave is dead,
The currents stagnate in the girded bed!
Back to my desert!—yet, O sorcerer's draught,
O smooth false world,—what soul that once has quaff'd,
Renounces not the ancient manliness?
Now, could the Desert the charm'd victim bless?
Can the caged bird, escaped from bondage, share
As erst the freedom of the hardy air?
Can the poor peasant, lured by Wealth's caprice
To marts and domes, find the old native peace
In the old hut?—on-rushing is the mind:
It ne'er looks back on what it leaves behind.
Once cut the cable and unfurl the sail,
And spreads the boundless sea, and drifts the hurrying gale!

"Come then, my Soul, thy thoughts thy desert be!
Thy dreams thy comrades!—I escape to thee!
Within, the gates unbar, the airs expand,
No bound but Heaven confines the Spirit's Land!
Such luxury yet as what of Nature lives
In Art's lone wreck, the lingering instinct gives;
Joy in the sun, and mystery in the star,
Light of the Unseen, commune with the Far;
Man's law,—his fellow, ev'n in scorn, to save,
And hope in some just World beyond the Grave!"

So went he on, and day succeeds to day,
Untired the step, though purposeless the way;
At night his pause was at the lowliest door,
The beggar'd heart makes brothers of the Poor;
They who most writhe beneath Man's social wrong,
But love the feeble when they hate the strong.
Laud not to me the optimists who call
Each knave a brother—Parasites of all—
Praise not as genial his indifferent eye,
Who lips the cant of mock philanthropy;
He who loathes ill must more than half which lies
In this ill world with generous scorn despise;
Yet of the wrong he hates, the grief he shares,
His lip rebuke, his soul compassion, wears;
The Hermit's wrath bespeaks the Preacher's hope
Who loves men most—men call the Misanthrope!

At times with honest toil reposed—at times
Where gnawing wants beset despairing crimes,
Both still betray'd the sojourn of his soul,
Here wise to cheer, there fearless to control.
His that strange power the Church's Fathers had
To awe the fierce and to console the sad;
For he, like them, had sinn'd;—like them had known
Life's wild extremes;—their trials were his own!
Were we as rich in charity of deed
As gold—what rock would bloom not with the seed?
We give our alms, and cry—"What can we more?"
One hour of time were worth a load of ore!
Give to the ignorant our own wisdom!—give
Sorrow our comfort,—lend to those who live
In crime, the counsels of our virtue,—share
With souls our souls, and Satan shall despair!
Alas, what converts one man, who would take
The cross and staff, and house with Guilt, could make!

Still, in his breast, 'midst much that well might shame
The virtues Christians in themselves proclaim,
There dwelt the Ancient Heathen;—still as strong
Doubts in Heaven's justice,—curses for man's wrong.
Revenge, denied indeed, still rankled deep
In thought—and dimm'd the day, and marr'd the sleep
And there were hours when from the hell within
Faded the angel that had saved from sin;
When the fell Fury, beckoning through the gloom,
Cried "Life for life—thou hast betray'd the tomb!"
For the grim Honour of the ancient time
Deem'd vengeance duty and forgiveness crime;
And the stern soul fanatic conscience scared,
For blood not shed, and injury weakly spared;—
Woe, if in hours like these, O more than woe,
Had the roused tiger met the pardon'd foe!

Nor when his instinct of the life afar
Soar'd from the soil and task'd the unanswering star,
Came more than Hope—that reflex-beam of Faith—
That fitful moonlight on the unknown path;
And not the glory of the joyous sun,
That fills with light whate'er it shines upon;
From which the smiles of God as brightly fall
On the lone charnel as the festive hall!

Now Autumn closes on the fading year,
The chill wind moaneth through the woodlands sere;
At morn the mists lie mournful on the hill,—
The hum of summer's populace is still!
Hush'd the rife herbage, mute the choral tree,
The blithe cicala, and the murmuring bee;
The plashing reed, the furrow on the glass
Of the calm wave, as by the bank you pass
Scaring the lazy trout,—delight no more;
The god of fields is dead—Pan's lusty reign is o'er!
Solemn and earnest—yet to holier eyes
Not void of glory, arch the sober'd skies
Above the serious earth!—The changes wrought
Type our own change from passion into thought.
What though our path at every step is strewn
With leaves that shadow'd in the summer noon;
Through the clear space more vigorous comes the air,
And the star pierces where the branch is bare.
What though the birds desert the chiller light;
To brighter climes the wiser speed their flight.
So happy Souls at will expand the wing,
And, trusting Heaven, re-settle into Spring.

An old man sat beneath the yellowing beech,
Vow'd to the Cross, and wise the Word to teach.
A patriarch priest, from earth's worst tempters pure,
Gold and Ambition!—sainted and obscure!
Before his knee (the Gospel in his hands,
And sunshine at his heart), a youthful listener stands!

The old man spoke of Christ—of Him who bore }
Our form, our woes;—that man might evermore }
In succouring woe-worn man, the God, made Man, adore! }
"My child," he said, "in the far-heathen days,
Hope was a dream, Belief an endless maze;
The wise perplex'd, yet still with glimpse sublime
Of ports dim-looming o'er the seas of Time
Guess'd Him unworshipp'd yet—the Power above
Or Dorian Phœbus, or Pelasgic Jove!
Guess'd the far realm, not won by Charon's oar
Not the pale joys the brave who gain abhor;
No cold Elysium where the very Blest
Envy the living and deplore the rest;[W]
Where ev'n the spirit, as the form, a ghost,
Dreams back life's conflicts on the shadowy coast,
Hears but the clashing steel, the armëd train,
And waves the airy spear, and murders hosts again!
More just the prescience of the eternal goal,
Which gleam'd 'mid Cyprian shades, on Zeno's soul,
Or shone to Plato in the lonely cave;
God in all space, and life in every grave!
Wise lore and high,—but for the few conceived;
By schools discuss'd, but not by crowds believed.
The angel-ladder touch'd the heavenly steep,
But at its foot the patriarchs did but sleep;
They did not preach to nations 'Lo your God;'
No thousands follow'd where their footsteps trod;
Not to the fisherman they said 'Arise!'
Not to the lowly they reveal'd the skies;—
Aloof and lone their shining course they ran
Like stars too high to gild the world of man:[X]
Then, not for schools—but for the human kind—
The uncultured reason, the unletter'd mind;
The poor, the oppress'd, the labourer, and the slave,
God said, 'Be light!'—And light was on the Grave!
No more alone to sage and hero given,
Ope for all life the impartial Gates of Heaven!
Enough hath Wisdom dream'd, and Reason err'd,
All they would seek is found!—O'er Nature sleeps the Word!

"Thou ask'st why Christ, so lenient to the deed,
So sternly claims the faith which founds the creed;
Because, reposed in faith the soul has calm;
The hope a haven, and the wound a balm;
Because the light, dim seen in Reason's Dream,
On all alike, through faith alone, could stream.
God will'd support to Weakness, joy to Grief,
And so descended from his throne—Belief!
Nor this alone—Have faith in things above,
The unseen Beautiful of Heavenly Love;
And from that faith what virtues have their birth,
What spiritual meanings gird, like air, the Earth!
A deeper thought inspires the musing sage!
To youth what visions—what delights to age!
A loftier genius wakens in the world,
To starrier heights more vigorous wings unfurl'd.
No more the outward senses reign alone,
The soul of Nature glides into our own.
To reason less is to imagine more;
They most aspire who meekly most adore!

"Therefore the God-like Comforter's decree—
'His sins be loosen'd who hath faith in me.'
Therefore he shunn'd the cavils of the wise,
And made no schools the threshold of the skies:
Therefore he taught no Pharisee to preach
His Word—the simple let the simple teach.
Upon the infant on his knee he smiled,
And said to Wisdom, 'Be once more a child!'"

The boughs behind the old man gently stirr'd,
By one unseen those Gospel accents heard;
Before the preacher bow'd the pilgrim's head:
"Heaven to this bourne my rescued steps hath led,
Grieving, perplex'd—benighted, yet with dim
Hopes in God's justice,—be my guide to Him!
In vain made man, I mourn and err!—restore
Childhood's pure soul, and ready trust, once more!"
The old man on the stranger gazed;—unto
The stranger's side the young disciple drew,
And gently clasp'd his hand;—and on the three
The western sun shone still and smilingly;
But, round—behind them—dark and lengthening lay
The massive shadow of the closing day.
"See," said the preacher, "Darkness hurries on,
But Man, toil-wearied, grieves not for the Sun;
He knows the light that leaves him shall return,
And hails the night because he trusts the morn!
Believe in God as in the Sun,—and, lo!
Along thy soul, morn's youth restored shall glow!
As rests the earth, so rest, O troubled heart,
Rest, till the burthen of the cloud depart;
Rest, till the gradual veil, from Heaven withdrawn,
Renews thy freshness as it yields the dawn!"

Behold the storm-beat wanderer in repose!
He lists the sounds at which the Heavens unclose,
Gleam, through expanding bars, the angel-wings,
And floats the music borne from seraph-strings.
Holy the oldest creed which Nature gives,
Proclaiming God where'er Creation lives;
But there the doubt will come!—the clear design
Attests the Maker and suggests the Shrine;
But in that visible harmonious plan,
What present shows the future world to man?
What lore detects, beneath our crumbling clay,
A soul exiled, and journeying back to day;
What knowledge, in the bones of charnel urns,
The etherial spark, the undying thought, discerns?
How from the universal war, the prey
Of life on life, can love explore the way?
Search the material tribes of earth, sea, air,
And the fierce Self that strives and slays is there.
What but that Self to Man doth Nature teach?
Where the charm'd link that binds the all to each?
Where the sweet Law—(doth Nature boast its birth)—
"Good will to man, and charity to earth?"
Not in the world without, but that within,
Reveal'd, not instinct—soul from sense can win!
And where the Natural halts, where cramp'd, confined,
The seen horizon bounds the baffled mind,
The Inspired begins—the onward march is given;
Bridging all space, nor ending ev'n in Heaven!
There, veil'd on earth, we mark divinely clear,
Duty and end—the There explains the Here!
We see the link that binds the future band,
Foeman with foeman gliding hand in hand;
And feel that Hate is but an hour's—the son
Of earth, to perish when the earth is done—
But Love eternal; and we turn below,
To hail the brother where we loathed the foe;
There, in the soft and beautiful Belief,
Flows the true Lethé for the lips of Grief;
There, Penury, Hunger, Misery, cast their eyes,
How soon the bright Republic of the Skies!
There, Love, heart-broken, sees prepared the bower,
And hears the bridal step, and waits the nuptial hour!
There, smiles the mother we have wept! there bloom
Again the buds asleep within the tomb;
There, souls regain what hearts had lost before
In that fix'd moment call'd the—Evermore!

Refresh'd in that soft baptism, and reborn,
The Indian woke, and on the world was morn!
All things seem'd new—rose-colour'd in the skies
Shone the hoar peaks of the old memories;
No more enshrouded with unbroken gloom
Calantha's injured name and early tomb—
No more with woe (how ill-suppress'd by pride!)
Thought sounds the gulf that parts the promised bride!
Faithful no less to Death, and true to Love,
This blooms again—that shall rejoin, above!
The Stoic courage had the wound conceal'd;
The Christian hope the wound's sharp torture heal'd.
As rude the waste, but now before him shone }
The star;—he rose, and cheerful journey'd on, }
Full of the God most with us when alone! }

III.

'Tis night,—a night by fits now foul, now fair,
As speed the cloud-wracks through the gusty air:
At times the wild blast dies—and high and far,
Through chasms of cloud, looks down the solemn star—
Or the majestic moon;—so watchfires mark
Some sleeping War dim-tented in the dark;
Or so, through antique Chaos and the storm
Of Matter, whirl'd and writhing into form,
Pale angels peer'd!

Anon, from brief repose
The winds leap forth, the cloven deeps reclose;
Mass upon mass, the hurtling vapours driven,
As one huge blackness walls the earth from heaven!—
In one of these brief lulls—you see, serene,
The village church spire 'mid its mounds of green,
The scattered roof-tops of the hamlet round,
And the swoll'n rill that girds the holy ground.

A plank that rock'd above the rushing wave,
The dizzy pathway to a wanderer gave;
There, as he paused, from the lone churchyard, slow
Emerged a form the wanderer's eyes should know!
It gains the opposing margent of the stream,
Full on the face shines calm the crescent beam;
It halts upon the bridge! Now, Indian, learn
If in thy soul the heathen yet can yearn!
Swift runs the wave, the instinct and the hour,
The lonely night, when evil thoughts have power,
The foe before thee, and no things that live
To witness vengeance—Canst thou still forgive?
Scarce seen by each the face of each—when, deep
O'er the lost moon, the cloud's loud surges sweep;
Yea, as a sea devours the fated bark,
Vanish'd the heaven, and closed the abyss of dark!
You heard the roaring of the mighty blast,
The groaning trees uprooted as it pass'd
The wrath and madness of the starless rill,
Swell'd by each torrent rushing from the hill.
The slight plank creaks—high mount the waves and high,
Hark! with the tempest's shrieks the human cry!
Upon the bridge but one man now!—below,
The night of waters and the drowning foe!
The Indian heard the death-cry and the fall;
Still o'er the wild scene hung the funeral pall!
What eye can pierce the darkness of the wave? }
What hand guide rescue through the roaring grave? }
Not for such craven questions pause the brave! }
Again the moon!—again the churchyard's green,
Spire, hamlet, mead, and rill distinct are seen;
But on the bridge no form, no life! The beam
Shoots wan and broken on the tortured stream;
Vague, indistinct, what yonder moveth o'er
The troubled tide, and struggles to the shore?
Hark, where the sere bough of the tossing tree
Snaps in the grasp of some strong agony,
And the dull plunge, and stifled cry betray
Where the grim water-fiend reclasps his prey!

Still shines the moon—still halts the panting storm,
It moves again—the shadow shapes to form,
Lo! where yon bank shelves gradual, and the ray
Silvers the reed, it cleaves its vigorous way!—
Saved from the deep, but happier far to save,
The foeman wrests the foeman from the grave!
Still shines the moon—still halts the storm!—above
His sons, looks down divine the Father-Love!
Upon the Indian's breast droops Arden's head,
Its marble beauty rigid as the dead.
What skill so fondly tends the soul's eclipse,
Chafes the stiff limb, and breathes in breathless lips?
Wooes back the flickering life, and when, once more,
The ebbing blood the wan cheek mantles o'er;
When stirs the pulse, when opes the glazing eye,
What voice of joy finds listeners in the sky?
"Bless thee, my God!—this mercy thine!—he lives:
Look in my heart, forgive, for it forgives!"

Then, while yet clear the heaven, he flies—he gains
The nearest roof—prompt aid his prayer obtains;
Well known the noble stranger's mien—they bear
To the rude home, and ply the zealous care;
Life with the dawn comes sure, if faint and slow,
And all night long the foeman watch'd the foe!

Day dawns on earth, still darkness wraps the mind;
Sleep pass'd, the waking is a veil more blind:
The soul, scared roughly from its mansion, glides
O'er mazy wastes through which the meteor guides.

The startled menial, who, alone of all
The hireling pomp that swarms in Arden's hall,
Attends his lord,—dismay'd lest one so high,
A rural Galen should permit to die,
Departs in haste to seek the subtler skill
Which from the College takes the right to kill;
And summon Lucy to the solemn room
To watch the father's life,—fast by the mother's tomb.
Meanwhile such facile arts as nature yields,
Draughts from the spring and simples from the fields,
Learn'd in his savage youth, the Indian plies;
The fever slakes, the cloudy darkness flies;
O'er the vex'd vision steals the lulling rest,
And Arden wakes to sense on Morvale's breast!

On Morvale's breast!—and through the noiseless door
A fearful footfall creeps, and lo! once more
Thou look'st, pale daughter, on thy father's foe!
Not with the lurid eye and menaced blow;
Not as when last, between the murtherous blade
And the proud victim, gleam'd the guardian maid—
Thy post is his!—that breast the prop supplies
That thine should yield;—as thine so watch those eyes,
Wistful and moist, that waning life above;
Recal the Heathen's hate!—behold the Christian's love!

The learned leech proclaims the danger o'er;
When life is safe, can Fate then harm no more?

The danger past for Arden, but for you
Who watch the couch, what danger threats anew?
How meet in pious duty and fond care,
In hours when through the eye the heart is bare?
How join in those soft sympathies, and yet
The earlier link, the tenderer bond forget?
How can the soul the magnet-charm withstand,
When chance brings look to look, and hand to hand!
No, Indian, no—if yet the power divine
Above the laws of our low world be thine;
If yet the Honour which thy later creed
Softens, not quells, revere the injured dead,
Fly, ere the full heart cries, "I love thee still"—
And find thy guardian in the angel—WILL!
That power was his!

Along the landscape lay
The hazy rime of winter's dawning day:
Snake-like the curving mists betray'd the rill,
The last star gleam'd upon the Eastern hill,
Still slept beneath the leafless trees the herd;
Still mute the sharp note of the sunless bird;
No sound, no life; as to some hearth, bereft
By death, of welcome, since his wanderings left,
Comes back the traveller;—so to earth, forlorn
Returns the ungreeted melancholy Morn.

Forth from the threshold stole the Indian!—far
Spread the dim land beneath the waning star.
Alas! how wide the world his heart will find
Who leaves one spot—the heart's true home, behind!
He paused—one upward look upon the gloom
Of the closed casement, the love-hallow'd room,
Where yet, perchance, while happier Suffering slept
Its mournful vigil tender Duty kept;
One prayer! What mercy taught us prayer?—as dews
On drooping herbs—as sleep tired life renews,
As dreams that lead, and lap our griefs in Heaven,
To souls through Prayer, dew, sleep, and dream, are given!
So bow'd, not broken, and with manly will,
Onwards he strode, slow up the labouring hill!

If Lucy mourn'd his absence, not before
Her sire's dim eyes the face of grief she wore;
Haply her woman heart divined the spell
Of her own power, by flight proclaim'd too well;
And not in hours like these may self control
The generous empire of a noble soul:
Lo, her first thought, first duty—the soft reign
Of Woman—patience by the bed of pain!
As mute the father, yet to him made clear
The cause of flight untold to Lucy's ear;
Thus ran the lines that met, at morn, his eyes:—
"Farewell! my place a daughter now supplies!—
Thou hast pass'd the gates of Death, and bright once more
Smile round thy steps the sunlight and the shore.
Farewell; and if a soul, where hatred's gall
Melts into pardon that embalmeth all,
Can with forgiveness bless thee;—from remorse
Can pluck the stone which interrupts the course
Of thought to God;—and bid the waters rest
Calm in Heaven's smile,—poor fellow-man, be blest!
I, that can aid no more, now need an aid
Against myself; by mine own thoughts dismay'd:
I dare not face thy child—I may not dare
To commune with my heart—thy child is there!
I hear a voice that whispers hope, and start
In shame, to shun the tempter and depart.
How vile the pardon that I yield would seem,
If shaped and colour'd from the egoist's dream;
A barter'd compromise with thoughts that take
The path of conscience but for passion's sake—
If with the pardon I could say—'The Tomb
Devours the Past, so let the Moment bloom,
And see Calantha's brother reconciled,
Kneel to Calantha's lover, for his child!'
It may not be; sad sophists were our vain
Desires, if Right were not a code so plain;
In good or ill leave casusits on the shelf,
'He never errs who sacrifices self!'"

Great Natures, Arden, thy strange lot to know
And lose!—twin souls thy mistress and thy foe!
How flash'd they, high and starry, through the dull
World's reeking air—earnest and beautiful!
Erring perchance, and yet divinely blind,
Such hero errors purify our kind!
One noble fault that springs from Self's disdain
May oft more grace in Angel eyes obtain,
Than a whole life, without a seeming flaw,
Which served but Heaven, because of Earth in awe,
Which in each act has loss or profit weigh'd,
And kept with Virtue the accounts of Trade!
He too was born, lost Idler, to be great,
The sins that dwarf'd, he had a soul to hate.
Ambition, Ease, Example had beguiled,
And our base world in fawning had defiled;
Yet still, contrasting all he did, he dream'd;
And through the Wordling's life the Poet gleam'd.
His eye not blind to Virtue; to his ear
Still spoke the music of the banish'd sphere;
Still in his thought the Ideal, though obscured,
Shamed the rank meteor which his sense allured.
Wreck if he was, the ruin yet betray'd
The shatter'd fane for gods departed made;
And still, through weeds neglected and o'erthrown,
The blurr'd inscription show'd the altar-stone.
So scorn'd he not, as folly or as pride,
The lofty code which made the Indian's guide;
But from that hour a subtle change came o'er
The thoughts he veil'd, the outward mien he wore;
A mournful, weary gloom, a pall'd distaste
Of all the joys so warmly once embraced.
His eye no more looks onward. but its gaze
Rests where Remorse a life misspent surveys:
What costly treasures strew that waste behind;
What whirlwinds daunt the soul that sows the wind!
By the dark shape of what he is, serene
Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been:
Here the vast loss, and there the worthless gain—
Vice scorn'd, yet woo'd, and Virtue loved in vain.

'Tis said, the Nightingale, who hears the thrill
Of some rich lute, made vocal by sweet skill,
To match the music strains its wild essay,
Feels its inferior art, and envying, pines away:
So, waked at last, and scarcely now confest,
Pined the still Poet in the Worldling's breast!
So with the Harmony of Good, compared
Its lesser self—so languish'd and despair'd.

Awhile, from land to land he idly roved,
And join'd life's movement with a heart unmoved.
No more loud cities ring with Arden's name,
Applaud his faults, and call his fashion "Fame!"
Disgust with all things robes him as he goes,
In that pale virtue, Vice, when weary, knows.
Yet his, at least, one rescue from the past;
His, one sweet comfort—Lucy's love at last!
That bed of pain o'er which she had watch'd and wept—
That grave, where Love forgot its wrongs and slept—
That touching sorrow and that still remorse
Unlock'd her heart, and gave the stream its course.
From her own grief, by griefs more dark beguiled,
Rose the consoling Angel in the Child!
Yet still the calm disease, whose mute decay
No leech arrests, crept gradual round its prey.
Death came, came gently, on his daughter's breast,
Murm'ring, "Remember where this dust should rest."
They bear the last Lord of that haughty race
Where winds the wave round Mary's dwelling-place;
And side by side (oh, be it in the sky
As in the earth!)—the long-divided lie!

Doth life's last act one wrong at least repair—
His nameless child to wealth at least the heir?
So Arden's will decreed—so sign'd the hand;
So ran the text—not so Law rules the land:
"I do bequeath unto my child,"[Y]—that word
Alone on strangers has the wealth conferr'd.
O'erjoy'd Law's heirs the legal blunder read,
And Justice cancels Nature from the deed.
O moral world! deal sternly if thou wilt
With the warm weakness as the wily guilt,
But spare the harmless! Wherefore shall the child
Be from the pale which shelters Crime exiled?
Why heap such barriers round the sole redress
Which sin can give to sinless wretchedness?
Why must the veriest stranger thrust aside
Our flesh—our blood, because a name's denied?
Give all thou hast to whomsoe'er thou please,
Foe, alien, knave, as whim so Law decrees;
But if thy heart speaks, if thy conscience cries—
"I give my child"—the law thy voice belies;
Chicanery balks all effort that atones,
And Justice robs the wretch that Nature owns!

So abject, so despoil'd, so penniless,
Stood thy love-born in the world's wilderness,
O Lord of lands and towers, and princely sway!
O Dust, from whom with breath has pass'd away
The humblest privilege the beggar finds
In rags that wrap his infant from the winds!

In the poor hamlet where her grandsire died,
Where sleeps her mother by the magnate's side,
The orphan found a home. Her story known,
Men's hearts allow the right men's laws disown.
Though lost the birthright, and denied the name,
Her pastor-grandsire's virtues shield from shame;
Pity seeks kind pretext to pour its balms,
And yields light toils that saves the pride from alms.
A soft respect the orphan's steps attends,
And the sharp thorn at least the rose defends.
So flows o'ershadow'd, but not darksome by,
Her life's lone stream—the banks admit the sky
Day's quiet taskwork o'er, when Ev'ning grey
Lists the last carol on the quivering spray,
When lengthening shades reflect the distant hill,
And the near spire, upon the lullëd rill;
Her sole delight with pensive step to glide
Along the path that winds the wave beside,
A moment pausing on the bridge, to mark
Perchance the moonlight vista through the dark:
Or watch the eddy where the wavelets play
Round the chafed stone that checks their happy way,
Then onward stealing, vanish from the view,
Where the star shimmers on the solemn yew,
As shade from earth and starlight from the sky
Meet—and repose on Death's calm mystery.

Moons pass'd—Behold the blossom on the spray!
Hark to the linnet!—On the world is May!
Green earth below and azure skies above;
May calling life to joy, and youth to love;
While Age, charm'd back to rosy hours awhile,
Hears the lost vow, and sees the vanish'd smile.
And does not May, lone Child, revive in thee,
Blossom and bud and mystic melody;
Does not the heart, like earth, imbibe the ray?
Does not the year's recal thy life's sweet May?
When like an altar to some happy bride,
Shone all creation by the loved one's side?
Yes, Exile, yes—that Empire is thine own,
Rove where thou wilt, awaits thee still thy throne!
Lo, where the paling cheek, the unconscious sigh,
The slower footstep, and the heavier eye,
Betray the burthen of sweet thoughts and mute,
The slight tree bows beneath the golden fruit!

'Tis eve. The orphan gains the holy ground, }
And listening halts;—the boughs that circle round }
Vex'd by no wind, yet rustle with a sound, }
As if that gentle form had scared some lone
Unwonted step more timid than its own!
All still once more; perchance some daunted bird,
That loves the night, the murmuring leaves had stirr'd?
She nears the tomb—amaze!—what hand unknown
Has placed those pious flowers upon the stone?
Why beats her heart? why hath the electric mind,
Whose act, whose hand, whose presence there, divined?
Why dreading, yearning, turn those eyes to meet
The adored, the lost?—Behold him at her feet!
His, those dark eyes that seek her own through tears,
His hand that clasps, and his the voice she hears,
Broken and faltering—"Is the trial past?
Here, by the dead, art thou made mine at last?
Far—in far lands I heard thy tale!—And thou
Orphan and lone!—no bar between us now!
No Arden now calls up the wrong'd and lost;
Lo, in this grave appeased the upbraiding ghost!
Orphan, I am thy father now!—Bereft
Of all beside,—this heart at least is left.
Forgive, forgive—Oh, canst thou yet bestow
One thought on him, to whom thou art all below?
Who could desert but to remember more?
Canst thou the Heaven, the exile lost, restore?
Canst thou——"

The orphan bow'd her angel head;
Breath blent with breath—her soul her silence said;
Eye unto eye, and heart to heart reveal'd;—
And lip on lip the eternal nuptials seal'd!

The Moon breaks forth—one silver stream of light
Glides from its fount in heaven along the night—
Flows in still splendour through the funeral gloom
Of yews,—and widens as it clasps the tomb—
Through the calm glory hosts as calm above
Look on the grave—and by the grave is Love!

FOOTNOTES

[A] Where now stands St. James's palace stood the hospital dedicated to St. James, for the reception of fourteen leprous maidens.

[B] Charles the First attended divine service in the Royal Chapel immediately before he walked through the park to his scaffold at Whitehall. In the palace of St. James's, Monk and Sir John Granville schemed for the restoration of Charles II.

[C] The Sanscrit term, denoting the mixture or confusion of classes; applied to that large portion of the Indian population excluded from the four pure castes.

[D] According to Eastern commentators, the march of the Israelites in the Desert was in a charmed circle; every morning they set out on their journey, and every night found themselves on the same spot as that from which the journey had commenced.

[E] The Tilt-yard.

[F] Since this was written, to Buckingham Palace has been prefixed a front which is not without merit—in thrusting out of sight the other three sides of the building.