As day wore on—the evening-hour of eight
Brought them within a league of Rollingate:
There the old house stood in a pleasant vale,
’Mid goodly elms and oaks which stem the gale,
And which commandingly arose to view;
The pale-blue smoke curl’d up anon anew;
And on a mound the flag-staff bore on high
The family-banner, in the sun-set sky.
Above—there waited the pale queen of night,
With her retaining beams of holy light;
Then condescending to the happy pair—
When Sol had vanish’d—strew’d her silvery care:
O righteous moon, refulgent in the skies!—
All poets greet thee with their longing eyes,—
Thou art to them a river of delight;
Their choicest pages praise thee with their might:
Unnumber’d titles to thy form are given,
As they behold thee in th’ unbounded heaven:
Soul-stirring Byron loved the night, and strove
T’immortalise thee as “the lamp of love.”
(Another tries thy title to improve.)
Most welcome were its hallow’d beams to those
Whose long day’s journey drew near to a close.
Th’ exhausted horses knew the well-trod ground,
And long’d to hear the groom’s inducing sound;
The grooms, they listen, and are glad to hear
The distant rumbling which disturbs the deer:
The whizzing whip re-echoed through the trees,
And Arnold’s voice came with the western breeze,—
The sound increased as forth they onward bore
In steady paces, to the mansion-door.
High up, in night, now sat “The dark-robed moon;”[199]
Whilst round about her purple-drapèd throne,
The assembled twinklers—brilliantly array’d—
Unite in love to welcome forth the maid.
Great is the joy throughout the boundless vast.
Imagination sent a silvery blast
To ’wake the nightingales; the birds uprise
And pour their melodies into the skies.
The inmates of the mansion, hast’ning forth,
Beheld (they said) an angel come on earth;—
No greater beauty, say they, could exist
Than she, on whom their eyes were firmly fixt:
When through the hall Jane, trembling, passèd by
They saw, unveil’d, her brilliant sparkling eye
As round she gazed upon the chandeliers,
That here and there lit up the winding stairs;
And swords and bucklers, which had hung for years,
Seem’d coalescing, with the central vase[200]
Which saved its perfumes until then, and rose
In all its fresh and lovely fragrancy
To greet the stranger: but, Lord Arnold, he
Observing his dear Jane’s timidity
Hail’d Toogood,[201] who (both elderly and kind,
And one to whom Jane could unfold her mind)
Came ’cross the hall, and bow’d and shook the hand
And made th’ acquaintance of Jane Hollybrand.
[199] See Ossian’s “Songs of Selma.”
[200] Of flowers.
[201] An elderly aunt, formerly a faithful companion to the late Lady
Mountjoy.