A captive, and alone, and far from thee,
My love and friend! Yet fostering, for thy sake,
A quenchless hope of happiness to be;
And feeling still my woman-spirit strong,
In the deep faith which lifts from earthly wrong
A heavenward glance. I know, I know our love
Shall yet call gentle angels from above,
By its undying fervour, and prevail--
Sending a breath, as of the spring’s first gale,
Through hearts now cold; and, raising its bright face,
With a free gush of sunny tears, erase
The characters of anguish. In this trust,
I bear, I strive, I bow not to the dust,
That I may bring thee back no faded form,
No bosom chill’d and blighted by the storm,
But all my youth’s first treasures, when we meet,
Making past sorrow, by communion, sweet.
III.
And thou too art in bonds! Yet droop thou not,
O my beloved! there is _one_ hopeless lot,
But one, and that not ours. Beside the dead
_There_ sits the grief that mantles up its head,
Loathing the laughter and proud pomp of light,
When darkness, from the vainly doting sight
Covers its beautiful![342] If thou wert gone
To the grave’s bosom, with thy radiant brow--
If thy deep-thrilling voice, with that low tone
Of earnest tenderness, which now, even now
Seems floating through my soul, were music taken
For ever from this world--oh! thus forsaken
Could I bear on? Thou livest, thou livest, thou’rt mine!
With this glad thought I make my heart a shrine,
And by the lamp which quenchless there shall burn,
Sit a lone watcher for the day’s return.
IV.
And lo! the joy that cometh with the morning,
Brightly victorious o’er the hours of care!
I have not watch’d in vain, serenely scorning
The wild and busy whispers of despair!
Thou hast sent tidings, as of heaven--I wait
The hour, the sign, for blessed flight to thee.
Oh! for the skylark’s wing that seeks its mate
As a star shoots!--but on the breezy sea
We shall meet soon. To think of such an hour!
Will not my heart, o’erburden’d by its bliss,
Faint and give way within me, as a flower
Borne down and perishing by noontide’s kiss?
Yet shall I _fear_ that lot--the perfect rest,
The full deep joy of dying on thy breast,
After long suffering won? So rich a close
Too seldom crowns with peace affection’s woes.
V.
Sunset! I tell each moment. From the skies
The last red splendour floats along my wall,
Like a king’s banner! Now it melts, it dies!
I see one star--I hear--’twas not the call,
Th’ expected voice; my quick heart throbb’d too soon.
I must keep vigil till yon rising moon
Shower down less golden light. Beneath her beam
Through my lone lattice pour’d, I sit and dream
Of summer lands afar, where holy love,
Under the vine or in the citron grove,
May breathe from terror.
Now the night grows deep,
And silent as its clouds, and full of sleep.
I hear my veins beat. Hark! a bell’s slow chime!
My heart strikes with it. Yet again--’tis time!
A step!--a voice!--or but a rising breeze?
Hark!--haste!--I come to meet thee on the seas!
VI.
Now never more, oh! never, in the worth
Of its pure cause, let sorrowing love on earth
Trust fondly--never more! The hope is crush’d
That lit my life, the voice within me hush’d
That spoke sweet oracles; and I return
To lay my youth, as in a burial urn,
Where sunshine may not find it. All is lost!
No tempest met our barks--no billow toss’d;
Yet were they sever’d, even as we must be,
That so have loved, so striven our hearts to free
From their close-coiling fate! In vain--in vain!
The dark links meet, and clasp themselves again,
And press out life. Upon the deck I stood,
And a white sail came gliding o’er the flood,
Like some proud bird of ocean; then mine eye
Strain’d out, one moment earlier to descry
The form it ached for, and the bark’s career
Seem’d slow to that fond yearning: it drew near,
Fraught with our foes! What boots it to recall
The strife, the tears? Once more a prison wall
Shuts the green hills and woodlands from my sight,
And joyous glance of waters to the light,
And thee, my Seymour!--thee!
I will not sink!
Thou, _thou_ hast rent the heavy chain that bound thee!
And this shall be my strength--the joy to think
That _thou_ may’st wander with heaven’s breath around thee,
And all the laughing sky! This thought shall yet
Shine o’er my heart a radiant amulet,
Guarding it from despair. Thy bonds are broken;
And unto me, I know, thy true love’s token
Shall one day be deliverance, though the years
Lie dim between, o’erhung with mists of tears.
VII.
My friend! my friend! where art thou? Day by day,
Gliding like some dark mournful stream away,
My silent youth flows from me. Spring, the while,
Comes and rains beauty on the kindling boughs
Round hall and hamlet; summer with her smile
Fills the green forest; young hearts breathe their vows;
Brothers long parted meet; fair children rise
Round the glad board; hope laughs from loving eyes:
All this is in the world!--these joys lie sown,
The dew of every path! On _one_ alone
Their freshness may not fall--the stricken deer
Dying of thirst with all the waters near.
VIII.
Ye are from dingle and fresh glade, ye flowers!
By some kind hand to cheer my dungeon sent;
O’er you the oak shed down the summer showers,
And the lark’s nest was where your bright cups bent,
Quivering to breeze and raindrop, like the sheen
Of twilight stars. On you heaven’s eye hath been,
Through the leaves pouring its dark sultry blue
Into your glowing hearts; the bee to you
Hath murmur’d, and the rill. My soul grows faint
With passionate yearning, as its quick dreams paint
Your haunts by dell and stream--the green, the free,
The full of all sweet sound--the shut from me!
IX.
There went a swift bird singing past my cell----
O Love and Freedom! ye are lovely things!
With you the peasant on the hills may dwell,
And by the streams. But I--the blood of kings,
A proud unmingling river, through my veins
Flows in lone brightness, and its gifts are chains!
Kings!--I had silent visions of deep bliss,
Leaving their thrones far distant; and for this
I am cast under their triumphal car,
An insect to be crush’d! Oh! heaven is far--
Earth pitiless!
Dost thou forget me, Seymour? I am proved
So long, so sternly! Seymour, my beloved!
There are such tales of holy marvels done
By strong affection, of deliverance won
Through its prevailing power! Are these things told
Till the young weep with rapture, and the old
Wonder, yet dare not doubt; and thou! oh, thou!
Dost thou forget me in my hope’s decay?--
Thou canst not! Through the silent night, even now,
I, that need prayer so much, awake and pray
Still first for thee. O gentle, gentle friend!
How shall I bear this anguish to the end?
Aid!--comes there yet no aid? The voice of blood
Passes heaven’s gate, even ere the crimson flood
Sinks through the greensward! Is there not a cry
From the wrung heart, of power, through agony,
To pierce the clouds? Hear, Mercy!--hear me! None
That bleed and weep beneath the smiling sun
Have heavier cause! Yet hear!--my soul grows dark!----
Who hears the last shriek from the sinking bark
On the mid seas, and with the storm alone,
And bearing to the abyss, unseen, unknown,
Its freight of human hearts? Th’ o’ermastering wave!
Who shall tell how it rush’d--and none to save!
Thou hast forsaken me! I feel, I know,
There would be rescue if this were not so.
Thou’rt at the chase, thou’rt at the festive board,
Thou’rt where the red wine free and high is pour’d,
Thou’rt where the dancers meet! A magic glass
Is set within my soul, and proud shapes pass,
Flushing it o’er with pomp from bower and hall:
I see one shadow, stateliest there of all--
_Thine!_ What dost _thou_ amidst the bright and fair,
Whispering light words, and mocking my despair?
It is not well of thee! My love was more
Than fiery song may breathe, deep thought explore;
And there thou smilest, while my heart is dying,
With all its blighted hopes around it lying:
Even thou, on whom they hung their last green leaf----
Yet smile, smile on! too bright art thou for grief!
Death! What! is death a lock’d and treasured thing,
Guarded by swords of fire?[343] a hidden spring,
A fabled fruit, that I should thus endure,
As if the world within me held no cure?
Wherefore not spread free wings----Heaven, heaven! control
These thoughts!--they rush--I look into my soul
As down a gulf, and tremble at the array
Of fierce forms crowding it! Give strength to pray!
So shall their dark host pass.
The storm is still’d.
Father in Heaven! thou, only thou, canst sound
The heart’s great deep, with floods of anguish fill’d,
For human line too fearfully profound.
Therefore, forgive, my Father! if thy child,
Rock’d on its heaving darkness, hath grown wild,
And sinn’d in her despair! It well may be
That thou wouldst lead my spirit back to thee,
By the crush’d hope too long on this world pour’d--
The stricken love which hath perchance adored
A mortal in thy place! Now let me strive
With thy strong arm no more! Forgive, forgive!
Take me to peace!
And peace at last is nigh.
A sign is on my brow, a token sent
Th’ o’erwearied dust from home: no breeze flits by,
But calls me with a strange sweet whisper, blent
Of many mysteries.
Hark! the warning tone
Deepens--its word is _Death_! Alone, alone,
And sad in youth, but chasten’d, I depart,
Bowing to heaven. Yet, yet my woman’s heart
Shall wake a spirit and a power to bless,
Even in this hour’s o’ershadowing fearfulness,
Thee, its first love! O tender still, and true!
Be it forgotten if mine anguish threw
Drops from its bitter fountain on thy name,
Though but a moment!
Now, with fainting frame,
With soul just lingering on the flight begun,
To bind for thee its last dim thoughts in one,
I bless thee! Peace be on thy noble head,
Years of bright fame, when I am with the dead!
I bid this prayer survive me, and retain
Its might, again to bless thee, and again!
Thou hast been gather’d into my dark fate
Too much; too long, for my sake, desolate
Hath been thine exiled youth: but now take back,
From dying hands, thy freedom, and retrack
(After a few kind tears for her whose days
Went out in dreams of thee) the sunny ways
Of hope, and find thou happiness! Yet send
Even then, in silent hours, a thought, dear friend!
Down to my voiceless chamber; for thy love
Hath been to me all gifts of earth above,
Though bought with burning tears! It is the sting
Of death to leave that vainly-precious thing
In this cold world! What were it, then, if thou,
With thy fond eyes, wert gazing on me now?
Too keen a pang! Farewell! and yet once more,
Farewell! The passion of long years I pour
Into that word! Thou hear’st not--but the woe
And fervour of its tones may one day flow
To thy heart’s holy place: there let them dwell.
We shall o’ersweep the grave to meet. Farewell!
[342] “Wheresoever you are, or in what state soever you be, it
sufficeth me you are mine. _Rachel wept and would not be comforted,
because her children were no more._ And that indeed, is the remediless
sorrow, and none else!”--From a letter of Arabella Stuart’s to her
husband.--See _Curiosities of Literature_.
[343] “And if you remember of old, _I dare die_. Consider what
the world would conceive if I should be violently enforced to do
it.”--_Fragments of her Letters._
THE BRIDE OF THE GREEK ISLE.[344]
“Fear! I’m a Greek, and how should I fear death?
A slave, and wherefore should I dread my freedom?
...
I will not live degraded.” Sardanapalus.
Come from the woods with the citron-flowers,
Come with your lyres for the festal hours,
Maids of bright Scio! They came, and the breeze
Bore their sweet songs o’er the Grecian seas;
They came, and Eudora stood robed and crown’d,
The bride of the morn, with her train around.
Jewels flash’d out from her braided hair,
Like starry dews midst the roses there;
Pearls on her bosom quivering shone,
Heaved by her heart through its golden zone.
But a brow, as those gems of the ocean pale,
Gleam’d from beneath her transparent veil;
Changeful and faint was her fair cheek’s hue,
Though clear as a flower which the light looks through;
And the glance of her dark resplendent eye,
For the aspect of woman at times too high,
Lay floating in mists, which the troubled stream
Of the soul sent up o’er its fervid beam.
She look’d on the vine at her father’s door,
Like one that is leaving his native shore;
She hung o’er the myrtle once call’d her own,
As it greenly waved by the threshold stone;
She turn’d--and her mother’s gaze brought back
Each hue of her childhood’s faded track.
Oh! hush the song, and let her tears
Flow to the dream of her early years!
Holy and pure are the drops that fall
When the young bride goes from her father’s hall;
She goes unto love yet untried and new,
She parts from love which hath still been true:
Mute be the song and the choral strain,
Till her heart’s deep well-spring is clear again!
She wept on her mother’s faithful breast,
Like a babe that sobs itself to rest;
She wept--yet laid her hand awhile
In _his_ that waited her dawning smile--
Her soul’s affianced, nor cherish’d less
For the gush of nature’s tenderness!
She lifted her graceful head at last--
The choking swell of her heart was past;
And her lovely thoughts from their cells found way
In the sudden flow of a plaintive lay.[345]
THE BRIDE’S FAREWELL.
Why do I weep? To leave the vine
Whose clusters o’er me bend;
The myrtle--yet, oh call it mine!--
The flowers I loved to tend.
A thousand thoughts of all things dear
Like shadows o’er me sweep;
I leave my sunny childhood here,
Oh! therefore let me weep!
I leave thee, sister! We have play’d
Through many a joyous hour,
Where the silvery green of the olive shade
Hung dim o’er fount and bower.
Yes! thou and I, by stream, by shore,
In song, in prayer, in sleep,
Have been as we may be no more--
Kind sister, let me weep!
I leave thee, father! Eve’s bright moon
Must now light other feet,
With the gather’d grapes, and the lyre in tune,
Thy homeward step to greet.
Thou in whose voice, to bless thy child,
Lay tones of love so deep,
Whose eye o’er all my youth hath smiled--
I leave thee! let me weep!
Mother! I leave thee! On thy breast
Pouring out joy and woe,
I have found that holy place of rest
Still changeless--yet I go!
Lips, that have lull’d me with your strain!
Eyes, that have watch’d my sleep!
Will earth give love like _yours_ again?--
Sweet mother! let me weep!
And like a slight young tree, that throws
The weight of rain from its drooping boughs,
Once more she wept. But a changeful thing
Is the human heart--as a mountain spring
That works its way, through the torrent’s foam,
To the bright pool near it, the lily’s home!
It is well!--The cloud on her soul that lay,
Hath melted in glittering drops away.
Wake again, mingle, sweet flute and lyre!
She turns to her lover, she leaves her sire.
Mother! on earth it must still be so:
Thou rearest the lovely to see them go!
They are moving onward, the bridal throng,
Ye may track their way by the swells of song;
Ye may catch through the foliage their white robes’ gleam,
Like a swan midst the reeds of a shadowy stream;
Their arms bear up garlands, their gliding tread
Is over the deep-vein’d violet’s bed;
They have light leaves around them, blue skies above,
An arch for the triumph of youth and love!
II.
Still and sweet was the home that stood
In the flowering depths of a Grecian wood,
With the soft green light o’er its low roof spread,
As if from the glow of an emerald shed,
Pouring through lime-leaves that mingled on high,
Asleep in the silence of noon’s clear sky.
Citrons amidst their dark foliage glow’d,
Making a gleam round the lone abode;
Laurels o’erhung it, whose faintest shiver
Scatter’d out rays like a glancing river;
Stars of the jasmine its pillars crown’d,
Vine-stalks its lattice and walls had bound;
And brightly before it a fountain’s play
Flung showers through a thicket of glossy bay,
To a cypress which rose in that flashing rain,
Like one tall shaft of some fallen fane.
And thither Ianthis had brought his bride,
And the guests were met by that fountain side.
They lifted the veil from Eudora’s face--
It smiled out softly in pensive grace,
With lips of love, and a brow serene,
Meet for the soul of the deep wood-scene.
Bring wine, bring odours!--the board is spread;
Bring roses! a chaplet for every head!
The wine-cups foam’d, and the rose was shower’d
On the young and fair from the world embower’d;
The sun look’d not on them in that sweet shade,
The winds amid scented boughs were laid;
And there came by fits, through some wavy tree,
A sound and a gleam of the moaning sea.
Hush! be still! Was that no more
Than the murmur from the shore?
Silence!--did thick rain-drops beat
On the grass like trampling feet?
Fling down the goblet, and draw the sword!
The groves are fill’d with a pirate horde!
Through the dim olives their sabres shine!--
Now must the red blood stream for wine!
The youths from the banquet to battle sprang,
The woods with the shriek of the maidens rang;
Under the golden-fruited boughs
There were flashing poniards and darkening brows--
Footsteps, o’er garland and lyre that fled,
And the dying soon on a greensward bed.
Eudora, Eudora! _thou_ dost not fly!--
She saw but Ianthis before her lie,
With the blood from his breast in a gushing flow,
Like a child’s large tears in its hour of woe,
And a gathering film in his lifted eye,
That sought his young bride out mournfully.
She knelt down beside him--her arms she wound
Like tendrils, his drooping neck around,
As if the passion of that fond grasp
Might chain in life with its ivy-clasp.
But they tore her thence in her wild despair,
The sea’s fierce rovers--they left him there:
They left to the fountain a dark-red vein,
And on the wet violets a pile of slain,
And a hush of fear through the summer grove.--
So closed the triumph of youth and love!
III.
Gloomy lay the shore that night,
When the moon, with sleeping light,
Bathed each purple Sciote hill--
Gloomy lay the shore, and still.
O’er the wave no gay guitar
Sent its floating music far;
No glad sound of dancing feet
Woke the starry hours to greet.
But a voice of mortal woe,
In its changes wild or low,
Through the midnight’s blue repose,
From the sea-beat rocks arose,
As Eudora’s mother stood
Gazing o’er th’ Ægean flood,
With a fix’d and straining eye--
Oh! was the spoilers’ vessel nigh?
Yes! there, becalm’d in silent sleep,
Dark and alone on a breathless deep,
On a sea of molten silver, dark
Brooding it frown’d, that evil bark!
There its broad pennon a shadow cast,
Moveless and black from the tall still mast;
And the heavy sound of its flapping sail
Idly and vainly woo’d the gale.
Hush’d was all else--had ocean’s breast
Rock’d e’en Eudora that hour to rest?
To rest? The waves tremble!--what piercing cry
Bursts from the heart of the ship on high?
What light through the heavens, in a sudden spire,
Shoots from the deck up? Fire! ’tis fire!
There are wild forms hurrying to and fro,
Seen darkly clear on that lurid glow;
There are shout, and signal-gun, and call,
And the dashing of water--but fruitless all!
Man may not fetter, nor ocean tame
The might and wrath of the rushing flame!
It hath twined the mast like a glittering snake,
That coils up a tree from a dusky brake;
It hath touch’d the sails, and their canvass rolls
Away from its breath into shrivell’d scrolls;
It hath taken the flag’s high place in the air,
And redden’d the stars with its wavy glare;
And sent out bright arrows, and soar’d in glee,
To a burning mount midst the moonlight sea.
The swimmers are plunging from stern and prow--
Eudora! Eudora! where, where art thou?
The slave and his master alike are gone.--
Mother! who stands on the deck alone?
The child of thy bosom!--and lo! a brand
Blazing up high in her lifted hand!
And her veil flung back, and her free dark hair
Sway’d by the flames as they rock and flare;
And her fragile form to its loftiest height
Dilated, as if by the spirit’s might;
And her eye with an eagle-gladness fraught----
Oh! could this work be of woman wrought?
Yes! ’twas her deed!--by that haughty smile,
It was hers: she hath kindled her funeral pile!
Never might shame on that bright head be:
Her blood was the Greek’s, and hath made her free!
Proudly she stands, like an Indian bride
On the pyre with the holy dead beside;
But a shriek from her mother hath caught her ear,
As the flames to her marriage-robe draw near,
And starting, she spreads her pale arms in vain
To the form they must never infold again.
--One moment more, and her hands are clasp’d--
Fallen is the torch they had wildly grasp’d--
Her sinking knee unto Heaven is bow’d,
And her last look raised through the smoke’s dim shroud,
And her lips as in prayer for her pardon move;--
Now the night gathers o’er youth and love!
[344] Founded on a circumstance related in the Second Series of the
_Curiosities of Literature_, and forming part of a picture in the
“Painted Biography” there described.
[345] A Greek bride, on leaving her father’s house, takes leave of
her friends and relatives frequently in extemporaneous verses.--See
Fauriel’s _Chants Populaires de la Grèce Moderne_.
THE SWITZER’S WIFE.
[Werner Stauffacher, one of the three confederates of the field of
Grutli, had been alarmed by the envy with which the Austrian Bailiff,
Landenberg, had noticed the appearance of wealth and comfort which
distinguished his dwelling. It was not, however, until roused by the
entreaties of his wife, a woman who seems to have been of a heroic
spirit, that he was induced to deliberate with his friends upon the
measures by which Switzerland was finally delivered.]
“Nor look nor tone revealeth aught
Save woman’s quietness of thought;
And yet around her is a light
Of inward majesty and might.” M. J. J.
“Wer solch ein herz an sienen Busen druckt
Der kann fur herd und hof mit freuden fechten.”
WILLHELM TELL.
It was the time when children bound to meet
Their father’s homeward step from field or hill,
And when the herd’s returning bells are sweet
In the Swiss valleys, and the lakes grow still,
And the last note of that wild horn swells by
Which haunts the exile’s heart with melody.
And lovely smiled full many an Alpine home,
Touch’d with the crimson of the dying hour,
Which lit its low roof by the torrent’s foam,
And pierced its lattice through the vine-hung bower;
But one, the loveliest o’er the land that rose,
Then first look’d mournful in its green repose.
For Werner sat beneath the linden tree
That sent its lulling whispers through his door,
Even as man sits, whose heart alone would be
With some deep care, and thus can find no more
Th’ accustom’d joy in all which evening brings,
Gathering a household with her quiet wings.
His wife stood hush’d before him--sad, yet mild
In her beseeching mien!--he mark’d it not.
The silvery laughter of his bright-hair’d child
Rang from the greensward round the shelter’d spot,
But seem’d unheard; until at last the boy
Raised from his heap’d up flowers a glance of joy,
And met his father’s face. But then a change
Pass’d swiftly o’er the brow of infant glee,
And a quick sense of something dimly strange
Brought him from play to stand beside the knee
So often climb’d, and lift his loving eyes
That shone through clouds of sorrowful surprise.
Then the proud bosom of the strong man shook;
But tenderly his babe’s fair mother laid
Her hand on his, and with a pleading look,
Through tears half-quivering, o’er him bent and said,
“What grief, dear friend, hath made thy heart its prey--
That thou shouldst turn thee from our love away?
“It is too sad to see thee thus, my friend!
Mark’st thou the wonder on thy boy’s fair brow,
Missing the smile from thine? Oh, cheer thee! bend
To his soft arms: unseal thy thoughts e’en now!
Thou dost not kindly to withhold the share
Of tried affection in thy secret care.”
He look’d up into that sweet earnest face,
But sternly, mournfully: not yet the band
Was loosen’d from his soul; its inmost place
Not yet unveil’d by love’s o’ermastering hand.
“Speak low!” he cried, and pointed where on high
The white Alps glitter’d through the solemn sky:
“We must speak low amidst our ancient hills
And their free torrents; for the days are come
When tyranny lies couch’d by forest rills,
And meets the shepherd in his mountain-home.
Go, pour the wine of our own grapes in fear--
Keep silence by the hearth! its foes are near.
“The envy of th’ oppressor’s eye hath been
Upon my heritage. I sit to-night
Under my household tree, if not serene,
Yet with the faces best beloved in sight:
To-morrow eve may find me chain’d, and thee--
How can I bear the boy’s young smiles to see?”
The bright blood left that youthful mother’s cheek;
Back on the linden stem she lean’d her form;
And her lip trembled as it strove to speak,
Like a frail harp-string shaken by the storm.
’Twas but a moment, and the faintness pass’d,
And the free Alpine spirit woke at last.
And she, that ever through her home had moved
With the meek thoughtfulness and quiet smile
Of woman, calmly loving and beloved,
And timid in her happiness the while,
Stood brightly forth, and steadfastly, that hour--
Her clear glance kindling into sudden power.
Ay, pale she stood, but with an eye of light,
And took her fair child to her holy breast,
And lifted her soft voice, that gather’d might
As it found language:--“Are we thus oppress’d?
Then must we rise upon our mountain-sod,
And man must arm, and woman call on God!
“I know what thou wouldst do;--and be it done!
Thy soul is darken’d with its fears for me.
Trust me to heaven, my husband! This, thy son,
The babe whom I have borne thee, must be free!
And the sweet memory of our pleasant hearth
May well give strength--if aught be strong on earth.
“Thou hast been brooding o’er the silent dread
Of my desponding tears; now lift once more,
My hunter of the hills! thy stately head,
And let thine eagle glance my joy restore!
I can bear all, but seeing _thee_ subdued--
Take to thee back thine own undaunted mood.
“Go forth beside the waters, and along
The chamois paths, and through the forests go;
And tell, in burning words, thy tale of wrong
To the brave hearts that midst the hamlets glow.
God shall be with thee, my beloved! Away!
Bless but thy child, and leave me--I can pray!”
He sprang up, like a warrior youth awaking
To clarion sounds upon the ringing air;
He caught her to his heart, while proud tears breaking
From his dark eyes fell o’er her braided hair;
And “Worthy art thou,” was his joyous cry,
“That man for thee should gird himself to die!
“My bride, my wife, the mother of my child!
Now shall thy name be armour to my heart:
And this our land, by chains no more defiled,
Be taught of thee to choose the better part!
I go--thy spirit on my words shall dwell;
Thy gentle voice shall stir the Alps. Farewell!”
And thus they parted, by the quiet lake,
In the clear starlight: he the strength to rouse
Of the free hills; she, thoughtful for his sake,
To rock her child beneath the whispering boughs,
Singing its blue half-curtain’d eyes to sleep
With a low hymn, amidst the stillness deep.
PROPERZIA ROSSI.
[Properzia Rossi, a celebrated female sculptor of Bologna, possessed
also of talents for poetry and music, died in consequence of an
unrequited attachment. A painting, by Ducis, represents her showing
her last work, a basso-relievo of Ariadne, to a Roman knight, the
object of her affection, who regards it with indifference.]
“Tell me no more, no more
Of my soul’s lofty gifts! Are they not vain
To quench its haunting thirst for happiness?
Have I not loved, and striven, and fail’d to bind
One true heart unto me, whereon my own
Might find a resting-place, a home for all
Its burden of affections? I depart,
Unknown, though Fame goes with me; I must leave
The earth unknown. Yet it may be that death
Shall give my name a power to win such tears
As would have made life precious.”
I.
One dream of passion and of beauty more!
And in its bright fulfilment let me pour
My soul away! Let earth retain a trace
Of that which lit my being, though its race
Might have been loftier far. Yet one more dream!
From my deep spirit one victorious gleam
Ere I depart! For thee alone, for thee!
May this last work, this farewell triumph be--
Thou, loved so vainly! I would leave enshrined
Something immortal of my heart and mind,
That yet may speak to thee when I am gone,
Shaking thine inmost bosom with a tone
Of lost affection,--something that may prove
What she hath been, whose melancholy love
On thee was lavish’d; silent pang and tear,
And fervent song that gush’d when none were near,
And dream by night, and weary thought by day,
Stealing the brightness from her life away--
While thou----Awake! not yet within me die!
Under the burden and the agony
Of this vain tenderness--my spirit, wake!
Even for thy sorrowful affection’s sake,
Live! in thy work breathe out!--that he may yet,
Feeling sad mastery there, perchance regret
Thine unrequited gift.
II.
It comes! the power
Within me born flows back--my fruitless dower
That could not win me love. Yet once again
I greet it proudly, with its rushing train
Of glorious images: they throng--they press--
A sudden joy lights up my loneliness--
I shall not perish all!
The bright work grows
Beneath my hand, unfolding, as a rose,
Leaf after leaf, to beauty--line by line,
Through the pale marble’s veins. It grows!--and now
I fix my thought, heart, soul, to burn, to shine:
I give my own life’s history to thy brow,
Forsaken Ariadne!--thou shalt wear
My form, my lineaments; but oh! more fair,
Touch’d into lovelier being by the glow
Which in me dwells, as by the summer light
All things are glorified. From thee my woe
Shall yet look beautiful to meet his sight,
When I am pass’d away. Thou art the mould,
Wherein I pour the fervent thoughts, th’ untold,
The self-consuming! Speak to him of me,
Thou, the deserted by the lonely sea,
With the soft sadness of thine earnest eye--
Speak to him, lorn one! deeply, mournfully,
Of all my love and grief! Oh! could I throw
Into thy frame a voice--a sweet, and low,
And thrilling voice of song! when he came nigh,
To send the passion of its melody
Through his pierced bosom--on its tones to bear
My life’s deep feeling, as the southern air
Wafts the faint myrtle’s breath--to rise, to swell,
To sink away in accents of farewell,
Winning but one, _one_ gush of tears, whose flow
Surely my parted spirit yet might know,
If love be strong as death!
III.
Now fair thou art,
Thou form, whose life is of my burning heart!
Yet all the vision that within me wrought,
I cannot make thee. Oh! I might have given
Birth to creations of far nobler thought;
I might have kindled, with the fire of heaven,
Things not of such as die! But I have been
Too much alone! A heart whereon to lean,
With all these deep affections that o’erflow
My aching soul, and find no shore below;
An eye to be my star; a voice to bring
Hope o’er my path like sounds that breathe of spring?
These are denied me--dreamt of still in vain.
Therefore my brief aspirings from the chain
Are ever but as some wild fitful song,
Rising triumphantly, to die ere long
In dirge-like echoes.
IV.
Yet the world will see
Little of this, my parting work! in thee.
Thou shalt have fame! Oh, mockery! give the reed
From storms a shelter--give the drooping vine
Something round which its tendrils may entwine--
Give the parch’d flower a rain-drop, and the meed
Of love’s kind words to woman! Worthless fame!
That in _his_ bosom wins not for my name
Th’ abiding place it ask’d! Yet how my heart,
In its own fairy world of song and art,
Once beat for praise! Are those high longings o’er?
That which I have been can I be no more?
Never! oh, never more! though still thy sky
Be blue as then, my glorious Italy!
And though the music, whose rich breathings fill
Thine air with soul, be wandering past me still;
And though the mantle of thy sunlight streams
Unchanged on forms, instinct with poet-dreams.
Never! oh, never more! Where’er I move,
The shadow of this broken-hearted love
Is on me and around! Too well _they_ know
Whose life is all within, too soon and well,
When there the blight hath settled! But I go
Under the silent wings of peace to dwell;
From the slow wasting, from the lonely pain,
The inward burning of those words--“_in vain_,”
Sear’d on the heart--I go. ’Twill soon be past!
Sunshine and song, and bright Italian heaven,
And thou, oh! thou, on whom my spirit cast
Unvalued wealth--who know’st not what was given
In that devotedness--the sad, and deep,
And unrepaid--farewell! If I could weep
Once, only once, beloved one! on thy breast,
Pouring my heart forth ere I sink to rest!
But that were happiness!--and unto me
Earth’s gift is _fame_. Yet I was form’d to be
So richly bless’d! With thee to watch the sky,
Speaking not, feeling but that thou wert nigh;
With thee to listen, while the tones of song
Swept even as part of our sweet air along--
To listen silently; with thee to gaze
On forms, the deified of olden days--
This had been joy enough; and hour by hour,
From its glad well-springs drinking life and power,
How had my spirit soar’d, and made its fame
A glory for thy brow! Dreams, dreams!--The fire
Burns faint within me. Yet I leave my name--
As a deep thrill may linger on the lyre
When its full chords are hush’d--awhile to live,
And one day haply in thy heart revive
Sad thoughts of me. I leave it, with a sound,
A spell o’er memory, mournfully profound;
I leave it, on my country’s air to dwell--
Say proudly yet--“_’Twas hers who loved me well_!”
GERTRUDE; OR, FIDELITY TILL DEATH.
[The Baron Von der Wart, accused--though it is believed unjustly--as
an accomplice in the assassination of the Emperor Albert, was bound
alive on the wheel, and attended by his wife Gertrude, throughout
his last agonising hours, with the most heroic devotedness. Her
own sufferings, with those of her unfortunate husband, are most
affectingly described in a letter which she afterwards addressed to a
female friend, and which was published some years ago, at Haarlem, in
a book entitled _Gertrude Von der Wart; or, Fidelity unto Death_.]
“Dark lowers our fate,
And terrible the storm that gathers o’er us;
But nothing, till that latest agony
Which severs thee from nature, shall unloose
This fix’d and sacred hold. In thy dark prison-house,
In the terrific face of armed law,
Yea, on the scaffold, if it needs must be,
I never will forsake thee.” Joanna Baillie.
Her hands were clasp’d, her dark eyes raised,
The breeze threw back her hair;
Up to the fearful wheel she gazed--
All that she loved was there.
The night was round her clear and cold,
The holy heaven above,
Its pale stars watching to behold
The might of earthly love.
“And bid me not depart,” she cried;
“My Rudolph, say not so!
This is no time to quit thy side--
Peace! peace! I cannot go.
Hath the world aught for _me_ to fear,
When death is on thy brow?
The world! what means it? _Mine is here_--
I will not leave thee now.
“I have been with thee in thine hour
Of glory and of bliss;
Doubt not its memory’s living power
To strengthen me through _this_!
And thou, mine honour’d love and true,
Bear on, bear nobly on!
We have the blessed heaven in view,
Whose rest shall soon be won.”
And were not these high words to flow
From woman’s breaking heart?
Through all that night of bitterest woe
She bore her lofty part;
But oh! with such a glazing eye,
With such a curdling cheek--
Love, Love! of mortal agony
Thou, only _thou_, shouldst speak!
The wind rose high--but with it rose
Her voice, that he might hear:--
Perchance that dark hour brought repose
To happy bosoms near;
While she sat striving with despair
Beside his tortured form,
And pouring her deep soul in prayer
Forth on the rushing storm.
She wiped the death-damps from his brow
With her pale hands and soft,
Whose touch upon the lute-chords low
Had still’d his heart so oft.
She spread her mantle o’er his breast,
She bathed his lips with dew,
And on his cheek such kisses press’d
As hope and joy ne’er knew.
Oh! lovely are ye, Love and Faith,
Enduring to the last!
She had her meed--one smile in death--
And his worn spirit pass’d!
While even as o’er a martyr’s grave
She knelt on that sad spot,
And, weeping, bless’d the God who gave
Strength to forsake it not.
IMELDA.
“Sometimes
The young forgot the lessons they had learnt,
And loved when they should hate--like thee, Imelda!”[346]
Italy; a Poem.
“Passa la bella Donna, e par che dorma.”--Tasso.
We have the myrtle’s breath around us here,
Amidst the fallen pillars: this hath been
Some Naiad’s fane of old. How brightly clear,
Flinging a vein of silver o’er the scene,
Up through the shadowy grass the fountain wells,
And music with it, gushing from beneath
The ivied altar! That sweet murmur tells
The rich wild-flowers no tale of woe or death;
Yet once the wave was darken’d, and a stain
Lay deep, and heavy drops--but not of rain--
On the dim violets by its marble bed,
And the pale-shining water-lily’s head.
Sad is that legend’s truth.--A fair girl met
One whom she loved, by this lone temple’s spring.
Just as the sun behind the pine-grove set,
And eve’s low voice in whispers woke, to bring
All wanderers home. They stood, that gentle pair,
With the blue heaven of Italy above,
And citron-odours dying on the air,
And light leaves trembling round, and early love
Deep in each breast. What reck’d _their_ souls of strife
Between their fathers? Unto them young life
Spread out the treasures of its vernal years;
And if they wept, they wept far other tears
Than the cold world brings forth. They stood, that hour,
Speaking of hope; while tree, and fount, and flower,
And star, just gleaming through the cypress boughs,
Seem’d holy things, as records of their vows.
But change came o’er the scene. A hurrying tread
Broke on the whispery shades. Imelda knew
The footstep of her brother’s wrath, and fled
Up where the cedars make yon avenue
Dim with green twilight: pausing there, she caught--
Was it the clash of swords? A swift dark thought
Struck down her lip’s rich crimson as it pass’d,
And from her eye the sunny sparkle took
One moment with its fearfulness, and shook
Her slight frame fiercely, as a stormy blast
Might rock the rose. Once more, and yet once more,
She still’d her heart to listen--all was o’er;
Sweet summer winds alone were heard to sigh,
Bearing the nightingale’s deep spirit by.
That night Imelda’s voice was in the song--
Lovely it floated through the festive throng
Peopling her father’s halls. That fatal night
Her eye look’d starry in its dazzling light,
And her cheek glow’d with beauty’s flushing dyes,
Like a rich cloud of eve in southern skies--
A burning, ruby cloud. There were, whose gaze
Follow’d her form beneath the clear lamp’s blaze,
And marvell’d at its radiance. But a few
Beheld the brightness of that feverish hue
With something of dim fear; and in that glance
Found strange and sudden tokens of unrest,
Startling to meet amidst the mazy dance,
Where Thought, if present, an unbidden guest,
Comes not unmask’d. Howe’er this were, the time
Sped as it speeds with joy, and grief, and crime
Alike: and when the banquet’s hall was left
Unto its garlands of their bloom bereft;
When trembling stars look’d silvery in their wane,
And heavy flowers yet slumber’d, once again
There stole a footstep, fleet, and light, and lone,
Through the dim cedar shade--the step of one
That started at a leaf, of one that fled,
Of one that panted with some secret dread.
What did Imelda there? She sought the scene
Where love so late with youth and hope had been.
Bodings were on her soul; a shuddering thrill
Ran through each vein, when first the Naiad’s rill
Met her with melody--sweet sounds and low:
We hear them yet, they live along its flow--
_Her_ voice is music lost! The fountain-side
She gain’d--the wave flash’d forth--’twas darkly dyed
Even as from warrior-hearts; and on its edge,
Amidst the fern, and flowers, and moss-tufts deep,
There lay, as lull’d by stream and rustling sedge,
A youth, a graceful youth. “Oh! dost thou sleep?
Azzo!” she cried, “my Azzo! is this rest?”
But then her low tones falter’d:--“On thy breast
Is the stain--yes, ’tis blood! And that cold cheek--
That moveless lip!--thou dost not slumber?--speak,
Speak, Azzo, my beloved! No sound--no breath--
What hath come thus between our spirits? Death!
Death?--I but dream--I dream!” And there she stood,
A faint fair trembler, gazing first on blood,
With her fair arm around yon cypress thrown,
Her form sustain’d by that dark stem alone,
And fading fast, like spell-struck maid of old,
Into white waves dissolving, clear and cold;
When from the grass her dimm’d eye caught a gleam--
’Twas where a sword lay shiver’d by the stream--
Her brother’s sword!--she knew it; and she knew
’Twas with a venom’d point that weapon slew!
Woe for young love! But love is strong. There came
Strength upon woman’s fragile heart and frame;
There came swift courage! On the dewy ground
She knelt, with all her dark hair floating round
Like a long silken stole; she knelt, and press’d
Her lips of glowing life to Azzo’s breast,
Drawing the poison forth. A strange, sad sight!
Pale death, and fearless love, and solemn night!
--So the moon saw them last.
The morn came singing
Through the green forests of the Apennines,
With all her joyous birds their free flight winging,
And steps and voices out amongst the vines.
What found that dayspring _here?_ Two fair forms laid
Like sculptured sleepers; from the myrtle shade
Casting a gleam of beauty o’er the wave,
Still, mournful, sweet. Were such things for the grave?
Could it be so indeed? That radiant girl,
Deck’d as for bridal hours!--long braids of pearl
Amidst her shadowy locks were faintly shining,
As tears might shine, with melancholy light;
And there was gold her slender waist entwining;
And her pale graceful arms--how sadly bright;
And fiery gems upon her breast were lying,
And round her marble brow red roses dying.
But she died first!--the violet’s hue had spread
O’er her sweet eyelids with repose oppress’d;
She had bow’d heavily her gentle head,
And on the youth’s hush’d bosom sunk to rest.
So slept they well!--the poison’s work was done;
Love with true heart had striven--but Death had won.
[346] The tale of Imelda is related in Sismondi’s _Histoire des
Républiques Italiennes_, vol. iii. p. 443.
EDITH.
A TALE OF THE WOODS.[347]
“Du Heilige! rufe dein Kind zuruck
Ich habe genossen das irdische Gluck,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet.” Wallenstein.
The woods--oh! solemn are the boundless woods
Of the great western world when day declines,
And louder sounds the roll of distant floods,
More deep the rustling of the ancient pines.
When dimness gathers on the stilly air,
And mystery seems o’er every leaf to brood,
Awful it is for human heart to bear
The might and burden of the solitude!
Yet, in that hour, midst those green wastes, there sate
One young and fair; and oh! how desolate!
But undismay’d--while sank the crimson light,
And the high cedars darken’d with the night.
Alone she sate; though many lay around,
They, pale and silent on the bloody ground,
Were sever’d from her need and from her woe,
Far as death severs life. O’er that wild spot
Combat had raged, and brought the valiant low,
And left them, with the history of their lot,
Unto the forest oaks--a fearful scene
For her whose home of other days had been
Midst the fair halls of England! But the love
Which fill’d her soul was strong to cast out fear;
And by its might upborne all else above,
She shrank not--mark’d not that the dead were near.
Of him alone she thought, whose languid head
Faintly upon her wedded bosom fell;
Memory of aught but him on earth was fled,
While heavily she felt his life-blood well
Fast o’er her garments forth, and vainly bound
With her torn robe and hair the streaming wound--
Yet hoped, still hoped! Oh! from such hope how long
Affection woos the whispers that deceive,
Even when the pressure of dismay grows strong!
And we, that weep, watch, tremble, ne’er believe
The blow indeed can fall. So bow’d she there
Over the dying, while unconscious prayer
Fill’d all her soul. Now pour’d the moonlight down,
Veining the pine-stems through the foliage brown,
And fire-flies, kindling up the leafy place,
Cast fitful radiance o’er the warrior’s face.
Whereby she caught its changes. To her eye,
The eye that faded look’d through gathering haze,
Whence love, o’ermastering mortal agony,
Lifted a long, deep, melancholy gaze,
When voice was not; that fond, sad meaning pass’d--
She knew the fulness of her woe at last!
One shriek the forests heard--and mute she lay
And cold, yet clasping still the precious clay
To her scarce-heaving breast. O Love and Death!
Ye have sad meetings on this changeful earth.
Many and sad!--but airs of heavenly breath
Shall melt the links which bind you, for your birth
Is far apart.
Now light, of richer hue
Than the moon sheds, came flushing mist and dew;
The pines grew red with morning; fresh winds play’d;
Bright-colour’d birds with splendour cross’d the shade,
Flitting on flower-like wings; glad murmurs broke
From reed, and spray, and leaf--the living strings
Of earth’s Æolian lyre, whose music woke
Into young life and joy all happy things.
And she, too, woke from that long dreamless trance,
The widow’d Edith: fearfully her glance
Fell, as in doubt, on faces dark and strange,
And dusky forms. A sudden sense of change
Flash’d o’er her spirit, even ere memory swept
The tide of anguish back with thoughts that slept;
Yet half instinctively she rose, and spread
Her arms, as ’twere for something lost or fled,
Then faintly sank again. The forest-bough,
With all its whispers, waved not o’er her now.
Where was she? Midst the people of the wild,
By the red hunter’s fire: an aged chief,
Whose home look’d sad--for therein play’d no child--
Had borne her, in the stillness of her grief,
To that lone cabin of the woods; and there,
Won by a form so desolately fair,
Or touch’d with thoughts from some past sorrow sprung,
O’er her low couch an Indian matron hung;
While in grave silence, yet with earnest eye,
The ancient warrior of the waste stood by,
Bending in watchfulness his proud gray head,
And leaning on his bow.
And life return’d--
Life, but with all its memories of the dead,
To Edith’s heart; and well the sufferer learn’d
Her task of meek endurance--well she wore
The chasten’d grief that humbly can adore
Midst blinding tears. But unto that old pair,
Even as a breath of spring’s awakening air,
Her presence was; or as a sweet wild tune
Bringing back tender thoughts, which all too soon
Depart with childhood. Sadly they had seen
A daughter to the land of spirits go;
And ever from that time her fading mien,
And voice, like winds of summer, soft and low,
Had haunted their dim years: but Edith’s face
Now look’d in holy sweetness from her place,
And they again seem’d parents. Oh! the joy,
The rich deep blessedness--though earth’s alloy,
Fear, that still bodes, be there--of pouring forth
The heart’s whole power of love, its wealth and worth
Of strong affection, in one healthful flow,
On something all its own! that kindly glow,
Which to shut inward is consuming pain,
Gives the glad soul its flowering time again,
When, like the sunshine, freed. And gentle cares
Th’ adopted Edith meekly gave for theirs
Who loved her thus. Her spirit dwelt the while
With the departed, and her patient smile
Spoke of farewells to earth; yet still she pray’d,
E’en o’er her soldier’s lowly grave, for aid
_One_ purpose to fulfil, to leave one trace
Brightly recording that her dwelling-place
Had been among the wilds; for well she knew
The secret whisper of her bosom true,
Which warn’d her hence.
And now, by many a word
Link’d unto moments when the heart was stirr’d--
By the sweet mournfulness of many a hymn,
Sung when the woods at eve grew hush’d and dim--
By the persuasion of her fervent eye,
All eloquent with childlike piety--
By the still beauty of her life she strove
To win for heaven, and heaven-born truth, the love
Pour’d out on her so freely. Nor in vain
Was that soft-breathing influence to enchain
The soul in gentle bonds; by slow degrees
Light follow’d on, as when a summer breeze
Parts the deep masses of the forest shade,
And lets the sunbeam through. Her voice was made
Even such a breeze; and she, a lowly guide,
By faith and sorrow raised and purified,
So to the Cross her Indian fosterers led,
Until their prayers were one. When morning spread
O’er the blue lake, and when the sunset’s glow
Touch’d into golden bronze the cypress bough,
And when the quiet of the Sabbath-time
Sank on her heart, though no melodious chime
Waken’d the wilderness, their prayers were one.
Now might she pass in hope--her work was done:
And she _was_ passing from the woods away--
The broken flower of England might not stay
Amidst those alien shades. Her eye was bright
Even yet with something of a starry light,
But her form wasted, and her fair young cheek
Wore oft and patiently a fatal streak,
A rose whose root was death. The parting sigh
Of autumn through the forests had gone by,
And the rich maple o’er her wanderings lone
Its crimson leaves in many a shower had strown,
Flushing the air; and winter’s blast had been
Amidst the pines; and now a softer green
Fringed their dark boughs: for spring again had come,
The sunny spring! but Edith to her home
Was journeying fast. Alas! we think it sad
To part with life when all the earth looks glad
In her young lovely things--when voices break
Into sweet sounds, and leaves and blossoms wake:
Is it not brighter, then, in that far clime
Where graves are not, nor blights of changeful time,
If _here_ such glory dwell with passing blooms,
Such golden sunshine rest around the tombs?
So thought the dying one. ’Twas early day,
And sounds and odours, with the breezes’ play
Whispering of spring-time, through the cabin door,
Unto her couch life’s farewell sweetness bore.
Then with a look where all her hope awoke,
“My father!”--to the gray-hair’d chief she spoke--
“Know’st thou that I depart?” “I know, I know,”
He answer’d mournfully, “that thou must go
To thy beloved, my daughter!” “Sorrow not
For me, kind mother!” with meek smiles once more
She murmur’d in low tones: “one happy lot
Awaits us, friends! upon the better shore;
For we have pray’d together in one trust,
And lifted our frail spirits from the dust
To God, who gave them. Lay me by mine own,
Under the cedar shade: where he is gone,
Thither I go. There will my sisters be,
And the dead parents, lisping at whose knee
My childhood’s prayer was learn’d--the Saviour’s prayer
Which now _ye_ know--and I shall meet you there.
Father and gentle mother! ye have bound
The bruisèd reed, and mercy shall be found
By Mercy’s children.” From the matron’s eye
Dropp’d tears, her sole and passionate reply.
But Edith felt them not; for now a sleep
Solemnly beautiful--a stillness deep,
Fell on her settled face. Then, sad and slow,
And mantling up his stately head in woe,
“Thou’rt passing hence,” he sang, that warrior old,
In sounds like those by plaintive waters roll’d.
“Thou’rt passing from the lake’s green side,
And the hunter’s hearth away:
For the time of flowers, for the summer’s pride,
Daughter! thou canst not stay.
“Thou’rt journeying to thy spirit’s home,
Where the skies are ever clear:
The corn-month’s golden hours will come,
But they shall not find thee here.
“And we shall miss thy voice, my bird!
Under our whispering pine;
Music shall midst the leaves be heard,
But not a song like thine.
“A breeze that roves o’er stream and hill,
Telling of winter gone,
Hath such sweet falls--yet caught we still
A farewell in its tone.
“But thou, my bright one! thou shalt be
Where farewell sounds are o’er;
Thou, in the eyes thou lovest, shalt see
No fear of parting more.
“The mossy grave thy tears have wet,
And the wind’s wild moanings by,
Thou with thy kindred shalt forget,
Midst flowers--not such as die.
“The shadow from thy brow shall melt
The sorrow from thy strain,
But where thine earthly smile hath dwelt
Our hearts shall thirst in vain.
“Dim will our cabin be, and lone,
When thou, its light, art fled;
Yet hath thy step the pathway shown
Unto the happy dead.
“And we will follow thee, our guide!
And join that shining band;
Thou’rt passing from the lake’s green side--
Go to the better land!”
The song had ceased, the list’ners caught no breath:
That lovely sleep had melted into death.
[347] Founded on incidents related in an American work, “Sketches of
Connecticut.”
THE INDIAN CITY.[348]
“What deep wounds ever closed without a sear?
The heart’s bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it.” Childe Harold.
[348] From a tale in Forbes’s _Oriental Memoirs_.
I.
Royal in splendour went down the day
On the plain where an Indian city lay,
With its crown of domes o’er the forest high,
Red, as if fused in the burning sky;
And its deep groves pierced by the rays which made
A bright stream’s way through each long arcade,
Till the pillar’d vaults of the banian stood
Like torch-lit aisles midst the solemn wood;
And the plantain glitter’d with leaves of gold,
As a tree midst the genii gardens old,
And the cypress lifted a blazing spire,
And the stems of the cocoas were shafts of fire.
Many a white pagoda’s gleam
Slept lovely round upon lake and stream,
Broken alone by the lotus flowers,
As they caught the glow of the sun’s last hours,
Like rosy wine in their cups, and shed
Its glory forth on their crystal bed.
Many a graceful Hindoo maid,
With the water-vase from the palmy shade,
Came gliding light as the desert’s roe,
Down marble steps, to the tanks below;
And a cool sweet plashing was ever heard,
As the molten glass of the wave was stirr’d,
And a murmur, thrilling the scented air,
Told where the Bramin bow’d in prayer.
--There wander’d a noble Moslem boy
Through the scene of beauty in breathless joy;
He gazed where the stately city rose,
Like a pageant of clouds, in its red repose;
He turn’d where birds through the gorgeous gloom
Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;
He track’d the brink of the shining lake,
By the tall canes feather’d in tuft and brake;
Till the path he chose, in its mazes, wound
To the very heart of the holy ground.
And there lay the water, as if enshrined
In a rocky urn, from the sun and wind,
Bearing the hues of the grove on high,
Far down through its dark still purity.
The flood beyond, to the fiery west,
Spread out like a metal mirror’s breast;
But that lone bay, in its dimness deep,
Seem’d made for the swimmer’s joyous leap,
For the stag athirst from the noontide chase,
For all free things of the wild wood’s race.
Like a falcon’s glance on the wide blue sky,
Was the kindling flash of the boy’s glad eye;
Like a sea-bird’s flight to the foaming wave,
From the shadowy bank was the bound he gave;
Dashing the spray-drops, cold and white,
O’er the glossy leaves in its young delight,
And bowing his locks to the waters clear--
Alas! he dreamt not that fate was near.
His mother look’d from her tent the while,
O’er heaven and earth with a quiet smile:
She, on her way unto Mecca’s fane,
Had stay’d the march of her pilgrim train,
Calmly to linger a few brief hours
In the Bramin city’s glorious bowers;
For the pomp of the forest, the wave’s bright fall,
The red gold of sunset--she loved them all.
II.
The moon rose clear in the splendour given
To the deep-blue night of an Indian heaven;
The boy from the high-arch’d woods came back--
Oh! what had he met in his lonely track?
The serpent’s glance, through the long reeds bright?
The arrowy spring of the tiger’s might?
No! yet as one by a conflict worn,
With his graceful hair all soil’d and torn,
And a gloom on the lids of his darken’d eye,
And a gash on his bosom--he came to die!
He look’d for the face to his young heart sweet,
And found it, and sank at his mother’s feet.
“Speak to me! whence doth the swift blood run
What hath befallen thee, my child, my son?”
The mist of death on his brow lay pale,
But his voice just linger’d to breathe the tale,
Murmuring faintly of wrongs and scorn,
And wounds from the children of Brahma borne
This was the doom for a Moslem found
With a foot profane on their holy ground--
This was for sullying the pure waves, free
Unto them alone--’twas their god’s decree.
A change came o’er his wandering look--
The mother shriek’d not then nor shook:
Breathless she knelt in her son’s young blood,
Rending her mantle to stanch its flood;
But it rush’d like a river which none may stay,
Bearing a flower to the deep away.
That which our love to the earth would chain,
Fearfully striving with heaven in vain--
That which fades from us, while yet we hold,
Clasp’d to our bosoms, its mortal mould,
Was fleeting before her, afar and fast;
One moment--the soul from the face had pass’d!
Are there no words for that common woe?
Ask of the thousands its depth that know!
The boy had breathed, in his dreaming rest,
Like a low-voiced dove, on her gentle breast;
He had stood, when she sorrow’d, beside her knee,
Painfully stilling his quick heart’s glee;
He had kiss’d from her cheek the widow’s tears,
With the loving lip of his infant years:
He had smiled o’er her path like a bright spring day--
Now in his blood on the earth he lay!
_Murder’d!_ Alas! and we love so well
In a world where anguish like this can dwell!
She bow’d down mutely o’er her dead--
They that stood round her watch’d in dread;
They watch’d--she knew not they were by--
Her soul sat veil’d in its agony.
On the silent lip she press’d no kiss--
Too stern was the grasp of her pangs for this:
She shed no tear, as her face bent low
O’er the shining hair of the lifeless brow;
She look’d but into the half-shut eye
With a gaze that found there no reply,
And, shrieking, mantled her head from sight,
And fell, struck down by her sorrow’s might.
And what deep change, what work of power,
Was wrought on her secret soul that hour?
How rose the lonely one? She rose
Like a prophetess from dark repose!
And proudly flung from her face the veil,
And shook the hair from her forehead pale,
And midst her wondering handmaids stood,
With the sudden glance of a dauntless mood--
Ay, lifting up to the midnight sky
A brow in its regal passion high,
With a close and rigid grasp she press’d
The blood-stain’d robe to her heaving breast,
And said--“Not yet, not yet I weep,
Not yet my spirit shall sink or sleep!
Not till yon city, in ruins rent,
Be piled for its victim’s monument.
Cover his dust! bear it on before!
It shall visit those temple gates once more.”
And away in the train of the dead she turn’d,
The strength of her step was the heart that burn’d;
And the Bramin groves in the starlight smiled,
As the mother pass’d with her slaughter’d child.
III.
Hark! a wild sound of the desert’s horn
Through the woods round the Indian city borne,
A peal of the cymbal and tambour afar--
War! ’tis the gathering of Moslem war!
The Bramin look’d from the leaguer’d towers--
He saw the wild archer amidst his bowers;
And the lake that flash’d through the plantain shade,
As the light of the lances along it play’d;
And the canes that shook as if winds were high,
When the fiery steed of the waste swept by;
And the camp as it lay like a billowy sea,
Wide round the sheltering banian-tree.
There stood one tent from the rest apart--
That was the place of a wounded heart.
Oh! deep is a wounded heart, and strong
A voice that cries against mighty wrong;
And full of death as a hot wind’s blight,
Doth the ire of a crush’d affection light.
Maimuna from realm to realm had pass’d,
And her tale had rung like a trumpet’s blast.
There had been words from her pale lips pour’d,
Each one a spell to unsheath the sword.
The Tartar had sprung from his steed to hear,
And the dark chief of Araby grasp’d his spear,
Till a chain of long lances begirt the wall,
And a vow was recorded that doom’d its fall.
Back with the dust of her son she came,
When her voice had kindled that lightning flame;
She came in the might of a queenly foe,
Banner, and javelin, and bended bow;
But a deeper power on her forehead sate--
_There_ sought the warrior his star of fate:
Her eye’s wild flash through the tented line
Was hail’d as a spirit and a sign,
And the faintest tone from her lip was caught
As a sibyl’s breath of prophetic thought.
Vain, bitter glory!--the gift of grief,
That lights up vengeance to find relief,
Transient and faithless! It cannot fill
So the deep void of the heart, nor still
The yearning left by a broken tie,
That haunted fever of which we die!
Sickening she turn’d from her sad renown,
As a king in death might reject his crown.
Slowly the strength of the walls gave way--
_She_ wither’d faster from day to day:
All the proud sounds of that banner’d plain,
To stay the flight of her soul were vain;
Like an eagle caged, it had striven, and worn
The frail dust, ne’er for such conflicts born,
Till the bars were rent, and the hour was come
For its fearful rushing through darkness home.
The bright sun set in his pomp and pride,
As on that eve when the fair boy died:
She gazed from her couch, and a softness fell
O’er her weary heart with the day’s farewell;
She spoke, and her voice, in its dying tone,
Had an echo of feelings that long seem’d flown.
She murmur’d a low sweet cradle-song,
Strange midst the din of a warrior throng--
A song of the time when her boy’s young cheek
Had glow’d on her breast in its slumber meek.
But something which breathed from that mournful strain
Sent a fitful gust o’er her soul again;
And starting, as if from a dream, she cried--
“Give him proud burial at my side!
There, by yon lake, where the palm-boughs wave,
When the temples are fallen, make there our grave.”
And the temples fell, though the spirit pass’d,
That stay’d not for victory’s voice at last;
When the day was won for the martyr dead,
For the broken heart and the bright blood shed.
Through the gates of the vanquish’d the Tartar steed
Bore in the avenger with foaming speed;
Free swept the flame through the idol fanes,
And the streams glow’d red, as from warrior veins;
And the sword of the Moslem, let loose to slay,
Like the panther leapt on its flying prey,
Till a city of ruin begirt the shade
Where the boy and his mother at rest were laid.
Palace and tower on that plain were left,
Like fallen trees by the lightning cleft;
The wild vine mantled the stately square,
The Rajah’s throne was the serpent’s lair,
And the jungle grass o’er the altar sprung--
This was the work of one deep heart wrung!
THE PEASANT GIRL OF THE RHONE.
----“There is but one place in the world--
Thither, where he lies buried!
...
There, there is all that still remains of him:
That single spot is the whole earth to me.”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
“Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert.”--Childe Harold.
There went a warrior’s funeral through the night,
A waving of tall plumes, a ruddy light
Of torches, fitfully and wildly thrown
From the high woods, along the sweeping Rhone,
Far down the waters. Heavily and dead,
Under the moaning trees, the home-hoof’s tread
In muffled sounds upon the greensward fell,
As chieftains pass’d; and solemnly the swell
Of the deep requiem, o’er the gleaming river
Borne with the gale, and with the leaves’ low shiver,
Floated and died. Proud mourners there, yet pale,
Wore man’s mute anguish sternly;--but of _one_,
Oh, who shall speak? What words _his_ brow unveil?
A father following to the grave his son!--
That is no grief to picture! Sad and slow,
Through the wood-shadows, moved the knightly train,
With youth’s fair form upon the bier laid low--
Fair even when found amidst the bloody slain,
Stretch’d by its broken lance. They reach’d the lone
Baronial chapel, where the forest-gloom
Fell heaviest, for the massy boughs had grown
Into thick archways, as to vault the tomb.
Stately they trode the hollow-ringing aisle,
A strange deep echo shudder’d through the pile,
Till crested heads at last in silence bent
Round the De Coucis’ antique monument,
When dust to dust was given:--and Aymer slept
Beneath the drooping banners of his line,
Whose broider’d folds the Syrian wind had swept
Proudly and oft o’er fields of Palestine.
So the sad rite was closed. The sculptor gave
Trophies, ere long, to deck that lordly grave;
And the pale image of a youth, array’d
As warriors are for fight, but calmly laid
In slumber on his shield. Then all was done--
All still around the dead. His name was heard
Perchance when wine-cups flow’d, and hearts were stirr’d
By some old song, or tale of battle won
Told round the hearth. But in his father’s breast
Manhood’s high passions woke again, and press’d
On to their mark; and in his friend’s clear eye
There dwelt no shadow of a dream gone by;
And with the brethren of his fields, the feast
Was gay as when the voice whose sounds had ceased
Mingled with theirs. Even thus life’s rushing tide
Bears back affection from the grave’s dark side;
Alas! to think of this!--the heart’s void place
Fill’d up so soon!--so like a summer cloud,
All that we loved to pass and leave no trace!--
He lay forgotten in his early shroud.
Forgotten?--not of all! The sunny smile
Glancing in play o’er that proud lip erewhile,
And the dark locks, whose breezy waving threw
A gladness round, whene’er their shade withdrew
From the bright brow; and all the sweetness lying
Within that eagle eye’s jet radiance deep,
And all the music with that young voice dying,
Whose joyous echoes made the quick heart leap
As at a hunter’s bugle--these things lived
Still in one breast, whose silent love survived
The pomps of kindred sorrow. Day by day,
On Aymer’s tomb fresh flowers in garlands lay,
Through the dim fane soft summer odours breathing,
And all the pale sepulchral trophies wreathing,
And with a flush of deeper brilliance glowing
In the rich light, like molten rubies flowing
Through storied windows down. The violet there
Might speak of love--a secret love and lowly;
And the rose image all things fleet and fair;
And the faint passion-flower, the sad and holy,
Tell of diviner hopes. But whose light hand,
As for an altar, wove the radiant band?
Whose gentle nurture brought, from hidden dells,
That gem-like wealth of blossoms and sweet bells,
To blush through every season? Blight and chill
Might touch the changing woods; but duly still
For years those gorgeous coronals renew’d,
And brightly clasping marble spear and helm,
Even through mid-winter, fill’d the solitude
With a strange smile--a glow of summer’s realm.
Surely some fond and fervent heart was pouring
Its youth’s vain worship on the dust, adoring
In lone devotedness!
One spring morn rose,
And found, within that tomb’s proud shadow laid--
Oh! not as midst the vineyards, to repose
From the fierce noon--a dark-hair’d peasant maid.
Who could reveal her story? That still face
Had once been fair; for on the clear arch’d brow
And the curved lip there linger’d yet such grace
As sculpture gives its dreams; and long and low
The deep black lashes, o’er the half-shut eye--
For death was on its lids--fell mournfully.
But the cold cheek was sunk, the raven hair
Dimm’d, the slight form all wasted, as by care.
Whence came that early blight? _Her_ kindred’s place
Was not amidst the high De Couci race;
Yet there her shrine had been! She grasp’d a wreath,
The tomb’s last garland!--This was love in death.
INDIAN WOMAN’S DEATH-SONG.
[An Indian woman, driven to despair by her husband’s desertion of her
for another wife, entered a canoe with her children, and rowed it
down the Mississippi towards a cataract. Her voice was heard from the
shore singing a mournful death-song, until overpowered by the sound
of the waters in which she perished. The tale is related in Long’s
“Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River.”]
“Non, je ne puis vivre avec un cœur brise. Il faut que je retrouve
la joie, et que je m’unisse aux esprits libres de l’air.”
“Bride of Messina.” Translated by Madame de Stael.
“Let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of a woman.”
“The Prairie.”
Down a broad river of the western wilds,
Piercing thick forest-glooms, a light canoe
Swept with the current: fearful was the speed
Of the frail bark, as by a tempest’s wing
Borne leaf-like on to where the mist of spray
Rose with the cataract’s thunder. Yet within,
Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone,
Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast,
A woman stood! Upon her Indian brow
Sat a strange gladness, and her dark hair waved
As if triumphantly. She press’d her child,
In its bright slumber, to her beating heart,
And lifted her sweet voice, that rose awhile
Above the sound of waters, high and clear,
Wafting a wild proud strain--a song of death.
“Roll swiftly to the spirits’ land, thou mighty stream and free!
Father of ancient waters,[349] roll! and bear our lives with thee!
The weary bird that storms have toss’d would seek the sunshine’s
calm,
And the deer that hath the arrow’s hurt flies to the woods of balm.
“Roll on!--my warrior’s eye hath look’d upon another’s face,
And mine hath faded from his soul, as fades a moonbeam’s trace:
My shadow comes not o’er his path, my whisper to his dream--
He flings away the broken reed. Roll swifter yet, thou stream!
“The voice that spoke of other days is hush’d within _his_ breast,
But _mine_ its lonely music haunts, and will not let me rest;
It sings a low and mournful song of gladness that is gone--
I cannot live without that light. Father of waves! roll on!
“Will he not miss the bounding step that met him from the chase?
The heart of love that made his home an ever-sunny place?
The hand that spread the hunter’s board, and deck’d his couch of
yore?--
He will not! Roll, dark foaming stream, on to the better shore!
“Some blessed fount amidst the woods of that bright land must flow,
Whose waters from my soul may lave the memory of this woe;
Some gentle wind must whisper there, whose breath may waft away
The burden of the heavy night, the sadness of the day.
“And thou, my babe! though born, like me, for woman’s weary lot,
Smile!--to that wasting of the heart, my own! I leave thee not;
Too bright a thing art _thou_ to pine in aching love away--
Thy mother bears thee far, young fawn! from sorrow and decay.
“She bears thee to the glorious bowers where none are heard to weep,
And where th’ unkind one hath no power again to trouble sleep;
And where the soul shall find its youth, as wakening from a dream:
One moment, and that realm is ours. On, on, dark-rolling stream!”
[349] “Father of waters,” the Indian name for the Mississippi.
JOAN OF ARC IN RHEIMS.
[“Jeanne d’Arc avait eu la joie de voir à Chalons quelques amis de son
enfance. Une joie plus ineffable encore l’attendait à Rheims, au sein
de son triomphe: Jacques d’Arc, son père, y se trouva, aussitôt que
de troupes de Charles VII. y furent entrées; et comme les deux frères
de notre héroine l’avaient accompagnée, elle se vit pour un instant
au milieu de sa famille, dans les bras d’un père vertueux.”--_Vie de
Jeanne d’Arc_.]
Thou hast a charmed cup, O Fame!
A draught that mantles high,
And seems to lift this earth-born frame
Above mortality:
Away! to me--a woman--bring
Sweet waters from affection’s spring!
That was a joyous day in Rheims of old,
When peal on peal of mighty music roll’d
Forth from her throng’d cathedral; while around,
A multitude, whose billows made no sound,
Chain’d to a hush of wonder, though elate
With victory, listen’d at their temple’s gate.
And what was done within? Within, the light,
Through the rich gloom of pictured windows flowing,
Tinged with soft awfulness a stately sight--
The chivalry of France their proud heads bowing
In martial vassalage! While midst that ring,
And shadow’d by ancestral tombs, a king
Received his birth-right’s crown. For this, the hymn
Swell’d out like rushing waters, and the day
With the sweet censer’s misty breath grew dim,
As through long aisles it floated o’er th’ array
Of arms and sweeping stoles. But who, alone
And unapproach’d, beside the altar-stone,
With the white banner forth like sunshine streaming,
And the gold helm through clouds of fragrance gleaming.
Silent and radiant stood? The helm was raised,
And the fair face reveal’d, that upward gazed,
Intensely worshipping--a still, clear face,
Youthful, but brightly solemn! Woman’s cheek
And brow were there, in deep devotion meek,
Yet glorified, with inspiration’s trace
On its pure paleness; while, enthroned above,
The pictured Virgin, with her smile of love,
Seem’d bending o’er her votaress. That slight form!
Was that the leader through the battle-storm?
Had the soft light in that adoring eye
Guided the warrior where the swords flash’d high?
’Twas so, even so!--and thou, the shepherd’s child,
Joanne, the lowly dreamer of the wild!
Never before, and never since that hour,
Hath woman, mantled with victorious power,
Stood forth as _thou_ beside the shrine didst stand,
Holy amidst the knighthood of the land,
And, beautiful with joy and with renown,
Lift thy white banner o’er the olden crown,
Ransom’d for France by thee!
The rites are done.
Now let the dome with trumpet-notes be shaken,
And bid the echoes of the tomb awaken,
And come thou forth, that heaven’s rejoicing sun
May give thee welcome from thine own blue skies,
Daughter of victory! A triumphant strain,
A proud rich stream of warlike melodies,
Gush’d through the portals of the antique fane,
And forth she came. Then rose a nation’s sound:
Oh! what a power to bid the quick heart bound,
The wind bears onward with the stormy cheer
Man gives to glory on her high career!
Is there indeed such power?--far deeper dwells
In one kind household voice, to reach the cells
Whence happiness flows forth! The shouts that fill’d
The hollow heaven tempestuously, were still’d
One moment; and in that brief pause, the tone,
As of a breeze that o’er her home had blown,
Sank on the bright maid’s heart. “Joanne!”--Who spoke
Like those whose childhood with _her_ childhood grew
Under one roof? “Joanne!”--_that_ murmur broke
With sounds of weeping forth! She turn’d--she knew
Beside her, mark’d from all the thousands there,
In the calm beauty of his silver hair,
The stately shepherd; and the youth, whose joy,
From his dark eye flash’d proudly; and the boy,
The youngest born, that ever loved her best:--
“Father! and ye, my brothers!” On the breast
Of that gray sire she sank--and swiftly back,
Even in an instant, to their native track
Her free thoughts flow’d. She saw the pomp no more
The plumes, the banners: to her cabin-door,
And to the Fairy’s Fountain in the glade,[350]
Where her young sisters by her side had play’d,
And to her hamlet’s chapel, where it rose
Hallowing the forest unto deep repose,
Her spirit turn’d. The very wood-note, sung
In early spring-time by the bird, which dwelt
Where o’er her father’s roof the beech leaves hung,
Was in her heart; a music heard and felt,
Winning her back to nature. She unbound
The helm of many battles from her head,
And, with her bright locks bow’d to sweep the ground,
Lifting her voice up, wept for joy and said--
“Bless me, my father! bless me! and with thee,
To the still cabin and the beechen tree,
Let me return!”
Oh! never did thine eye
Through the green haunts of happy infancy
Wander again, Joanne! Too much of fame
Had shed its radiance on thy peasant name;
And bought alone by gifts beyond all price--
The trusting heart’s repose, the paradise
Of home, with all its loves--doth fate allow
The crown of glory unto woman’s brow.
[350] A beautiful fountain, near Domremi, believed to be haunted by
fairies, and a favourite resort of Jeanne d’Arc in her childhood.
PAULINE.
To die for what we love! Oh! there is power
In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this:
It is to live without the vanish’d light
That strength is needed.
“Cosi trapassa al trapassar d’un Giorno
Della vita mortal il fiore e’l verde.” Tasso.
Along the starlit Seine went music swelling,
Till the air thrill’d with its exulting mirth;
Proudly it floated, even as if no dwelling
For cares or stricken hearts were found on earth;
And a glad sound the measure lightly beat,
A happy chime of many dancing feet.
For in a palace of the land that night,
Lamps, and fresh roses, and green leaves were hung;
And from the painted walls, a stream of light
On flying forms beneath soft splendour flung;
But loveliest far amidst the revel’s pride
Was one--the lady from the Danube side.[351]
Pauline, the meekly bright! though now no more
Her clear eye flash’d with youth’s all-tameless glee,
Yet something holier than its dayspring wore,
There in soft rest lay beautiful to see;
A charm with graver, tenderer, sweetness fraught--
The blending of deep love and matron thought.
Through the gay throng she moved, serenely fair,
And such calm joy as fills a moonlight sky
Sat on her brow beneath its graceful hair,
As her young daughter in the dance went by,
With the fleet step of one that yet hath known
Smiles and kind voices in this world alone.
Lurk’d there no secret boding in her breast?
Did no faint whisper warn of evil nigh?
Such oft awake when most the heart seems blest
Midst the light laughter of festivity.
Whence come those tones? Alas! enough we know
To mingle fear with all triumphal show!
Who spoke of evil when young feet were flying
In fairy rings around the echoing hall?
Soft airs through braided locks in perfume sighing,
Glad pulses beating unto music’s call?
Silence!--the minstrels pause--and hark! a sound,
A strange quick rustling which their notes had drown’d!
And lo! a light upon the dancers breaking--
Not such their clear and silvery lamps had shed!
From the gay dream of revelry awaking,
One moment holds them still in breathless dread.
The wild fierce lustre grows: then bursts a cry--
_Fire!_ through the hall and round it gathering--fly!
And forth they rush, as chased by sword and spear,
To the green coverts of the garden bowers--
A gorgeous masque of pageantry and fear,
Startling the birds and trampling down the flowers:
While from the dome behind, red sparkles driven
Pierce the dark stillness of the midnight heaven.
And where is she--Pauline? The hurrying throng
Have swept her onward, as a stormy blast
Might sweep some faint o’erwearied bird along--
Till now the threshold of that death is past,
And free she stands beneath the starry skies,
Calling her child--but no sweet voice replies.
“Bertha! where art thou? Speak! oh! speak, my own!”
Alas! unconscious of her pangs the while,
The gentle girl, in fear’s cold grasp alone,
Powerless had sunk within the blazing pile;
A young bright form, deck’d gloriously for death,
With flowers all shrinking from the flame’s fierce breath!
But oh! thy strength, deep love! There is no power
To stay the mother from that rolling grave,
Though fast on high the fiery volumes tower,
And forth like banners from each lattice wave:
Back, back she rushes through a host combined--
Mighty is anguish, with affection twined!
And what bold step may follow, midst the roar
Of the red billows, o’er their prey that rise?
None!--Courage there stood still--and never more
Did those fair forms emerge on human eyes!
Was one bright meeting theirs, one wild farewell?
And died they heart to heart?--Oh! who can tell?
Freshly and cloudlessly the morning broke
On that sad palace, midst its pleasure shades;
Its painted roofs had sunk--yet black with smoke
And lonely stood its marble colonnades:
But yester eve their shafts with wreaths were bound,
Now lay the scene one shrivell’d scroll around!
And bore the ruins no recording trace
Of all that woman’s heart had dared and done?
Yes! there were gems to mark its mortal place,
That forth from dust and ashes dimly shone!
Those had the mother, on her gentle breast,
Worn round her child’s fair image, there at rest.
And they were all!--the tender and the true
Left this alone her sacrifice to prove,
Hallowing the spot where mirth once lightly flew,
To deep lone chasten’d thoughts of grief and love.
Oh! we have need of patient faith below,
To clear away the mysteries of such woe!
[351] The Princess Pauline Schwartzenberg. The story of her fate is
beautifully related in _L’Allemagne_, vol. iii. p. 336.
JUANA.
[Juana, mother of the Emperor Charles V., upon the death of her
husband, Philip the Handsome of Austria, who had treated her with
uniform neglect, had his body laid upon a bed of state, in a
magnificent dress; and being possessed with the idea that it would
revive, watched it for a length of time, incessantly waiting for the
moment of returning life.]
It is but dust thou look’st upon. This love,
This wild and passionate idolatry,
What doth it in the shadow of the grave?
Gather it back within thy lonely heart,
So must it ever end: too much we give
Unto the things that perish.
The night-wind shook the tapestry round an ancient palace room,
And torches, as it rose and fell, waved through the gorgeous gloom,
And o’er a shadowy regal couch threw fitful gleams and red,
Where a woman with long raven hair sat watching by the dead.
Pale shone the features of the dead, yet glorious still to see,
Like a hunter or a chief struck down while his heart and step were
free:
No shroud he wore, no robe of death, but there majestic lay,
Proudly and sadly glittering in royalty’s array.
But she that with the dark hair watch’d by the cold slumberer’s
side,
On _her_ wan cheek no beauty dwelt, and in her garb no pride;
Only her full impassion’d eyes as o’er that clay she bent,
A wildness and a tenderness in strange resplendence blent.
And as the swift thoughts cross’d her soul, like shadows of a cloud,
Amidst the silent room of death the dreamer spoke aloud;
She spoke to him that could not hear, and cried,
“Thou yet wilt wake,
And learn my watchings and my tears, beloved one! for thy sake.
“They told me this was death, but well I knew it could not be;
Fairest and stateliest of the earth! who spoke of death for _thee_?
They would have wrapp’d the funeral shroud thy gallant form around,
But I forbade--and there thou art, a monarch, robed and crown’d!
“With all thy bright locks gleaming still, their coronal beneath,
And thy brow so proudly beautiful--who said that this was death?
Silence hath been upon thy lips, and stillness round thee long,
But the hopeful spirit in my breast is all undimm’d and strong.
“I know thou hast not loved me yet; I am not fair like thee,
The very glance of whose clear eye threw round a light of glee!
A frail and drooping form is mine--a cold unsmiling cheek--
Oh! I have but a woman’s heart wherewith _thy_ heart to seek.
“But when thou wakest, my prince, my lord! and hear’st how I have
kept
A lonely vigil by thy side, and o’er thee pray’d and wept--
How in one long deep dream of thee my nights, and days have past--
Surely that humble patient love _must_ win back love at last!
“And thou wilt smile--my own, my own, shall be the sunny smile,
Which brightly fell, and joyously, on all _but_ me erewhile!
No more in vain affection’s thirst my weary soul shall pine--
Oh! years of hope deferr’d were paid by one fond glance of thine!
“Thou’lt meet me with that radiant look when thou comest from the
chase--
For me, for me, in festal halls it shall kindle o’er thy face!
Thou’lt reck no more though beauty’s gift mine aspect may not bless;
In thy kind eyes this deep, deep love shall give me loveliness.
“But wake! my heart within me burns, yet once more to rejoice
In the sound to which it ever leap’d, the music of thy voice.
Awake! I sit in solitude, that thy first look and tone,
And the gladness of thine opening eyes, may all be mine alone.”
In the still chambers of the dust, thus pour’d forth day by day,
The passion of that loving dream from a troubled soul found way,
Until the shadows of the grave had swept o’er every grace,
Left midst the awfulness of death on the princely form and face.
And slowly broke the fearful truth upon the watcher’s breast,
And they bore away the royal dead with requiems to his rest,
With banners and with knightly plumes all waving in the wind--
But a woman’s broken heart was left in its lone despair behind.
THE AMERICAN FOREST GIRL.
A fearful gift upon thy heart is laid,
Woman!--a power to suffer and to love;
Therefore thou so canst pity.
Wildly and mournfully the Indian drum
On the deep hush of moonlight forests broke--
“Sing us a death-song, for thine hour is come”--
So the red warriors to their captive spoke.
Still, and amidst those dusky forms alone,
A youth, a fair-hair’d youth of England stood,
Like a king’s son; though from his cheek had flown
The mantling crimson of the island blood,
And his press’d lips look’d marble. Fiercely bright
And high around him blazed the fires of night,
Rocking beneath the cedars to and fro,
As the wind pass’d, and with a fitful glow
Lighting the victim’s face: but who could tell
Of what within his secret heart befell,
Known but to heaven that hour? Perchance a thought
Of his far home then so intensely wrought,
That its full image, pictured to his eye
On the dark ground of mortal agony,
Rose clear as day!--and he might _see_ the band
Of his young sisters wandering hand in hand,
Where the laburnums droop’d; or haply binding
The jasmine up the door’s low pillars winding;
Or, as day closed upon their gentle mirth,
Gathering, with braided hair, around the hearth,
Where sat their mother; and that mother’s face
Its grave sweet smile yet wearing in the place
Where so it ever smiled! Perchance the prayer
Learn’d at her knee came back on his despair;
The blessing from her voice, the very tone
Of her “_Good-night_” might breathe from boyhood gone!
--He started and look’d up: thick cypress boughs,
Full of strange sound, waved o’er him, darkly red
In the broad stormy firelight; savage brows,
With tall plumes crested and wild hues o’erspread,
Girt him like feverish phantoms; and pale stars
Look’d through the branches as through dungeon bars,
Shedding no hope. He knew, he felt his doom--
Oh! what a tale to shadow with its gloom
That happy hall in England. Idle fear!
Would the winds tell it? Who might dream or hear
The secret of the forests? To the stake
They bound him; and that proud young soldier strove
His father’s spirit in his breast to wake,
Trusting to die in silence! He, the love
Of many hearts!--the fondly rear’d--the fair,
Gladdening all eyes to see! And fetter’d there
He stood beside his death-pyre, and the brand
Flamed up to light it in the chieftain’s hand.
He thought upon his God. Hush! hark! a cry
Breaks on the stern and dread solemnity--
A step hath pierced the ring! Who dares intrude
On the dark hunters in their vengeful mood?
A girl--a young slight girl--a fawn-like child
Of green savannas and the leafy wild,
Springing unmark’d till then, as some lone flower,
Happy because the sunshine is its dower;
Yet one that knew how early tears are shed,
For _hers_ had mourn’d a playmate-brother dead.
She had sat gazing on the victim long,
Until the pity of her soul grew strong;
And, by its passion’s deepening fervour sway’d,
Even to the stake she rush’d, and gently laid
His bright head on her bosom, and around
His form her slender arms to shield it wound
Like close Liannes; then raised her glittering eye,
And clear-toned voice, that said, “He shall not die!”
“He shall not die!”--the gloomy forest thrill’d
To that sweet sound. A sudden wonder fell
On the fierce throng; and heart and hand were still’d,
Struck down as by the whisper of a spell.
They gazed: their dark souls bow’d before the maid,
She of the dancing step in wood and glade!
And, as her cheek flush’d through its olive hue,
As her black tresses to the night-wind flew,
Something o’ermaster’d them from that young mien--
Something of heaven in silence felt and seen;
And seeming, to their childlike faith, a token
That the Great Spirit by her voice had spoken.
They loosed the bonds that held their captive’s breath;
From his pale lips they took the cup of death;
They quench’d the brand beneath the cypress tree:
“Away,” they cried, “young stranger, thou art free!”
COSTANZA.
Art thou then desolate?
Of friends, of hopes forsaken? Come to me!
I am thine own. Have trusted hearts proved false?
Flatterers deceived thee? Wanderer, come to me!
Why didst thou ever leave me? Know’st thou all
I would have borne, and call’d it joy to bear,
For thy sake? Know’st thou that thy voice hath power
To shake me with a thrill of happiness
By one kind tone?--to fill mine eyes with tears
Of yearning love? And thou--oh! thou didst throw
That crush’d affection back upon my heart
Yet come to me!--it died not.
She knelt in prayer. A stream of sunset fell
Through the stain’d window of her lonely cell,
And with its rich, deep, melancholy glow,
Flushing her cheek and pale Madonna brow,
While o’er her long hair’s flowing jet it threw
Bright waves of gold--the autumn forest’s hue--
Seem’d all a vision’s mist of glory, spread
By painting’s touch around some holy head,
Virgin’s or fairest martyr’s. In her eye
Which glanced as dark clear water to the sky,
What solemn fervour lived! And yet what woe,
Lay like some buried thing, still seen below
The glassy tide! Oh! he that could reveal
What life had taught that chasten’d heart to feel,
Might speak indeed of woman’s blighted years,
And wasted love, and vainly bitter tears!
But she had told her griefs to heaven alone,
And of the gentle saint no more was known,
Than that she fled the world’s cold breath, and made
A temple of the pine and chestnut shade,
Filling its depths with soul, whene’er her hymn
Rose through each murmur of the green, and dim,
And ancient solitude; where hidden streams
Went moaning through the grass, like sounds in dreams--
Music for weary hearts! Midst leaves and flowers
She dwelt, and knew all secrets of their powers,
All nature’s balms, wherewith her gliding tread
To the sick peasant on his lowly bed
Came and brought hope! while scarce of mortal birth
He deem’d the pale fair form that held on earth
Communion but with grief.
Ere long, a cell,
A rock-hewn chapel rose, a cross of stone
Gleam’d through the dark trees o’er a sparkling well;
And a sweet voice, of rich yet mournful tone,
Told the Calabrian wilds that duly there
Costanza lifted her sad heart in prayer.
And now ’twas prayer’s own hour. That voice again
Through the dim foliage sent its heavenly strain,
That made the cypress quiver where it stood,
In day’s last crimson soaring from the wood
Like spiry flame. But as the bright sun set,
Other and wilder sounds in tumult met
The floating song. Strange sounds!--the trumpet’s peal,
Made hollow by the rocks; the clash of steel;
The rallying war-cry. In the mountain pass
There had been combat; blood was on the grass,
Banners had strewn the waters; chiefs lay dying,
And the pine branches crash’d before the flying.
And all was changed within the still retreat,
Costanza’s home: there enter’d hurrying feet,
Dark looks of shame and sorrow--mail-clad men,
Stern fugitives from that wild battle-glen,
Scaring the ringdoves from the porch roof, bore
A wounded warrior in. The rocky floor
Gave back deep echoes to his clanging sword,
As there they laid their leader, and implored
The sweet saint’s prayers to heal him: then for flight,
Through the wide forest and the mantling night,
Sped breathlessly again. They pass’d; but he,
The stateliest of a host--alas! to see
What mother’s eyes have watch’d in rosy sleep,
Till joy, for very fulness, turn’d to weep,
Thus changed!--a fearful thing! His golden crest
Was shiver’d, and the bright scarf on his breast--
Some costly love-gift--rent: but what of these?
There were the clustering raven locks--the breeze,
As it came in through lime and myrtle flowers,
Might scarcely lift them; steep’d in bloody showers,
So heavily upon the pallid clay
Of the damp cheek they hung. The eyes’ dark ray,
Where was it? And the lips!--they gasp’d apart,
With their light curve, as from the chisel’s art,
Still proudly beautiful! But that white hue--
Was it not death’s?--that stillness--that cold dew
On the scarr’d forehead? No! his spirit broke
From its deep trance ere long, yet but awoke
To wander in wild dreams; and there he lay,
By the fierce fever as a green reed shaken,
The haughty chief of thousands--the forsaken
Of all save one. _She_ fled not. Day by day--
Such hours are woman’s birthright--she, unknown,
Kept watch beside him, fearless and alone;
Binding his wounds, and oft in silence laving
His brow with tears that mourn’d the strong man’s raving.
He felt them not, nor mark’d the light veil’d form
Still hovering nigh! yet sometimes, when that storm
Of frenzy sank, her voice, in tones as low
As a young mother’s by the cradle singing,
Would soothe him with sweet _aves_, gently bringing
Moments of slumber, when the fiery glow
Ebb’d from his hollow cheek.
At last faint gleams
Of memory dawn’d upon the cloud of dreams;
And feebly lifting, as a child, his head,
And gazing round him from his leafy bed,
He murmur’d forth, “Where am I? What soft strain
Pass’d like a breeze across my burning brain?
Back from my youth it floated, with a tone
Of life’s first music, and a thought of one--
Where is she now? and where the gauds of pride,
Whose hollow splendour lured me from her side?
All lost!--and this is death!--I _cannot_ die
Without forgiveness from that mournful eye!
Away! the earth hath lost her. Was she born
To brook abandonment, to strive with scorn?
My first, my holiest love!--her broken heart
Lies low, and I--unpardon’d I depart.”
But then Costanza raised the shadowy veil
From her dark locks and features brightly pale,
And stood before him with a smile--oh! ne’er
Did aught that _smiled_ so much of sadness wear--
And said, “Cesario! look on me; I live
To say my heart hath bled, and can forgive.
I loved thee with such worship, such deep trust,
As should be heaven’s alone--and heaven is just!
I bless thee--be at peace!”
But o’er his frame
Too fast the strong tide rush’d--the sudden shame,
The joy, th’ amaze! He bow’d his head--it fell
On the wrong’d bosom which had loved so well;
And love, still perfect, gave him refuge there--
His last faint breath just waved her floating hair.
MADELINE.
A DOMESTIC TALE.
“Who should it be?--Where shouldst thou look for kindness?
When we are sick, where can we turn for succour;
When we are wretched, where can we complain;
And when the world looks cold and surly on us,
Where can we go to meet a warmer eye
With such sure confidence as to a mother?”--Joanna Baillie.
“My child, my child, thou leavest me! I shall hear
The gentle voice no more that blest mine ear
With its first utterance: I shall miss the sound
Of thy light step amidst the flowers around,
And thy soft-breathing hymn at twilight’s close,
And thy ‘Good-night’ at parting for repose.
Under the vine-leaves I shall sit alone,
And the low breeze will have a mournful tone
Amidst their tendrils, while I think of thee,
My child! and thou, along the moonlight sea,
With a soft sadness haply in thy glance,
Shalt watch thine own, thy pleasant land of France,
Fading to air. Yet blessings with thee go!
Love guard thee, gentlest! and the exile’s woe
From thy young heart be far! And sorrow not
For me, sweet daughter! in my lonely lot,
God shall be with me. Now, farewell! farewell!
Thou that hast been what words may never tell
Unto thy mother’s bosom, since the days
When thou wert pillow’d there, and wont to raise
In sudden laughter thence thy loving eye
That still sought mine: these moments are gone by--
Thou too must go, my flower! Yet with thee dwell
The peace of God! One, one more gaze: farewell!”
This was a mother’s parting with her child--
A young meek bride, on whom fair fortune smiled,
And woo’d her with a voice of love away
From childhood’s home: yet there, with fond delay,
She linger’d on the threshold, heard the note
Of her caged bird through trellis’d rose-leaves float,
And fell upon her mother’s neck and wept,
Whilst old remembrances, that long had slept,
Gush’d o’er her soul, and many a vanish’d day,
As in one picture traced, before her lay.
But the farewell was said; and on the deep,
When its breast heaved in sunset’s golden sleep,
With a calm’d heart, young Madeline ere long
Pour’d forth her own sweet, solemn vesper-song,
Breathing of home. Through stillness heard afar,
And duly rising with the first pale star,
That voice was on the waters; till at last
The sounding ocean solitudes were pass’d,
And the bright land was reach’d, the youthful world
That glows along the West: the sails were furl’d
In its clear sunshine, and the gentle bride
Look’d on the home that promised hearts untried
A bower of bliss to come. Alas! we trace
The map of our own paths, and long ere years
With their dull steps the brilliant lines efface,
On sweeps the storm, and blots them out with tears!
That home was darken’d soon: the summer breeze
Welcomed with death the wanderers from the seas:
Death unto one, and anguish--how forlorn!
To her that, widow’d in her marriage morn,
Sat in her voiceless dwelling, whence with him,
Her bosom’s first beloved, her friend and guide,
Joy had gone forth, and left the green earth dim,
As from the sun shut out on every side
By the close veil of misery. Oh! but ill,
When with rich hopes o’erfraught, the young high heart
Bears its first blow! It knows not yet the part
Which life will teach--to suffer and be still,
And with submissive love to count the flowers
Which yet are spared, and through the future hours
To send no busy dream! _She_ had not learn’d
Of sorrow till that hour, and therefore turn’d
In weariness from life. Then came th’ unrest,
The heart-sick yearning of the exile’s breast,
The haunting sounds of voices far away,
And household steps: until at last she lay
On her lone couch of sickness, lost in dreams
Of the gay vineyards and blue rushing streams
In her own sunny land; and murmuring oft
Familiar names, in accents wild yet soft,
To strangers round that bed, who knew not aught
Of the deep spells wherewith each word was fraught.
To strangers? Oh! could strangers raise the head
Gently as hers was raised? Did strangers shed
The kindly tears which bathed that feverish brow
And wasted cheek with half-unconscious flow?
Something was there that, through the lingering night,
Outwatches patiently the taper’s light--
Something that faints not through the day’s distress,
That fears not toil, that knows not weariness--
Love, true and perfect love! Whence came that power,
Uprearing through the storm the drooping flower?
Whence?--who can ask? The wild delirium pass’d,
And from her eyes the spirit look’d at last
Into her _mother’s_ face, and wakening knew
The brow’s calm grace, the hair’s dear silvery hue,
The kind sweet smile of old!--and had _she_ come,
Thus in life’s evening from her distant home,
To save her child? Even so--nor yet in vain;
In that young heart a light sprang up again,
And lovely still, with so much love to give,
Seem’d this fair world, though faded; still to live
Was not to pine forsaken. On the breast
That rock’d her childhood, sinking in soft rest,
“Sweet mother! gentlest mother! can it be?”
The lorn one cried, “and do I look on thee?
Take back thy wanderer from this fatal shore:
Peace shall be ours beneath our vines once more.”
THE QUEEN OF PRUSSIA’S TOMB.
[“This tomb is in the garden of Charlottenburg, near Berlin. It
was not without surprise that I came suddenly, among trees, upon a
fair white Doric temple. I might and should have deemed it a mere
adornment of the grounds, but the cypress and the willow declare it
a habitation of the dead. Upon a sarcophagus of white marble lay a
sheet, and the outline of the human form was plainly visible beneath
its folds. The person with me reverently turned it back, and displayed
the statue of his queen. It is a portrait statue recumbent, said to be
a perfect resemblance--not as in death, but when she lived to bless
and be blessed. Nothing can be more calm and kind than the expression
of her features. The hands are folded on the bosom; the limbs are
sufficiently crossed to show the repose of life. Here the king brings
her children annually, to offer garlands at her grave. These hang
in withered mournfulness above this living image of their departed
mother.”--Sherer’s _Notes and Reflections during a Ramble in Germany_.]
“In sweet pride upon that insult keen
She smiled; then drooping mute and brokenhearted,
To the cold comfort of the grave departed.” Milman.
It stands where northern willows weep,
A temple fair and lone;
Soft shadows o’er its marble sweep
From cypress branches thrown;
While silently around it spread,
Thou feel’st the presence of the dead.
And what within is richly shrined?
A sculptured woman’s form,
Lovely, in perfect rest reclined,
As one beyond the storm:
Yet not of death, but slumber, lies
The solemn sweetness on those eyes.
The folded hands, the calm pure face,
The mantle’s quiet flow,
The gentle yet majestic grace
Throned on the matron brow;
These, in that scene of tender gloom,
With a still glory robe the tomb.
There stands an eagle, at the feet
Of the fair image wrought;
A kingly emblem--nor unmeet
To wake yet deeper thought:
She whose high heart finds rest below,
Was royal in her birth and woe.
There are pale garlands hung above,
Of dying scent and hue;
She was a mother--in her love
How sorrowfully true!
Oh! hallow’d long be every leaf,
The record of her children’s grief!
She saw their birthright’s warrior-crown
Of olden glory spoil’d,
The standard of their sires borne down,
The shield’s bright blazon soil’d:
She met the tempest, meekly brave,
Then turn’d o’erwearied to the grave.
She slumber’d: but it came--it came,
Her land’s redeeming hour,
With the glad shout, and signal flame
Sent on from tower to tower!
Fast through the realm a spirit moved--
’Twas hers, the lofty and the loved.
Then was her name a note that rung
To rouse bold hearts from sleep;
Her memory, as a banner flung
Forth by the Baltic deep;
Her grief, a bitter vial pour’d
To sanctify th’ avenger’s sword.
And the crown’d eagle spread again
His pinion to the sun;
And the strong land shook off its chain--
So was the triumph won!
But woe for earth, where sorrow’s tone
Still blends with victory’s!--She was gone!
THE MEMORIAL PILLAR.
[On the road-side, between Penrith and Appleby, stands a small pillar,
with this inscription:--“This pillar was erected in the year 1656,
by Ann, Countess-Dowager of Pembroke, for a memorial of her last
parting, in this place, with her good and pious mother, Margaret,
Countess-Dowager of Cumberland, on the 2d April 1616.”--See notes to
the _Pleasures of Memory_.]
Mother and child! whose blending tears
Have sanctified the place,
Where, to the love of many years,
Was given one last embrace--
Oh! ye have shrined a spell of power
Deep in your record of that hour!
A spell to waken solemn thought--
A still, small under tone,
That calls back days of childhood, fraught
With many a treasure gone;
And smites, perchance, the hidden source,
Though long untroubled--of remorse.
For who, that gazes on the stone
Which marks your parting spot,
Who but a mother’s love hath known--
The _one_ love changing not?
Alas! and haply learn’d its worth
First with the sound of “Earth to earth!”
But thou, high-hearted daughter! thou,
O’er whose bright honour’d head
Blessings and tears of holiest flow
E’en here were fondly shed--
Thou from the passion of thy grief,
In its full burst, couldst draw relief.
For, oh! though painful be th’ excess,
The might wherewith it swells,
In nature’s fount no bitterness
Of nature’s mingling dwells;
And thou hadst not, by wrong or pride,
Poison’d the free and healthful tide.
But didst thou meet the face no more
Which thy young heart first knew?
And all--was all in this world o’er
With ties thus close and true?
It was! On earth no other eye
Could give thee back thine infancy.
No other voice could pierce the maze
Where, deep within thy breast,
The sounds and dreams of other days
With memory lay at rest;
No other smile to thee could bring
A gladdening, like the breath of spring.
Yet, while thy place of weeping still
Its lone memorial keeps,
While on thy name, midst wood and hill,
The quiet sunshine sleeps,
And touches, in each graven line,
Of reverential thought a sign;
Can I, while yet these tokens wear
The impress of the dead,
Think of the love embodied there
As of a vision fled?
A perish’d thing, the joy and flower
And glory of one earthly hour?
Not so!--I will not bow me so
To thoughts that breathe despair!
A loftier faith we need below,
Life’s farewell words to bear.
Mother and child!--your tears are past--
Surely your hearts have met at last.
THE GRAVE OF A POETESS.[352]
I stood beside thy lowly grave;
Spring odours breathed around,
And music, in the river wave,
Pass’d with a lulling sound.
All happy things that love the sun
In the bright air glanced by,
And a glad murmur seem’d to run
Through the soft azure sky.
Fresh leaves were on the ivy bough
That fringed the ruins near;
Young voices were abroad--but thou
Their sweetness couldst not hear.
And mournful grew my heart for thee!
Thou in whose woman’s mind
The ray that brightens earth and sea,
The light of song, was shrined.
Mournful, that thou wert slumbering low,
With a dread curtain drawn
Between thee and the golden glow
Of this world’s vernal dawn.
Parted from all the song and bloom
Thou wouldst have loved so well,
To thee the sunshine round thy tomb
Was but a broken spell.
The bird, the insect on the wing,
In their bright reckless play,
Might feel the flush and life of spring--
And thou wert pass’d away.
But then, e’en then, a nobler thought
O’er my vain sadness came;
Th’ immortal spirit woke, and wrought
Within my thrilling frame.
Surely on lovelier things, I said,
Thou must have look’d ere now,
Than all that round our pathway shed
Odours and hues below.
The shadows of the tomb are here,
Yet beautiful is earth!
What see’st thou, then, where no dim fear,
No haunting dream hath birth?
Here a vain love to passing flowers
Thou gavest; but where thou art,
The sway is not with changeful hours--
_There_ love and death must part.
Thou hast left sorrow in thy song,
A voice not loud but deep!
The glorious bowers of earth among,
How often didst thou weep?
Where couldst thou fix on mortal ground
Thy tender thoughts and high?--
Now peace the woman’s heart hath found,
And joy the poet’s eye.
[352] “Extrinsic interest has lately attached to the fine scenery
of Woodstock, near Kilkenny, on account of its having been the last
residence of the author of _Psyche_. Her grave is one of many in the
churchyard of the village. The river runs smoothly by. The ruins of
an ancient abbey, that have been partially converted into a church,
reverently throw their mantle of tender shadow over it.”--_Tales by the
O’Hara Family._
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
THE HOMES OF ENGLAND.
“Where’s the coward that would not dare
To fight for such a land?” Marmion.
The stately homes of England!
How beautiful they stand,
Amidst their tall ancestral trees,
O’er all the pleasant land!
The deer across their greensward bound,
Through shade and sunny gleam;
And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.
The merry homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,
What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!
There woman’s voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood’s tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.
The blessed homes of England!
How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness
That breathes from Sabbath hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell’s chime
Floats through their woods at morn;
All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.
The cottage homes of England!
By thousands on her plains,
They are smiling o’er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;
And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath their eaves.
The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be rear’d
To guard each hallow’d wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child’s glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!
THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE.
“I have dreamt thou wert
A captive in thy hopelessness; afar
From the sweet home of thy young infancy,
Whose image unto thee is as a dream
Of fire and slaughter; I can see thee wasting,
Sick for thy native air.” L. E. L.
The champions had come from their fields of war,
Over the crests of the billows far;
They had brought back the spoils of a hundred shores,
Where the deep had foam’d to their flashing oars.
They sat at their feast round the Norse king’s board;
By the glare of the torch-light the mead was pour’d;
The hearth was heap’d with the pine-boughs high,
And it flung a red radiance on shields thrown by.
The Scalds had chanted in Runic rhyme
Their songs of the sword and the olden time;
And a solemn thrill, as the harp-chords rung,
Had breathed from the walls where the bright spears hung.
But the swell was gone from the quivering string,
They had summon’d a softer voice to sing;
And a captive girl, at the warriors’ call,
Stood forth in the midst of that frowning hall.
Lonely she stood,--in her mournful eyes
Lay the clear midnight of southern skies;
And the drooping fringe of their lashes low
Half-veil’d a depth of unfathom’d woe.
Stately she stood--though her fragile frame
Seem’d struck with the blight of some inward flame,
And her proud pale brow had a shade of scorn,
Under the waves of her dark hair worn.
And a deep flush pass’d, like a crimson haze,
O’er her marble cheek by the pine-fire’s blaze--
No soft hue caught from the south wind’s breath,
But a token of fever at strife with death.
She had been torn from her home away,
With her long locks crown’d for her bridal-day,
And brought to die of the burning dreams
That haunt the exile by foreign streams.
They bade her sing of her distant land--
She held its lyre with a trembling hand,
Till the spirit its blue skies had given her woke,
And the stream of her voice into music broke.
Faint was the strain, in its first wild flow--
Troubled its murmur, and sad and low;
But it swell’d into deeper power ere long,
As the breeze that swept o’er her soul grew strong.
“They bid me sing of thee, mine own, my sunny land! of thee!
Am I not parted from thy shores by the mournful-sounding sea?
Doth not thy shadow wrap my soul? In silence let me die,
In a voiceless dream of thy silvery founts, and thy pure,
deep sapphire sky:
How should thy lyre give _here_ its wealth of buried sweetness
forth--
Its tones of summer’s breathings born, to the wild winds of the
north?
“Yet thus it shall be once, once more! My spirit shall awake,
And through the mists of death shine out, my country, for thy sake!
That I may make _thee_ known, with all the beauty and the light,
And the glory never more to bless thy daughter’s yearning sight!
Thy woods shall whisper in my song, thy bright streams warble by,
Thy soul flow o’er my lips again--yet once, my Sicily!
“There are blue heavens--far hence, far hence! but,
oh! their glorious blue!
Its very night is beautiful with the hyacinth’s deep hue!
It is above my own fair land, and round my laughing home,
And arching o’er my vintage hills, they hang their cloudless dome;
And making all the waves as gems, that melt along the shore,
And steeping happy hearts in joy--that now is mine no more.
“And there are haunts in that green land--oh! who may dream or tell
Of all the shaded loveliness it hides in grot and dell!
By fountains flinging rainbow-spray on dark and glossy leaves,
And bowers wherein the forest-dove her nest untroubled weaves;
The myrtle dwells there, sending round the richness of its breath,
And the violets gleam like amethysts from the dewy moss beneath.
“And there are floating sounds that fill the skies through night and
day--
Sweet sounds! the soul to hear them faints in dreams of heaven away;
They wander through the olive woods, and o’er the shining seas--
They mingle with the orange scents that load the sleepy breeze;
Lute, voice, and bird are blending there,--it were a bliss to die,
As dies a leaf, thy groves among, my flowery Sicily!
“_I_ may not thus depart--farewell! Yet no, my country! no!
Is not love stronger than the grave? I feel it must be so!
My fleeting spirit shall o’ersweep the mountains and the main,
And in thy tender starlight rove, and through thy woods again.
Its passion deepens--it prevails!--I break my chain--I come
To dwell a viewless thing, yet blest--in thy sweet air, my home!”
And her pale arms dropp’d the ringing lyre--
There came a mist o’er her eye’s wild fire--
And her dark rich tresses in many a fold,
Loosed from their braids, down her bosom roll’d.
For her head sank back on the rugged wall--
A silence fell o’er the warriors’ hall;
She had pour’d out her soul with her song’s last tone:
The lyre was broken, the minstrel gone!
IVAN THE CZAR.
[“Ivan le Terrible, étant déjà devenu vieux, assiégait Novgorod. Les
Boyards, le voyant affoibli, lui demandèrent s’il ne voulait pas
donner le commandement de l’assaut à son fils. Sa fureur fut si grande
à cette proposition, que rien ne pût l’appaiser; son fils se prosterna
à ses pieds; il le repoussa avec un coup d’une telle violence, que
deux jours après le malheureux en mourut. Le père, alors au désespoir,
devint indifférent à la guerre comme au pouvoir, et ne survécut que
peu de mois à son fils.”--_Dix Années d’Exil, par_ Madame de Stael.]
“Gieb diesen Todten mir heraus. Ich muss
Ihn wieder haben! ...
... Trostlose allmacht,
Die nicht einmal in Graber ihren arm
Verlangern, eine kleine Ubereilung
Mit Menschenleben nicht verbessern kann!” Schiller.
He sat in silence on the ground,
The old and haughty Czar,
Lonely, though princes girt him round,
And leaders of the war;
He had cast his jewell’d sabre,
That many a field had won,
To the earth beside his youthful dead--
His fair and first-born son.
With a robe of ermine for its bed
Was laid that form of clay,
Where the light a stormy sunset shed
Through the rich tent made way;
And a sad and solemn beauty
On the pallid face came down,
Which the lord of nations mutely watch’d,
In the dust, with his renown.
Low tones at last, of woe and fear,
From his full bosom broke--
A mournful thing it was to hear
How then the proud man spoke!
The voice that through the combat
Had shouted far and high,
Came forth in strange, dull, hollow tones,
Burden’d with agony.
“There is no crimson on thy cheek,
And on thy lip no breath;
I call thee, and thou dost not speak--
They tell me this is death!
And fearful things are whispering
That I the deed have done--
For the honour of thy father’s name,
Look up, look up, my son!
“Well might I know death’s hue and mien--
But on _thine_ aspect, boy!
What, till this moment, have I seen
Save pride and tameless joy?
Swiftest thou wert to battle,
And bravest there of all--
How could I think a warrior’s frame
Thus like a flower should fall?
“I will not bear that still cold look--
Rise up, thou fierce and free!
Wake as the storm wakes! I will brook
All, save this calm, from thee!
Lift brightly up, and proudly,
Once more thy kindling eyes!
Hath my word lost its power on earth?
I say to thee, arise!
“Didst thou not know I loved thee well?
Thou didst not! and art gone,
In bitterness of soul, to dwell
Where man must dwell alone.
Come back, young fiery spirit!
If but one hour, to learn
The secrets of the folded heart
That seem’d to thee so stern.
“Thou wert the first, the first, fair child
That in mine arms I press’d:
Thou wert the bright one, that hast smiled
Like summer on my breast!
I rear’d thee as an eagle,
To the chase thy steps I led,
I bore thee on my battle-horse,
I look upon thee--dead!
“Lay down my warlike banners here,
Never again to wave,
And bury my red sword and spear,
Chiefs! in my first-born’s grave!
And leave me!--I have conquer’d,
I have slain: my work is done!
Whom have I slain? Ye answer not--
_Thou_ too art mute, my son!”
And thus his wild lament was pour’d
Through the dark resounding night,
And the battle knew no more his sword,
Nor the foaming steed his might.
He heard strange voices moaning
In every wind that sigh’d;
From the searching stars of heaven he shrank--
Humbly the conqueror died.
CAROLAN’S PROPHECY.
[“It is somewhat remarkable that Carolan, the Irish bard, even in
his gayest mood, never could compose a planxty for a Miss Brett,
in the county of Sligo, whose father’s house he frequented, and
where he always met with a reception due to his exquisite taste and
mental endowments. One day, after an unsuccessful attempt to compose
something in a sprightly strain for this lady, he threw aside his harp
with a mixture of rage and grief; and addressing himself in Irish to
her mother, ‘Madam,’ said he, ‘I have often, from my great respect to
your family, attempted a planxty in order to celebrate your daughter’s
perfections, but to no purpose. Some evil genius hovers over me;
there is not a string in my harp that does not vibrate a melancholy
sound when I set about this task. I fear she is not doomed to remain
long among us; nay,’ said he emphatically, ‘she will not survive
twelve months.’ The event verified the prediction, and the young
lady died within the period limited by the unconsciously prophetic
bard.”--_Percy Anecdotes_.]
Thy cheek too swiftly flushes, o’er thine eye
The lights and shadows come and go too fast;
Thy tears gush forth too soon, and in thy voice
Are sounds of tenderness too passionate
For peace on earth: oh! therefore, child of song!
’Tis well thou shouldst depart.
A sound of music, from amidst the hills,
Came suddenly, and died; a fitful sound
Of mirth, soon lost in wail. Again it rose,
And sank in mournfulness. There sat a bard
By a blue stream of Erin, where it swept
Flashing through rock and wood: the sunset’s light
Was on his wavy, silver-gleaming hair,
And the wind’s whisper in the mountain ash,
Whose clusters droop’d above. His head was bow’d,
His hand was on his harp, yet thence its touch
Had drawn but broken strains; and many stood
Waiting around, in silent earnestness,
Th’ unchaining of his soul, the gush of song--
Many and graceful forms!--yet one alone
Seem’d present to his dream; and she, indeed,
With her pale virgin brow, and changeful cheek,
And the clear starlight of her serious eyes,
Lovely amidst the flowing of dark locks
And pallid braiding flowers, was beautiful,
E’en painfully!--a creature to behold
With trembling midst our joy, lest aught unseen
Should waft the vision from us, leaving earth
Too dim without its brightness! Did such fear
O’ershadow in that hour the gifted one,
By his own rushing stream? Once more he gazed
Upon the radiant girl, and yet once more
From the deep chords his wandering hand brought out
A few short festive notes, an opening strain
Of bridal melody, soon dash’d with grief--
As if some wailing spirit in the strings
Met and o’ermaster’d him; but yielding then
To the strong prophet impulse, mournfully,
Like moaning waters o’er the harp he pour’d
The trouble of his haunted soul, and sang--
“Voice of the grave!
I hear thy thrilling call;
It comes in the dash of the foaming wave,
In the sere leaf’s trembling fall!
In the shiver of the tree,
I hear thee, O thou voice!
And I would thy warning were but for me,
That my spirit might rejoice.
“But thou art sent
For the sad earth’s young and fair,
For the graceful heads that have not bent
To the wintry hand of care!
They hear the wind’s low sigh,
And the river sweeping free,
And the green reeds murmuring heavily,
And the woods--but they hear not thee!
“Long have I striven
With my deep-foreboding soul,
But the full tide now its bounds hath riven,
And darkly on must roll.
There’s a young brow smiling near,
With a bridal white-rose wreath--
Unto _me_ it smiles from a flowery bier,
Touch’d solemnly by death!
“Fair art thou, Morna!
The sadness of thine eye
Is beautiful as silvery clouds
On the dark-blue summer sky!
And thy voice comes like the sound
Of a sweet and hidden rill,
That makes the dim woods tuneful round--
But soon it must be still!
“Silence and dust
On thy sunny lips must lie--
Make not the strength of love thy trust,
A stronger yet is nigh!
No strain of festal flow
That my hand for thee hath tried,
But into dirge-notes wild and low
Its ringing tones have died.
“Young art thou, Morna!
Yet on thy gentle head,
Like heavy dew on the lily’s leaves,
A spirit hath been shed!
And the glance is thine which sees
Through nature’s awful heart--
But bright things go with the summer breeze,
And thou too must depart!
“Yet, shall I weep?
I know that in thy breast
There swells a fount of song too deep,
Too powerful for thy rest!
And the bitterness I know,
And the chill of this world’s breath--
Go--all undimm’d in thy glory, go!
Young and crown’d bride of death!
“Take hence to heaven
Thy holy thoughts and bright,
And soaring hopes, that were not given
For the touch of mortal blight!
Might we follow in thy track,
This parting should not be!
But the spring shall give us violets back,
And every flower but thee!”
There was a burst of tears around the bard:
All wept but one--and she serenely stood,
With her clear brow and dark religious eye
Raised to the first faint star above the hills,
And cloudless; though it might be that her cheek
Was paler than before. So Morna heard
The minstrel’s prophecy.
And spring return’d,
Bringing the earth her lovely things again--
All, save the loveliest far! A voice, a smile,
A young sweet spirit gone.
THE LADY OF THE CASTLE.
FROM THE “PORTRAIT GALLERY,” AN UNFINISHED POEM.
If there be but one spot on thy name,
One eye thou fear’st to meet, one human voice
Whose tones thou shrink’st from--Woman! veil thy face,
And bow thy head--and die!
Thou see’st her pictured with her shining hair,
(Famed were those tresses in Provençal song,)
Half braided, half o’er cheek and bosom fair
Let loose, and pouring sunny waves along
Her gorgeous vest. A child’s light hand is roving
Midst the rich curls; and, oh! how meekly loving
Its earnest looks are lifted to the face
Which bends to meet its lip in laughing grace!
Yet that bright lady’s eye, methinks, hath less
Of deep, and still, and pensive tenderness,
Than might beseem a mother’s; on her brow
Something too much there sits of native scorn,
And her smile kindles with a conscious glow
As from the thought of sovereign beauty born.
These may be dreams--but how shall woman tell
Of woman’s shame, and not with tears? She fell!
That mother left that child!--went hurrying by
Its cradle--haply not without a sigh,
Haply one moment o’er its rest serene
She hung. But no! it could not thus have been,
For _she went on!_--forsook her home, her hearth,
All pure affection, all sweet household mirth,
To live a gaudy and dishonour’d thing,
Sharing in guilt the splendours of a king.
Her lord, in very weariness of life,
Girt on his sword for scenes of distant strife.
He reck’d no more of glory: grief and shame
Crush’d out his fiery nature, and his name
Died silently. A shadow o’er his halls
Crept year by year: the minstrel pass’d their walls;
The warder’s horn hung mute. Meantime the child
On whose first flowering thoughts no parent smiled,
A gentle girl, and yet deep-hearted, grew
Into sad youth; for well, too well, she knew
Her mother’s tale! Its memory made the sky
Seem all too joyous for her shrinking eye;
Check’d on her lip the flow of song, which fain
Would there have linger’d; flush’d her cheek to pain,
If met by sudden glance; and gave a tone
Of sorrow, as for something lovely gone,
E’en to the spring’s glad voice. Her own was low
And plaintive. Oh! there lie such depths of woe
In a _young_ blighted spirit! Manhood rears
A haughty brow, and age has done with tears;
But youth bows down to misery, in amaze
At the dark cloud o’ermantling its fresh days;--
And thus it was with her. A mournful sight
In one so fair--for she indeed was fair;
Not with her mother’s dazzling eyes of light--
_Hers_ were more shadowy, full of thought and prayer,
And with long lashes o’er a white-rose cheek
Drooping in gloom, yet tender still and meek,
Still that fond child’s--and oh! the brow above
So pale and pure! so form’d for holy love
To gaze upon in silence! But she felt
That love was not for her, though hearts would melt
Where’er she moved, and reverence mutely given
Went with her; and low prayers, that call’d on heaven
To bless the young Isaure.
One sunny morn
With alms before her castle-gate she stood,
Midst peasant groups: when, breathless and o’erworn,
And shrouded in long weeds of widowhood,
A stranger through them broke. The orphan maid,
With her sweet voice and proffer’d hand of aid,
Turn’d to give welcome; but a wild sad look
Met hers--a gaze that all her spirit shook;
And that pale woman, suddenly subdued
By some strong passion, in its gushing mood,
Knelt at her feet, and bathed them with such tears
As rain the hoarded agonies of years
From the heart’s urn; and with her white lips press’d
The ground they trod; then, burying in her vest
Her brow’s deep flush, sobb’d out--“O undefiled!
I am thy mother--spurn me not, my child!”
Isaure had pray’d for that lost mother; wept
O’er her stain’d memory, while the happy slept
In the hush’d midnight; stood with mournful gaze
Before yon picture’s smile of other days,
But never breathed in human ear the name
Which weigh’d her being to the earth with shame.
What marvel if the anguish, the surprise,
The dark remembrances, the alter’d guise,
Awhile o’erpower’d her? From the weeper’s touch
She shrank--’twas but a moment--yet too much
For that all-humbled one; its mortal stroke
Came down like lightning, and her full heart broke
At once in silence. Heavily and prone
She sank, while o’er her castle’s threshold stone,
Those long fair tresses--_they_ still brightly wore
Their early pride, though bound with pearls no more--
Bursting their fillet, in sad beauty roll’d,
And swept the dust with coils of wavy gold.
Her child bent o’er her--call’d her: ’twas too late--
Dead lay the wanderer at her own proud gate!
The joy of courts, the star of knight and bard--
How didst thou fall, O bright-hair’d Ermengarde!
THE MOURNER FOR THE BARMECIDES.
“O good old man! how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times.”
As You Like It.
Fallen was the house of Giafar; and its name,
The high romantic name of Barmecide,
A sound forbidden on its own bright shores,
By the swift Tigris’ wave. Stern Haroun’s wrath,
Sweeping the mighty with their fame away,
Had so pass’d sentence: but man’s chainless heart
Hides that within its depths which never yet
Th’ oppressor’s thought could reach.
’Twas desolate
Where Giafar’s halls, beneath the burning sun,
Spread out in ruin lay. The songs had ceased;
The lights, the perfumes, and the genii tales
Had ceased; the guests were gone. Yet still one voice
Was there--the fountain’s; through those Eastern courts,
Over the broken marble and the grass,
Its low clear music shedding mournfully.
And still another voice! An aged man,
Yet with a dark and fervent eye beneath
His silvery hair, came day by day, and sate
On a white column’s fragment; and drew forth,
From the forsaken walls and dim arcades,
A tone that shook them with its answering thrill,
To his deep accents. Many a glorious tale
He told that sad yet stately solitude,
Pouring his memory’s fulness o’er its gloom,
Like waters in the waste; and calling up,
By song or high recital of their deeds,
Bright solemn shadows of its vanish’d race
To people their own halls: with these alone,
In all this rich and breathing world, his thoughts
Held still unbroken converse. He had been
Rear’d in this lordly dwelling, and was now
The ivy of its ruins, unto which
His fading life seem’d bound. Day roll’d on day,
And from that scene the loneliness was fled;
For crowds around the gray-hair’d chronicler
Met as men meet, within whose anxious hearts
Fear with deep feeling strives; till, as a breeze
Wanders through forest branches, and is met
By one quick sound and shiver of the leaves,
The spirit of his passionate lament,
As through their stricken souls it pass’d, awoke
One echoing murmur. But this might not be
Under a despot’s rule, and, summon’d thence,
The dreamer stood before the Caliph’s throne:
Sentenced to death he stood, and deeply pale,
And with his white lips rigidly compress’d;
Till, in submissive tones, he ask’d to speak
Once more, ere thrust from earth’s fair sunshine forth.
Was it to sue for grace? His burning heart
Sprang, with a sudden lightning, to his eye,
And he was changed!--and thus, in rapid words,
Th’ o’ermastering thoughts, more strong than death, found way:--
“And shall I not rejoice to go, when the noble and the brave,
With the glory on their brows, are gone before me to the grave?
What is there left to look on now, what brightness in the land?
I hold in scorn the faded world, that wants their princely band!
“My chiefs! my chiefs! the old man comes that in your halls was
nursed--
That follow’d you to many a fight, where flash’d your sabres first--
That bore your children in his arms, your name upon his heart:--
Oh! must the music of that name with him from earth depart?
“It shall not be! A thousand tongues, though human voice were still,
With that high sound the living air triumphantly shall fill;
The wind’s free flight shall bear it on as wandering seeds are sown,
And the starry midnight whisper it with a deep and thrilling tone.
“For it is not as a flower whose scent with the dropping leaves
expires,
And it is not as a household lamp, that a breath should quench its
fires;
It is written on our battle-fields with the writing of the sword,
It hath left upon our desert-sands a light in blessings pour’d.
“The founts, the many gushing founts which to the wild ye gave,
Of you, my chiefs! shall sing aloud, as they pour a joyous wave;
And the groves, with whose deep lovely gloom ye hung the pilgrim’s
way,
Shall send from all their sighing leaves your praises on the day.
“The very walls your bounty rear’d for the stranger’s homeless head,
Shall find a murmur to record your tale, my glorious dead!
Though the grass be where ye feasted once, where lute and cittern
rung,
And the serpent in your palaces lie coil’d amidst its young.
“It is enough! Mine eye no more of joy or splendour sees--
I leave your name in lofty faith to the skies and to the breeze!
I go, since earth her flower hath lost, to join the bright and fair,
And call the grave a kingly house, for ye, my chiefs! are there.”
But while the old man sang, a mist of tears
O’er Haroun’s eyes had gather’d, and a thought--
Oh! many a sudden and remorseful thought--
Of his youth’s once-loved friends, the martyr’d race,
O’erflow’d his softening heart. “Live! live!” he cried,
“Thou faithful unto death! Live on, and still
Speak of thy lords--they _were_ a princely band!”
THE SPANISH CHAPEL.[353]
“Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb,
In life’s early morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a veil o’er the spirit’s young bloom,
Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies.”
Moore.
I made a mountain brook my guide
Through a wild Spanish glen,
And wander’d on its grassy side,
Far from the homes of men.
It lured me with a singing tone,
And many a sunny glance,
To a green spot of beauty lone,
A haunt for old romance.
A dim and deeply bosom’d grove
Of many an aged tree,
Such as the shadowy violets love,
The fawn and forest bee.
The darkness of the chestnut-bough
There on the waters lay,
The bright stream reverently below
Check’d its exulting play;
And bore a music all subdued,
And led a silvery sheen
On through the breathing solitude
Of that rich leafy scene.
For something viewlessly around
Of solemn influence dwelt,
In the soft gloom and whispery sound,
Not to be told, but felt;
While, sending forth a quiet gleam
Across the wood’s repose,
And o’er the twilight of the stream,
A lowly chapel rose.
A pathway to that still retreat
Through many a myrtle wound,
And there a sight--how strangely sweet!
My steps in wonder bound.
For on a brilliant bed of flowers,
E’en at the threshold made,
As if to sleep through sultry hours,
A young fair child was laid.
To sleep?--oh! ne’er, on childhood’s eye
And silken lashes press’d,
Did the warm _living_ slumber lie
With such a weight of rest!
Yet still a tender crimson glow
Its cheeks’ pure marble dyed--
’Twas but the light’s faint streaming flow
Through roses heap’d beside.
I stoop’d--the smooth round arm was chill,
The soft lips’ breath was fled,
And the bright ringlets hung so still--
The lovely child was dead!
“Alas!” I cried, “fair faded thing!
Thou hast wrung bitter tears,
And thou hast left a woe, to cling
Round yearning hearts for years!”
But then a voice came sweet and low--
I turn’d, and near me sate
A woman with a mourner’s brow,
Pale, yet not desolate.
And in her still, clear, matron face,
All solemnly serene,
A shadow’d image I could trace
Of that young slumberer’s mien.
“Stranger! thou pitiest me,” she said
With lips that faintly smiled,
“As here I watch beside my dead,
My fair and precious child.
“But know, the time-worn heart may be
By pangs in this world riven,
Keener than theirs who yield, like me,
An angel thus to heaven!”
[353] Suggested by a scene beautifully described in the _Recollections
of the Peninsula_.
THE KAISER’S FEAST.
[Louis, Emperor of Germany, having put his brother, the Palsgrave
Rodolphus, under the ban of the empire in the twelfth century, that
unfortunate prince fled to England, where he died in neglect and
poverty. “After his decease, his mother Matilda privately invited his
children to return to Germany; and, by her mediation, during a season
of festivity, when Louis kept wassail in the castle of Heidelberg, the
family of his brother presented themselves before him in the garb of
suppliants, imploring pity and forgiveness. To this appeal the victor
softened.”--_Miss Benger’s Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia._]
The Kaiser feasted in his hall--
The red wine mantled high;
Banners were trembling on the wall
To the peals of minstrelsy:
And many a gleam and sparkle came
From the armour hung around,
As it caught the glance of the torch’s flame,
Or the hearth with pine-boughs crown’d.
Why fell there silence on the chord
Beneath the harper’s hand?
And suddenly from that rich board,
Why rose the wassail band?
The strings were hush’d--the knights made way
For the queenly mother’s tread,
As up the hall, in dark array,
Two fair-hair’d boys she led.
She led them e’en to the Kaiser’s place,
And still before him stood;
Till, with strange wonder, o’er his face
Flush’d the proud warrior-blood:
And “Speak, my mother! speak!” he cried,
“Wherefore this mourning vest?
And the clinging children by thy side,
In weeds of sadness drest?”
“Well may a mourning vest be mine,
And theirs, my son, my son!
Look on the features of thy line
In each fair little one!
Though grief awhile within their eyes
Hath tamed the dancing glee,
Yet there thine own quick spirit lies--
Thy brother’s children see!
“And where is he, thy brother--where?
He in thy home that grew,
And smiling, with his sunny hair,
Ever to greet thee flew?
How would his arms thy neck entwine,
His fond lips press thy brow!
My son! oh, call these orphans thine!--
Thou hast no brother now!
“What! from their gentle eyes doth naught
Speak of thy childhood’s hours,
And smite thee with a tender thought
Of thy dead father’s towers?
Kind was thy boyish heart and true,
When rear’d together there,
Through the old woods like fawns ye flew--
Where is thy brother--where?
“Well didst thou love him then, and he
Still at thy side was seen!
How is it that such things can be
As though they ne’er had been?
Evil was this world’s breath, which came
Between the good and brave!
Now must the tears of grief and shame
Be offer’d to the grave.
“And let them, let them there be pour’d!
Though all unfelt below--
Thine own wrung heart, to love restored,
Shall soften as they flow.
Oh! death is mighty to make peace;
Now bid his work be done!
So many an inward strife shall cease--
Take, take these babes, my son!”
His eye was dimm’d--the strong man shook
With feelings long suppress’d;
Up in his arms the boys he took,
And strain’d them to his breast.
And a shout from all in the royal hall
Burst forth to hail the sight;
And eyes were wet midst the brave that met
At the Kaiser’s feast that night.
TASSO AND HIS SISTER.
“Devant vous est Sorrente; la demeuroit la sœur de Tasse, quand
il vint en pelerin demander a cette obscure amie un asyle contre
l’injustice des princes.--Ses longues douleurs avaient presque egare
sa raison; il ne lui restoit plus que son genie.”--Corinne.