Chapter IV: Part THE FOURTH: I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, in his breast, 'midst much that well might shame
The virtues Christians in themselves proclaim,
There dwelt the Ancient Heathen;--still as strong
Doubts in Heaven's justice,--curses for man's wrong.
Revenge, denied indeed, still rankled deep
In thought--and dimm'd the day, and marr'd the sleep
And there were hours when from the hell within
Faded the angel that had saved from sin;
When the fell Fury, beckoning through the gloom,
Cried "Life for life--thou hast betray'd the tomb!"
For the grim Honour of the ancient time
Deem'd vengeance duty and forgiveness crime;
And the stern soul fanatic conscience scared,
For blood _not_ shed, and injury weakly spared;--
Woe, if in hours like these, O more than woe,
Had the roused tiger met the pardon'd foe!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

III.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[S] "At best it _babies_ us."--YOUNG.

[T] "For, oh! he stood before me as my youth."--COLERIDGE'S
_Wallenstein_.

[U] The beautiful story of Aimee--the delight of all
children--is in the collection entitled "The Temple
of the Fairies."

[V] According to the exploded hypothesis of Voltaire, that the
Gipsies are a Syrian tribe, the remains of the long scattered
fraternity of Isis.

[W] Whoever is well acquainted with the heathen learning must often
have been deeply impressed with the mournful character of the
mythological Elysium. Even the few admitted to the groves of
asphodel, unpurified by death, retain the passions and pine with
the griefs of life; they envy the mortal whom the poet brings to
their moody immortality; and, amidst the disdained repose, sigh
for the struggle and the storm.

[X] Not only were the lofty and cheering notions of the soul, that
were cherished by the more illustrious philosophers of Greece,
confined to a few, but even the grosser and dimmer belief in
a future state, which the vulgar mythology implied, was not
entertained by the multitude. Plato remarked that few, even in
his day, had faith in the immortality of the soul; and indeed
the Hades of the ancients was not for the Many. Amongst those
condemned we find few criminals, except the old Titans, and such
as imitated them in the one crime--blasphemy to the fabled gods:
and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the poets
and the heroes, the oligarchy of earth.

[Y] If a man wishes to leave a portion to his natural child, his
lawyer will tell him to name the child as if it were a stranger
to his blood. If he says, "I leave to John Tompson, of
Baker-street, L10,000," John Tompson may probably get the
legacy; if he says, "I leave to my son, John Tompson, of
Baker-street, L10,000," and the said John Tompson _is_ his son
(_a natural one_), it is a hundred to one if John Tompson ever
touches a penny! Up springs the Inhuman Law, with its multiform
obstacles, quibbles, and objections--proof of identity--evidence
of birth!--Many and many a natural child has thus been robbed
and swindled out of his sole claim upon redress--his sole chance
of subsistence. In most civilised countries a father is
permitted to own the offspring, whom, unless he do so, he has
wronged at its very birth--whom, if he do not so, he wrongs
irremedially; with us the error is denied reparation, and the
innocence is sentenced to outlawry. Our laws, with relation to
illegitimate children, are more than unjust--they are inhuman.

CONSTANCE; OR, THE PORTRAIT.