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Copyrighted in 1877, by ADams, Victor & Co.

 

 

ADAMS, VICTOR & CO, PUBLISHERS, Price,
No. 98 WILLIAM STREET, NEW YORK. 10 Cents.

s
At the sight of a neat little letter, address’d | Over-night, for the ae pen of Time—a wild beast,
In a woman’s handwriting, containing, half guess’d, | Which, bayaay classified yet by no naturalist,
An odor era aan aia Spe iw sone in eer mountains, oe hate i ae
ERED: And coquettishly seal’d with a small signet-ring. more mischievous, too, than the Lynx or the
i ee ee But in autumn, the season of somber reflection, Bear.
PART L When a damp day, at breakfast, begins with dejec- fe ~
S . tion; : : I marvel less, therefore, that, having already
CANTO FIR3T. Far from London and Paris, and ill at one’s ease, Torn open this note, with a hand most unsteady,
I Away in the heart of the blue Pyrenees, Lord Alfred was startled.
: Where a call from the doctor, a stroll to the bath, The month is September;
LETTER rRoM THE ComTEsse DE NEvERS To LorpD AI- | A ride through the hills on a hack like a lath, Time, morning; the scene at Bigorre; (pray remem-
FRED VARGRAVE. A cigar, a French novel, a tedious flirtation, ber
‘‘T HEAR from Bigorre you are there. Iam told ‘Are all a man finds for his day’s occupation, These facts, gentle reader, because I intend
You are going to marry Miss Darcy. Of old, The whole case, believe me, is totally changed, To fling all the unities by at the end.)
So long since you nay have forgotten it now, And a letter may alter the plans we arranged | He walk’d to the window. The morning was chill:
(When we parted as friends, The brown woods were crisp’d&
soon mere strangers to in the cold on the hill:
grow,) 2 . : TT = wil The sole thing abroad in the
Your last words recorded a BY Wh ma | \ (Shi! | | \\/ ' Mh | My ie streets was the wind:
\ opt ‘
\

 

 

 

pledge—what you will— AY ih We NH \ 47 And the straws on the gust, like
A promise—the thts is now J} y ! | ye the thoughts in his mind,
come to fulfill. We {AN Rose, and eddied around and
The letters I ask you, my lord, as eu argead, an oe teasing
other. The prospect, in

to return,
truth, was unpleasing:

\\

|
\

I desire to receive from your

hand. You discern
My reasons, which, therefore, I
need not explain.
The distance to Serchon is short.
I remain
A month in these mountains,
_. Miss Darcy, perchance,
Will forego one brief page from
the summer romance
Of her courtship, and spare you
one day from your place
At her feet, in the light of her
fair English face,
I desire nothing more, and I
_ trust you will feel
I desire nothing much.
“Your friend always,
“* Luoms,”

I.

Now in May Fair, of course—in
the fair month of May—
When life is abundant, and busy,

and gay:

When the markets of London
are noisy about

Young ladies, and strawberries,

‘only just out:”

Fresh strawberries sold under
all the house-eaves,

And young ladies on sale for the
strawberry-leaves:

When cards, invitations, and
three-corner’d notes

Fly about like white butterflies,
gay little motes

In the sunbeam of Fashion; and
even Blue Books

Take a heavy-wing’d flight, and

row busy as rooks;

And the postman (that Genius,
indifferent and stern,

Who shakes out even-handed to
all, from his urn,

Those lots which so often decide
if our per

Shall be fretful and anxious, or
Joyous and gay)

Brings, each morning, more
letters of one sort or other

Than Cadmus, himself, put to-
gether, to bother

The heads of Hellenes;—I say,
in the season

Of Fair May, in May Fair, there
can be no reason 3

Why, when quietly munching
your dry-toast and butter,

Your nerves should be suddenly

wn in a flutter

 

|

' And Lord Alfred, while moodi-
ly gazing around it,
To himself more than once
(vex’d in soul) sigh’d . . ~
‘Confound it!”
IV.
What the eee were which
led to this bad interjection,
Sir, or madam, I leave to your
future detection;
For whatever they were, they
were burst in upon,
As the door was burst em
by my lord’s Cousin John.
Cousin JOHN.
A fool, Alfred, a fool, a most
motley fool!
Lorp ALFRED.
Who?

JOHN.

The man who has anything bet-
ter. to do;

And yet so far forgets himself,
so far degrades

His position as Man, to this
worst of all trades,

Which even a well-brought-up
ape were above,

To travel about with a woman

in love,—
Unless she’s in love with him-
self.
ALFRED.
Indeed! why
Are you here then, dear Jack ®
JOHN.

Can't you guess it?
ALFRED.
Not L

JOuN,

Because I have nothing that’s
better to do.

I had rather be bored, my dear
Alfred, by you,

On the whole (I must own), tham
be bored by myself.

That perverse, imperturbable,

‘olden-hair’d eif—

Your Will-o’-the-wisp—that has
led you and me

Such a dance through these
hills—

Who, Matilda?
OHN.

Yes! she,
Of course! who but she could
contrive so to kee
One’s eyes, and one’s feet toa,
from falling asleep

 
2 _THE SUNNYSIDE LIB

For even one half-hour of the long twenty-four?

What’s the matter?
JOHN.

Why, she is—a matter, the more
I consider about it, the more it demands
An attention it does not deserve; and expands
Beyond the dimensions which ev’n crinoline
When Eee by a fair face and saucy Eighteen,
Is entitled to take in this eee star,
Already too crowded, as 7 think, by far.
You read Malthus and Sadler?

ALFRED.
Of course.

To what use,
When — countenance, calmly, such monstrous
abuse
Of one mere human creature’s legitimate space
In this world? Mars, Apollo, Virorum! the case
Wholly passes my patience.
ALFRED,
My own is worse tried.
JOHN.

JOHN.

Yours, Alfred?

ALFRED.
Read this, if you doubt, and decide.

Joun (reading the letter),
“T hear from Bigorre you are there. I am told
You are going to marry Miss Darcy. Of old—”
What is this?

ALFRED. o
Read it on to the end, and you'll know.

JouN (continues reading).
“ When we parted, your last words recorded a vow—
\/nat you will” ....
Hang it! this smells all over, I swear,
O? adventures and violets. Was it your hair
You promised a lock of?

ALFRED,
Read on. You'll discern.

JouHn (continues).
“ Those letters I ask you, my lord, to return.” .
Humph!.. Letters! ... the matter is worse than
I guess’d;
Ihave my misgivings—

Well, read out the rest,
And advise.

Eh?...

JOHN.
Where wasI?...
als
“* Miss Darcy, perchance,
Will forego one brief page from the summer romance
Of her courtship.” .. .
Egad! a romance, for my part,
I'd forego every page of, and not break my heart!
ALFRED,
Continue! 4
JouN (reading).
“ And spare you one day from your place
At her feet.” ...
Pray forgive me the passing grimace.
I wish you had my place?
res
“7 trust you will feel
I desire nothing much. Your friend 7 es
Bless me! ‘* Lucile’?
The Comtesse de Nevers?
ALFRED,
: Yes.
JOHN. s
What will you do?

k ALFRED.
You ask me just what I would rather ask you.
JOHN.
You can’t go.
ALFRED,
I must.

JOHN.
And Matilda?
ALIRED.
Oh, that
You must manage! ‘

JOHN, *
Must I? I decline it, though, flat.
In an hour the horses will be at the door,
And Matilda is now in her habit. Before
J have finish’d my breakfast, of course I receive
A message for “‘dear Cousin John!” ...1 must

leavo
At the jeweler’s the bracelet which you broke last

night;
I must call for the music. “Dear Alfred is right:
The black shawl looks best: will I change it? Of
course
Ican just stop, in s ng, to order the horse.
Then Beau has the mumps, or St. Hubert knows

what: %

Will 1 see the dog-doctor?”’ Hang Beau! I will not.

ALFRED,
Tush, tush! this is serious. ,

JOHN,
It is.
ALFRED,
Very well,

You must think—

JOHN.
What excuse will you make, tho’?
ALFRED,
__ Oh, tell
Mrs. Darcy that... lend me your wits, Jack! ...
the deuce!

Can you not stretch your genius to fit a friend's use?
Excuses are clotbes which, when ask’d unawares,

Rey,

 

|
Good Breeding to naked Necessity spares.
You must have a whole wardrobe, no doubt.

JOHN.
ae dear fellow!
Matilda is jealous, you know, as Othello.
ALFRED.
You joke.
JouN.
Iam serious. Why go to Serchon?
ALFRED.

Don’t ask me. I have not a choice, my dear John,

Besides, shall I own a strange sort of desire,

Before f extinguish forever the fire

Of youth and romance, in whose shadowy light

Hope whisper’d her first fairy tales, to excite -

The last spark, till it rise, and fade far in that dawn

Of my days where the twilights of life were first
drawn

By the rosy, reluctant auroras of Love:

Of the years long departed forever to take

One last look, one final farewell; to awake

The Heroic of youth from the Hades of joy,

And pe a be, though but for an hour, Jack—
a boy .

JOHN,
You had better go hang yourself.
ALFRED.

°

No! were it but
To make sure that the Past from the Future is shut,
It were worth the step back. Do you think we
should live
With the living so lightly, and learn to survive

gloom

We Pee our heart’s best, if the doors of the
om)

Were not a with a key which Fate keeps for

our sake?
If the dead could return, or the corpses awake?

JOHN.
Nonsense!

ALFRED.
Not wholly. The man who gets up
A fill’d guest from the banquet, and drains off his

cup, :
Sees the last lamp extinguish’d with cheerfulness,

/_ goes
Well contented to bed, and aieee its repose.
But he who has copys at the tables of kings,
And yet starved in the sight of luxurious taingns
Who hath watch’d the wine flow, by himself but
half tasted,
Heard tee music, and yet miss’d the tune; who hath
waste:
One part of life’s grand possibilities ;—friend,
That man will bear with him, be sure, to the end,
A blighted experience, a rancor within:
You may call it a virtue, I call it a sin.
JOHN.
I see you remember the cynical story
Of that wicked old. piece of Experience—a hoary
Lothario, whom dying, the priest by his bed
(Knowing well the unprincipled life he had led
And observing, with no small amount of surprise,
ee and calm in the old sinner’s eyes)
Ask’d if he had nothing that weigh’d on mind:

erie .. nO,’ . . . says Lothario, ‘I think not,

mn

On reviewing my life, which in most things was
pleasant,

I never neglected, when once it was present,
An occasion of pleasing myself. On the whole,

I have naught. to regret,’ + « and so, smiling,
his soul
Took its flight from this world.
ALFRED.
. Well, Regret or Remorse,
Which is best?
» JOHN.
Why, Regret.

ALFRED,
‘ '. No; Remorse, Jack, of course:
For the one is related, be sure, to the other.
Regret is a spiteful old maid; but her brother,

Remorse, ehotgh a widower en ye’
Has been wed to young Pleasure, Dear Jack, hang
Regret! :
JOHN.
Bref/ you mean, then, to go?
ALFRED,
Bref! 1 do.
Joun.
One word... stay!
Are you really in love with Matilda?
ALFRED.
Love, eh?

What a question! Of course.

Joun.
Were you really in love
With Madame de Nevers?
» ALYRED,
What; Lucile? No, by Jove,
Never really.
‘ Joun.
She’s pretty?
: ALFRED,
Decidedly so.
At least, so she was, some ten summers

As soft, and as sallow as Autumn—with hair
Battier black, nor yet brown, but that tinge which

e air

Takes at eve in September, when night lingers lone

Through a vineyard, from beams of a slow-setting
sun,

 

|
|

|
|
|
|
|

In short, from the dead Past the gravestone to move}; |

That wild moment in which to the grave and its |

 

Eyes—the wistful gazelle’s; the fine foot of a fairy;
Anda hand fitafay’s wand to wave,—white and airy;
A voice soft and sweet as a tune that one knows.
Something in her there was, set you thinking of those
Strange backgrounds of Raphael. . . that hectic and

deep
Brief twilight in which southern suns fallasleep.

JOHN.
Coquette?
ALFRED.
Not at all. °T was my own fault. Not she!

Thad loved her the better, had she less loved me.
The heart of a man’s like that delicate weed
Which requires to be trampled on, boldly indeed,
Ere it give forth the fragrance you wish to extract.
*T is a simile, trust me, if not new, exact.

JOHN,

| Women change so.

ALFRED.
Of course.

JOHN.
And, unless rumor errs,

I believe that, last year, the Comtesse de Nevers*
Was at Baden the rage—held an absolute court

Of her devoted adorers, and really made sport

Of her subjects.

ALFRED.
Indeed!

JOHN.

‘When she broke off with you
Her engagement, her heart did not break with it?

ALFRED.
Pooh!

Pray would you have had her dress always in black,
And shut herself up in a convent, dear Jack?
Besides, ’t was my fault the engagement was broken.

JOHN.
How was it?

ALFRED,

The tale is soon spoken.
She bored me. I show’d it. She saw it. What next?
She reproach’d. I retorted. Of course she was vex’d.
I was vex’d that she was so. She sulk’d. So didI.
If I ask’d her to sing, she look’d ready to cry.
I was contrite, submissive. She soften’d. I harden’d.
At noon I was banish’d. At eve I was pardon’d.
She said I had no heart. I said she had no reason,
I swore she talk’d nonsense. She sobb’d I talk’d

treason.

In short, my dear fellow, ’t was time, as you see,
Things should come to a crisis, and finish, “T was

Most likely.

she
By whom to that crisis the matter was brought.
She released me. I linger’d. I linger’d, she thought,
‘With too sullen an aspect. This gave me, of course,
The occasion to fly in a rage, mount my horse,
And declare ee uncomprehended, And so
We parted. The rest of the story you know.

JOHN.
No, indeed.
ALFRED.
Well, we parted. Of course we could not

| Continue to meet, as before, in one spot.

You Ca it was awkward? Even Don Ferdi-
nando

Can do, a remember, no more than he can do.

I think that I acted exceedingly well,

Considering the time when this rupture befell,

For Paris was charming just then. It deranged

All my pe for the winter. I ask’d to be changed—

Wrote for Naples, then vacant—obtain’d it—and so

Join’d my new post at once; but scarce reach’d it,
when lo!

My first news from Paris informs me Lucile

Is ill, and in danger. Conceive what I feel.

I fly back. I find her recover’d, but yet,

Looking pale. Iam seized with a contrite regret;
I ask to renew the engagement.
JOHN.
And she?
ALFRED.

Reflects, but declines. We part, swearing to be
Friends ever, friends only. All that sort of thing!
We each keep our letters...a portrait... a

pasta aiergary
With a edge: to return them whenever the one
Or the other shall call for them back.

JOHN. :
Pray go on.

ALFRED.
My story is finish’d. Of course I enjoin
On Lucile all those thousand good maxims we coin
To supply the grim deficit found in our days,
When Love leaves them bankrupt. I preach. She

obeys.

She goss Out in the world; takes to dancing once
more—

A pleasure she rarely indulged in before.

* Oh Shakspeare! how couldst thou ask “@ What's in

a name?”

°T is the devil’s in it when a bard has to frame

en ae for alliance with names that are

'rench ;

And in these rhymes of mine, well I know that I
trenc!

All too far on that license which critics refuse,

With just right, to accord to a well-brought-up

Muse.

Yet, tho’ faulty the union, in many a line,

*Twixt my British-born verse and my French hero-
ine,

Since, however auspiciously wedded they be,
There is many a pair that yet cannot agree. |
Your forgiveness for this ‘Gath the author invites,
Whom necessity, not inclination, unites.

 

a

-"

 

 
 

 

 

 

- To be running away, on the eve of all this,

 

1TLUGILE

, 3

 

 

Igo back to my post, and collect (I must own
"Tis a taste I had never before, my dear John)
ae ues and small Elzevirs. Heigh-ho! now, Jack,
ou i
Joun (after a pause).
You are ly resolved to go back?
ALFRED.

Eh, where?

JOHN,
To that worst of all places—the past.
You remember Lot’s wife?
: ALFRED,
_ *T was a promise when last
We parted. My honor is pledged to it.
JOHN.
es . Well,
What is it you wish me to do?
ALFRED.
" You must tell
Matilda, I meant to have call’d—to leave word—
To explain—but the time was so pressing—
JOHN.
My lord!
‘Your lordship’s obedient! I really can’t do...
3 ALFRED,
‘You wish then to break off my marriage?
JOHN.
. No, no!
But indeed I can’t see why yourself you need take
These letters.

ALFRED.
Not see? would you have-me, then, break
A promise my honor is pledged to?
Joun (humming).
* OF, att,
And away! said the stranger”...

D. i
Oh, good! oh, you scoff!
JOHN.
At what, my dear Alfred?
ALFRED.
At all things!
JOHN.
Indeed?
ALFRED.

Yes; I see Sradce heart is as oo 4 as a reed:

That the dew of your youth is rubb’d off you: I see
You have no teeing left in you, even for me!

At honor you jest: you are col as a stone

To the warm voice of friendship, Belief you have

none;
‘You have lost faith in all things. You carry a blight
About with you everywhere. Yes, at the sient a
Of such callous indifference, who could be calm?

I must leave you at once, Jack, or else the last balm
That is left me in Gilead you’ll turn into gall.
Heartless, cold, unconcern’d . ..

JOHN.

Have you done? Is that all?
Well, then, listen to me! I presume when you made
UR your mind to propose to Miss Darcy, you weigh’d
All the drawbacks against the equivalent gains,
Ere you finally settled the pees What remains
But to stick to your choice? You want money; ’t is

ere. ‘
A settled position: "tis yours. A career:
You secure it. A wife, young, and pretty as rich.
Whom all men will envy you. Why must you itch

To a woman whom never for once did you miss

All these cea you left her? Who knows what
may ha;

This letter—to me—is a palpable trap.

The ee has changed since you knew her. Per-
chance an

She yet seeks to renew her youth’s broken romance.

‘When women begin to feel youth and their beauty

Slip from them, they count it a sort of a duty

To let nothing else slip away unsecured

Which a while they lasted, might once have pro-
cured.

Lucile ’s a coquette to the end of her fingers,

T will stake my last farthing. Perhaps the wish lin-

To recall the once reckless, indifferent lover

To the feet he has left; ee ta e now recover

What cruth could not keep, ere a vengeance, DO

doubt—
A triumph—but why must you bring it about?
You are ri the substance of all that you schemed
To obtain; = for what? some mad dream you have

But there’s not
You mistake.

ALFRED,
torisk. You
days, at the m:
JOHN.
Ay, but how? . .. discontented, unsettled, upset,
Bearing with you a comfortless twinge of regret;
Preoccupied, sulky, and likely enor eh
To make your betroth’d break off all in a huff.
Three days, do yousay? But in three days who knows

te, Jack,
, 1 am back,

What may happen? I don’t, nor do you, I suppose.
iN;
Of all the good things in this good world around us,

The one most abundantly furnish’d and found us,

And which, for that reason, we least care about.

And a Oe spare our friends, is good counsel, no
oubt. :

But ages when ’t is sought from a friend (though

Ma; forbid to avow it), means meré liability

In the bill we have drawn on Remorse,
Which, we deem that a true friend is bound’ to in-
orse.

 

A mere lecture on debt from that friend is a bore.

Thus, the better his cousin’s advice was, the more

Alfred Vargrayve with oun. resentment gepoaed it.

And, having the worst of the contest, he closed it

With so firm a resolve his bad ground to maintain,

That, sadly perceiving resistance was vain,

The argument fruitless, the amiable Jack

Came to terms, and assisted his cousin to pack

A slender valise (the one small condescension

Which his final remonstrance obtain’d), whose di-
mension

Excluded large outfits; and, cursing his stars, he

Shook hands with his friend and return’d to Miss
Darcy. =

Lord Alfred, when last to the window he turn’d,
Ere he lock’d up and quitted his chamber, discern’d
Matilda ride by, with her cheek beaming bright
In what Virgil has called ‘‘ Youth’s purpureal light ”
iS like the expression, and can’t find a better),
e sigh’d as he look’d at her. Did he regret her?
In her habit and hat, with her glad golden hair,
As airy and blithe as a blithe bird in air,
And her arch rosy lips, and her eager blue eyes,
With their little impertinent look of surprise,
And her round youthful figure, and fair neck, below
The dark arene. feather, as radiant as snow,—
I can only declare, that if / had the chance
Of fee three days in the exquisite glance
of ope eyes, or caressing the hand that now pet-
a
That =o English mare, I should much have regret-

Whatever might lose me one little halfehour

Of a pastime so pleasant, when once in ay ower.
For, if one drop of milk from the bright Milky Way
Could turn into a woman, *t would look, I dare say,
Not more fresh than Matilda was looking that day.

Vil.
But whatever the feeling that prompted the sigh
With which Alfred Vargrave now watch’d her ride

b
I can only affirm that, in watching her ride,
As he turned from the window, he certainly sigh’d.

 

CANTO SECOND.

i

Letter FROM LorD ALFRED VARGRAVE TO THE Com-
TESSE DE NEVERS. ®

‘ BiGORRE, Tuesday.
“Your note, madam, reach’d me to-day, at Bigorre,
And commands (n Tadd?) my obedience. fore
The night I shall be at Serchon—where a line,
If sent to Duval’s, the hotel where I dine,
Will find me, awaiting your orders, Receive
My respects. ‘
“Yours sincerely,
“A, VARGRAVE.
“T leave
In an hour.”
a:
In an hour from the time he wrote this,
Alfred Vargrave, in tracking a mountain abyss.
Gave oe to his steed and his thoughts, and pur-
sued,
In pursuing his course through the blue solitude,
The reflections that journey gave rise to.
‘ * _ And here
ecause, without some such precaution, I fear
ou might fail to distinguish them each from the

rest
Of a care they belong to; whose captives are
rest,
As our convicts, precisely the same one and all,
While the coat cut for Peter is pass’d on to Paul)
I resolve, one by one, when I pick from the mass
The persons I want, as before you they pass,
To label them broadly in plain black and white
On the backs of them. Therefore while yet he’s in

sight,
IT first abel my hero,

. The age is gone o’er
When a man may in all things be all. We have

more
Painters, poets, musicians, and artists, no doubt,
Than the great Cinquecento gave birth to; but out
Of a million of mere dilettanti, when, when
Will a new Lronarpo arise on our ken?

He is gone with the age which begat him, Our own
Is too vast, and too complex, for one man alone
To embody its he and hold it shut close
In the palm of hi dd, There were giants in those
Irreclaimable days; but in these days of ours,
In dividing the work, we distribute the powers.
Yet a dwarf on a dead giant’s shoulders sees more
Than the ‘live giant’s Rb ‘ht avail’d to explore;
And in life’s lengthened alphabet what to be
To our sires X Y Zis tous A BC.

Vanini is roasted alive for his dagen
But a Bacon comes after and picks up his brains.
A Bruno is pee seized by the throttle
And hunted about by thy ghost, Aristotle,

ll a More or Lavater into his place:
Then the world turns and makes an admiring grim-

ace.

Once the men were so great and so few, they appear.

Through a distant Olympian atmosphere, a :

Like vast Caryatids Soe the age.

Now the men are so and small, disengage

One man_ oe the ion to mark him, next mo-
men’

The Cee sweeps him hurriedly out of your com-
ment;

And since we seek vainly (to praise in our songs)

*Mid our fellows the size which to heroes belongs,

 

We take the whole age for a hero, in want

Of a better; and still, in its favor, descant

On the strength and the beauty which, failing to find
In any one man, we ascribe to mankind. :

IV.

Alfred Vargrave was one of those men who achieve
So little, because of the much they conceive.
With irresolute finger he knock’d at each one
Of the doorways of life, and abided in none.
His course, by each star that would cross it, was set,
And whatever he did he was sure to regret.
That target, discuss’d by the travelers of old,
Which to one appear’d grgont to one appear’d gold,
To him, ever lingering on oubt’s dizzy margent,
Appear’d in one moment both golden and argent.

e man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
May hope to achieve it before life be done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he

Sows

A harvest of barren regrets. And the worm

That crawls on in the dust to the definite term

Of its creeping existence, and sees nothing more

Than the path it pursues till its creeping be o’er,

In its limited vision, is happier far

Than the Half-Sage, whose course, fixed by no
friendly star,

Is by each star distracted in turn, and who knows

Each will still be as distant wherever he goes.

Vv.

Both brilliant and brittle, both bold and unstable,

Indecisive ed keen, Alfred Vargrave seem’d able

To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind.

A vigorous, various, versatile mind;

A character wavering, fitful, uncertain,

As the shadow that shakes o’er a luminous curtain,

Vague, flitting, but on it forever impressing

The shape of some substance at which you stand

guessing:

When you said, ‘‘All is worthless and weak here,”
behold!

Into sight on a sudden there seem’d to unfold

Great outlines of strenuous truth in the man;

When you said, “‘This is genius,” the outlines grew

wan.
And his life, though in all things so gifted and skill’d,
Was, at best, but a promise which nothing fulfill’d.

ibe

In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower
The shut leaves of man’s life, round the germ of his

wer

Yet fdided, his life had been earnest. Alas!

In that life one occasion, one moment there was
When this earnestness might, with the life-sap of

youth,
Lusty ee have borne in his manhood’s full
artis

But HW teuad him too soon, when his nature was still
The delicate toy of too pliant a will,

The boisterous wind of the world to resist,

Or the frost of the world’s wintry wisdom.

He miss’d
That occasion, too rathe in its advent.
Since then,
He had made ita law, in his commerce with men,
That intensity in him, which only left sore
The heart it disturb’d, to repel and ignore.

And thus, as some Prince by his subjects deposed,
Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed,
In ee the power he lack’d power to support,
Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court,
In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal’d
To a cynic denial of all he conceal’d
In the instincts and feelings belied by his words.

ords, nearer are things: and the man who ac-

co!
To his language the license to outrage his soul,
Is controll’d by the words he disdains to control.
And, therefore, he seem’d in the deeds of each day,
The light code proclaim’d on his lips to obey;
And, the slave of each whim, follow’d willfully we oe
That one a fool’d the fancy, or "d
o

t.
Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth,
Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth,
Lived and breathed, and e moan—stirr’d them-
selves—strove to start
Into oa though deposed, in that Hades, his

hea:
Like those antique Theogonies ruin’d and hurl’d
Under clefts of the hills, which, convulsing the world,
Heaved, in earthquake, their heads the rent caverns

above, , 2

To trouble at times in the light court of Jove
All its frivolous , with an undefined awe,
Of wrong’d rebel powers that own’d not their law.
For his sake, I am fain to believe that, if born
To some lowlier rank (from the world’s id scorn

by the world’s stern resistance), where strife,
Strife and toil, not pleasure, gave aoe to life,
He possibly might have contrived to attain
Not eminence only, but worth. So,
Had he been of his own house the

Ofa oy many-gifted had gone to uplift
A great name by a name’s greatest uses.

He stood isolated, opposed, as it were,

To life’s great realities; part of no plan;

And if ever a nobler and happier man

He might hope to become, that alone could be when
With all that is real in life and in men

What was real in him should have been reconciled;
When each influence now from experience exiled
Should have seized on his being, combined with his

nature,
And form’d, as by fusion, a new human creature;

‘born, each

But there
A THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

As when those airy elements viewless to sight
(The amalgam of which, if our science be right,
The germ of this populous planet doth fold)
Unite in the glass of the chemist, behold!

Where a void seem’d before there a substance ap- |

VIL.
But the permanent cause why his life fail’d and

miss
The full value of life was,—where man should re-

sis'

The world, which man’s genius is call’d to com-

’ man

He gave way, less from lack of the power to with-
stand,

Than from lack of the resolute will to retain
Those strongholds of life which the world strives to

in.
Let this character go in the old-fashion’d way
With the moral thereof tightly tack’d to it. ‘ee
‘‘Let any man once show the world that he fee.
Afraid of its bark, and ’t will fly at his heels:

Let him fearlessly face it, ’t leave him alone:
But ’t will fawn at his feet if he flings it a bone.”

vu.

The moon of aenenied now half at the full,

Was unfolding from darkness and dreamland the lull

Of the quiet blue air, where the many-faced hills

Watch’d, well-pleased, their fair slaves, the light,
foam-footed rills,

Dance and sing down the steep marble stairs of their
courts,

And gracefully fashion a thousand sweet sports.

Lord Alfred (by this on his journeying tay

Was ss. puffing his Lo cigar,

And brokenly humming an old opera strain,

And thinking, perchance, of those castles in Spain

Which that long rocky barrier hid from his sight;

When suddenly, out of the neighboding men :

A horseman emerged from a fold of the h

And so startled his steed, that was winding at will

Up the thin dizzy a of a pathway which led

O’er the mountain—the reins on its neck, and its

head
Bean lazily forward—that, but for a hand

Light and <—e yet firm, in familiar command,
Both rider and horse might have aiiiben a trice

Hurl’d horribly over the grim precip:
rx,

As soon as the moment’s alarm had subsided,
And ie oath, with which nothing can find unpro-

led
A thoroughbred Englishman, safely explod
Lord Alfred unbent-(as Apollo his bow aud sa
Now and then) his erectness; and looking, not ruder
egal 7 inroad would warrant, survey’d the in-
ruder,
Whose arrival so nearly cut short in his glory
My hero, and finish’d abruptly this story.

x.

The strangers: men of hisiewn age or less,
Well mounted, and simple though rich in his dress,
Wore his beard and mustache in the fashion of

France.
His face, which was pale, gather’d force from the

glance
Of a pair of dark, vivid, and eloquent eyes.

With a gest of apology, touch’d with surprise,

He lifted his hat, bow'd and courteo' made

Some excuse in such well-cadenced ch as be-

tray’d,
At the first word he spoke, the Parisian.

xi.
I swear
I have wander’d about the world everywhere;
From many strange mouths have heard

strange tongues;
Strain’d with many strange idioms my lips and my

lungs;
hg en i a far lends peentting my own;
n many a language an’'d many a groan;
Abd here often bed reason £0,curss those wild fel-

lows
‘Who hallh the high house at which Heaven turn’d

jou
Making usa audacity stumble and stammer
When seized by the throat in the hard gripe of Gram-

mar.
But the la of languages dearest to me

Is that in which onee, 0 ma toute cherie,

When, together, we bent o’er your nosegay for hours,
You en °d what was silently said by the flowers,
And, selecting the sweetest of all, sent a flame

Through m in laughing, you murmur’d,
Me sabres: ~ 2
XII,
The Italians have voices like ; the Spanish

Smell, I fancy, of garlic; the Swedish and Danish
Have secnettie ioe Runic, too rough and unshod, in
Their accent for mouths not descended from Odin;
oe gives me a cold in the head, sets me wheez-
And coughing; and Russian is nothing but sneezing;
But fy Boing and Babel! I never have heard,

And I never shall hear (I well know it), one word

Of that delicate idiom of Paris without

Feeling morally sure, beyond question or doubt,
By the wild way in which my heart inw: flutter’d,
That m; heart's native tongue to my hi had been

utter’d, .
And whene’er I hear French spoken as I approve,
I feel myself quietly falling in love.

a

 

xii.
Lord Alfred, on hearing the stranger, appeased
a something, an accent, a cadence, which pleased
is ear with that pledge of good breeding which tells
At once of the world in whose fellowship dwells

pears, | ™ i Kk
From the fusion of forces whence issued the spheres! | The speaker tab Owns ity’ Was piad to renee

In the horseman a man one might meet after dark
Without fear.

And thus, not disagreeably impress’d,
As it seem’d, with each other, the two men abreast
Rode on slowly a moment.

XIV.
STRANGER.
I see, sir, you are
Asmoker. Allow me!

ED.
Pray take a cigar.

Many thanks! “Buch cig I here
any Bl... Buc ars are & .
Do you go to Serchon? on sree
ALFRED.
Yes; and you?
STRANGER.
Yes. Ifear
Since our road is the same, that our journey must be
Somewhat closer than is our tance. Yousee
How narrow the path is. I’m tempted to ask
Your permission to finish (no difficult task!)
The cigar you have given me (really a prize!)
In your company.
ALFRED.
Charm’d, sir, to find your road lies
In the way of my own inclinations! Indeed
The dream of your nation I find in this weed.
In the distant Savannahs a talisman grows
That makes all men brothers that use it... who

knows?
That blaze which erewhile from the Bouwlevart out-

roke,
It has ended where wisdom begins, sir—in smoke.
Messieurs Lopez (whatever your publicists write
Have done more in their way human kind to unite,
Perchance, than ten Prudhons.
STRANGER.
Yes. Ah, what a scene!

ALFRED.
Humph! Nature is here too pretentious. Her
en
Is too aeuehly. One likes to be coax’d, not com-

To the notice such beauty resents if withheld,

She seems to be saying too plainly, ‘‘ Admire me!”
And I answer, ‘‘ Yes, madam, I do: but you tire me,”
STRANGER.

That sunset, just now though .. .

ALFRED,
A very old trick!
One a think that the sun by this time must be

sic!
Of blushing at what, by this time, he must know
Too well to be shock’d by—this world.

GER,
Ah, ’tis so
With us a "Tis the sinner that best knew the
wor
At twenty, whose lip is, at sixty, most curl’d
With n of its follies. You stay at Serchon?
ALFRED?
A day or two only.
STRANGER.
The season is done,
ALFRED,
Already?

STRANGER.
*Twas shorter this year than the last.
Folly soon wears her shoes out, ie dances so fast,
We are all of us tired.

You know the place well?
STRANGER.
I have been there two seasons.
ALFRED.
Pray who is the Belle
Of the Baths at this moment?
STRANGER.
The same who has been
The belle of all places in which she is seen;
The belle of all Paris last winter; last spring

| The belle of all Baden.

ALFRED.
An uncommon thing!
STRANGER,
Sir, an uncommon beauty! . . . Trather should say,
An uncommon character. Truly, each day
One meets women whose beauty is equal to hers,
But none with the charm of Lucile de Nevers.

Madame de Nevers!

GER.
Do you know her?
ALFRED.

Or, rather, I knew her—a long time ago.
I ost forget...

Iknow,

GER.
What a wit! what a grace
In her , her movements! what play in her

face
And yet what a sadness she seems to conceal!
You speak like a lover.

 

 

 

STRANGER.
I speak as I feel,

But not like a lover, What interests me so

In Lucile, at the same time forbids me, I know,
To give to that interest, whate’er the sensation,
The name we men give to an hour’s admiration,
A night’s passing passion, an actress’s eyes,

A dancing girl’s ankles, a fine lady’s sighs.

‘ ALFRED.

Yes, Le comprehend, But this sadness—this
shade

Which you speak of? .. . it almost would make me
afraid

Your gay countrymen, sir, less adroit must have
grown,

Since when, as a ae at Paris, I own

I found in them terrible rivals—if yet

They have all lack’d the skill to console this regret

(If regret be the word I should use), or fulfill

This desire (if desire be the Tae which seems still

To endure unappeased. For I take it for granted,
From all that you say, that the will was not wanted.

XV.

The stranger replied, not without irritation:
pom = heard that an Englishman—one of your na-
ion
I presume—and if so, I must you, indeed,
To excuse the contempt whichT. . .”
ALFRED.

Pray, sir, proceed
With your tale. My compatriot, what wirme crime?

STRANGER.
Oh, nothing! His folly was not so sublime
As to merit that term. If I blamed him just now,
It was not for the sin, but the silliness.

ALFRED,
How?

STRANGER.
I own I hate Bor . Still, ... I admit,
Although I myself have no passion for it,
And do not understand, yet I cannot despise
The cold man of science, who walks with his eyes
All alert through a garden of flowers, and strips
The lilies’ gold tongues, and the roses’ red lips,
With a ruthless dissection; since he, I suppose,
Has some pu! beyond the mere mischief he does,
But the stupid and mischievous boy, that uproots
The exotics, and tramples the tender young shoots,
For a boy’s brutal time, and only Rocaian
He knows no ction *twixt heartsease and

haws—
One Oo ee for the sake of each nursling so
To catch the young rascal and have him well whipp’d!

ALFRED.
Some compatriot of mine, do I then understand,
With a cold Northern heart, and a rude English hand,
Has injured your Rosebud of France?

STRANGER,
Sir, I know

But little, or nothing. Yet some faces show

The last act of a tragedy in their meget:

Though the first scenes panting, it yet is not hard

To Seen or less, what the plot may have been,

And what sort of actors have pass’d o’er the scene.

And whenever I gaze on the face of Lucile.

With its pensive and ieee languor, I feel
burnt there . .

That some feeling ha . burnt out,
and burnt up
ae hope. So you feel when you gaze down
ec

uy
extinguiaiia volcanoes: you judge of the fire

Once there, by the ravage you see;—the desire,

2 § the apathy left in its wake, and that sense

Of a moral, immovable, mute impotence,

ALFRED.
Humph! ... I see you have finish’d, at last, your
Can I offer another?

GER.
No, thank you. Weare
Not two miles from Serchon.

‘You know the road well?
STRANGER.
I have often been over it.

XVI.
Here a pause fell

On their converse. Still musingly ee by side,
In the moonlight, the two men continued to ride
Down the dim mountain pathway. But each for the
Of their journe; ee they still rode on abreast,
Continued to follow in silence the train
Of the different feelings that haunted his brain;
And each, as they roused from a deep reverie,
Almost shouted, descen the mountain, to see
Burst at once on the moonlight the silvery Baths,
The long lime-tree alley, the dark sicataing penne,
With the lantpe twinkling through them—the quaint
wooden roofs—
The little white houses,

The clatter of hoofs,

And the music of wande. bands, up the walls

Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals

Beach 4. ine, cross’d by the sound of the clacking
And here and there, faintly, through serpentine sli:
Of verdant rose-garden, Gente aheliered ‘attr Screg
Of airy acacias and dark eve ns,

They could mark the white and catch the

ny So songs,
Of the lovely Parisians that wander’d in throngs,
Led by Laughter and Love through the cold even-

ide
Down the dream-haunted valley, or up the hillside,

 
.

 

 

LUCILE.

 

 

 

XVII.
At length at the door of the inn l’H=risson,

vet go there, if aan go to Serchon!)
e two horsemen, well pleased to have reach’d it,

And eet th ir last greetings.
nd exc! eir las q
The Frenéhman invited
Lord Alfred to dinner. Lord Alfred declined.
He had letters to write, and felt tired. So he dined
In his own rooms that night. i
; With an unquiet eye
He watch’d his onan depart; nor knew why,
Beyond all accountable reason or measure,
He felt in his breast such a sovran displeasure,
“The fellow’s good-looking,” he murmured at last,
“And yet not a coxcomb.” Some ghost of the past
Vex’d him still.
“Tf he love her,” he thought, “let him win her.”
Then he turn’d to the future—and order’d his dinner,

XVI

Oh hour of all hours, the most bless’d upon earth,
Blessed hour of our dinners!
The land of his birth;

The face of his first love; the bills that he owes;

The twaddle of friends and the venom of foes;

The sermon he heard when to church he last went;

The money he borrow’d, the money he spent;—

All of these things a man, I believe, may forget,

And not be the worse for forgetting; but yet

Never, never, oh never! earth’s luckiest sinner

Hath unpunish’d forgotten the hour of his dinner!

indication, that conscience of every bad stomach,

Sh eee gnaw and pursue him with some
ache

Or some pain; and trouble, remorseless, his best

ease.
As the Furies once troubled the sleep of Orestes.

XIX.

‘We may live without poetry, music, and art;
‘We may live without conscience, and live without

eart;
We may live without friends; we may live without

But civilized man cannot live without cooks.
He may live without books—what is knowledge but

grieving? ;
He ae me without hope—what is hope but deceiv-
He may live without love—what is passion but pin-

But where is the man that can live without dining?

xX.
Lord Alfred found, waiting his coming, a note
from Lucile.
“* Your last letter has reach’d me,” she wrote.

“This evening, alas! I must go to the
And shall not be at home till too late for your call;
But to-morrow, at any rate, sans faute, at one
You will find me at home, and will find me alone.
Meanwhile, let me thank you sincerely, milord,
For the honor with which you adhere to your word,
Yes, Ithank you, Lord Alfred! To-morrow, then.

: ae

XXL

I find myself terribly puzzled to tell
The feel with which Alfred Vargrave flung down
This note, as he pour’d out his wine. I must own
That I think he, If, could have hardly explain’d
Those feelings exactly.

“Yes, yes,” as he drain’d
The glass Sore he mutter’d, “‘ Jack’s right, after all.

The coque't
“Does milord mean to go to the ball?”
Ask’d the waiter, who linger’d.
‘Perhaps. I don’t know.
‘You may keep me a ticket, in case I should go.”

XXIL
Oh, better, no doubt, is a dinner of herbs,
‘When season’d by love, which no rancor disturbs,
And sweaten’d by all that is sweetest in life,
Than turbot, bisque, ortolans, eaten in strife!
But if, out of humor, and hungry, alone,
A man should sit down to a dinner, each one
Of the dishes of which the cook chooses to spoil
‘With a horrible mixture of garlic and oil,
The chances are ten against one, I must own,
He gets up as ill-temper’d as when he sat down.
And if any reader this fact to dispute is :
Disposed, I say . . . ‘* Alliwm edat cicutis Pica

Nocentius!”

Over the fruit and the wine
Undisturb’d the wasp settled. The evening was fine.
Lord Alfred his chair by the window had set,
And languidly lighted his small cigarette.
The window was open. The warm air without
Waved the flame of the candles, The moths were

about,
In the gloom he sat gloomy.
XXIII.
; Gay sounds from below
Floated up like faint echoes of joy long ago.

And night deepen’d apace; through the dark avenues
The lamps twinkled bright; and by threes, and by

twos,

The idlers of Serchon were strolling at will,
As Lord Alfred could see from the cool window-sill,
RA pedir gore as he idly turn’d 7 fell o’er

rave) companion, now passing before
The inn, at the window of which he still at
In full toilet—boots varnish’d, and snowy cravat,
Gayly smoothing and buttoning a yellow kid glove,
As he turn’d down the avenue.

Watching above,

From his apres the stranger, who stopp’d as he |

walk

_A soft breeze in the white window drape:

 

To mix with those groups, and now nodded, now
talk’d,

To the young Paris dandies, Lord Alfred discern’d,
By the way hats were lifted, and glances were turn’d,
That oe unknown acquaintance, now bound for the
Wasa person of rank or of fashion; for all

Whom he bow’d to in passing, or stopp’d with and |

chatter’d,
Walk’d on with a look which implied .. . . “‘I feel
flatter’d!””
XXIV.
His form was soon lost in the distance and gloom.

XXV.
Lord Alfred still sat by himself in his room.
He had finish’d, one after the other, a dozen
Or more cigarettes. He had thought of his cousin:
He. had thought of Matilda, and thought of Lucile:
He had shone t about many things: thought a great
e:
Of himself: of his past life, his future, his present:
He had thought of the moon, neither full moon nor
crescent:
Of the gay world, so sad! life, so sweet and so sour!
He sake thought, too, of glory, and fortune, and

power:
Thought of love, and the country, and sympathy, and
A poet’s asylum in some distant land:

Thought of man in the abstract, and woman, no |

doubt,
In particular; also he had thought much about
His digestion, his debts, and his dinner: and last,

He thought that the night would be stupidly pass’d

If he thought any more of such matters at all:
So he rose, and resolved to set out for the ball.

XXVI.

I believe, ere he finish’d his tardy toilet,

That Lord Alfred had spoil’d and flung by in a pet,

Half a dozen white neckcloths, and look’d for the
nonce

Twenty times in the glass, if he look’d in it once.

I believe that he split up, in drawing them on,

Three pair of pale lavender gloves, one by one.

And this is the reason, no doubt, that at last.

When he reached the Casino, although he walk’d fast,

He heard, as he hurriedly enter’d the door,

The church'clock strike twelve.

XXVIII.

The last waltz was just o’er.
The chaperons and dancers were all in a flutter.
A crowd block’d the door: and a buzz and a mutter
Went about in the room as a young man, whose face
Lord Alfred had seen ere he entered that place
But a few hours ago, through the pe ‘umed and

warm
Flowery porch, with a lady that lean’d on his arm
Like a queen in a fable of old fairy days,
Left the ballroom.
* The hubbub of comment and praise,
Reach’d Lord Alfred as just then he es A
“Ha foi!”
Said a Frenchman beside him,.... “That lucky
Luvois
Has ec all the gifts of the gods.... rank and
wea
And good looks, and then such inexhaustible health!
He that hath shall have more, and this truth, I sur-

mise,

Is the cause why, to-night, bye beautiful eyes

Of la charmante Lucile more distinguished than all,

He so gayly goes off with the belle of the ball.”

“Ts it true?” ask’d a nore eae fat,

Who, fierce as a female Leviathan, sai

By another that look’d like a needle, all steel

And tenuity—‘ Luvois will marry Lucile?’

The needle seem’d jerk’d by a virulent twitch,

As though it were bent upon driving a stitch

Through somebody’s character.

Interposi h t by thelr side Por"
ni , a young man who sat by their side,

And was Tagua 7 taniidnes his face with his hat,
“Tm ready to bet my new Tilbury that

If Luvois has proposed, the Comtesse has refused.”

The fat and thin ladies were highly amused.
‘Refused! . . . what! a young Duke, not thirty, my

dear,
With at least half a million (what is it?) a year!”
“That may be,” said the third; ‘‘yet I know some
time since .
Castelmar was refused, though as rich, and a Prince.
But Luvois, who was never before in his life
In love with a woman who was not a wife,

'| Is now certainly serious.”

XXIX.
The music once more
Recommenced.
XXX.
Said Lord Alfred, ‘‘ This ball is a bore!”’
And return’d to the inn, somewhat worse than be-

fore.
XXXI

There,while musing he lean’d the dark valley above,

Through the warm land were wand’ring the spirits
of love.

‘ stirr’d;

In the blossom’d acacia the lone cricket chirr’d;

The scent of the roses fell faint o’er the night,

And eee on the mountain was dreaming in

&)
Repose, and yet rapture! that pensive wild nature
Impregnate with passion in each breat feature!
A stone’s throw from thence, through the e lime-

trees peep’d,
In a garden of roses, a white chalet, steep’d

 

=

In the rage The windows oped down to the
wh;
The casements were open; the curtains were drawn;
Lights eens from the inside; and with them tho
soun

Of music and song. In the garden, around

A table with fruits, wine, tea, ices, there set,

Half a dozen young men and young women were met.

Light, laughter, and voices, and music, all stream’d
Through 4 quiet-leaved limes. At the window there
seem’

For one moment the outline, familiar and fair,
Of a white dress, a white neck, and soft dusky hair,
Which Lord Alfred remember’d . . , a moment or

so

It hover’d, then pass’d into shadow; and slow
The soft notes, from a tender piano upflung,
Floated forth, and a voice unforgotten thus sung:

“ Hear a song that was born in the land of my birth!
The anchors are lifted, the fair ship is free,
And the shout of the mariners floats in its mirth
*Twixt the light in the sky and the light on the sea.
“And = ship is a world. She is freighted with
souls,
She is freighted with merchandise: proudly she
sai
With eo that stores, and the Will that con-

rol
The gold in the ingots, the silk in the bales.

“From the gardens of Pleasure, where reddens the

‘Ose,
And the scent of the cedar is faint on the air,
Past the harbors of Traffic, sublimely she goes,
ua. hopee o’er the world of the waters to

| Bele! the cheer from the harbors of Traffic is

 

eard,
Weegee gardens of Pleasure fade fast on the

sig
O’er the rose, o’er the cedar, there passes a bird;
*T is the Paradise Bird, never known to alight.

“And that bird, bright and bold as a Poet’s desire,

Roams her own native heavens, the realms cf
her birth. (

There she soars like a seraph, she shines like a

re,
And her plumage hath never been sullied by
earth.

* And bs mariners greet her; there’s song on each
i) 2 “
For that bird of good omen, and joy in each
eye.
And the ship and the bird, and the bird and the

iP;
Together go forth over ocean and sky.

“Fast, fast fades the land! far the rose-gardens flee,
And far fleet the harbors. In regions unknown
The ship is alone on a desert of sea,
And the bird in a desert of sky is alone.

“Tn those regions unknown, o’er that desert of air,

Down 4 desert of waters — tremendous in
wrath—

The storm-wind_ Euroclydon leaps from his lair,

And cleaves, through the waves of the ocean,
his path.

‘“‘And the bird in the cloud, and the ship on the
wave,
Overtaken, are beaten about by wild gales;
And the mariners all rush their ‘0 to save,
Of the gold in the ingots, the in the bales.
“To! So eeeraa which never before hath been
eard,
For it never before hath been given Se
On the aan hath descended the Paradise Bird,
The Paradise Bird, never known to alight!
“The pt which the mariners bless’d when each
Had I song for the omen that gladden’d each
eye;
The bright bird for shelter hath flown to the ship
ee we wrath on the sea and the wrath in
e sky.

‘But the mariners heed not the bird any more.
They Te felling the masts—they are cutting the

Some are working, some weeping, and some
yoains o’er str
Their gold in the ingots, their silk in the bales.
“Souls of men are on board; wealth of man in the
old:
And the storm-wind Euroclydon sweeps to his
rey:
And ho heeds the bird? ‘Save the silk and
the gold!’
And the re from her shelter the gust sweeps
away

“Poor Paradise Bird! on her lone flight once more
Back again in the wake of the wind she is

driven—
To be ’whelm’d in the storm, or above it to soar,
Sf SOND SP POON. AO, SN oh

ven

“And oa ship rides the waters, and weathers the
les: ,
From the haven she nears the rej is heard.

All hands are at work on the ingots, the bales,
Save a a. sitting lonely, who misses — the
S EE SUN eee Lee

CANTO THIRD.
I

Wir stout iron shoes be my Pegasus shod!
For my road is a rough one: flint, stubble, and clod,
Blue clay, and black quagmire, brambles no few,
And I gallop up-hill, now.

There’s terror that’s true
In that tale of a youth who, one night at a revel,
Amidst music and mirth lured and wiled by some

devil,
Follow’d ever one mask through the mad masque-

rade,

Till, pursued to some chamber deserted (‘tis said),

He ——” with a kiss, the strange lady, an
stood

Face to face with a Thing not of flesh nor of blood.

in this Masque of the Passions, call’d Life, there’s
no human

Emotion, though mask’d, or in man or in woman,

But, when faced and unmask’d, it will leave us at

Struck by some supernatural aspect aghast.

Yor truth is appalling and eldritch, as seen

By this world’s artificial lamplights, and we screen

irom ne sight the strange vision that troubles our

ife.

Alas! why is Genius forever at strife

With the world, which, despite the world’s self, it
ennobles? :

Why is it that Genius perplexes and troubles

And offends the effete life it comes to renew?

*T is the terror of truth! ’t is that Genius is true!

I.

Lucile de Nevers (if her riddle I read)
Was a woman of genius; whose genius, indeed,
With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that

ife
The chance had been hers to escape from this strife
in herself; finding peace in the life of another

rom the passionate wants she, in hers, failed to

smother.

But the chance fell too soon, when the crude rest-
less power

Which had been to her nature so fatal a dower,

Only wearied the man it yet haunted and thrall’d;

An go aan once lost, had been never re-
call’

Yet it left her heart sore: and, to shelter her heart
rom approach, she then sought, in that delicate art
Of concealment, those thousand adroit strategies
Of feminine wit, which repel while they please,

A weapon, at once, and a shield, to conceal

And defend all that women can earnestly feel.

ee striving her instincts to hide and repress,

She felt frighten’d at times by her very success:

She pined for the hill-tops, the clouds; and the stars:
Golden wires may annoy us as much as steel bars

If they keep us behind prison-windows: impassion’d
Her heart rose and burst the light cage she had

fashion
Out of glittering trifles around it.
Unknown

To herself, all her instincts, without hesitation,
Embraced the idea of self-immolation.

The strong spirit in her, had her life but been blended
With some man’s whose heart had her own compre-

hended,

Allits wealth at his feet would have lavishly thrown.
For him she had struggled and striven alone;

For him had aspired; in him had transfused

All the gladness and grace of her nature; and used
¥or him only the spells of its delicate power:

Like the ministering fairy that brings from her bower
To some maze all the treasures, whose use the fond

elf,
More enrich’d by her love, disregards for herself.
But standing apart, as she ever had done,
And her genius, which needed a vent, finding none
Iu the broad fields of action thrown wide to man’s
power,
She unconsciously made it her bulwark and tower,
And built in it her refuge, whence lightly she hurl’d
Her contempt atthe fashions and forms of the world.

And ie eee cause why she now miss’d and
‘aile

‘That firm hold upon life she so keenly assail’d,

Was, in all those diurnal occasions that place

Say—the world and the woman opposed face to face,

Where the woman must yield, she, refusing to stir,

Offended the world, which in turn wounded her,

As before, in the old-fashion’d manner, I fit

To this character, also, its moral: to wit,

Say—the world is a nettle; disturb it, it stings:

Grasp it firmly, it stings not. On one of two things,
If you would not be stung, it behooves you to settle:
Avoid it, or crush it. She crush’d not the nettle;
Yor she could not; nor would she avoid it; she tried
With the weak hand of woman to thrust it aside, ©
And it stung her. A woman is too slight a thing

To trample the world without feeling its sting,

TI.

One lodges but simply at Serchon; yet, thanks
To the season that changes forever the banks
Of the blossoming mountains, and shifts the light

cloud
O’er the valley, and hushes or rouses the loud
Wind that wails in the pines, or creeps murmuring

down
‘The dark evergreen a to the slumbering town,
And the torrent that falls, faintly heard from afar,

And the blue-bells that purple the dapple-gray scaur,
One sees with each month of the many-faced year
A thousand sweet changes of beauty appear.

The chalet where dwelt the Comtesse de Nevers
Rested half up the base of a mountain of firs,

In a garden of roses, reveal’d to the road,

 

Yet io from its noise; ’t was a peaceful
abode.

And oe pales and the roofs, with their gables like
S,

Which the monks wear, were built of sweet resinous

woods,
The sunlight of noon, as Lord Alfred ascended
The steep garden paths, every odor had blended
Of the ardent carnations, and faint heliotropes,
With the balms floated down from the dark wooded
slopes:
A light breeze at the windows was playing about,
And the white curtains floated, now in, and now out.
The house was all hush’d when he rung at the door,
Which was open’d to him in a moment, or more,
By an old nodding negress, whose sable head shined
In the sun like a cocoa-nut polish’d in Ind,
*Neath the snowy foward which about it was wound.

Iv.

Lord Alfred sprung forward at once, with a bound.
He remember’d the nurse of Lucile. The old dame,
Whose teeth and whose eyes used to beam when he

came,

With a boy’s eager step, in the blithe days of yore,

To pass, unannounced, her young mistress’s door.

The old woman had fondled Lucile on her knee

When she left, as an infant, far over the sea,

In India, the tomb of a mother, unknown,

To pine, a pale flow’ret, in great Paris town.

She had sooth’d the child’s sobs on her breast, when
she read

The letter that told her, her father was dead.

An astute, shrewd adventurer, who, like Ulysses,

Had studied men, cities, laws, wars, the abysses

Of statecraft, with vouritg fortunes, was he.

He had wander’d the world thro’ by land and by sea,

And knew it in most of its phases. Strong will,

Subtle tact, and soft manners, had given him skill

To conciliate Fortune, and courage to brave

Her displeasure. Thrice shipwreck’d, and cast by
the wave

On his own quick resources, they rarely had fail’d *

His command: often baffled, he ever prevail’d

In his combat with fate: to-day flatter’d and fed

By monarchs, to-morrow in search of mere bread.

The offspring of times trouble-haunted, he came

Of a family ruin’d, yet noble in name,

He lost sight of his fortune, at twenty, in France;

And, half statesman, half soldier, and wholly Free-

lance,
Had wander’d in search of it, over the world,
Into India.
But scarce had the monad unfurl’d
His wandering tent at Mysore, in the smile
Of a Rajah (whose court he controll’d for a while,
And Seomlare he prompted and govern’d by
stea. 3
Scarce, indeed, had he wedded an Indian of wealth,
Who died giving birth to this daughter, before
He was borne to the tomb of his wife at Mysore.
His fortune, which fell to his orphan, perchance
Had secured her a home with his sister in France,
A lone woman, the last of the race left. Lucile
Neither felt, nor affected, the wish to conceal
The half-Eastern blood, which ene to bequeath
eee now and then, though but rarely, beneath
‘That outward repose that conceal’d it in her)
A something half wild to her strange character.
The nurse with the orphan, awhile broken-hearted,
At the door of a convent in Paris had parted.
But later, once more, with her mistress she tarried
When the gi, by that grim maiden aunt, had beén
marrie
To a dreary old Count, who had sullenly died,
With no claim on her tears—she had wept as a bride,
Said Lord Alfred, ‘‘ Your mistress expects me.”

The crone
Oped the drawing-room door, and there left him
alone. — ¥

O’er the soft atmosphere of this temple of grace
Rested silence and perfume. No sound reach’d the

ace,
In the white curtains waver’d the delicate shade
Of the heaving acacias, through which the breeze

Fmt
Over 0 smooth wooden floor, polish’d dark as a
glass,
erage white Indian matting allow’d you to pass.
In light olive baskets, by window and door,
Some hung from the ceiling, some crowding the

floor,
Rich wild flowers pluck’d by Lucile from the hill,
Seem’d the room with their passionate presence to
Blue aconite, hid in white roses, reposed;
The deep belladonna its vermeil disclosed ;
And the frail saponaire, and the tender blue-bell,
And the purple valerian—each child of the fell
And the solitude flourish’d, fed fair from the source
Of waters the huntsman scarce heeds in his course,
Where the chamois and izard, with delicate hoof,
Pause or flit through the pinnacled silence aloof.

VI

Here you felt, by the sense of its beauty reposed.

That you stood in a shrine of sweet thoughts. Half
unclosed

Tn ‘the light slept the flowers: all was pure and at
rest;

All peacebul; all modest; all seem’d self-possess’d, «

And aware of the silence. No vestige nor trace

Ofa young woman’s coquetry troubled the place.

He stood by the window. A cloud pass’d the sun.

A light breeze uplifted the leaves, one by one.

Just then Lucile entered the room, undiscern’d

By Lord Alfred, whose face to the window was

turn’d,
In a strange reverie,

“

|
|

 

 

The time was, when Lucile,

In beholding that man, could not help but reveal
The rapture, the fear, which wrench’d out every

nerve
In the heart of the girl from the woman’s reserve.
And now—she gazed at him, calm, smiling,—per-

chance
Indifferent,

VIL.
Indifferently turning his glance,

Alfred Vai ve encounter’d that gaze unaware.
O’er a bodice snow-white stream’d her soft dusky

hair;
A rose-bud half blown in her hand; in her eyes

A half-pensive smile,

_ ., . Asharp cry of surprise
Escaped from his lips: some unknown agitation,
An invincible trouble, a strange palpitation,
Confused his ingenious and frivolous wit;
Overtook, and entangled, and paralyzed it.
That wit so complacent and docile, that ever
Lightly came at the call of the lightest endeavor,
and coin’d, and availably current as gold,
Which, secure of its value, so fluently roll’d
In free circulation from hand on to hand
For the usage of all, at a moment’s command;
For once it rebell’d, it was mute and unstirr’d,
And he looked at Lucile without speaking a word.

VIII.

Porkats what so troubled him was, that the face
On whose features he gazed had no more thana

trace
Of the face his remembrance had imaged for

ears.
Yes! “ae face he remember’d was faded with tears:
Grief had famish’d the figure, and dimm/’d the dark

eyes,
And ee the pale lips, too acquainted with

sighs.

And that tender, and gracious, and fond coquetterie

Of a woman who knows her least ribbon to be

Something dear to the lips that so warmly caress

Every sacred detail of her exquisite j

In the careless toilet of Lucile—then too sad

To care sent to her changeable beauty to add—

Lord Alfred had never admired before!

Alas! poor Lucile, in those weak days of yore,

Had neglected herself, never beefing, nor thinking

(While the blossom and bloom of her beauty were
shrinking)

That sorrow can beautify only the heart—

Not the face—of a woman; and can but impart

Its endearment to one that has suffer’d. truth

Grief hath beauty for grief; but gay youth loves gay
youth. 1x

The woman that now met, unshrinking, his gaze,
Seem’d to bask in the silent but sumptuous haze
Of that soft second summer, more ripe than the

first
VE returns when the bud to the blossom hath
Ww

rs!
In despite of the stormiest April. Lucile
Had acquired that matchless unconscious ap
To 7 ; = add which none but a churl wo
old —
That caressing and exquisite grace—never bold,
Everypresent—which just a few women possess.
From a healthful repose, undisturb’d by the stress
Of unquiet emotions, her soft cheek had drawn
A freshness as pure as the twilight of dawn.
Her figure, though slight, had revived everywhere
The luxurious proportions of youth; and her hair—
Once shorn as an Offering to passionate love—
Now floated or rested redundant above
Her airy pure forehead and throat; gather’d loose
Under which, by one violet knot, the profuse
Milk-white folds of a cool modest garment reposed,
Rippled faint by the breast they half hid, half dis-

closed.
And her simple attire thus in all things reveal’d
The fine art which so artfully all things conceal’d

x.

Lord Alfred, who never conceived that Lucile
Could have look’d so enchanting, felt tempted to

id with-

nee!
At her feet, and her eae with passion implore;
But the calm smile that met him sufficed to restore
The pride and the bitterness needed to meet

The occasion with dignity due and discreet.

XI.
“Madam *—thus he began with a voice reassured—
“You see that your latest command has secured
My immediate obedience—presuming I may
Consider my freedom restored from this day.”»—
“T had thought,” said Lucile, with a smile gay yet

sad
“That yo freedom from me not a fetter has had.
Indeed! . . . in my chains have you rested till now?
I had not so flattered myself, I avow!”
‘For Heaven’s sake, madam,” Lord Alfred replied,
“Do not Jest! has the moment no sadness?’ he

“Tis an ancient tradition,” she answered, ‘‘a tale
Often told—a position too sure to iat

In the end of all legends of love. If we wrote,

When we first love, foreseeing that hour yet remote,
Wherein of necessity each would recall

From the other the poor foolish records of all

Those emotions, whose pain, when recorded, seem’d

bli
Should we write as we wrote? But one thinks not of

is
At twenty (who does not at twenty?) we write
Believing eternal the frail vows we plight;
And we smile with a confident pity, above
The vulgar results of all poor human loye:

presage

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a

 

For we deem, with that vanity common to youth,
Because what we feel in our bosoms, in truth,

Is novel to us—that *t is novel to earth,

And will prove the exception, in durance and worth,
To the great law to which all on earth must incline.
The error was noble, the vanity fine! _

Shall we blame it because we survive it? ah, no;

*T was the youth of our youth, my lord, is it not so?”

XII.

Lord Alfred was mute. He remember’d her yet

A child—the weak sport of each moment’s regret,
Blindly yielding herself to the errors of life,

The pares of youth, and borne down by the

strife ,
And the tumult of passion; the tremulous toy
Of each transient emotion of pe or of joy.
But to watch her pronounce the death-warrant of all
The illusions of life—lift, unflinching, the pall
From the bier of the dead Past—that woman so fair,
And so you yet her own self-survivor; who there
Traced her life’s epitaph with a finger so cold!
T was a picture that pain’d his self-love to behold.
He himself knew—none bettcr—thefthings to be said
Up an like this. Yet he bow’d down his

And as thus, with a trouble he could not command.

Been crumpling the letters he held in his hand,

7 at Aer me Sele, ae ob Tot rs og what

wo Say 1s, you yet recollect (do you no

Lord Alfred?) enough of my nature, to know

That these pledges of what was perhaps long ago

A foolish affection, I do not repall’

From those motives of prudence which actuate all

Or most women when their love ceases. Indeed,

If you have such a doubt, to dispel it I need

But oe you that ten years these letters have
reste

Unreclaim’d in your hands.” A reproach seem’d
suggested

By. these words. To meet it, Lord Alfred look’d up.

¢ tis gaze had been fix’d on a blue Sevres cup

ith a look of profound connoisseurship—a smile

Of sin, r interest and care, all this while.)

He look’d up, and look’d long in the face of Lucile,

To mark if that face by a sign would rev

At the thought of Miss Darcy the least jealous pain.

He look’d keenly and long, yet he look’d there in
vain.

“You are generous, madam,” he murmur’d at last,

And into his voice a light irony pass’d.

He had look’d for reproaches, and fully arranged

His forces, But straighvway the enemy changed

The position,

xa.

**Come!’’ ayly. Lucile interposed,
With a smile whose divinely deep sweetness dis-

clos
Some depth in her nature he never had known,
While she tenderly laid her light hand on his own,
“Do not think I abuse occasion. We gain
Justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in
vain,
From me not a single reproach can you hear.
Lhave sinn’d to myself—to the world—nay, I fear
To you chiefly. The woman who loves should, indeed.
Be the friend of the man that she loves, She should

heed
Not her selfish and often mistaken desires,
But his interest whose fate her own interest inspires;
And, rather than seek to allure, for her sake,
His life down the turbulent, fanciful wake
Of impossible destinies, use all her art
That his ew in the world find its place in her heart,
I, alas!—I perceived not this truth till too late;
I tormented your ue and darken’d your fate.
Forgive me the ill I have done for the sake
Of its long expiation!”

XIV.
Lord Alfred, a‘
Seem’d S wander from dream on. to Gromn: inthet
seal

Where he sat as a criminal, ready to meet

His accuser, he found himself turn’d by some change,
As surprising, and all unexpected as strange,

To the judge from whose mercy indulgence was

sought.
All the world’s foolish pride in that moment was

or tt; ‘

He felt all his plausible theories ;

And, thrill’d by the beauty of nature disclosed

In the pathos of all he had witness’d, his head

He bow’d, and faint words self-reproachfully said

As he lifted her hands to his lips.” "T'wasa hand ’

White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid and bland.

The hand of a woman is often, in youth,

Somewhat rough
less, in truth;

Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm,

Or as Sorrow has crossed the life-line in the palm?

Say

The more that he look’d, that he listen’d, the more _

He discovered perfections unnoticed before.

Less salient than once, less poetic, perchance,

This woman who had thus survived the romance
That had made him its hero, and breathed him its

sighs,
Seem’d more charming a thousand times o’er to his

eyes.

Together they talk’d of the years since when last

They parted, contrasting the present, the past.

Yet no memory marr’d their light converse. Lucile
estion’d much, with the interest a sister might feel,

somewhat red, somewhat grace- |

 

Lue
| Duke, I scarcely conceive...

f Lord Alfred’s new life—of Miss Darcy—her face, |

Her temper, accomplishménts—pausing ‘to trace
The advantage derived from a hymen so fit.

Of herself, she recounted with humor and wit,
Her journeys, her daily employments, the lands

| And reproach’d him.

 

She a a and the books she had read, and the
ands

She had shaken.

In all that she said there appear’d
Anamiable irony. Laughing, she rear’d
The temple of reason, with ever a touch
Of light scorn at her work, reveal’d only so much
As there gleams, in the thyrsus that Bacchanals bear,
Through the blooms of a garland the point of a spear.
But above, and beneath, and beyond all of this,
To that soul, whose experience had paralyzed bliss,
A benighted indulgence, to all things resign’d,
A justice, a sweetness, a méekness of mind,
Gave a luminous beauty, as tender and faint
And serene as the halo encircling a saint.

XVI.

Unobserved by Lord Alfred the time fleeted by
To each novel sensation spontaneously
He abandon’d himself with that ardor so strange
Which ane to a mind grown accustom’d to
change.
He sought, with well-practiced and delicate art,
To surprise from Lucile the true state of her heart;
But his efforts were vain, and the woman, as ever,
More adroit than the man, baffled every endeavor.
When he deem’d he had touch’d on some chord in
her being, :
At the touch it dissolved, and was gone. Ever fleeing
As ever he near it advanced, when he thought
To have seized, and proceeded to analyze aught
Of the moral existence, the absolute soul,
Light as vapor the phantom escaped his control,
XVI. {
From the hall, on a sudden, a sharp ring was heard.
In the pa: e without a quick footstep there stirr’d.
At eae ie nock’d the negress, and thrust in her
ead,
‘The Duke dé Luvois had just enter’d,” she said,
** And insisted—”
“The Duke!”’ cried Lucile (as she spoke
The Duke’s step, approaching, a light echo woke).
bh I do not receive till the evening. Explain,”
As she glanced at Lord Alfred, she added again,
“T have business of private importance.”
There came
O’er Lord Alfred at once, at the sound of the name,
An invincible sense of vexation. He turn’d
To Lucile, and he fancied he faintly discern’d
On her face an indefinite look of confusion.
On his mind instantaneously flash’d the conclusion,
That his presence had caused it,
He said, with a sneer
Which he did not repress, “Let not me interfere
With the claims on your time, lady! when you are free
From more pleasant engagements, allow me to see
And to wait on you later,’
The words were not said
Ere he wish’d to recall them. He bitterly read
The mistake he had made in Lucile’s ing eye.
Inclining her head, as in . reply,
More reproachful perchance than all utter’d rebuke,
She sai merely, resuming her seat, “‘Tell the Duke
He may enter.”
And vex’d with his own words and hers,
Alfred Vargrave bow’d low to Lucile de Nevers,
Pass’d the casement and enter’d the garden. Before
His shadow was fled the Duke stood at the door,

XVIII

When left to his thoughts in the garden alone,
en stood, strange to himself. With dull
ne

Of importance, through cities of rose and carnation,
Went the bee on his business from station to station.
The minute mirth of summer was shrill all around;
Its incessant small voices like sti seem ’d to soun
On his sore Sngry sense. He stoo: grieving the hot
Solid sun with his shadow, nor stirr’d from the spot.
The last look of Lucile still bewilder’d, Pea

: The Duke’s visit goaded and

vex’d.

He had not yet given the letters. Again

He must visit Lucile. He resolved to remain

Where he was till the Duke went. In short, he
would stay,

Were it only to know when the Duke went away.

But just as he form’d this resolve, he perceiv:

{pone toward him, between the thick-leaved

And luxuriant laurels, Lucile and the Duke.

Thus surprised, his first thought was to seek for
some nook

Whence = might, unobserved, from the garden re-
treat.

| They had not yet seen him. The sound of their feet

And their voices had warn’d him in time. They
were walking *

eee The Duke (a true Frenchman) was
alking

With the action of Talma. He saw at a glance

That they barr’d the sole path to the gateway. No
chance

Of escape save in instant concealment! Deep-dipp’d

In thick foliage, an arbor stood near. In he slipp’d,

Saved from sight, as in front of that ambush they

ass’d,
Still conversing. Beneath a laburnum at last
They paused, and sat down on a bench in the shade,
So close that he could not but hear what they said.

XIX.
TLE.

Luvors. ;
Ah, forgive! . . . I desired
So deeply to see you to-day. You retired
So early last night from the ball . ... this whole week
Ihave seen you pale, silent, preoccupied . . . speak,

| The sudden, acute
| With which he

 

J

Speak, Lucile, and forgive me! ...I know that I

am.
A rash fool—but I love you! Ilove you, madame, {
More than language cansay! Do not deem, oh Lu-

cile.
That the love I no ee have strength to conceal
Is a passing caprice! It is strange to my nature,
It has made me, unknown to myself, a new creature.
Iimplore you to sanction and save the new life
Which s y at your feet with this prayer—Be my
wife;
Stoop, and raise me!
Lord Alfred could scarcely restrain
ang of anger and pain
heard this. As though to some
wind

The leaves of the hush’d, windless laurels behind
The two thus in converse were suddenly stirr’d.
The sound half betrayed him. They started. He

heard.
Tho low voice of Lucile; but so faint was its tone
That her answer escaped him.
Luvois hurried on,
As though in remonstrance with what had been

spoken.

“Nay, I know it, Lucile! but your heart was not
broken

By the trial in which all its fibers were proved.

Laren aneN you mistrust, yet you need to be
loved.

You mistake your own feelings. I fear you mistake

What so ill I interpret, those feelings which make

awe like these vague and feeble. Whatever your

eart
May have suffer’d of yore, this can only impart
A pity profound to the love which I feel.
Hush! hush! I know all. Tell me nothing, Lucile.”
“You know all, Duke?’ she said; “‘ well then, know
that, in truth,
Ihave learned from the rude lesson taught to my

youth
From my own heart to shelter my life; to mistrust
The heart of another. We are what we must,

And not what we would be. I know that one hour
Assures not another. The will and the power
Are diverse.”

“Oh, madam!” he answer’d, “you fence
With a feeling you know to be true and intense.
Tis not my life, Lucile, that I plead for alone;
If your nature I know, ’tis no Jess for your own.
That nature will prey on itself; it was made
To influence others. Consider,” he said,
“That genius craves power—what scope for it here?
Gifts less noble to me give command of that sphere
In which genius is power. Such gifts you despise?
But you do not disdain what such gifts realize!
I offer you, lady, a name not unknown—
A fortune which worthless, without you, is grown—
All my life at your feet I lay down—at your feet
A heart which for you, and you only, can beat.”

*

Lucie.
That heart, Duke, that life—I respect both. The
name

And tian an offer, and all that you claim
In behalf of their nobler employment, I feel
To deserve what, in turn, I now you—
Louvors. -
Lucile!
LUcILE.
Task you to leave me—
Lvvo’

IS.
You do not reject?

Lucie.
I ask you to leave me the time to reflect.

Luvois.
You ask me?—
Lucite.
—The time to reflect.
Lovots.
Say—One word!
May I hope?

The reply of Lucile was not heard
By Lord Alfred; for just then she rose, and moved

on,
The Duke bow’d his lips o’er her hand, and was

gone.
3a:

Not a sound save the birds in the bushes. And when
Alfred Vargrave reel’d forth to the sunlight again,
He just saw the white robe of the woman recede

As she enter’d the house.
Scarcely conscious indeed
Of his steps, he too follow’d, and enter’d.

XXxI.
3 He enter’d
Unnoticed; Lucile never stirr’d: so concenter’d
And wholly absorb’d in her thoughts she appear’d,
Her back to the window was turn’d. As he near’d
The sofa, her face from the glass was reflected.
Her dark eyes were fix’d on the ground. Pale, de-

jected, -

And lost in profound meditation she seem’d.

Softly, silently, over her droop’d shoulders stream’d
The rnoon sunlight. The cry of alarm

And Si oe which escaped her, as now on her arm
Alfred Vargrave let fall a hand -— cold
And clammy as death, all too cruelly told
How far he had been trom her thoughts.

XXII.
All his cheek
Was disturb’d with the effort it cost him to speak.
“Tt was not my fault. I have heard all,” he said.
“Now ae letters—and farewell, Lucile! When you
we
May—”
The sentence broke short, like a weapon that
snaps .
8 THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

‘When the weight of a man is upon it,
‘ Perhaps,”

Said Lucile (her sole answer reveal’d in the flush

Of quick color which up to her brows seem’d to rush
In reply to those few broken words), “ this farewell
Ts our last, Alfred Vargrave, in life. Who can tell?
Let a part without bitterness. Here are your let-

ers.

Be assured I retain you no more in my fetters!”"—
She laughed, as she said this, a little sad laugh,

And stretched out her hand with the letters. And

Wroth to feel his wrath rise, and unable to trust
His own powers of restraint, in his bosom he thrust
“The packet she gave, with a short angry sigh,
Bow’d his head, and departed without a reply.

XXII

And Lucile was alone. And the men of the world

‘Were gone back to the world. And the world’s self
was furl’d

War away from the heart of the woman, Her hand

Droop’d, and from it, unloosed from their frail silk-

en band,

Fell ote early love-letters, strewn, scatter’d, and
she

At her feet—life’s lost blossoms! Dejected, her head

n her bosom was bow’d. Her gaze vaguely stray’d
over

Those strewn records of passionate moments no
more.

ents eae page to her sight leapt some word that

elie
‘The composure with which she that day had denied
Every claim on her heart to those poor perish’d

ears.
"They a veneed themselves now, and she burst into

CANTO FOURTH.
*
LetTer From Cousin JonN To Cousin ALFRED.

“ Braorre, Thursday.
““'TIME up, you rascal! Come back, or be hang’d.

Matilda grows peevish. Her mother harangued
For s WwW ole our this morning about you. The
euce?

What on earth can I say to you?—nothing’s of use.
And the blame of the whole of your shocking be-

avior
Falls on me, sir! Come back—do you hear?—or I
leave your
Affairs, and abjure you forever. Come back
‘To your anxious betroth’d; and perplex’d
4 “Cousin Jack.”

Alfred needed, in truth, no entreaties from John
"To increase his impatience to fly from Serchon.
All the place was now fraught with sensations of

ain
Which, while in it, he strove to escape from in vain.
A wild instinct warn’d him to fly from ppace
Where he felt that some fatal event, swift of pace,
Was supecaching his life. In despite his endeavor
‘To think of Matilda, her image forever
Was effaced from his fancy by that of Lucile.

_ From the ground which he stood on he felt himself

reel,
a alarm’d by those failings to which, on the
a)

y -
Just before, all his heart had so soon given way,
When he caught, with a strange sense of fear, for
assistance
At what was, till then, the great fact in existence,
“Twas a phantom he grasp’d.

Im.
Having sent for his guide,

He order’d his horse, and determin’d to ride
Back forthwith to Bigorre.
de, who well knew

‘hen, the

Every haunt of those hills, said the wild lake of Oo
Lay a league from Serchon; and suggested a track
By the lake to Bigorre, which, traversing the back
Of the mountain, avoided a circuit between
Two long valleys; and thinking, ‘‘ Perchance change

of scene
May create change of thought,” Alfred Vargrave

agreed,
‘Mounted horse; and set forth to Bjgorre at full speed.
vx

His guide rode beside him.

The king of the guides!
“The gallant Bernard! ever boldly he rides,
-EXver gayly he a For to him, from of old,
"The hills have confided their secrets, and told
Where the white partridge lies, and the cock o’ the

woods;
Where the izard flits fine through the cold solitudes;
Where the bear lurks perdu; and the lynx on his

re:
At nightfall descends, when the mountains are gray;
‘Where the sassafras blooms, and the blue-bell is

born,
And the wild rhododendron first reddens at morn;
‘Where the source of the waters is fine as a thread;
‘How the storm on the wild Maladetta is spread;
"Where the thunder is hoarded, the snows lie asleep,
_ Whence the torrents are fed, and the cataracts leap;
And, familiarly known in the hamlets, the vales
Have whisper’d to him all their thousand love-tales;
‘He has laugh’d with the girls, he has leap’d with the

boys;
Ever blithe, ever bold, ever boon, he enjoys
An existence untroubled by envy or strife,
‘While he feeds on the dews and the juices of life.
And so lightly he sings, and so gayly he rides,
Wor Bernarp LE Savrevr is the king of all guides!

 

Ys
But Bernard found, that day, neither song nor love-

le
Nor adventure, nor laughter, nor legend avail
To arouse from his deep and profound reverie
Him that silent beside him rode fast as could be.

VI.

Ascending the mountain they slacken’d their pace,
And the marvelous prospect each moment changed
‘ace.
The breezy and pure inspirations of morn
Breathed about them. ‘The scarp’d ravaged moun-
tains, all worn
By the torrents, whose course they watch’d faintly
meander,
Were alive with the diamonded shy salamander.
They paused,o’er the bosom of purple abysses;
And wound through a region of green wildernesses;
The waters went wirbling above and around,
The forests hung heap’d in their shadows i
Here the Larboust, and there Aventin, Castellon,
Which the Demon of Tempest, descending upon,
Had wasted with fire, and the peaceful Cazeaux
They mark’d; and far down in the sunshine below,
Half dipp’d in a valley of airiest blue,
The white happy homes of the village of Oo,
Where the age is yet golden.
And high overhead

The wrecks of the combat of Titans were spread.

Red granite and quartz, in the alchemic sun,

F their splendors of crimson and crystal in one;

And deep in the moss gleam’d the delicate shells,

And the dew linger’d fresh in the heavy harebells;

The large violet burn’d; the calypennt blue;

And atures own flower, the saffron, peer’d
roug!

The red-berried brambles and thick sassafras;

} And oy ace with thyme was the delicate ,
And hig

up, and higher, and highest of
The secular phantom of snow!
of nl I ing di Bods eg

a gray sunless glen gaping drowsy below,
The aerial specter, revesta in the Fox.
Of the great golden dawn, hovers faint on the eye,
And appears to for in and out of the sky,
And plays with the fancy, and baffles the 0m
Only reach’d by the vast rosy ripple of light,
And the cool star of eve, the Imperial Thing,

alf unreal, like some mythological king
That dominates all in a fable of old,
Takes command of a valley as fair to behold
As aught in old fables; and, seen or unseen,
Dwells aloof over all, in the vast and serene
Sacred sky, where the footsteps of spirits are furl’d
*Mid the wt ouds beyond which spreads the infinite
wor!

Of man’s aspirations, unfathom’d, untrod,
Save by Even and Morn, and the angels of God.

Vil.

Meanwhile, as they journey’d, that serpentine road,

Now abruptly reversed, See ai show’d

A gay cavalcade some few feet in advance.

Alfred Vargrave’s heart beat; for he saw at a glance

The alight orm of Lucile in the midst. His next
00

Show’d him, joyously aigh ins beside her, the Duke.

The ae of the troop which had thus caught his
en

He knew not, nor noticed them (women and men).

They sg ughing and talking together. Soon

te:

after
His sudden appearance suspended their laughter.
VIIL.

“You here! ... Tim

ned Ae far on your way
To Bigorre!’”’... said Lucile. ‘‘What has caused
‘ou to stay?”

treed i
Lam on my way to Begorre,”’ he replied,
he vis sg my way would seem to be yours, let me

e

For one moment beside you.” And then, with a
p.

At her ear, .. . ‘“‘and forgive me!”

By this time the troop

Lucile was as pale
As the cloud ‘neath their feet, on its way to the vale.
The Duke had observed it, nor quitted her side,
For even one moment, the whole of the ride.
Alfred smiled, as he iis fel “he is jealous of her!”’

Had regather’d its numbers.

And the thought of this jealousy added a spur
To his firm resolution and effort to
He talk’d much; was witty, and q

lease.
at his ease.

x.
After noontide, the clouds, which had traversed the

eas'
Half the day, gather’d closer, and rose and increas’d.
The air changed and chill’d. As though out of the

groun
There ran up. the trees a confused hissing sound,
And the wind rose. The guides sniff’d, like chamois

the air,
And look’d at each other, and halted, and there
Unbuckled the cloaks from the saddles. The white
Semi ert and turn’d up their frail leaves in

t.
All anzicnnieed the approach of the manele” i
relong,

Thick darkness 5 oa the mountains among;
Anda vivid, vindictive, and serpentine flash
Gored the darkness, and shore it across with a gash.
The rain fell in large heavy drops. And anon
Broke the thunder,

The horses took fright, every one.
The Duke’s in a moment was far out of sight.
The guides whoop’d. The band was obliged to alight;

 

And, d rsed up the perilous pathway, walk’d blind
To the ispersed | fore from the darkness behind.

xi.
And the Storm is abroad in the mountains!
He fills

The crouch’d hollows and all the oracular hills

With dread voices of power. A roused million or more
Of wild echoes reluctantly rise from their hoar
Immemorial ambush, and roll in the wake

Of the cloud, whose reflection leaves vivid the lake.
And the wind, that wild robber, for plunder descends
From invisible lands, o’er those black mountain ends;
He howls-as he hounds down his prey; and his lash
Tears the hair of the timorous wan mountain-ash,
That clings to the rocks, with her garments all torn,
Like a woman in fear; then he blows his hoarse horn,
And is off, the fierce guide of destruction and terror,
up the desolate hights, ‘mid an intricate error

Of mountain and mist.

xi.

There is war in the skies!
Lo! the black-winged legions of tempest arise
O’er those sharp splinter’d rocks that are gleaming

below
In the soft light, so fair and so fatal, as though
Some seraph burn’d through them, the thunderbolt

searching
wit a black cloud unbosom’d just now. Lo! the
ure’

ing
_And shivering pine-trees, like phantoms that seem

To waver above, in the dark, and yon stream,
How it hurries and roars, on its way to the white
And paralyzed lake there, appall’d at the sight
Of the things seen in heaven!

xuI.

Through the darkness and awe
That had gather’d around him, Lord Alfred now saw,
Reveal’d in the fierce and evanishing glare
Of mp re tg} that momently pulsed through the
air,
A woman alone on a shelf of the hill,
With ae cheek coldly propp’d on her hand—and as

sti
As the rock that she sat on, which beetled above
The black lake beneath her.

All terror, all love

Added speed to the instinct with which he rush’d on.
For one moment the blue lightning swathed the

whole stone
In its lurid embrace: like the sleek dazzling snake
That encircles a sorceress, charm’d for her sake}
And lull’d by her loveliness; fawning, it play’d a
And caressingly twined round the feet and the head
Of the woman who sat there, undaunted and calm
As the soul of that solitude, listing the psalm
Of the plongont and laboring tempest roll slow
From the caldron of midnight and vapor below.
Next moment from bastion to bastion, all round,
Of the siege-circled mountains, there tumbled the

soun
Of the battering thunder’s indefinite peal,
And Lord Alfred had sprung to the feet of Lucile.

SLY,

She started. Once more, with its flickering wand,
The lightning aoa her. In terror, her hand
Alfred Vargrave had seized within his; and he felt
The light fingers that coldly and lingeringly dwelt
In the grasp of his own, tremble faintly. Pied

! see!

Where ue ( hath stricken and strangled
yon tree!’

She exclaim’d, .. . “like the passion that brings on
its breath,

To the being it embraces, destruction and death!

Alfred Vargrave, the lightning is round you ies i)

‘Lucile
I hear—I see—naught but yourself. I can feel
Nothing here but your presence. My pride fights in

vain
With the truth that leaps from me. We two meet

again
*Neath Jou terrible aaa that is watching above
To avenge if I lie when I'swear that I love—

And beneath yonder terrible heaven, at your feet,
Ihumble my head and my heart, I entreat

Your pardon, Lucile, for the past—I implore

For the future your merey—implore it with more

Of passion than prayer ever breathed. By the

power
Which invisibly touches us both in this hour,

By the rights I have o’er you, Lucile, I demand ”*—
“The rights!” . . . said Lucile, and drew from him
her hand.

"em Be rights! for what greater to man may
nN;

ong 4
Than the right to repair in the future the wrong
To the past? and the wrong I have done you, of

ore,
Hath Requeath’d to me all the sad right to restore,
To retrieve, to amend! I, who injured your life,
Urge the right to repair it, Lucile! Be my wife,

My guide, my angel, my all upon earth,

And accept, for the sake of what yet may give

wort
To my life, its contrition!”

Xv.

He paused, for there came
O’er the cheek of Lucile a swift flush like the flame
That illumin’d at moments the darkness o’erhead.
With a voice faint and marr’d by emotion, she said,
“And your pledge to another?” ;
 

LUCILE.

9

 

 

 

 

XVI.

“Hush, hush!” he exclaim’d,
“My honor will live where my love lives, unshamed.
*Twere poor honor indeed, to another to give
That life of which you keep the heart. Could it live
In the light of those hea) eyes, suppressing a lie?
Alas, no! your hand holds my whole destiny.
I can never recall what my lips have avow’d;
In your love lies whatever can render me proud.
For the great crime of all my existence hath been
To have known you in vain, And the duty best

seen,
And most hallow’d—the duty most sacred and

sweet
Is that which hath led me, Lucile, to your feet.
Oh speak! and restore me the blessing I lost
When I lost most pearl of all pearls beyond cost!
And restore to your own life its youth, and restore
The vision, the rapture, the passion of yore!
Ere our brows had been dimm’d in the dust of the

world,
ae oe their white wings yet exulting un-
‘url’di

For your eyes rest no more on the unquiet man,
The wild star of whose course its pale orbit outran,
Whom the formless indefinite future of youth,
With its lying allurements, distracted. In truth

T have wea wander’d the world, and I feel

That the least of your lovely regards, oh, Lucile,

Is worth all the world can afford, and the dream
Which, though follow’d forever, forever doth seem
As fleeting, and distant, and dim, as of yore

When it brooded in twilight, at dawn, on the shore
Of earth’s untraversed ocean! I know the sole path
To repose, which my desolate destiny hath,

Is the path by whose course to your feet T return,
And who else, oh, Lucile, will so truly discern,

And so deeply revere, all the passionate strength,
The sublimity in you, as he whom at length

These have saved from himself, for the truth they

reveal
To his worship?”
XVII.
rhs thesetiae aie spoke in but nee could ay
ig) and and arm. upon him repose
Thrill and bmi Those dark: eyes of Mer were
closed;
But, under their languid mysterious fringe,
A cones softness was beaming. One tinge
Of faint inward fire flush’d transparently through
The delicate, pallid, and Pia olive hue
Of the cheek, half ave and droop’d. The rich

bosom
aaa as when in the heart of a ruffled rose-blos-
m
A bee is imprison’d and struggles.

‘ M hil
eanwhile
The sun, in his setting, sent up the last smile
Of his power, to baffle the storm. And, behold!
O’er the mountains embattled, his armies, all gold,
Rose and rested: while far up the dim airy crags,
Its artillery silenced, its banners in
The rear of the tempest its sullen retreat
Drew off slowly, receding in silence, to meet
The powers of the night, which, now gathering afar,
Had bee sent forward one bright, signal star.
a ore a oe, soft a wag hair,
‘rom the dar! -hat, which Lucile used to wear,
Had escaped; i Alfred now cover’d with

sses

The redolent warmth of those long falling tresses.

Neither he, nor Lucile, felt the rain, which not yet

Had ceased falling around them; when, splash’d,

drench’d, and wet,

The Duc de Luvois down the rough mountain course

Approached them as fast as the road, and his horse,
on limping, would suffer. The beast had just

-

OW
Lost his footing, and over the perilous brow
Of be? storm-haunted mountain his master had

rown;
But the Duke, who was had — to a stone
And the horse, being b: . the instinct which fills
The breast of the wild mountaineer in these hills,
Had scrambled sain to his feet; and now master
And horse bore about them the of disaster.
he here mt ug ould, She Due ea he wah
Bruised and bleeding. a

If ever your feet, like m n,
Oh reader, have traversed these mountains alone,”
Have you felt your identity shrink and contract

At the sound of the distant and dim cataract,

In the presence of nature’s immensities? Say,
Have you hung o’er the torrent, bedewed with its

spray,

And, leaving the rock-way, contorted and roll’d,

Like a huge couchant Typhon, fold heaped over fold

Track ne a summits, from which every step tha‘
yu

Rolls the loose stones, with thunder below, to the bed

Of invisible waters, whose mystical sound

Fills with awful suggestions the profound?

And, laboring onward, at last through a break

In the walls of the world, burst at once on the lake?

If you have, this description I might have withheld.

You pha ee how strangely your bosom has
swe

At the vision reveal’d. On the overwork'd soil

Of this planet, enjoyment is sharpen’d with toil;

And one seems, Lf the pain of ascending the hight,

To have conquer’d a claim to that wonderful sight,

0.6

Hail, virginal daughter of cold Espingo!
Hail, Nalad, whose realm is the soar and the snow;

‘But what once, in his life, some

 

For o’er thee the angels have whiten’d their wings,
And the thirst of the seraphs is quenched at thy |

springs.
What hand hath, in heaven, upheld thy expanse?
When the breath of creation first fashion’d .fair

France,
Did the Spirit of Il, in his downthrow appalling, _
Bunigs tne world, and thus hollow thy basin while
ing?
Ere the faaeaiibth was born hath some monster un- |
nam
The base of thy mountainous pedestal framed? |
And later, when Power to Beauty was wed, |
|
}

Did some delicate fairy embroider thy bed
With the fragile valerian and wild columbine?

XXI

But thy secret thou keepest, and I will keep mine;

For once gazing on thee, it flash’d on my soul,

All that secret! I saw in a vision the whole

Vast design of the ages; what was and shall be!

Hands unseen raised the vail of a great myste’

For one moment. Isaw, and I heard; and my heart

Bore witness within me to infinite art,

In infinite power proving infinite love; |

Caught the great choral chant, mark’d the dread
ageant move—

The divine Whence and Whither of life! But, oh,

daughter

Of Oo, not more safe in the deep silent water

Is thy secret, than mine in my heart. Even so.

What I then saw and heard, the world never shall

ow.
XXII. $

The dimness of eve o’er.the valleys had closed,

The rain had ceased falling, the mountains reposed.

The stars had enkindled in juminous courses

Their Peat pa lamps, when, remounting their
orses,

The riders retraversed that mighty serration

Of rock-work. Thus left to its own desolation,

The lake, from whose pane limits the last

Transient ; pomp of the pageants of sunset had

ass’d,
Drew Tete its bosom the darkness, and only
Admitted within it one image—a lionel y

And tremulous phantom of flickering light

That follow’d the mystical moon through the night.

XXII. :
It var when o’er Serchon at last they descend-

To her chalet, in silence, Lord Alfred attended

Lucile. As the she whisper’d him low,

“You have made to me, Alfred, an offer I know

All the worth of, believe me. I cannot reply

Withee time for reflection. Good-night!—not good-
iy.

“ Alas! ’t is the very same answer you made

To the Duc de Luvois but a day since,” he said.

“No, Alfred! the = same, no,”’ she replied.
Her voice shook. “If you love me, obey me, Abide
My answer, to-morrow.”

XXIV.
Alas, Cousin Jack!
You Cassandra in breeches and boots! turn your

ac
To the ruins of Troy. Prophet, seek not for glory

Among thy own le. .
eae I follow my story.

CANTO FIFTH.
i

Up!—forth again, P i —‘‘ Many’s the slip,”
Hath the prover’ wel said, ee *ewixt the cup mui the

How blest should we be, have I often conceiv

Had we really achieved what we nearly achieved!

We but catch at the skirts of the thing we would be,

And fall back on the lap of a false destiny.

So it will be, so has been, since this world began!

And the happiest, noblest, and best part of man

Is the part which he never hath come lay’d out:

For es = and last word in life’s volume is—
oubt,

The face the most fair to our vision allow’d

Is the face we encounter and lose in the crowd.

The thought that most thrills our existence is one

Which, before we can frame it in language, is gone.

Oh Horace, the rustic still rests by the river, *

But the river flows on, and flows past him forever!

ae down, and say . . . ‘“ What I will be, I

y
Who ees and affirm. . . “‘ What I was, Iam”
still”
Who is it eo must not, if question’d, say. . .

I would have remain’d or become, I am not?”

We are ever behind, or beyond, or beside

Our intrinsic existence. Forever at hide

And seek with our souls. Not in Hades alone

Doth Sisyphus roll, ever frustrate, the stone,

Do the Danaids ply, ever vainly, the sieve.

Tasks as futile does earth to its denizens give.

Yet there’s none so ere but what he hath been
Just about to be happy; at some time, I ween;

And none so beguiled and defrauded by chance,

ute circum-

stance
Would have fully sufficed to secure him the bliss
Which, missing it then, he forever must miss.
And to most of us, ere we go down to the grave,
Life, relenting, accords the good gift we would have;
But, as though by some strange imperfection in fate,
The ao gift, when it comes, comes a moment too

 

The Future’s t vail our breath fitfully flaps,

And behind it broods ever the mighty Perhaps.

Yet! there’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip;
But while o’er the brim of life’s beaker I dip,
Though the cup may next moment be shatter’d, the

wine
Spilt, one deep health I'll pledge, and that health
shall be thi

thine,
Oh, being of beauty and bliss! seen and known
In the deeps of my soul, and possess’d there alone!
My days know thee not; and my lips name thee
never.
Thy place in my poor life is vacant forever.
We have met: we have parted. No more is recorded
In my annals on earth. This alone was afforded
To the man whom men knew me, or deem me, to be.

| But, far down, in the depth of my life’s mystery,
,

(Like the siren that under the deep ocean dwe
Whom the wind as it wails, and the wave as it swells.

| Cannot stir in the calm of her coralline halls,

*Mid the world’s adamantine and dim pedestals;

At be feet sit the sylphs and sea fairies; for
whom

The almondine glimmers, the soft samphires bloom)—

Thou abidest and reignest forever, oh, Queen

Of that better world which thou swayest unseen!

My one perfect mistress! my all things in all!

Thee by no vulgar name known to men do I call:

For the Seraphs have named thee to me in my sleep,

And that name is a secret I sacredly keep.

But, wherever this nature of mine is most fair,

‘And a thoughts are the purest—belov’d, thou art
there!

And whatever is noblest in aught that I do,

Is done to exalt and to worship thee too.

The world gave thee not to me, no! and the world

Cannot take thee away from me now. I have furl’d

The wings of my spirit about thy bright head;

At thy feet are my soul’s immortalities spread.

Thou ap have been to me much, Thou art more.

And in silence I worship, in darkness adore.

If life be not that which without us we find—

Chance, accident, merely—but rather the mind—

And the soul which, within us, surviveth these things,

if our real existence have truly its springs

Less in that which we do than in that which we feel,

Not in vain do I worship, not hopeless I kneel!

For then, though I name thee not mistress or wife,

Thou art mine—and mine only—oh, life of my life!

And though many’s the slip ’twixt the cup and the

li
Yet white o’er the brim of life’s beaker I dip,
While there’s life on the lip, while there’s warmth in

the wine,
One oem a I'll pledge, and that health shall be
e
IL.

This world, on whose peaceable breast we repose
Unconvulsed by alarm, once confused in the throes
Of a tumult divine, sea and land, moist and dry,
Andin fiery fusion commix’d earth and sky.

Time cool’d it, and calm’d it, and taught it to go
The round of its orbit in peace, long ago.

The wind changeth and whirleth continually:

All the rivers run down and run into the sea:

The wind whirleth about, and is presently still’d:
All the rivers run down, yet the sea is not fill’d:
The sun goeth forth from his chambers: the sun
Ariseth, and lo! he descendeth anon.

All returns to its place. Use and Habit are powers
Far stronger than Passion, in this world of ours.
The great laws of life readjust their infraction,
And to every emotion appoint a reaction.

mm

Alfred V: ve had time, after leaving Lucile,
To review the rash step he had taken, and feel
What the world would have call’d “ his erroneous po-

sation.
———_ obtruded its claim, and enforced recogni-
ion;
Like a creditor who, when the gloss is worn out

On = cost which we once wore with pleasure, no

oul

Sends us in his account for the a we bought.
Ev'ry spendthrift to passion is debtor to thought.

IV.

He felt ill at with himself. He could feel
Little doubt what the answer would be from Lucile.
Her eyes, when they parted—her voice, when they

met,
Still enraptured his heart, which they haunted. And
eu,
Though exulting, he deem’d himself loved, where he

loved,
Through _ mind a vague self-accusation there
moved.
O’er his fancy, when —_ was fairest, would rise
The infantine face of Matilda, with eyes

So sad, so reproachful, so cruelly kind,
a fail’d within hi In vain did he

A thousand just reasons for what he had done:

The vision troubled him would not be gone.

In vain did he say to himself, and with tru’

“Matilda has beauty, and fortune, and outh;

And her heart is too yo to have deeply involved

All its hopes in the tie which must now be dissolved.

°T were a false sense of honor in me to suppress

The sad truth which I owe it to her to confess.

And what reason have I to Tata ne, this poor life

Of my own, with its languid and frivolous strife,

And without what alone might endear it to her,

Were a boon all so precious, indeed, to confer,

Its withdrawal can wrong her? *
“Tt is not as though

I were bound to some poor village maiden, I know,
Unto whose simple heart mine were all upon earth,
40

Or to whose simple fortunes my own could give
rt

 

 

worth.
Matilda, in all the world’s gifts, will not miss __
Aught that I could procure her. T is best as it is!”’

v

In vain did he say to himself, ‘‘ When I came

To this fatal spot, I had nothing to blame

Or reproach myself for, in the thoughts of my
neart. >

I could not foresee that its pulses would start

Into such strange emotions on seeing once more

A woman I left with indifference before.

I believed, and with honest conviction believed,

In my love for Matilda. I never conceived

That another could shake it. I deem’d I had done

With the wild heart of youth, and looked hopefully

on
To the soberer manhood, the worthier life, "
Which I sought in the love that I vow’d to my wife.
Poor child! she shall learn the whole truth. She
shall know
What I knew not myself but a few days ago.
The world will console her—her pride will support—
Her youth will renew its emotions. In short,
There is nothing in me that Matilda will miss
When once we have parted. ’T is best as it is!”

VI.

But in vain did he reason and argue. Alas!

He yet felt unconvinced that ’¢ was best as it was.
Out of reach of all reason, forever would rise
That infantine face of Matilda, with eyes —

So sad, so re SoC cruelly kin

That they harrow’d his heart and distracted his
mind.
VIL.
And then, when he turned from these thoughts to

uucile
Pee ad heart rose enraptured, he could not but
ee!

A vague sense of awe of her nature. Behind

All the beauty of heart, and the es of mind,

Which he saw and revered in her, something un-
known

And unseen in that nature still troubled his own.

He felt that Lucile penettnted and prized

Whatever was noblest and best, though disguised,

In himself; but he did not feel sure that he knew,

Or completely possess’d, what, half-hidden from

Re tna lofty and lonely in her.
main 0: and lonely in *
- p Then, her life,

So untamed, and so free! would she yield as a wife,

~ Independence, long claimed as awoman? Her name,

So link’d by the world with that spurious fame

Which the beauty and wit of a woman assert,

In some measure, alas! to her own loss and hurt

In the serious thoughts ofa man! . . . This re-
flection

Over oe love which he felt cast a shade of dejec-
t ‘

ion
From which he forever escaped to the thought
Doubt could reach not. . . . “Ilove her, and all
else is naught!”

His hand trembled strangely in breaking the seal

Of the letter which reach’d him at last from Lucile.
At the sight of the very first word that he read,
That dee dropp’d down from his hand like the
Leaf in autumn, that, falling, leaves naked and bare
A desolate tree in a wide wintry air.

He passed his hand hurriedly over his eyes,
Bewildered, incredulous. Angry surprise :
And dismay, in one sharp moan, broke from him.

Anon
He pick’d up the page, and read rapidly on,

Ix,
THe ComresseE DE Nevers To Lorp ALFRED VAR-

GRAVE.
“No, Alfred!
“Tf over the present, when last
We two met, rose the glamour and mist of the past,
It hath now rolled away, and our two paths are

a
And those two paths divide us.

“That hand which again
Mine one moment has clasp’d as the hand of a broth-

er,
That hand and your honor are pledged to another!
Forgive, Alfred Vargrave, forgive me, if yet
For that moment (now past!) I have made you for-

get
What was due to yourself and that other one. Yes,
Mine foe fault, and be mine the repentance! Not 4
less,
In now owning this fault, Alfred, let me own, too,
I foresaw not the sorrow involved in it, ico
‘True,
That meeting, which hath been so fatal, I sought,
LIalone! But oh, deem not it was with the thought
Or your heart to regain, or the past to rewaken,
No! believe me, it was with the firm and unshaken
Conviction, at least, that our meeting would be
Without peril to you, although haply to me
The salvation of all my existence.

“T own
When the rumor first reach’d me, which lightly made
nown.
To the wou your engagement, my heart and my
min

Suffer’d torture intense. It was cruel to find

‘That so much of the life of my life, half unknown
To myself, had been silently settled on one

anos whom but to think it would soon be a crime.
Then I said to myself, ‘from the thralldom which

 

time

 

Hath not weaken’d there rests but one hope of es-

cape.

That image which Fancy seems ever to shape
From the solitude left round the ruins of yore
Isa phantom. The Being I love isno more.
What I hear in the silence, and see in the lone
Void of life, is the young hero born of my own
Perish’d youth: and his image, serene and sublime,
In my heart rests unconscious of change and of time.
Could I see it but once more, as time and as change
Have made it, a thing unfamiliar and strange,
See, indeed, that the ing I loved in my youth
Is no more, and what rests now is only, in truth,
The hard pupil of life and the world: then, oh, then,
I should wake from a dream, and my life be again
Reconciled to the world; and, released from regret,
Take the lot fate accords to my choice.’

4 “So we met.
But the danger I did not foresee has oceurr’d:
The danger, alas, to yourself! I have err’d.
But happy for both that this error hath been
Discover’d as soon as the danger was seen!
‘We meet, Alfred Vargrave, no more. I, indeed,
Shall be far from Serchon when this letter you read.
My course is decided; my path I discern:
Doubt is over; my future is fix’d now.

“Return,
Oh, return to the young living love! Whence, alas!
If, one moment, you wander’d, think only it was
More deeply to bury the past love.
“ And, oh!

Believe, Alfred Vargrave, that I, where I go

On my far distant pathway through life shall rejoice

To treasure in memory all that your voice

Has avow’d to me, all in which others have clothed

To my fancy with beauty and worth your betrothed!

In the fair morning light, in the orient dew

Of that young life, now yours, can you fail to renew

All the noble and pure aspirations, he truth

The freshness, the faith, of your own earnest youth?

Yes! you will be happy. _I, too, in the bliss

I foresee for you, I shall be happy. And this

Proves me worthy your frien ip. And so—let it
rove

That I cannot—I do not—respond to your love.

Yes, indeed! be convinced that I could not (no, no,

Never, never!) have render’d you happy. And so,

Rest assured that, if false to the vows you have

pitied,
‘You wae a have endur’d, when the first brief, exci-
c

Emotion was o’er, not alone the remorse
Of honor, but also (to render it worse)

Disappointed affection.
“Yes, Alfred; you start?

But think! if the world was too much in your heart,
And too little in mine, when we parted ten years
Ere this last fatal meeting, that time (ay, and tears!)
Have but deepen’d the old demarcations which then
laced our natures asunder; and we two again,
As we een were, would still have been strangely at
strife.
In that self-independence which is to my life
Its necessity now, as it once was its ab 6.
Had our course through the world been henceforth
side by side,
I should have revolted forever, and shock’d,
Your respect for the world’s plausibilities, mock’d,
Without meaning to do so, and outraged, all those
Social creeds which you live by.
“Oh! do not suppose
That I blame you. Perhaps it is you that are right.
Best, then, all as it is!
““Deem these words life’s Good-night
To the hope of a moment: no more! If there fell
Any tear on this page, ’t was a friend’s.
“So farewell
To the past—and to you, Alfred Vargrave.
“ LUCILE.””

So ended that letter.
The room seem’d to reel
Round and round in the mist that was scorching his
e

yes
With a fiery dew. Grief, resentment, surprise,
Half choked him; each'word he had read, as it smote
Down some hope, rose and grasp’d like a hand at his

throat,

To stifle and strangle him.
? ; care already

For relief from himself, with a footstep unsteady,
He pass’d see his chamber. He felt both op-

press’
And excited. The letter he thrust in his breast,
And, in search of fresh air and of solitude, pass’d
The jong lime-trees of Serchon. His footsteps at last
Reach’d a bare narrow heath by the skirts of a wood:
It was somber and silent, and suited his mood.
By a mineral spring, long unused, now unknown,
Stood a small ruin’d abbey. He reach’d it, sat down
On a ann fan of stone, ’mid the wild weed and

istle,

And read over again that perplexing epistle.

XI

In re-reading that letter, there roll’d from his mind

The er ale of resentment which first made him
Ine

To the pathos breath’d through it. Tears rose in his

eyes, ~
And a hope sweet and strange in his heart seem’d to

rise.
The truth which he saw not the first time he read
That letter, he now saw—that each word betray’d
The love which the writer had sought to conceal.
His love was received not, he could not but feel,
For one reason alone—that his love was not free.
True! free yet he was not: but could he not be
Free erelong, free as air to revoke that farewell,
And to sanction his own hopes? he had but to tell

SSH OEY) Ly nee

 

 

 

The truth to Matilda, and she were the first
To release him: he had but to wait at the worst.
Matilda’s relations would probably snatch
Any pretext, with pleasure, to break off a match
In which they had yielded, alone at the whim
Of their spoil’d child, a languid approval to him.
She herself, careless child! was her love for him aught
Save the first joyous fancy succeeding the thought
She gave to her doll? was she able to feel
Such a love as the love he divined in Lucile?
He would seek her, obtain his release, and, oh! then,
He had but to fly to Lucile, and again
Claim the eo which his heart would be free to com-
mand.
But to press on Lucile any claim to her hand,
Or even to seek, or to see her, before
He could say, ‘‘I am free!.free, Lucile, to implore
That great blessing on life you alone can confer,”
*T were dishonor in him, *t would be insult to her.
Thus still with the letter outspread on his knee
He follow’d so fondly his own reverie,
That he felt not the angry regard of a man
Fix’d upon him; he saw not a face stern and wan
Turn’d topant him; he heard not a footstep that
ASS,

And repass’d the lone spot where he stood, till, at last
A hoarse voice aroused him.

He look’d up and saw,
On the bare hearth before him, the Duc de Luvois.

xm.
With aggressive ironical tones, and a look
Of concentrated insolent challenge, the Duke
Address’d to Lord Alfred some sneering allusion
To ‘‘ the doubtless sublime reveries his intrusion
Had, he fear’d, interrupted. Milord would do better,
He fancied, however, to fold up a letter
The writing of which was too well known, in fact.
His remark as he pass’d to have failed to attract,””

XII.
It was obvious to Alfred the Frenchman was bent
Upon hoe a quarrel! and doubtless ’t was meant
From him to provoke it by sneers such as these.
A moment sufficed his quick instinct to seize
The position. He felt that he could not expose
His own name, or Lucile’s, or Matilda’s to those
Idle tongues that would bring down upon him the ban
Of the world, if he now were to fight with this man.
And indeed, when he look’d in the Duke’s haggard

face,
He ne pain’d by the change there he could not but
‘ace.
And he almost felt pity.
He therefore put by

Each remark from the Duke with some careless reply.
And coldly, but courteously, waving away

The ill-humor the Duke seem’d resolved to display,
Rose, and turn’d, with a stern salutation, aside,

XIV.
Then ace put himself in the path, made one
stride

In advance, raised a hand, fix’d upon him his eyes,

And said...
“Hold, Lord Alfred! Away with disguise!
I will own that Tsought you a moment ago,
To fix on you a quarrel. I still can do so
Upon my excuse. I prefer to be frank.
I admit not a rival in fortune or rank
To the hand of a woman, whatever be hers
Or her suitor’s. I love the Comtesse de Nevers.
I believed, ere you cross’d me, and still have the right
To beliare that she would have been mine. To her

sight
You return, and the woman is suddenly changed,
You mee in between us: her heart is estranged.
You! who now are betrothed to another, I know:
You! whose name with Lucile’s nearly ten years ago
Was coupled by ties which you broke: you! the man
I reproach’d on the day our acquaintance began:
You! that left her so lightly—I cannot believe
That you love, as I love, her; nor can I conceive
You, indeed, have the right so to love her. artic

or

I will not thus tamely concede, at your word, s
What, a few days ago, I believed to be mine!
I shall yet persevere: I shall yet be, in fine,
A rival you dare not despise. It is plain
That to settle this contest there can but remain
One way—need I say what it is?”

XV,

Not unmoved
With regretful respect for the earnestness proved
By the speech he had heard, Alfred Vargrave replied
In words which he trusted might yet turn aside
The quarrel from which he felt bound to abstain,
And, with stately urbanity, strove to explain
To the Duke that he too (a fair rival at worst )
Had not been accepted.

e XVI.
“‘ Accepted! say first
Are you free to have offer’d?””
Lord Alfred was mute.

XVI.

“Ah, you dare not reply!” eried the Duke, “Why
ispute,

Why palter with me? You are silent! and why?

Because, in your conscience, you cannot deny

°*T was from vanity, wanton and cruel withal,

And the wish an ascendeney lost to recall,

That _you stepp’d in between me and her. If milord,

You be really sincere, I ask only one word.

Say at once you renounce her. At once, on my part,

I will ee forgiveness with all truth of heart,

And there can be no quarrel between us. Say on!”

Lord Alfred grew gall’d and impatient. This tone

Roused a strong irritation he could not repress,
 

|

 

‘‘ You have not the right, sir,” he said, ‘‘ and still less
The power, to make terms and conditions with me,
I refuse to reply.”

xvii.

As diviners may see

Fates they cannot avert in some figure occult,
He foresaw in a moment each evil result
Of the quarrel now imminent.

There, face to face,
*Mid the ruins and tombs of a long-perish’d race,
With, for witness, the stern Autumn Sky overhead,
And beneath them, unnoticed, the graves, and the

dead,
Those two men had met, as it were on the ridge
Of that perilous, narrow, invisible bridge
Dividing the Past from the Future, so small
That, if one should pass over, the other must fall.

XIX.
On the ear, at that moment, the sound of a hoof,
si aac’ with oe sharply smote; and from under
e@ TOO:
Of the forest in view, where the skirts of it verged
On the heath where they stood, at full gallop em-

e
A nen ea oniia ta soroextl- by the ual
e he aj e sas)
Of red silk round fre waist, aa the iene leathern

With * mana wooden handle, slung crosswise be-
in

The short jacket; the loose canvas trowser, confined
By the long boots; the woolen capote; and the rein,
A mere hempen cord on a curb.

He wheel’d his horse, vate with tee ae his
Leap’ the rivulet lightly, turn’d sharp from the
And, aes the Duke, raised his woolen ca-
Bow’d low in the selle, and deliver’d a note.

xx.

The two stood astonish’d. The Duke with a gest

Of apology, turn’d, stretch’d his hand, and possess’d

Himself of the letter, chang’d color, and tore ~

The page open, and read.

His whole aspect changed Fignt ros tbe ra
aspect cl * rose is eyes,

And a smile to his lips. While with startled bur

rise

Lord Alfred et watch’d him, he turn’d on his heel,
And said gayly: “A oesnttg uest from Lucile!
You are quite right, Lord red! fair rivals at worst,
Our relative place may perchance be reversed.
You are not accepted—nor free to Snes
I, perchance, am accepted already; who knows?

v d you, milord, I should Still persevere,
This létter—but stay! you can read it—look here!"’

XXII.
It was now Alfred’s turn to feel roused and enraged.
But Lucile to himself was not pledged or e'
ei aught that could sanction resentment. ie said
ot Se but turn’d round, took the letter, and

THE ComTEssE DE NEVERS TO THE Duc pr Lvvols.

“Sant Saviour.
thee which follow’d me here, makes me
si

y
Till [see you again. With no moment’s delay
I entreat, I conjure you, by all that you feel
Or profess, to come to me directly.

XXII.
“Your letter!” He then had been writing to her!
Coldly. ghrugging his shoulders, Lord Alfred said:
Do not let me detain you!”

The Duke smiled and bow’d;
Placed the note in his bosom; address’, half-aloud,

“ Lucrin.”’

A few words to the messenger: . . . “Say your dis-
Will veanswera ere nightfall;”’ then glanced at his
And turn’d back to the Baths.

XXII.

Alfred Vai ve stood still
Torn, distracted in heart, and divided in will. Fi
He turn’d to Lucile’s farewell letter to him,
And read over her words; rising tears made them

dim;
“ Doubt is over: my future is fad now,” they said,
“ My course is decided.”” Her course? What! to wed
With this insolent rival! With that thought there

sho
ae, his heart an acute jealous anguish, But

no
Even thus could his clear worldly sense quite excuse
Those strange words to the Duke. She was free to

refuse

Himself, free the Duke to accept, it was true:

Even then, though, this eager and strange rendez-
vous -

How imprudent! To some unfrequented lone inn,

And so late (for the night was about to in)—

She, companionless there !—had she bidden that man?

A fear, vague, and formless, and horrible, ran

Through his heart. xxiv.

At that moment he look’d up, and saw,
Riding fast through the forest, the Duc de Luvois,
Who waved his hand to him, and sped out of sight,
The day was descending. He felt ’twould be night
Ere that man reached tt Saviour.

 

IT

 

He walked on, but not
Back as Serchon: he walked on, but knew not
in what
Direction, nor yet with what object, indeed,
He was walking; but still he walk’d on without heed.

XXVI.

The day had been sullen; but, toward his decline,
The sun sent a stream of wild light up the pine.
Darkly denting the red light reveal’d at its back,
The old ruin’d abbey rose roofless and black.
The spring that yet oozed through the moss-paven

oor
Had suggested, no doubt, to the monks there, of

ore,

The sieht of that refuge where, back to its God
How many a heart, now at rest ’neath the sod,
Had borne from the world all the same wild unrest
That now prey’d on his own!

XXVII.

By the thoughts in his breast
With varying impulse divided and torn,
He traversed the scant heath, and reach’d the for-

lorn

Autumn woodland, in which but a short while ago
He had seen the Duke ay. enter; and so _
He too ee The light waned around him, and

ASS|
Into davies The wrathful, red Occident cast
One glare of vindictive inquiry behind,
As the last light of day from the high wé6od declined,
And the great forest sigh’d its farewell to the beam,
And far off on the stillness the voice of the stream
Fell faintly.

XXVIII.

Oh, Nature, how fair is sd face,
And how light is thy heart, and how friendless thy

Thou false mistress of man! thou dost sport with
him lightly

In his hours of ease and She and Seley

Dost thou smile to his smile: to his joys thou in-

clinest,
But his sorrows, thou knowest them not, nor divin-
est.
While he woos, thou art wanton; thou lettest him
love thee;
But ~ art not his friend, for his grief cannot move
00;
And a. ta when he sickens and dies, what dost
ou

All as gay are thy garments, as careless thy brow,
And thou laughest and toyest with any new-comer,
Not a tear more for winter, a smile less for sum-

mer
Hast thou never an anguish to heave the heart under
That fair breast of thine, oh thou feminine wonder!

For all those—the young, and the fair, and the

oe
Who have loved thee, and lived with thee gayly and

long,

And wie: now on thy bosom lie dead? and their
deeds

And their days are forgotten! Oh hast thouno weeds

And not one year of mourning—one out of the many

That deck thy new bridals forever—nor an;

Regrets for thy lost loves, conceal’d from the new,

Oh thou widow of earth’s generations? Go to!

If the sea and the night wind know aught of these

things, ‘ .
They do not reveal it. We are not thy kings.

 

CANTO SIXTH.
I

“Tam huntsman has ridden too far on the chase,
And eldritch, and eerie, and strange is the place}!
The castle betokens a date long gone by.

He crosses the court-yard with curious eye:

He wanders from chamber to chamber, and yet
From strangeness to strangeness his footsteps are

set;
And ie ‘whole place grows wilder and wilder, and

less

Like aught seen before. Each in obsolete dress,

Strange portraits regard him with looks of surprise,

Strange forms from the arras start forth to his eyes;

Strange epigraphs, blazon’d, burn out of the wall:

The spell of a wizard is over it all. «

In her chamber, enchanted, the Princess is sleeping

The sleep which for centuries she has been keeping.

If she smile in her sleep, it must be to some lover

Whose lost golden locks the long grasses now cover:

If she moan in her dream it must be to deplore

Some grief which the world cares to hear of no more.

But ane oa is her forehead, how calm seems her
cheek!

And how are must that voice be, if once she would
speak!

He looks and he loves her; but knows he (not he!)

The clew to unravel this old aysteny?

And he stoops to those shut lips. e shapes on the

wall,
The mute men in armor around him and all
The wierd figures frown, as though pena say,
‘ Halt! invade not the Past, reckless child day!
And give not, oh madman! the heart in thy breast
To a phantom, the of whose sense is possess’ a
By an Age not thine own!’
“But unconscious is he,

And he heeds not the warning, he cares not to see
Aught but one form before him!

“Rash, wild words are o’er;
And the vision is vanish’d from sight evermore!
And the gray morning sees, as it drearily moves
O’er a land Jong deserted, a madman that roves
Through a ruin, and seeks to recapture a dream.

Lost to life and its uses, withdrawn from the scheme
Of man’s waking existence, he wanders apart.” —,
And this is an old fairy tale of the heart.

It is told in all lands, in a different tongue;

Told with tears by the old, heard with smiles by the

oung.
And the tale to each heart unto which it is known
Has a different sense. It has puzzled my own.

Il.

Eugene de Luvois was a man who, in part

From strong physical health, and that vigor of heart
Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance,
From a generous vanity native to et

With the heart of the hunter, whatever the quarry,
Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry

Or turn, till he took it. is trophies were trifles:
But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles,
No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind

Its Se pursues with impetuous mind.

Both Eugene de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been
Men of pleasure: but men’s pleasant vices, which,

seen
| Floating faint, in the sunshine of Alfred’s soft mood,
Seem’d amiable foibles, by Luvois pursued

With impetuous passion, seemed semi-Satanic.

Half pleased you see brooks play with pebbles; in

panic
You watch them whirl’d down by the eae

To the sacred hie creed of his youth
The century which he was born to denied
All realization. Its generous pride
To degenerate protest on all things was sunk;
Its principles each to a prejudice shrunk,
Down the path of a life that led nowhere he trod,
ee — were his guides, and his will was:
god,
And his pastime his purpose.
From boyhood possess’d.
Of inherited wealth, he had learn’d to invest
Both his wealth and those passions wealth frees

from the pane.
Which penury locks in each vice of an age
All the virtues of which, by the creed he revered,
Were to him illegitimate.
he appear’d

Thus
To the world what the world chose to have him ap-

truth,

pear—
The frivolous tyrant of Fashion, a mere
Reformer in coats, cards, and carriages. Still
*Twas this vigor of nature, and tension of will,
That found for the first time—perhaps for the last—
In Lucile what they lacked yet to free from the Past,
Force, and faith, in the Future.
inane w waie ts And s0, in ina mind,
'o the anguish 0! e woman was join’
The terror of i ‘his life’s destination,
Which in her had its mystical representation.
Til. 7
And truly, the thought of it, scaring him, pass’d
Over oe while he now eee the twilight
rode fast.
As a shade from the wing of some great bird ob-

scene
In a wide silent land may be suddenly seen, 2
Darkening over the sands, where it startles and

scares
Some traveler stray’d in the waste unawares,
So that thought more than once darken’d over his

heart
For a moment, and rapidly seem’d to depart.
Fast and furious he rode through the thickets which:

rose
Up the shaggy hillside; and the quarreling crows
ang’d above him, and clustering down the dim air
Dropp’d into the dark woods. By fits here and there
Shep! ay fires faintly gleam’d from the valleys. Oh,
ow
He envied the wing of each wild bird, as now
He urged the ated over the dizzy ascent.
Of the mountain! Behind him a murmur was sent
From the torrent—before him a sound from the

tracts
Of the woodlands that waved o’er the wild cataracts,
And the loose earth and loose stones roll’d momently

down
From the hoofs of his steed to abysses unknown.
The red day had fallen beneath the black woods,
And Se of the night through the vast soli-

tudes
pn abroad and conversed with each other. The.
rees

Were in sound and in motion, and mutter’d like seas
Elfland, The road through the forest was hol-

low’d.
On he aa through the darkness, as though he were
follow’d
Fast, fast by the Erl King!
The wild wizard-work

Of the forest at last open’d sharp, o’er the fork

Of a savage ravine, and behind the black stems

of ee trees, whose leaves in the light gleam’d&

| ike gems,

| Broke the broad moon above the voluminous

| Rock-chaos,—the Hecate of that Tartarus!

) With od horse reeking white, he at last reach’d the,

oor

| Of a small mountain inn, on the brow of a hoar

| Craggy promontory, o’er a fissure as grim,
eae nee ever roaring, there leap’d o’er the

im’

Of the rent rock a torrent of water, from sight,

| Into pools that were feeding the roots of the night.
A balcony hung o’er the water. Above

| Ina glimmering casement a shade seem'd to move.

| At the door the old negress was nodding her head

 

 

As he at it. “My mistress awaits you,” she
said.
%
fe

42

And up the rude stairway of creaking pine rafter
He follow’d her silent. few moments after,
His heart almost stunn’d him, his head seem’d to

 

ree)
For a door closed—Luvois was alone with Lucile.

IV.
In a gray traveling dress, her dark hair unconfined
pemme o’er it, and toss’d now and then by the
win ‘

From the lattice, that waved the dull flame in a spire
From a brass lamp before her—a faint hectic fire
On her cheek, to her eyes lent the luster of fever.
They seem’d to have wept themselves wider than

ever,
Those dark eyes—so dark and so deep!
“You relent?
And your plans have been changed by the letter I
sent?”
There his voice sunk, borne down by a strong inward

Lucie.
Your letter! yes, Duke. For it threatens man’s life—
Woman's honor,
Lovots.
The last, niadam, not /

Lucix.

: Both. I glance

At your own words; blush, son of the knighthood of
France,
AsIread them! You say in this letter...
“T know

Why now you refuse me; tis (is it not so?)
For the man who has trifled before, wantonly,
And now trifies again with the heart you deny
To myself. But he shall not! By man’s last wild law,
Iwill seize on the right (the right, Duc de Luvois!)
To avenge for you, woman, the past, and to give
To the future its freedom. That man shall not live
To make you as wretched as you have made me!”

Lovots.
Well, madam, in those words what word do you see
That threatens the honor of woman?
Lucie.
See! ... what,
What word, do you ask? Every word! would you

not.
Had I taken your hand thus, have felt that your
name
‘Vas soil’d and dishonor’d by more than mere shame
if the woman that bore it had first been the cause
Of the crime which in these words is menaced? You
pause! :
Woman's honor, you ask? Is there, sir, no dishonor
In the smile of a woman, when men, gazing on her,
Can shudder, and say, ‘In that smile is a grave?”
No! you can have no cause, Duke, for no right you

ave
Inthe contest you menace. That contest but draws
‘ivery right into ruin. By all human laws
Of man’s*heart 1 forbid it, by all sanctities

Of man’s social honor!

The Duke droop’d his eyes.
**T obey you,” he said, “ but let woman beware
iow she plays fast and loose thus with human

despair,

And = aot in man’s heart. Madam, yours was
e right,

When you saw that I hoped, to extinguish hope

quite,
But oe latin from the first have done this, for I

ee
That you knew from the first that I loved you.”
Lucile

She raised
A slow, wistful regard to his features, and gazed
On them silent awhile. His own looks were down-

cast. »
Through her heart, whence its first wild alarm was
now pass’d

"This sudden reproach seem’d to startle,

,
Pity crept, and perchance o’er her conscience a tear,

Falling softly, awoke it.

However severe,
Were the ree these sudden pat to her?
Fad she ee 'y misconstrued this man’s character,
Which had seem’d, even when most impassion’d it

seem’d,

‘Too self-conscious to lose all in love? Had she
deem’d

That this airy, gay, insolent man of the world.

£o proud of the place the world gave him, held furl’d

‘in his bosom no passion, which once shaken wide

Might tug, till it snapp’d, that erect lofty pride?

Were ame elements in him, which once roused to
strife

Overthrow a whole nature, and change a whole life?

There are two kinds of strength. One, the strength
of the river

Yhich through continents pushes its pathway for-
ever ‘

oe fling its fond heart in the sea; if it lose

‘nis, the aim of its life, it is lost to its use.

it goes mad, is diffused into deluge, and dies,

‘The other, the strength of the sea; which supplies

ts deep life from mysterious sources, and draws

'’he river’s life into its own life, by laws

= oe not. The difference in each case is

us?

The river is lost, if the ocean it miss; -

if the sea miss the river, what matter? The sea

1; the sea still, forever, Its deep heart will be

Self-sufficing, unconscious of loss as of yore;

Its sources are infinite; still to the shore,

With no diminution of pride, it will say,

“T am a I, the sea! stand aside, and make
way!’

THE SUNN

 

Was his love, then, the love of the river? and she,
Had she taken that love for the love of the sea?

Wi

At that thought, from her aspect whatever had been
Stern or haughty departed; and, humbled in mien,
She Sees ’d him, and brokenly murmur’d, as
though
To herself more than him, ‘“‘ Was I wrong? is it so?
Hear me, Duke! you must feel that, whatever you
eem.
Your Hight to reproach me in this, your esteem
I may claim on one ground—I at least am sincere.
You say that to me from the first it was clear
That you loved me. But what if this knowledge
were known
At a moment in life when I felt most alone,
And least able to be so? _A moment, in fact,
When I strove from one haunting regret to retract
And emancipate life, and once more to ful
al destinies, duties, and hopes? would you
stil
So bitterly blame me, Eugene de Luvois,
If I hoped to see all this, or deem’d that I saw
For a moment the promise of this, in the plighted
Affection of one who, in nature, united
So much that from others affection might claim,
If only affection were free? Do you blame
The hope of that moment? I deem’d my heart free
from all, saving sorrow. I deem’d that in me
There ting yet strength to mold it once more to my
will,
To uplift it once more to my hope. Do you still
Blame me, Duke, that I did mot then bid you refrain
From hope? alas! I too then hoped!”
Lvvois.
Oh, again,
Yet again, say that thrice-blessed word! say, Lucile,
That you then deign’d to hope—
LUcILE.
Yes! to hope I could feel,
And could give to you, that without which, all else

even
Were but to deceive, and to injure you even:—

A heart free from thoughts of another. Say, then,
Do you blame that one hope?
Lvuyols.
Oh Lucile!
“Say again,”

She resumed, gazing down, and with faltering tone,
“Do you blame me that, when I at last had to own
To my heart that the hope it had cherish’d was o’er,
And forever, I said to you then, ‘ Hope no more’?
I myself hoped no more!”’
With but ill-suppress’d wrath
The Duke answer’d , . . ‘‘ What, then! he recrosses
your path
This man, and you have but to see him, despite
Of his troth to another, to take back that light
Worthless heart to your own, which he wrong’d
years ago!”
Lucile ee ene, murmur’d ... ‘*No! no!
*T is not that—but alas!—but I cannot conceal
That I have not forgotten the past—but I feel
That I cannot accept all these gifts on your part,—
In return for what... ah, Duke, what is it?...a

heart
Which is only a ruin!”
With words warm and wild,

“Though a ruin it be, trust me yet to rebuild
And restore it,” Luvois cried; “though ruin’d it be,
Since so dear is that ruin, ah, yield it to me!”
He approach’d her. She shrunk back. The grief in
er eyes J ;

Answered *‘ No!”

An emotion more fierce seem’d to rise
And to break into flame, as though fired by the light
Of that look, in his heart, He exclaim’d, “Am I

right?
You tefect me! accept him?”
“T have not done so,’”
She si firmly. He hoarsely resumed, ‘‘ Not yet—
no

But can you with accents as firm promise me
That you will not accept him?’

Pee esl atin aut “ Accept? Is he free?
Free to offer?’ e said.

He replied; ‘‘ ah,

He might make h
away!

Dare you 0}

“You evade me, Lucile,”
you will not avow what you feel!
self free? Oh, you blush—turn

nly look in my face, lady, say!

While ea eign to reply to one question from me?

I may hope not, you tell me: but tell me, may he?

What! silent? Ialter my question. If ior

Freed in faith from this troth, might he ope eat
y

‘He mig!
She said softly.
Vi.

Those two whisper’d words, in his breast,
As he heard them, in one maddening moment releas'
All that’s evil and fierce in man’s nature, to crush
And extinguish in man all that’s good. Tn the rush
Of wild jealousy, all the fierce passions that waste
And darken and devastate intellect, chased
From its realm human reason, The wild animal
In the bosom of man was set free. And of all
Human pee the fiercest, fierce jealousy, fierce
As the fire, and more wild than the whirlwind to

jierce :
And 1 rend, rush’d upon him; fierce jealousy,
swell’d
By all passions bred from it, and ever impell’d
To involve all things else in the anguish within it,
And on others inflict its own pangs!
At that minute

What pass’d through his mind, who shall say? who
may tell

YSIDE LIBRARY.

 

 

The dark thoughts of man’s heart, which the red
glare of hell
Can illumine alone?
He stared wildly around
That lone place, so lonely! That silence! no sound
Reach’d that room, through the dark evening air,
_ Save drear
Drip and foar of the cataract ceaseless and near!
It was midnight all round on the weird silent
weather;
Deep eee in him! They two,—lone and to-
gether.
Himself, and that woman defenseless before him!
The triumph and bliss of his rival flash’d o’er him.
The abyss of his own black despair seem’d to ope
At his feet, with that awful exclusion of hope
Which Dante read over the city of doom. ‘
All the Tarquin pass’d into his soul in the gloom,
And, uttering words he dared never recall,
Words of insult and menace, he thunder’d down all
The brew’d storm-cloud within ‘him: its flashes
scorch’d blind
His own senses. His spirit was driven on the wind
Of a reckless emotion beyond his control;
A torrent seem’d loosen’d within him. His soul
Surged up from that caldron of passion that hiss’d
And seeth’d in his heart,

VI.
He had thrown, and had miss’d

VES

For, transfigured, she rose from the place
Where he rested o’erawed: a saint’s scorn on her

His last stake.

‘ace
Such a dread vade retro was written in light
On her oe the fiend would himself, at that
sight,
Have sunk back abash’d to perdition. I know
If Lucretia at Tarquin but once had look’d so,
She had needed no dagger next morning.
She rose
And swept to the door, like that phantom the snows
Feel at nightfall sweep o’er them, when daylight is
one, ;
And Caucasus is with the moon all alone,
There she paus’d; and, as though from immeasura-

ble,
Insurpassable distance, she murmur’d—
“ Warewell!

We, alas! have mistaken each other. Once more
Illusion, to-night, in my lifetime i8 o’er.
Duc de Luvois, adieu!’’

From the heart-breaking gloom
Of that vacant, reproachful, and desolate room,
He felt she was gone—gone forever!

Ix.
No word,
The sharpest that ever was edged like a sword,
Could have pierced to his heart with such keen ac-
cusation
As the silence, the sudden profound isolation,
In which he remain’d.
“Oh return; I repent!’’
He exclaim’d; but no sound through the stillness
was sent,
Save the roar of the water, in answer to him,
And a beetle that, sleeping, yet humm’d her night-
mn:
An indistinct anthem that troubled the air
With a searching, and wistful, and questioning
prayer.
“Return,” sung the wandering insect. The roar
Of the waters replied, “‘ Nevermore! nevermore!”
He walk’d to the window. The spray on his brow
Was flung cold from the whirlpools of water below;
The frail wooden balcony shook in the sound
Of the eae. The mountains gloom’d sullenly
round,
A candle one ray from a closed casement flung.
O’er the dim balustrade all bewilder’d he hung,
Vaguely watching the broken and shimmering blink
Of the stars on the veering and vitreous brink
Of Lag snake-like prone column of water; and
ny
Aloof o’er the languors of air the pe het
Sharp horn of the gray gnat. Before he relinquish’d
His oe employment, that light was extin-
uish’d.
Wheels, at last, from the inn door, aroused him. He
ran
iad stairs; reached the door—just to see her

epart.
Down the mountain the carriage was speeding.

x.
His heart

Pealed the knell of its last hope. He rush’d on; but

whither
He knew not—or, into the dark cloudy weather—
The midnight—the mountains—on, over the shelf
Of the precipice—on, still—away from himself!
Till, exhausted, he sunk ’mid the dead leaves and

moss

At the mouth of the forest. A een cross
Of gray stone stood for prayer by the woodside. He

sank
Prayerless, powerless, down at the base, ’mid the
) Weeds and grasses; his face hid"among them. He

new
That the night had divided his whole life in two.
Behind him a Past that was over forever;

Before hima Future devoid of endeavor

And pur; . He felt a remorse for the one,

Of the other a fear. What remain’d to be done?
Whither now should he turn? Turn again as befo:
To his old easy, careless existence of yore

He could not. He felt that for better or worse

 
 

 

 

i

A change had pass’d o’er him; an ai remorse
Of his own frantic failure and error had marr’d
Such a refuge forever. The future seem’d barr’d

By the ere of a dead hope o’er which he must

trea
To attain it. Life’s wilderness round him was spread.
What clew there to cling by?
He clung by a name

To a dynasty fallen forever. He came

Of an old princely house, true through change to
the race cs

And the sword of Saint Louis—a faith ’t were dis-

ace
To retineuish, and folly to live for! Nor less
Was his ancient religion (once potent to bless
Or to ban; and the crozier his ancestors kneel’d
To adore, when they fought for the cross in hard

fiel

With ed Crescent) become, ere it reach’d him, tra-

ition;

Amere faded badge of a social position;

A thing to retain and say nothing about,

Lest, if used, it should draw degradation from doubt.

Thus, the first time he sought them, the creeds of
his youth

Wholl: ee the strong needs of his manhood, in

ru a
And beyond them, what region of refuge? what field
For employment, this civilized age, did it yield
In that civilized land? or to thought? or to action?
Blind deliriums, bewilder’d and endless distraction!
Not éven a desert, not even the cell
Of a hermit to flee to, wherein he might quell
The wild devil-instincts which now, unreprest,
Ran riot through that ruin’d world in his breast.

- emek,
So he lay there, like Lucifer, fresh from the sight
Of a ae scaled and lost; in the wide arms of

e nig.

O’er the howling abysses of nothingness! There
As he lay, Nature’s deep voice was teaching him

et
But what had he to pray to?

The winds in the woods,
The voices abroad o’er those vast solitudes,
Were in commune ail round with the invisible Power
That walk’d the dim world by Himself at that hour,
But their yrguage he had not yet learn’d—in despite
Of the much he had learn’d—or forgotten it quite,
With its once native accents. Alas! what had he
To add to that deep-toned sublime symphon;
Of thanksgiving?.... A fiery finger was sti
oe into his heart some dread sentence, His

i

Like a wind that is put to no purpose, was wild
At its work of destruction within him. The child
Of an infidelage, he had been his own god,
His own devil.
He sat on the damp mountain sod,
And stared sullenly up at the dark sky. me
The clouds

Had heap’d themselves over the bare west in crowds

Of misshapen, incongruous potents. A green

Streak of dreary, cold, luminous ether, between

The base of their black barricades, and the ridge

Of =a grim world, gleam’d ghastly, as under some
ridge, ;

Cyclop-sized, in a city of ruins o’erthrown

By sieges eae some river, unknown

And unnamed, widens on into desolate lands.

While he gazed, that cloud-city invisible hands

Dismantled and rent; and reveal’d, through a loo

In cians ee dark, the blemish’d and half-broken

loop

Of the moon, which soon silently sunk; and anon
The,whole supernatural pageant wag gone.
The wide night, discomforted, conscious of loss,
Darken’d round him, One object alone—that gray

eross—
Glimmer’d fa’nt on the dark. Gazing up, he descri
Through the void air, its desolate ae erent

wide,
As though to embrace him.

: ; He turn’d from the sight,
Set his face to the darkness, and fled.

XI,
; . ; When the light
Of the dawn grayly flicker’d and glared on the petit

_ Wearied ends of the night, like a hope that is sent

 

 

 

: Set against the young day, as disc

To the i of some grief when its need is the
sorest, e
He was sullenly riding across the dark forest
Toward Serchon. :
Thus riding, with eyes of defiance
1 ming alliance
With ety that the day brings to man, he per-
ceivi
Aes ee fleetingly, through the damp-

ea
Autumn branches that put forth gaunt arms on his

way,
The face of aman pale and wistful, and gray

With the gray glare of morning. Mugene de Luvois,
With the sense of a strange second sight, when he

saw
That phantom-like face, could at once recognize,
By the sole instinct now left to guide him, the eyes
Of his rival, though fleeting the vision and dim,
With a stern sad inquiry fix’d keenly on him.
And, to meet it, a lie leap’d at once to his own;
A lie born of that lying darkness now grown
Over allin hisnature! He answer’d that gaze
With a look which, if ever a man’s look conveys
More intensely than words what a man means, con-

ey:
Beyond doubt in its smile an announcement which

sai
“I have triumph’. The question your eyes woud
_ tmply Z

! Comes too late, Alfred Vargrave!l”

 

LUCILE.

And so he rode by}
And rode on, and rode gayly, and rode out of sight,
Leaving that look behind him to rankle and bite,

XI.
And it bit, and it rankled.
XIV.

Lord Alfred, scarce knowing,
Or choosing, or heeding the way he was going,
By one wild hope impell’d, by one wild fear pursued,
And led by one instinct, which seem’d to exclude
From his mind every human sensation, save one—
The torture of doubt—had stray’d moodily on,
Down the highway deserted, that evening in which
With te ee he had parted; stray’d on, through
the ric’
Haze of sunset, or into the gradual night,
Which darken’d, unnoticed, the land from his sight
oe oe Saviour; nor did the changed aspect
of a
The wild scenery round him avail to recall
To his senses their normal perceptions, until, _
As he stood on the black shaggy brow of the hill
At the mouth of the forest, the moon, which had

un,

Two Sane hours in a cloud, slipp’d on fire from
among

The rent vapors, and sunk o’er the ridge of the world,

Then he lifted his eyes, and saw round him unfurl’d,

In one moment of splendor, the leagues of dark

trees.
And the Jong rocky line of the wild Pyrenees.
And he knew by the milestone scored rough on the

face
Of the bare rock, he was but two hours from the

+ lace :

Whers Lucile and Luvois must have met. This same
trac

The Duke must have traversed, perforce, to get back

To Serchon; not yet then the Duke had return’d!

He listen’d, he look’d up the dark, but discern’d

Not a trace, not a sound of a horse by the way.

He knew that the night was approaching to day.

He resolved to proceed to Saint Saviour. The morn,

Which, at last, through the forest broke chill and
forlorn,

Reveal’d to him, riding toward Serchon, the Duke.

el ae — that the two men exchanged look for
00.

XV.
And the Duke’s rankled in him,
XVI.

He rush’d on. He tore
His path through the thicket. He reach’d the inn

door,
Roused the yet drowsing porter, reluctant to rise,
‘And inquired for the Countess. The man rubb’d his

eyes
The Gentes was gone. And the Duke?
The man stared

A sleepy inquiry.
ea With accents that scared
The man’s dull sense awake, ‘‘ He, the stranger,’’ he

cried,
“Who had been there that night!”
The man grinn’d and replied,
With a vacant intelligence, ‘“‘ He, oh ay, ay!
He went after the lady.”
4 No further reply

Could he give. Alfred Vargrave demanded no more,
Flung a coin to the man, and so turn’d from the

door.
“What! the Duke then the night in that lone inn
had pass’d?

In that ne jnn—with her!’ Was that look he had
east ,
When they met in the forest, that look which re-

main’
On his mind with its terrible smile, thus explain’d?

ait, :
The day was half turn’d tothe evening, before
He re-entered Serchon, with a heart sick and sore.
In the midst of a light crowd of babblers, his look,
By their voices attracted, distinguished the Duke,
Gay, insolent, noisy, with eyes sparkling bright,
With laughter, shrill, airy, continuous.

j Right
Through the throng Alfred Vargrave, with swift
somber stride,
Glided on. The Duke noticed him, turn’d, stepp’d

aside.
And cordially ping his hand, whisper’d low,
‘‘Oh, how right have you been! There can never

be—no.
Never—any ore contest between us! Milord,
Let us henceforth be-friends!”’

Having utter’d that word,

He turn’d lightly round on his heel, and again
His gay laughter was heard, echoed loud by that

train
Of his young imitators.
Lord Alfred stood still,

Rooted, stunn’d to the spot. He felt weary and ill,
Out of heart with his own heart, and sick to the soul,
With a dull, stifling anguish he could not control.

Does he hear in a dream, through the buzz of the

crowd, ~
The Duke's blithe associates, babbling aloud
Some comment upon his gay humor that day?
He never was gayer: what makes him so gay?
Tis, no doubt, say the flatterers, flattering in tune,
Some vestal whose virtue no tongue dare impugn .
Has at last found a Mars—who, of course, shall be

nameless, |
The vestal that yields to Mars only is blameless!
Hark! hears he a name which, thus syllabled,
All his heart into tumult? ... Lucile de Nevers

With ane Duke’s coupled gayly, in some laughing

‘D
Free alfusion? Not so as might give him the right
To turn fiercely round on the see e oe but yet
To a trite and irreverent compliment set!
XVII.

Slowly, slowly, ee that place in his soul
Where the thought of Lucile was enshrined, did

there roll
Back again, back again, on its smooth downward

course
O’er his nature, with gathered momentum and force,
THE WORLD. ee

“No!” he mutter’d, “she cannot have sinn’d!
True! women there are (self-named women of mind!)
Who love rather liberty—liberty, yes!

To choose and to leave—than the legalized stress

Of the lovingest marriage. But she—isshe so?
I willnot believe it. Lucile? Oh, no, no!
Not Lucile!

“ But the world? and, ah, what would it say?
Oh the look of that man, and _ his laughter to-day!
The gossip’s light question! the slanderous jest!
She is right! no, we could not be happy. Tis best
As it is. I will write to her—write, oh my heart!
And accept her farewells Our farewell! must we

Meets ‘

Part thus, then—forever, Lucile? Is it so?
Yes! I feelit. We could not be happy, I know.
"Twas a dream! we must waken!””

xx.

With head bow’d, as though
By the weight of the heart’s resignation, and slow

oody footsteps he turned to his inn.
Drawn apart
From the gate in the court-yard, and ready to start,
Postboys mounted, portmanteaus pack’d up and
made fast,

A traveling-carriage, unnoticed, he pass’d.
He order’d his horse to be ready anon:
Sent, and paid, for the reckoning, and slowly pass’d

on,
And ascended the staircase, and enter’d his room.
It was twilight. The chamber was dark in thegloom
Of the evening. He listlessly kindled a light,
On the mantle-piece; there a large card caught his

sight—
A large card, a stout card, well printed and plain,
Nothing flourishing, flimsy, affected, or vain.
It gave a respectable look to the slab
That it lay on. The name was—
Smr Riptey MacNas,,

Full familiar to him was the name that he saw,

For ’t was that of his own future uncle-in-law,

Mrs. Darcy’s rich brother, the banker, well known

As wearing the longest-phylacteried gown

Of all the rich Pharisees England can boast of;

A psec at eg Scot, whose sharp wits made the

most o:

This world and the next; having largely invested

Not only where treasure is never molested

By thieves, moth, or rust; but on this earthly ball
ere interest was high, and security small,

Of mankind there was never a theory yet

Not by some individual instance upset:

And go to that sorrowful verse of the Psalm

Which declares that the wicked expand like the palm

In a world where the righteous are stunted and pent,

A checring exception did Ridley present. _ :

Like the worthy of Uz, Heaven prosper'd his piety.

The leader of every religious society,

Christian knowledge he labor’d through life to pro-

mote
With ee profit, and knew how to quote
Both the Stocks and the Scripture, with equal advant-

age
To himself and admiring friends, in this Cant-Age.
XXI.

While over this card Alfred vacantly brooded,

A waiter his head through the doorway protruded;
“Sir Ridley MacNab with milord wish’d to speak.”
Alfred Vargrave could feel there were tears on his

cheek;
He brush’d them away with a gesture of pride.
He glanced at the glass; when his own face he eyed,
He was scared by its pallor. Inclining his head,
He with tones calm, unshaken, and silvery, said
“Sir Ridley may enter.”
In three minutes more

That benign apparition appear’d at the door.

Sir Richey: released for a while from the cares

Of business, and minded to breathe the pure airs

Of the blue Pyrenees, and enjoy his release,

In company there with his sister and niece,

Found himself now at Serchon—distributing tracts,
Sowing seed by the way, and collecting new facts
For Exter Hall; he was starting that night

For Bigorre: he had heard, to his cordial delight,
That Lord Alfred was there, and, himself, setting out
For the same destination: impatient, no doubt!
Here some commonplace compliments as to “the

marriage 6
Through his speech trickled softly, like honey: his

cal
Was ready. Astorm seem’d to threaten the weather;
If his young friend agreed, why not travel together?

ea a pale —— and ee a a
perplexity, during this speech, up and down
Alfred Vargrive was striding; but, after a pause
And a slight hesitation, the which seem’d to cause
Some surprise to Sir Ridley, he answer’d: ‘‘ My dear
Sir Ridley, allowme afew moments here—
Half an hour at the most—to conclude an affair

Of a nature so urgent as hardly to

 

spare *
My presence (which brought me, ion to this spot),

a

nee

we

oe ree a ne

|

 
 

 

 

414 THE SUNNYSIDE; LIBR

 

 

 

 

 

Before I accept your kind offer.”

“Why not?”
Said Sir Ridley, and smiled. Alfred Vargrave before
Sir Ridley observed it, had pass’d through the door.
A few moments later, with footsteps revealing
Intense agitation of uncontroll’d feeling,
He was rapidly pacing the garden below.
What pass’d through his mind then is more than I

now.
But before one half-hour into darkness had fled,
In Ea Se cat he stood with Sir Ridley. His
Tea
Was firm and composed. Not a sign on his face
Betray’d there the least agitation. ‘The place
You so kindly have offer’d,”’ he said, ‘‘I accept.”’
And he stretch’d out his hand. The two travelers
stepp’d
Smiling into the carriage.
And thus, out of sight,
They drove down the dark road, and into the night.

XXII.

‘Sir Ripley was a of it See 4 wise men ah - a
As their power of saying it goes. with Zophar,
a isdom shall die

“We, no doubt, are the people, Ww
: with us!’
Though of wisdom like theirs there is no small supply

with us.
Side by side in the carriage ensconced, the two men
Began to converse, somewhat drowsily, when
Alfred suddenly thought—“‘ Here’s a man of ripe age,
At my side, by his fellows reputed as sage,
Who looks happy, and therefore who must have been
wise:
Suppose I with caution reveal to his eyes,
Some few of the reasons which make me believe
That I neither am happy nor wise? ’twould relieve
And a perchance, my own darkness and
oubt.’
For which purpose a feeler he softly put out.
It was snapp’d up at once.
‘What is truth?” jesting Pilate
Ask’d, and pass’d from the question at once with a
smile at
Its utter futility. Had he address’d it
To Ridley MacNab, he at least had confess’d it
Admitted discussion! and certainly no man

Could more promptly have answer’d the skeptical |

Roman
‘Than Ridley. Hear some street astronomer talk!
Grant him two or three hearers, a morsel of chalk,
And forthwith on the pavement he’ll sketch you the
scheme
Of the heavens! Then hear him enlarge on his

eme!
Not afraid of La Place, nor of Arago, he!
He'll prove you the whole plan in z ain A BC,
Here’s your sun—call him A; B’s the moon, it is clear
How the rest of the alphabet brings up the rear
‘Of the planets. Now ask Arago, ask La Place,
Os, sages, who speak with the heavens face to
ace!)
Their science in plain A B C to accord
‘To your point-blank inquiry, my friends! not a word
wil you get for your pains from their sad lips. Alas!
Not a drop from the bottle that’s quite full will pass.
°Tis the half-empty vessel that freest emits
The water that’s init. ’Tis thus with men’s wits;
“Or at long with their knowledge. A man’s capa-
ility
‘Of imparting to others a truth with facility
“Is proportion’d forever with painful exactness
‘To the portable nature, the vulgar compactness,
The minuteness in size, or the lightness in weight
Of the truth he imparts. So small coins circulate
More freely than large ones. A beggar asks alms,
And we fling him a sixpence, nor feel any qualms;
But if every street charity shook an investment,
Or each beggar to clothe we must strip off a vest-

ment,
The length of the process would limit the act;
And therefore the truth that’s summ’d up in a tract
is most lightly dispensed.
As for Alfred, indeed.

On what spoonfuls of truth he was suffer’d to feed
By Sir Ridley, I know not. This only I know,

That the two men thus talking continued to go
Onward somehow, together—on into the night—
The midnight—in which they escape from our sight.

XXII.

nd meanwhile a word had been changed in its Ba
And those glittering chains that o’er blue balmy

space
Hang na blessing of darkness, had drawn out of
18)

To solace unseen hemispheres, the soft night;

And the dew of the dayspring benignly descended,

And the — morn to all things new sanction ex-
tended,

In the smile of the East. And the lark soaring on

-Lost in light, shook the dawn with a song from the

sun, Pf
And the world laugh’d.
It. wanted but two rosy hours
From the noon when they pass’d through the thick
passion-flowers
‘Of the little wild garden that dimpled before
‘The small house where their carriage now stopp’d at

Bigorre.
And more fair than the flowers, more fresh than the

dew,
With her white morning robe flitting joyously

through
The dark aac with which the soft*hillside jwas |

clothed,
ae _oreee perceived, where he paused, his be-
rothed.
Matilda sprung to him, at once, with a face
Ot such sunny sweetness, such gladness, such grace,

 

And radiant confidence, childlike delight,

That his whole heart upbraided itself at that sight.

And ua Star or sigh’d, ‘‘ Oh, how could I have
stray

From this sweet child, or suffer’d in aught to invade

Her young claim on my life, though it were for an

hour,
The thought of another?’’
“Look up, my sweet flower!”
He whisper’d her softly, ‘‘my heart unto thee
Is return’d, as returns to the rose the wild bee!”
“And will wander no more?” laugh’d Matilda.
“No more,”
He repeated. And, low to himself: ‘Yes, tis o’er!
My course, too, is decided, Lucile! Was I blind
To have em that those clever Frenchwomen of
mind
Could satisfy simply a plain lish heart.
Or sympathize wih ite? ae :

XXIV.

And here the first part
Of this drama is over. The curtain falls furl’
On the actors within it—the Heart and the World.
‘Woo'd and wooer have play’d with the riddle of life—
Have they solved it?
Appear! answer, Husband and Wife!

XKXV.

Yet, ere bidding farewell to Lucile de Nevers,
Hear her own heart’s farewell in this letter of hers.

Tuer ComMTEssE DE NEVERS TO A FRIEND IN INDIA,
*“Once more, oh my friend, to your arms and your

eart,
And the places of old . . . never, never to part!
Once more to the palm, and the fountain! Once
more

To the land of my birth, and the deep skies of yore!
From the cities of Europe, pursued by the fret

Of their turmoil wherever my footsteps are set;
From the children that cry for the birth, and behold!
There is no strength to bear them—old Time is so

old!
From tea weary masters, that come upon
ear’
Babe ¢ ee mined by the fever they bear from their
irth ;

From the men of small stature, mere parts of a
crowa

Born too late, when the strength of the world hath
been bow’d;

en to the orient, from whose sunbright
wom!

ar the giants which now are no more, in the

oom.

0 5

And the beauty of times that are faded forever!

To the palms! to the tombs! to the still Sacred River!

Where I too, the child of a day that is done,

First leapt into life, and look’d up at the sun.

Back again, back again, to the hill-tops of home

I come, oh my friend, my consoler, I come!

Are the 2 intense stars, that we watch’d night by
nig’

Burning broad on the band of Orion, as bright?

Are the large Indian moons as serene as of old,

When, i ildren, we gather’d the moonbeams for
go)

Do you yet recollect me, my friend? Do you still

Remember the free games we play’d on the hill,

‘Mid ity eee stones upheap’d, where we reckless-
ly tro 4

O’er the old ruin’d fane of the old ruin’d god?

How nd gate while around him we carelessly

ay”

That frown on my life ever after hath stay’d,

Like the shade of a solemn experience upcast

From some vague supernatural grief in the past.

For the poor god, pain, more than anger, he
frown’d,

To be that our youth, though so fleeting, had

ound,

in its transient and ignorant gladness, the bliss

Which his science divine seem’d divinely to miss.

Alas! you may haply remember me ye

The free child, whose glad childhood myself I forget.

I come—a sad woman, defrauded of rest:

I bear to you only a laboring breast:

My heart is a storm-beaten ark, wildly hurl’d

Over the oom of time, with the wrecks of a
world:

The dove from my bosom hath flown far away:

It is flown, and returns not, though many a day

Have I watch’d from the windows of life for its com-

ing. ;
Friend, T sigh for repose, I am weary of roaming.
I know not what Ararat rises for me
Far away, o’er the waves of the wandering sea:
I know not what rainbow may yet, from far hills,
Lift the promise of hope, the cessation of ills:
But a voice, like the voice of my youth, in my breast
Wakes and whispers me on—to the East! to the

East!
Shall I find the child’s heart that I left there? or find
The lost youth I recall with its pure Pree of mind?
Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?
Or give to the dead leaves their pce again?
Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath

rent?
‘Who oo, bring forth the winds that within them are
pent?
To a voice who shall render an image? or who
From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?
Ihave burn’d out within me the fuel of life.
Wherefore lingers the flame? Rest is sweet after

strife,
I would sleep for a while. Iam weary.
“My friend,
Thad meant in these lines to regather, and send

 

To our old home, my life’s scattered links. But ’t igs
vain!
Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again;
Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o’er,
Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore
Whence too far I have wander’d.
‘How many long years
Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching
fears,
‘While I wrote to you, splash’d out a girl’s premature
Moans of pain at what women in silence endure!
To your eyes, friend of mine, and to your eyes alone,
That now long-faded page of my life hath been shown
bilge: ed my heart’s birth, and death, as you
ow,
Many years since—how many!
. “A few months ago
Iseem’d reading it backward, that page! Why ex-

plain
Whence or how? The old dream of my life rose
again.
The old superstition! the idol of old!
Itis over. The leaf trodden down in the mold
Is not to the forest more lost than to me
That emotion. I bury it here by the sea
Which will bear me anon far away from the shore
Of a land which my footsteps shall visit no more.
And a heart’s reguiescat I write on that grave.
Hark! the sigh of the wind, and the sound of the
wave, j
Scem like voices of spirits that whisper me home!
I come, oh you whispering voices, I come!
My friend, ask me nothing.
“Receive me alone

As a Santon receives to his dwelling of stone

In silence some pilgrim the midnight may bring:

It may bean angel that, weary of wing,

Hath paused in his flight from some city of doom,
Or only a wayfarer stray’d in the gloom. e
This only I know: that in Se at least ’
Lives fine, att or the power that must master our

Wherefore strive where the gods must themselves
ield at last?
Both they and their altars ace by with the Past.
The tg & the household Time thrusts from the
shelf;

And I seem as unreal and weird to myself
As those idols of old.

“Other times, other men,
Other men, other passions!

“So be it! yet again
I turn to my birthplace, the birthplace of morn,
And ye lig: t of those lands where the great sun is
_ born

Spread your arms, oh my friend! on your breast let

me fee
The repose which hath fled from my own.
“Your LUcILE.”’

PART “TF
CANTO FIRST.

Le
Hatt, Muse! But each Muse by this time has, I
know,

Been used up, and Apollo has bent his own bow
All too long; so I leave unassaulted the portal
Of Olympus, and only invoke here a mortal.

Hail, Murray !—not Lindley,—but Murray and Son.

Hail, omniscient, beneficent, great Two-in-One!

Tn Albemarle street may thy temple long stand!

Long enlighten’d and led by thine erudite hand,

May each novice in science nomadic unravel

Statistical mazes of modernized travel!

May each innkeeping knave long thy judgments
revere,

And the postboys of Europe regard thee with fear;

While they feel, in the silence of baffled extortion,

That knowledge is power! Long, long, like that

portion
Of the national soil which the Greek exile took
In his baggage wherever he went, may thy book
Cheer each poor British pilgrim, who trusts to thy
wit
Not to pay through his nose just for following it!
May’st thou long, oh, instructor! preside o’er his

way,
And teach him alike what to praise and to pay!
Thee, pursuing this fet of song, once again
I invoke, lest, unskill’d, I should wander in vain.
To my call be propitious, nor, churlish, refuse
Thy great accents to lend to the lips of my Muse;
For I sing of the Naiads who dwell ’mid the stems
Of the green linden-trees by the waters of Ems. F
Yes! thy spirit descends upon mine, oh, John Mur-

ray!
And I Spatcertils thy book—for the Baths in a
hurry. I

“At Coblentz a bridge of boats crosses the Rhine;
And from thence the road, winding by Ehrenbreit-

stein,
Passes over the frontier of Nassau. Wen
No custom-house here since the Zollverein.”” See
Murray, paragraph 30.)

“The route, at each turn,

Here the lover of nature allows to discern,
In varying prospect, a rich wooded dale:
The vine and acacia-tree mostly prevail
In the foliage observable here; and, moreover,
The soil is carbonic. The road, under cover
Of the grape-clad and mountainous upland that

hems
Round this beautiful oe the traveler to—
A Schnellpost from Frankfort arrives every day.
 

* Born too late or too early,

 

LUCILE.

 

At the Kurhaus (the old Ducal mansion) you pay

Light florins for lodgings. A Restaurateur

Is attach’d to the place; but most travelers prefer

(ncluding, indeed, many persons of note)

To dine at the usual-priced table d’hote.

Through the town runs the Lahn, the steep green
banks of which :

Two rows of white picturesque houses enrich;

And between the high road and the river is laid

Out a sort of a garden, call’d ‘Tum Promenade.’

Female visitors here, who may make up their mind

To ascend to the top of these mountains, will find

On the banks of the stream, saddled all the day Jong,

Troops of donkeys—sure - footed —proverbially
strong;”’

And the traveler at Ems may remark, as he passes,

Here, as elsewhere, the women run after the asses.

TE,
Mid the world’s weary denizens bound for these

springs,
In the month when the merle on the maple-bough
sings, ’
Pursued to the place from dissimilar paths
By a similar sickness, there came to the baths
Four sufferers—each stricken deep through the

heart,
Or the head, by the selfsame invisible dart
Of the arrow that flieth unheard in the noon,
From the sickness that walketh unseen in the moon,
Through this great lazaretto of life, wherein each
Infects with his own sores the next within reach.
First LF these were a young English husband and
wife,
Grown weary ere half through the journey of life.
Oh, Nature, say where, thou gray mother of earth,
Is the co of thy youth? that thy womb brings
to birt!
Only old men to-day! On the winds, as of old,
Thy voice in its accent is joyous and bold;
Thy forests are green as of yore; and thine oceans
Yet move in the might of their ancient emotions:
But man—thy last birth and thy best—is no more
Life’s free lord, that look’d up to the starlight of

yore
With the faith on the brow, and the fire in the eyes,
The eas foot on the earth, the high heart in the
skies;
But a gray-headed infant, defrauded of youth,

» The lady, in truth
Was young, fair, and gentle; and never was given
To more heavenly eyes the pure azure of heaven,
Never yet did the sun touch to mais of gold
Tresses paehtet than those which her soft hand en-
ro)
From her noble and innocent brow, when she rose,
An Aurora, at dawn, from her balmy repose,
And into the mirror the bloom and the blush
Of her beauty broke, glowing; like light in a gush
From the sunrise in summer,
Love, roaming, shall meet
But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet—
Hyes brighter—brows whiter—a figure more fair—
Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair—
Than thine, ey Alfred! And here I aver
May those that have seen thee declare if I err)
hat not all the oysters in Britain contain
A pearl pure as thou art,
Let some one explain
Who may know more than I of the intimate life
Of the pearl with the oyster,—why yet in his wife,
In despite of her beauty—and most when he felt
His soul to the sense of her loveliness melt—
Lord Alfred miss’d something he sought for: indeed,
_ The more that he miss’d it the greater the need;
Till it seem’d to himself he could willingly spare
All ey that he found for the one charm not
ere,
IV,

For the blessings Life lends us, it strictly demands
The worth of their full usufruct at our hands,

And the value of all things exists, not indeed

In themselves, but man’s use of them, feeding man’s

need,
Alfred Vargrave, in wedding with beauty and youth
Had embraced ‘both Ambition and Weslih, Yet ti

truth
Unfulfill’d the ambition, and sterile the wealth
ae a life paralyzed by a moral ill-health),
ad ae d, while the beauty and youth, unre-
From a vague disappointment at all things, but
semd

Day by day to reproach him in silence for all

That lost youth in himself they had fail’d to recall,
No career had he follow’d, no object obtain’d

In the world by those worldly advantages gain’d
From nuptials beyond which once seem’d to appear,
Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career,

All that eee and gleam’d through the moonlight

of yout
With a elo: so fair, now that manhood in truth
ee gather’d it, seem’d like that false fairy

gold ;
‘Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and
mold!
i
Fairy ‘eoa moss and leaves! and the young Fairy
ride?

Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?
Say, oh friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch’d
Some pale and im pable vapor, detach’d
From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall
O’er the light of a sweet serene star, until all
The chill’d splendor reluctantly waned in the deep
Of its own native heaven? Even so seem’d to creep
O’er that fair and ethereal face, day by day,

the radiant yermeil, subsiding away,

15

 

Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual vail
Of a sadness unconscious.

The lady ied pale
As silent her lord grew: and both, as they eyed
Each other askance, turn’d, and secretly sigh’d. _
Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give?
True, we know what life is—but, alas! do we live?
The grammar of life we have gotten by heart,
But life’s self we have made a dead language—an

art,

Not a voice. Could we speak it, but once, as *t was
spoken

‘When the silence of passion the first time was broken!

Cuvier knew the world better than Adam, no doubt,

But the last man, at best, was but. learned about

What the first, without learning, enjoy’d. What art

thou
To the man of to-day, oh Leviathan, now?
A science. What wert thou to him that from ocean
First beheld thee appear? A surprise,—an emotion!
‘When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the

eart,
When it thrills as it fills every animate part,
eed Sie om how works it? - we scarcely
etect i x
But life goes; the heart dies: oh haste, leech, and dis-
sect it!
This accursed, eesthetical, ethical age
Hath so finger’d .life’s hornbook, so blurr’d every

i Age,

That ie old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story

With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,

Is turn’d to a tedious instruction, not new

To the children that read it insipidly through.

We as too much of Love ere we love. We can

race

Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face

When we see it at last. "Tis the same little Cupid,

With the tae dimpled cheek, and the smile ost
stupi

We cats seen in our pictures, and stuck on our
shelves.

And copied a hundred times over, ourselves,

And wherever we turn, and whatever we do,

Still, that horrible sense of the deja connu!

VI

Perchance *t was the fault of the life that they led;
Perchance ’t was the fault of the novels they read;
Perchance ’t was a fault in themselves; Iam bound

not
To say: aed I know—that these two creatures found
no’

In each other some sign they expected to find

Of a something unnamed in the heart or the mind;
And, missing it, each felt aright to complain

Of a sadness which each found no word to explain.
Whatever it was, the world noticed not it

In the light-hearted beauty, the light-hearted wit.
Still, as once with the actors n Greece, ‘tis the case,
Each must speak to the crown with a mask on his

face.
Praise follow’d Matilda wherever she went.
She was flatter’d. Can flattery purchase content?
Yes. While to its voice, for a moment, she listen’d,
The young oo still bloom’d, and the soft eyes still
sten’d; -
And her lord, when, like one of those light vivid
ings

That glide down the gauzes of summer with wings

Of rapturous radiance, unconscious she moved __

Through aid buzz of inferior creatures, which

rove

Her eens their envy, one moment forgot

‘Mid the mes charms there, the one charm that
was not:

And when o’er her beauty enraptured he bow’d,

(As they turn’d to each other, each flush’d from the

crowd,)
And ee those praises which yet seem’d more
ear ®

Than the praises of others had grown to her ear,

She, too, ceased awhile, her own fate to regret:

“Yes!...he loves me,” she sigh’d; “this is love,
then—and yet—/”

Vil

Ah, that yet/ fatal word! ’tis the moral of all
Thought os felt, seen or done, in this world since

e
It stands at the end of each sentence we learn;
It flits in the vista of all we discern;
Tt leads us, forever and ever, away
To find in to-morrow what flies with to-day.
°*T was this same little fatal and mystical word
That now, like a mirage, led my lady and lord
To the waters of Ems from the waters of Marah;
Drooping pilgrims in Fashion’s blank, arid Sahara!

VU,

At the same time, pursued by a spell much the same,
To these waters two other worn pi s there came;
One a man,:one a woman: just now, at the latter,
As the Reader I mean by and by to look at her

And judge for himself, I will not even glance,

Ix.

Of the self-crown’d young kings of the Fashion in
rance

Whose resplendent regalia so dazzled the sight;

Whose horse was so perfect, whose boots were so

right, :
Who s6 hailed in the salon, so mark’d in the Bois,
‘Who so welcomed by all as Eugene de Luvois?
Of all the smooth-brow’d premature debauchees
In that town of all towns, where Debauchery sees
On the forehead of youth her mark everywhere

 

graven—
In Paris I mean—where the streets are all paven

 

By those two fiends whom Milton saw bridging the
wa: 4

iY,
From Hell to this planet—who, haughty and gay,
The free rebel of life, bound or led by no law,
Walk’d that causeway as bold as Eugene de Luvois?
Yes! he march’d through the great masquerade,

loud of tongue,

Bold of brow: but the motley he mask’d in, it hung
So loose, trail’d so wide, and appear’d to impede
So eee at times the vex’d effort at speed,
That 7 keen eye might guess it was made—not for
‘im,
But some brawler more stalwart of stature and limb.
That it irk’d him, in truth, you at times could divine,
For when low was the music, and spilt was the wine,
He would clutch at the garment, as though it op-

press’d
And stifled some impulse that choked in his breast.

x

What! he, ... the light sport of his frivolous ease!

Was he, too, a prey to a mortal disease?

My friend, hear a parable: ponder it well:

For a moral there is in thé tale that I tell.

One evening I sat in the Palais Royal,

And there, while I laugh’d at Grassot and Arnal,

My eye fell on the face of a man at ae

Every time that he laugh’d I observed t he sigh’d,

AS eo vex’d to be pleased. I remark’d that he
sai

Ill at ease on his seat, and kept twirling his hat
In his hand, with a look of unquiet a ction.
I inquired the cause of his dissatisfaction.
“ Sir,” he said, “if what vexes me here you would

know,
Learn that, passing this way some few half-hours

ago,
I walked into the Francais, to look at Rachel.
(Sir, that woman in Phedre is a mirac! ee
Task’d for a box: they were occupied all:
For a seat in the balcony: all taken! a stall:
Taken too: the whole house was as full as could be—
Not a hole for a rat! I had just time to see
The lady I love ¢ete-a-tete with a friend
In a box out of reach at the opposite end:
Then a oe push’d me out. What was leff me

0 do
I tried for the eee +e Que voulez-vous?

Every place for the tragedy book’d!. .. mon ami,
The farce was close by: ... at the farce me voici!
The piece is a new one: and Grassot plays well:
There is drollery, too, in that fellow Ravel

And Hyacinth’s nose is superb!... yet Imeant
My evening elsewhere, and not thus, to have spent.
Fate orders these things by her will, not by ours!
Sir, mankind is the sport of invisible powers.”

I once met the Duc de Luvois for a moment;
And I mark’d when his features I fixed in my com-

men i
O’er those features the same vague disquietude stray
I had seen on the face of my friend at the play;

And I thought that he too, Ma 4 probably, spent

His evenings not wholly as first he had meant.

XI.

Oh source of the holiest joys we inherit,

Oh, Sorrow, thou solemn, invisible spirit!

Ill fares it with man when, through life’s desert sa:
Grown impatient too soon for the long-promised

He turns from the worship of thee, as thou art,

An expressless and imageless truth in the heart,
And takes of the jewels of pt the pelf

And the gold of the Godless, to make to himself

A gaudy, idolatrous image of thee,

And then bows to the sound of the cymbal the knee.
The sorrows we make to ourselves are false gods:
Like the prophets of Baal, our bosom with rods

‘We may smite, we may gash at our hearts till they

bleed, —
But these idols are blind, deaf, and dumb to our
n

eed. "
The land is athirst, and cries out! . . .’t is in vain;
The great blessing of Heaven descends not in rain.

xi.
It was night; and the lamps were beginning to

gleam
Through the long linden-trees, folded each in his

From ee building which looks like a temple...
and is »
The Temple of—Health? Nay, but enter! I wis
That never the rosy-hued deity knew

One votary out of that sallow-cheek’d crew

Of Courlanders, Wallacs, Greeks, affable Russians,
Explosive Parisians, potato-faced Prussians;
Jews—Hamburghers chiefly ;—pure patriots,—Suabi-

ans;—
. Cappadocians and Elamites, Cretes and Arabians,
And the dwellers in Pontus”... My muse will not

weary ‘
More lines with the list of them . . . cur fremuere?
What is it they murmur, and mutter, and hum?
Into what Pandemonium is Pentecost come?
Oh, what is the name of the god at whose fane
Every nation is mix’d in so motley a train?
What weird Kabala lies on those tables outspread?
To what oracle turns with attention each head?
What holds these pale worshipers each so devout,
And what are those hierophants busied about?

z Oi ee
Here passes, repasses, and flits to and fro,
And rolls without ceasing the great Yes and No:
Round this altar alternate the weird Passions dance,
And the God worship’d here is the old God of Chance.
Through the wide-open doors of the distant saloo:
Flute, ot A and fiddle are squeaking in tune;
And an indistinct music forever is roll’d,

 

 

epee

Gt =

=

BP a
Se eS EE

Se

een

TS TT

 

k

i

 

46

That mixes and chimes with the chink of the gold,

From a vision, that flits in a luminous haze,

Of figures forever eluding the gaze;

It fleets through the doorway, it gleams on the glass,

And od weir words pursue it—Rouge, Impair, et

8Sé f

Like a sound borne in sleep through such dreams as
encumber

With haggard emotions the wild wicked slumber

Of some witch when she seeks, through a nightmare,

to fo at
The hot hoof of the fiend, on her way to the Sabbat,
XIV.

The Duc de Luvois and Lord Alfred had met

Some few evenings ago (for the season as yet

Was but young) in this selfsame Pavilion of Chance,

The idler from England, the idler from France

Shook hands, each, of course, with much cordial
pleasure:

An a ae at Ems is to most men a treasure,

 

And 7 1ey both were too well-bred in aught to be-
ra. .

One discourteous remembrance of things pass’d
away.

°T was a sight that was pleasant, indeed, to be seen,
These . riends exchange greetings; the men who had
een

Foes so nearly in days that were past.

This, no doubt,
Is why, on the night I am speaking about,
= Lord Alfred sat down by himself at roulette,

ithout, one suspicion his bosom to fret,

Although he h

friend,
Matilda, half vex’d, at the room’s furthest end.
XV.

Lord Alfred his combat with Fortune began

With a few modest thalers—away they all ran—

The reserve follow’d fast in the rear, As his purse

Grew lighter his spirits grew sensibly worse.

One needs not a Bacon to find a cause for it:

*T is an old law in Perit seen abhorret

Vacuum—andmy lord, as he watch’d his last crown

Tumble into the bank, turn’d away with a frown

Which es of Napoleon himself might have
eck’

On that day of all days when an empire was wreck’d

On thy plain, Waterloo, and he witness’d the last

Of his favorite Guard cut to pieces, aghast!

Just then Alfred felt, he could scarce y tell why,

Within him the sudden strange sense that some eye

Had long been intently regarding him there—

That some gaze was upon him too searching to bear,

He rose and look’d up. Was it fact? Was it fable?

Was it dream? Was it waking? Across the green

left, with his pleasant French

table.
That face, with its features so fatally known—
Those eyes, whose deep gaze answer’d strangely his

own—
What was it? Some ghost from its grave come

again?
Some cheat of a feverish, fanciful brain?
Or was it herself—with those deep eyes of hers,

And that face unforgotten?—Lucile de Nevers!

XVI. -
Ah, well that pale woman a phantom stig seem,
Who appear’d to herself but the dream of a dream!

*Neath t Ose features so calm, that fair forehead so |

ush’d,

That pale cheek forever by passion unflush’d,

There yawn’d an insatiate void, and there heaved

A tumult of restless regrets unrelieved.

The brief noon of beauty was passing away,

And the chill of the twilight fell, silent and gray,

O’er that deep, self-perceived isolation of soul.

And now, as all round her the dim evening stole,

With its weird desolations she inwardly grieved

For the want of that tender assurance received

From the warmth of a whisper, the glance of an eye.

Which should say, or should look, ‘‘ Fear thou naught
—Iam by!”

And thus, through the lonely and self-fix’d existence, |

ons Mabe Bay of pence, 8nd ea | A remember’d resentment, half check’d by a wild

| And relentful re;

nce:
A strange sort of faint-footed fear—like a mouse

That comes out, when ’t is dark, in some old ducal |

house

Long deserted, where no one the creature can scare, |

And the forms on the arras are all that move there,

In Rome—in the Forum—there open’d one night

A gulf.. All the augurs turn’d pale at the sight.

In this omen the anger of Heaven they read.

Men consulted the gods: then the oracle said:—

“ Ever open this gulf shall endure, till at last

That oe Rome hath most precious within it be

ast.
The Romans threw in it their corn and their stuff,
But the gulf yawn’d as wide. Rome seem’d likely

enough -
To be ruin’d ere this rent in her heart she could
choke.

Then Curtius, revering the oracle, spoke:
“Oh, Quirites! to this Heaven’s question is come:
What to Rome is most precious? ee of

mieh?? ;
He plunged, and the gulf closed.

; The tale is not new;
But the moral applies many ways, and is true®
How, aoe — rent in twain, shall*the curse be de-

stroy” 2

°Tis a warm human life that must fill up the void,
Through many a heart runs the rent in the fable;
But who to discover a Curtius is able?

XVII.

‘Back she came from her long hiding-place, at the
source

THE SUNNYSIDE

 

| To old friends,

 

 

ee

Of the sunrise; where, fair in their fabulous course,
Run the rivers of Eden: an exile again,
To the cities of Europe—the scenes, and the men,
And the life, and the ways, she had left: still op-
press’
With fea same hungry heart, and unpeaceable
reast.
The same, to the same things! The world, she had
quitted
With a sigh, with a sigh she re-enter’d. Soon flitted
ee the salons and clubs, to the great satisfac-
ion
Of Paris, the news of a novel attraction.
The enchanting Lucile, the Py, Countess, once more
To her old friend, the World, had reopen’d her door;
The World came, and shook hands, and was ple
and amused
With what the World then went away and abused.
From ne poe fair fame it in naught could de-
ract:
*Twas the woman’s free genius it vex’d and attack’d
With a sneer at her freedom of action and speech.
But its ght careless cavils, in truth, could not reach

The lone heart they aim’d at. Her tears fell beyond
The world’s limit, to feel that the world could re-

spond
To that Se deepest, innermost yearning, in
naught.
*Twas no Tonger this earth’s idle inmates she sought:
The wit of the woman sufficed to engage
In the woman’s gay court the first men of the age.
Some had genius; and all, wealth of mind to confer
On we world: but that wealth was not lavish’d for
er.
For the genius of man, though so human indeed,
‘When ay out to man’s help by some great human
need,
The right to a man’s chance acquaintance refuses
To use what it hoards for mankind’s nobler uses.
Genius touches the world at but one point alone
Of that spacious circumference, never quite known
To the world: all the infinite number of lines
That radiate thither a mere point combines,
But one only,—some central affection apart
From the reach of the world, in which Genius is

eart.
And love, life’s fine center, includes heart and mind.
And therefore it was that Lucile sigh’d to find
Men of genius appear, one and all in her ken,
When they stoop’d themselves to it, as mere clever

men;
Artists, statesmen, and they in whose works are un-

‘ur!

Worlds new-fashion’d for man, as mere men of the
world.

And go, as alone now she stood, in the sight

Of the sunset of youth, with her face from the light,

And watch’d her own shadow grow long at her feet,

As though stretch’d out, the shade of some other to

meet,
The woman felt homeless and childless: in scorn
She seem’d mock’d by the voices of children unborn;
And when from these somber reflections away
She turn’d, with a sigh, to that gay world, more ga;
For her presence within it, she knew herself friend-

less;

That her ath led from peace, and that path appear’d
endless .

That even her beauty had been but a snare,

And her wit sharpened only the edge of despair.

XVII.

With a face all transfigured and flush’d by surprise,
Alfred turned to Lucile. With those deep-searching

eyes

She look’d into his own. Nota word that she said,
Not a look, not a blush, one emotion betray’d,

She seem’d to smile through him, at something be-

yond:

When she a his questions, she seem’d to re-
spon

To some voice in herself. With no trouble descried,

To each troubled inquiry she calmly replied.

Not so he. At the sight of that face back again

To his mind came the ghost of a long-stifled pain,

et like a motherless child
Softly seeking admittance, with plaintive appeal,
To the heart which resisted its entrance,

Lucile
And himself thus, however, with freedom allow’d
. talking still side by side, left the
crow

By the crowd unobserved. Not unnoticed, however,
By the Duke and Matilda. Maltilda had never
Seen her husband’s new friend.

She had follow’d by chance,
Or by instinct, the sudden half-menacing glance
Which the Duke, when he witnessed their meeting,

had turn’d

On Lucile, and Lord Alfred; and, scared, she dis-

cern

On his feature the shade of a gloom so profound
That she shudder’d instinctively.
Of her voice, to some startled inquiry, of hers

He replied not, but murmur’d, ‘‘ Lucile de Nevers,
Once again, then? so be it!’’ In the mind of that

man. ‘

At that moment, there shaped itself vaguely the plan
Of a purpose malignant and dark, such alone
(To his own secret heart but imperfectly shown)

As could spring from the cloudy, fierce chaos of

Hhouae
By which all his nature to tumult was wrought.

xIx

“So!” he thought, ‘‘they meet thus; and re-weave
the old charm!
And she hangs on his voice, and she leans on his

2

LIBRARY.

| Its victim so surel;

 

| And she fens me not, seeks me not, recks not of
me

| Oh, what if I show’d her that I, too, can be

Loved by etna own rival—more fair and more
young?”

The serpent rose in him: a serpent which, stung,

| Sought to sting. y
Each unconscious, indeed, of the eye
Fix’d upon them, Lucile and my lord saunter’d by, |
In converse which seem’d to be earnest. A smile (
Now and thenseem’d to show where their thoughts - ||
touch’d, Meanwhile
The muse of this story, convinced that they need

her,
To the Duke and Matilda returns, gentle Reader.

xx

The Duke, with that sort of aggressive false praise
Which is meant a resentful remonstrance to raise

| From a listener (as sometimes a judge, owe before
He pulls down the black cap, very gent:

‘oes o’er

The case for the prisoner, and deals tender! x

With the man he is minded to hang by and by),

Had referr’d to Lucile, and then stopp’d to detect

In the face of Matilda the ee ect

Of the words he had dropp’d. ere is no weapon

that slays

(if well aim’d) as praise.

Thus, a pause on their converse had fallen: and now

Each was silent, preoccupied, thoughtful. e
You know

aes moments when silence, prolong’d and un-

roken,
More expressive may be than all the words ever spo-

en.
It is when the heart has an instinct of what
In the heart of another is passing. And that
In the heart of Matilda, what was it? Whence
came
To her cheek on a sudden that tremulous flame?
What weighed down her head?
All your eye could discover
Was the fact that Matilda was troubled. Moreover
That trouble the Duke’s presence seem’d to renew.
She, however, broke silence, the first of the two.
The Duke was too prudent to shatter the spell *
Of a silence which suited his purpose so well.
She was plucking the leaves from a pale blush rose
blossom
Which had fallen from the nosegay she wore in her *
,

bosom. -
“This poor flower,” she said, ‘seems it not out of

place

In this hot, lamplit air, with its fresh, a grace?”’

She bent her head low as she ns With a smile

The wi watch’d her caressing the leaves all the
while,

And continued on his side the silence. He knew

This would force his companion their talk to renew

At the point that he wish’d; and Matilda divined

The significant pause with new trouble of mind.

She lifted one moment her head; but her look

Encounter’d the ardent regard of the Duke, .

And dropp’d back on her floweret abash’d. Then,
still Serer

The assurance she fancied she show’d him by speak-

in
She concaived herself safe in adopting again

The theme she should most have avoided just then,
“Duke,” she said, . . . and she felt, as she spoke, .
her cheek burn’d, ; j
“ You know, then, this . . . lady?”
“Too well!” he return’d.
MATILDA,
True; you drew with emotion her portrait just now. _
Lvvois.
With emotion?
MATILDA,
Yes, yes! you described her, I know,
As possess’d of a charm all unrival’d,

Lvvots.

j : Alas!
You mistook me completely! You, madam, surpass -
This lady as moonlight does lamplight; as youth
Surpasses its best imitations; as truth
The fairest of falsehoods surpasses; as nature
Surpasses art’s masterpiece; ay, as the creature
Fresh and pure in its native adornment surpasses
All the charms got by heart at the world’s looking-

 

glasses!
“Yet you said,”—she continued with some trepida-

| jon,
| “That you quite comprehend”. . . a slight hesita-

tion
Shook the sentence, . . . “‘a passion so strongas”’..
Lovols,
True, true!
But not in a man that had once looked at you.

- ‘Hush, hush!”
She broke in, all more fair for one innocent blush,
“Between man and woman these things differ so!
It a A be oe the world pardons . . . (now should I

now? :
In you what it visits on us; or ’tis true, am
It may be, that we women are better than you.”
Lovois.

Who denies it? Yet, madam, once more you mis-

Deaf to the sound | Nor can I conceive, or excuse, or...

ake, ’
The world, in its judgment, some difference may
emake *

 

*Twixt the man and the woman, so far as respects
Its social enactments; but not as affects ait oP
The one sentiment which it were easy to prove,

| Is the sole lay we look to the moment we love.
LUCILE

.

 

Marimpa.
That may be. Yet I think I should be less severe.
Although so inexperienced in such things, I fear
Lhave learn’d that the heart cannot always repress
Or account for the feelings which sway it.

“Yes! yes!
That is too true, indeed!” . . . the Duke sigh’d. ‘
And again
For one moment in silence continued the twain.
XXII.

At length the Duke slowly, as though he had needed
All this time to repress his emotions, proceeded:
“And ira ... What avails, then, to woman, the

gi
Of a beauty like yours, if it cannot uplift
Her heart from the reach of one doubt, one despair,
One pang of wrong’d love, to which women less fair
Are exposed, when they love?”
With a quick change of tone,
As though by resentment impell’d, he went on:—
“The name that you bear, it is whisper’d you took
eas tes not ‘convention. Well, lady, . .. that
00
So excited, so keen, on the face, you must know
Ties all its expressions — that rapturous
glow—
Those eloquent features—significant eyes—
Which that, pale woman sees, yet betrays no sur-
rise. e

(He pointed his hand, as he spoke, to the door,
Fixing with it Lucile and Lord Alfred) . . . “before,
Have you ever once seen what just now you may

view
In that face so familiar? . . . no, lady, *tis new.
Young, lovely, and loving, no doubt, as you are,
Are you loved?” ...

XXIII.

He look’d at her—paused—felt if thus far

The sootne held yet. The ardor with which he had
spoken,

This close, rapid question, thus suddenly broken,
Inspired in Matilda a vague sense of fear,
As though some indefinite danger were near.
‘With composure, however, at once she replied:
‘oT is three years since the day when I first was a

bride,
And my husband I never had cause to suspect;
Nor ever have stoop’d, sir, such cause to detect.
Yet if in his looks or his acts I should see—
See, or noe moment’s oblivion of me,
I trust that I too should forget it—for you
Must have seen that my heart is my husband’s.”’

The hue
On her cheek with the effort wherewith to the Duke
She had utter’d this vague and half-frighten’d rebuke,
‘Was white as the rose in her hand. e last word
Seem’d to die on her lip, and could scarcely be heard.

There was silence ve f visa
ad been made

By the Duke im the words he that erent had said.

There, half drown’d by the music, Matilda, that night,

Had listen’d—long listen’d—no doubt, in despite

Of herself, to a voice she should never have heard,

And ped — by that voice had been troubled and

stirr’d.
And so, having suffer’d in silence his eye
To fathom her own, he resumed, with a sigh:

XXIV.
“Will you suffer me, lady your thoughts to invade
By disclosing my own? The position,” he said,
“In which we so strangely seem placed may excuse
The frankness and force of the words which I use.
You say that your heart is your husband’s. You say
That you love him. You think so, of course, lady

++. nay,
Such a love, tadtintiy were a merit, no doubt.
But, t me, no true love there can be without
Its dr penalty—jealousy.
“Well, do not start!

Until now—either thanks to a singular art

Of supreme self-control, you have held them all
own

Unreveal’d in your heart—or you never have known

Even one of those fierce irresistible pangs

bab” deep passion engenders; that anguish which

angs ‘
On the heart like a nightmare, by jealousy bred.
But if, lady, the love youdentibeiie aber”
Of a blissful security thus hath reposed
Undisturb’d with mild eyelids on happiness closed.
he it tot as ; i‘ a peril unjust, i

nd most cruel, that happy re ‘ou so trust,
To meet, to receive, and, Taek, it ey? be,
For how long I know not, continue to see
A woman whose place rivals yours in the life
And the heart which not only your title of wife,
But also (forgive me!) your beauty alone,
Should have made wholly yours?—You, who gave all

our own!

Reflect !|—’t is the peace of existence you stake
On the turn of a die, And for whose—for his sake?
While you witness this woman, the false point of view
From which she must now be regarded by you
Will exaggerate to you, whatever they be,
The charms I admit she . Tome
They are trivial indeed; yet to your eyes, I fear
And foresee, they will true and intrinsic appear,
Self-unconscious, and sweetly unable to guess ,
How more lovely by far is the grace you possess
You will wrong your own beauty. The graces of art,
You will take for the natural charm of the heart; ’
Studied manners, the brilliant and bold repartee,
4 too at in that ee - m be

‘0 your fancy more fair than the sweet timid se:
Which, in shrinking, betrays its own best eloquence.
Oh, then, lady, then, you will feel in your heart
Ee yonees n of a fierce jealous dart!
e@ you see her, yourself you no longer will see—

-

 

You will hear her, and hear not yourself—you willbe |

Unhappy; unhappy, because you will deem

Your own power less great than her power willseem.
And I shall not be by your side, day by day,

In despite of your noble displeasure, to say

‘You are fairer than she, as the star is more fair
Than the diamond, the brightest that beauty can

wearl???
XXV.

This appeal, both by looks and by language, increased
The coals Matilda felt grow in her breast.
Still she spoke with what calmness she could—

“Sir, the while
Ithank you,” she said, with a faint scornful smile,
“or your fervor in painting my fancied distress:
Allow me the ee some surprise to express
At the zeal you betray in disclosing to me
The possible aan of my own misery.”
“That zeal would not startle you, madam,” he said,
“ Could you read in my heart, as myself I have read,
The peculiar interest which causes that zeal—”

Matilda her terror no more could conceal.

‘“Duke,” she answer’d in accents short, cold, and
severe. be

‘As she rose from her seat, ‘‘I continue to hear;

But permit me to say, I no more understand.”

“ orgive!’’ with a nervous peel of the hand,

And a well-feign’d confusion of voice and of look

“Forgive, oh, forgive me!” at once cried_the Duke,

 

“T forgot that you know me so'’slightly. Your leave |

I entreat (from your anger those words to retrieve)
For one moment to speak of myself—for I think
That you wrong me—”

in seem’d to sink;

His voice, as in
And tears in his eyes, as he lifted them, glisten’d.

XXVI.
Matilda, despite of herself, sat and listen’d.
XXVIL.

“Beneath an exterior which seems, and may be,
Worldly, frivolous, careless, my heart hides in me,”
He continued, ‘‘a sorrow which draws me to side
With all things that suffer. Nay, laugh not,” he cried,
“At so strange an avowal,

“T seek at a ball,

For instance—the beauty admired by all?

No! some aoe insignificant creature, who sits

Scorn’d of course by the beauties, and shunn’d by
the wits.

All the world is accustom’d to wound, or neglect,

Or aoe claims my heart and commands my re-
spect. _

No Quixote, I do not affect to belong,

I admit, to those charter’d redressers of wrong;

But I seek to console, where I can. °T is a part

Not brilliant, I own, yet its joys bring no smart.”

These trite words, from the tone which he gave them,
received

An ae ae of truth, which might well be be-

lever

By a heart shrewder yet than Matilda’s.
And so,

He continued . . . ‘‘Oh lady! alas, could you know

What injustice and wrong in this world I have seen!

How many a woman, believed to have been

Without a regret, I have known turn aside

To burst into heartbroken tears undescried!

On how many a lip have I witnessed the smile

Which Ly : d what was breaking the poor heart the
while!”

Said ara “Your life, it would seem, then, must

e
One long act of devotion.”

“Perhaps so,” said he;
“But at least that devotion small merit can boast,
For one day may yet come—if one day at the most—
When, perceiving at last all the erence—how

reat !—
nwisct the heart that neglects, and the heart that
can wait,
’Twixt the natures that pity, the natures that pai
Some woman, that else might have passed in
Or indifference by me—in passing ‘hat day
Might pause with a word or a smile to repay

This devotion—and then”... 2

To Matilda’s relief
At that moment her husband approach’d.
With some grief
I must = that her welcome, perchance was ex-
press’ ’
The tne eagerly = for one twinge in her breast
Of a conscience disturb’d, and her smile not less

a warm, .
Though she saw the Comtesse de Nevers on his arm,
The Duke turn’d and adjusted his collar.

Thought he,
“Good! the gods fight my battle to-night. I foresee
That the family doctor’s the part I must play.
Very well! but the patients my visits shall pay.”
Lord Alfred presented Lucile to his wife;
And Matilda, repressing with effort the strife
Of emotions which made her voice shake, murmur’d

low
Some faint, troubled greeting. The Duke, with a bow
Which betoken’d a distant defiance, replied
To Lucile’s startled cry, as surprised she descried
Her former gay wooer. Anon, with the grace -
Of that kindness which seeks to win kindness, her

place
She assumed by Matilda, unconscious, perchance,
Or resolved not to notice, the half-frighten’d glance
That follow’d that movement.

The Duke to his feet

Arose; and, in silence, relinquish’d his seat.
One must own that the moment was awkward for

 

+7

But nevertheless, before long, the strange thrall

Of Lucile’s gracious tact was by every one felt,

And oe each the reserve seem’d, reluctant, to
melt;

Thus, conversing together, the whole of the four

Thro’ the crowd saunter’d, smiling.

XXIX.
Approaching the door,
— de Luvois, who had fallen behind,
By uucile, after some hesitation, was join’d
ith a gesture of gentle and kindly appeal
Which appear’d*to imply, without words, ‘‘Let us

fee!
That we friendship between us in years that have
ed,
Has survived one mad moment forgotten,” she said,

“You remain, Duke, at Ems
He turn’d on her a look

| Of frigid, resentful, and sullen rebuke;
| And then, with a more than significant glance

At Matilda, maliciously answered, ‘‘ Perchance
Thave here an attraction. And you?” he return’d.
Lucile’s eyes had follow’d his own, and discern’d
The boast they implied.

He repeated, “‘ And you?”’
And, still watching Matilda, she answer’d, ‘‘I too.””
And he eet as with that word she left him, she

sigh’d. "
The next moment her place she resumed by the side
Of Matilda; and soon they shook hands at the gate
Of the self-same hotel.
xxx. - :

One depress’d, one elate,
The Duke and Lord Alfred again, thro’ the glooms
Of the thick linden alley, return’d to the Rooms.
His cigar each had lighted, a moment before,
At = inn, as they turn’d, arm-in-arm, from the

oor.

Ems cigars do not cheer a man’s spirits, eaperto
(Me miserumy mohes 4) erede Roberto.
In silence, awhile, they walk’d onward,

At last
The Duke’s thoughts to language half consciously
pass’d,
Lovvors.
Once more! yet once more!
ALFRED.
What?
Lvvors.

We meet her, once more,
The woman for whom we two mad men of yore
(Laugh, mon cher Alfred, laugh!) were about to de-

stroy
Each other!
ALFRED.
It is not with laughter that I
Raise the'ghost of that once troubled time. Say!

can you

Recall it with coolness aud quietude now?
Lovots.

Now? oa I, mon cher, am a true Parisien:

Now, the red revolution, the tocsin, and then

The dance and the play. Iam now at the play.

ALFRED.
At the play, are you now? Then perchance I now

may.
Presume, Duke, to ask you what, ever until
Such a moment, I waited... |
Lovors.
Oh! ask what you will.
Cee / on the table my cards I spread out.
!

ALFRED.

Duke, you were call’d to a meeting (no doubt
You remember it yet) with Lucile. It was ae
When on went; and before you return’d it was
We met aa accosted me then with a brow
Bright with triumph: your words (you remember

them now?)

Were “Let us be friends!”

Lvvots. <

Well?
ALFRED.
How then, after that,
Can you and she meet as acquaintances?
Luvors. .
; What!
Did she not then, herself, the Comtesse de Nevers,

Solve your riddle to-night with those soft lips of”

hers?
ALFRED.
In our converse to-night we avoided the .
But the question I ask should be answer’d at last:
By you, if you will; if you will not, by her.

Lvvo!s.

Indeed? but that question, milord, can it stir
Such an interest in you, if your passion be,o’er?

ALFRED.

Yes, Esteem may remain, although love be no
more. -

Lucile ask’d me, this night, tomy wife (understand

To my wife /) to present her. I did so. Her hand

Has clasp’d that of Matilda. We gentlemen owe

Respect to the name that is ours: and, if so,

To the woman that bears it a twofold respect.

Answer, Duc de Luvois! Did Lucile then reject |

The proffer you made of your hand and your name?

Or ad you on her love then relinquish a

Urged before? LIask bluntly this question, because

My title to do so is clear by the laws

That all gentlemen honor. Make only one sign

That you know of Lucile de Nevers aught, in fine,

%

 

 

 

 
seneieaheaneeenan

SaaS TSS

as

;

 

 

 

48

 

 

THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

For which, if your own virgin sister were by,
From Lucile you would shield her acquaintance,

and
And Matilda leave Ems on the morrow.

XXXII.
The Duke
Hesitated and cee He could tell, by the look
Of the man at his side, that he meant what he said
And there flash’d in a moment these thoughts
through his head: ;
“ Leave Ems! would that suit me? no! that were

again.

To mar all. And besides, if I do not explain,

She herself will . . . e ee il a raison ; on est

Gentithomme avant tout! He replied therefore,
“Nay

Madame de Nevers had rejected me, I,

In those days I was mad; and in some mad reply

I threatened the life of the rival to whom

That rejection was due, I was led to presume.

She fear’d for his life; and the letter which then

She wrote me, I show’d you; we met: and again

My hand was refused, and my,love was denied,

And the glance you mistook was the vizard which

Pride
Lends to Humiliation,
* And go,”’ half in jest,

He went on, “‘ in this best world, ’tis all for the best;

You are wedded (bless’d Englishman!) wedded to
one

‘Whose past can be call’d into question by none;

And I (fickle Frenchman!) can still laugh to fee

Iam lord of myself, and the Mode: and Lucile

Still shines from her pedestal, frigid and fair

As iy ts German moon o’er the linden-tops there!

A Dian in marble that scorns any troth

While the little love-gods, whom I thank for us both,

With she smiles from her lonely ra apart,

That her arrows are marble as well as her heart.

Stay at Ems, Alfred Vargrave!”

XXXII.
The Duke, With a smile,

- Turn’d and enter’d the Rooms which, thus talking,

meanwhile,
They had reach’d,
XXXII.

j Alfred Vargrave strode on (overthrown
Heart and mind!) in the darkness bewilder’d, alone:
* And so,”’ to himself did he mutter, ‘‘and so
‘Twas to rescue my life, gentle spirit! and, oh,

Yor this did I dowbt her? . . . a light word—a look—
The mistake of @ moment! .. . for this I forsook—
For this? Pardon, pardon, Lucile! Ob, Lucile!”
Thought and memory rung, like a funeral.peal,

Wea’ ae on one dirge-like note through his
rain,
As he stray’d down the darkness

XXXIV ’
Re-entering again
The Casino, the Duke smiled. He turn’d to roulette
And sat down, and play’d fast, and lost largely, and

et
He still smiled; night deepen’d: he play’d his last
number:
Went home: and soon slept and still smil’d in his

slumber,
, XXXV.
In his desolate Maxims, La Rochefoucauld wrote,
“Tn the grief or mischance of a friend you may note,
There is something which always gives oa
las

That reflection fell short of the truth as it was.

La Rochefoucauld might have as truly set down—
“No misfortune, but what some one turns to his

wn
Advantage its mischief: no sorrow, but of it
There ever is somebody ready to profit:
No affliction without its stock-jobbers, who all
Gamble, speculate eed on the rise and the fall
Of another‘may’s heart, and make traffic in it.”
Burn thy book, oh, La Rochefoucauld!

Fool! one man’s wit
All men’s selfishness, how should it fathom?

Oh, sage,
Dost thou satirize Nature?
She laughs at thy page.

CANTO SECOND,
u

Cousin JoHn TO Cousin ALFRED,
“ Lonpon, 18—.

“My dear Alfred,
% Your last letters put me in pain.
This contempt of existence, this listless disdain
Of your own life—its joys and its duties—the deuce
Take my wits if they find for it half an excuse!
I wish that some Frenchman would shoot off your

leg.
And compel you to stump through’ the world on a

e}
I wist that you had, like myself, (more’s the pity !)
To sit seven hours on this cursed committee.

I wish that you knew, sir, how salt is the bread

Of another—(what is it that Dante has said?)

And the trouble of other men’s stairs. In a word,

I wish fate had some real affliction conferr’d

On your whimsical self, that, at least, you had cause
For neglecting life’s duties, and damning its laws!
This pressure against all the purpose of life,

This self-ebullition, and ferment, and strife,
Betoken’d, I grant that it may be in truth,

The richness and strength of the new wine of youth.
But if, when the wine should have mellow’d with

time.
Being bottled and binn’d, to a flavor sublime,

w

 

It retains the same acrid, incongruous taste,

Why, the sooner to throw it away that we haste

The better, I take it, And this vice of snarling,

Self-love’s little lapdog the overfed darling

Of a erase fancy appears,

To my thinking, at least, in a man of your years,

At the midnoon of manhood with plenty to do,

And every incentive for doing it too— 4

With the duties of life just sufficiently pressing

For prayer, and of joys more than most men for
blessing;

With a pretty young wife, and a pretty full purse—

Like poltroonery, puerile truly, or worse!

I wish I could get you at least to agree

To take life as it is, and consider with me,

Tf it be not all smiles, that it is not all sneers;

It admits honest laughter, and needs honest tears.

 

You, for eee read Plato. You know that the
sou!

Is immortal; and put this in rhyme, on the whole,

Very well, with sublime illustration. Man’s heart

Isa pk doubtless. You trace it in art:—

The Greek Psyche,—that’s beauty,—the perfect ideal

But then comes the imperfect, perfectible real,

‘With its pain’d aspiration and strife. In those pale

Ill-drawn virgins of Giotto you see it prevail.

‘You have studied all this. Then, the universe, too,

Is not a mere house to be lived in, for you.

geolony opens the mind. So you know

Something also of strata and fossils; these show

| The bases of cosmical structure: some mention

Do you think none have known but yourself all the |

pain

of ones that retreat, and regrets that remain?

And all the wide distance fate fixes, no doubt,

’Twixt the life that’s within, and the life that’s

without?

What one of us finds the world just as he likes?

Or gets what he wants when he wants it? Or strikes

Without missing the thing that he strikes at the first?

Or walks without stumbling? Or quenches his thirst

At one draught? Bah! I tell you! I, bachelor John,

Have hast griefs of my own. But what then? 1
ush on

All ice pee Nig eps that I yet feel the pain

Of my last fall, albeit I may stumble again.

God means every man to be happy, be sure.

He sends us no sorrows that have not some cure.

Our duty down here is to do, not to know.

Live as though life were earnest, and life will be so.

Let each moment, like Time’s last ambassador,

come:
It will wait to deliver its message: and some

Sort of answer it merits. It is not the deed

A man. does, but the way that he does it, should

plead
For the man’s compensation in doing it,
“Here,
My next neighbor ’s a man with twelve thousand a

ear,
Who deen that life has not a pastime more pleasant
Than to follow a fox, or to slaughter a pheasant.
Yet this fellow goes through a contested election,
Lives in London, and sits, like the soul of de ection,
All the day through upon a committee, and late

To the last, every night ee the dreary debate,
As though he were getting each speaker by heart,
Though among them he never presumes to take

part. ft
One asks himself why, without murmur or question,
He Foangave all his tastes, and destroys his digestion,
For a labor of which the result seems so small,
‘The man is ambitious,’ you say. Not at all.
He has just sense enough to be fully aware
That he never can hope to be Premier, or share
The renown of a Tully ;—or even to hold
A subordinate office. He is not so bold
As to fancy the House for ten see eee bear
With porenee his modest opinions to hear,
‘But he wants something!’
“What! with twelve thousand a year?
What could Government give him would be half so

lear

To his heart as a walk with a dog and a gun

Through his own pleasant woods, or a capital run?

‘No; but vanity fills out the emptiest brain;

The se would be more than his neighbors, ’t is
ain;

And the drudgery drearily gone through in town

Is more than repaid by provincial renown.

Beough if some Marchioness, lively and loose,

Shall have eyed him with passing complaisance; the

goose,
If the Fashion to him open one of its doors,
As proud as a sultan, returns to his boors.’
Wrong again! if you think so,
: “Tor, primo; my friend
Is the head of a family known from one end
Of his shire to the other, as the oldest; and therefore
He despises fine lords and fine ladies, He care for
A peerage? no truly! Secondo, he rarely
Or never goes out: dines at Bellamy’s sparely,
And abhors what you call the gay world.

“Then, I ask,
What jnepines, and consoles, such a self-imposed.

tas!

As the life of this man,—but the sense of its duty?
And I swear that the eyes of the paughtiost beauty
Have never inspired in my soul that intense,
Reverential, and loving, and absolute sense
Of heart-felt admiration I feel for this man,
As I see him beside me;—there, wearing the wan
London daylight away, on his humdrum committee;
So unconscious of all that awakens my pity,
And wonder—and worship, I might say,

¢ “To me
There seems something nobler than genius to be
In that dull patient labor no genius relieves,
That absence of all joy which yet never grieves;
The humility of it! the grandeur withal!
The sublimity of it! And yet, should you call
The man’s own very slow apprehension to this,
He would ask, with a stare, what sublimity is!
His work is the duty to which he was born;
He accepts it, without ostentation or scorn:
And this man is no uncommon type (I thank Heavy-

® en!) i
Of tae tnd’ common men. In all other lands, even
The type’s self is wanting. Perchance, ’t is the
reason \
That*Government oscillates ever ’twixt treason
And tyranny elsewhere,
: “Twander away
Too far, though, from what I was wishing to say.

 

Of the nebulous theory demands your attention;
And so on. -
_ _ In short, it is clear the interior
Of ao brain, my dear Alfred, is vastly superior
In fiber, and fullness, and function, and fire,

To that of my poor parliamentary squire;

But your life leaves upon me (forgive me this heat
Due to friendship) the sense of a thing incomplete,
You fly high. ut what is it, in truth, “te fly at?
My mind is not satisfied quite as to that.

An old illustration ’s as good as a new,

Provided the old illustration be true. -

We are children. Mere kites are the fancies we fly,
Though we marvel to see them ascending so high;

Things slight in themselves,—long-tail’d toys, and no ;

more.
What is it that makes the kite steadily soar

Through the realms where the cloud and the whirl-

wind have birth
But the tie that attaches the kite to the earth?
I remember the lessons of childhood, you see,
And the hornbook I learn’d on my poor mother’s

nee.
In truth, I suspect little else do we learn
From this great book of life, which so shrewdly we

turn,
Saving how to apply, with a good or’bad grace,
What we leunid ia the hornbook of aeidiioed.

; “Your case
Is exactly in point.

“Fly your kite, if you please,
Out of sight: let it go where it will, on the breeze;
But cut not the one thread by which it is bound,
Be it never so high, to this poor human ground,
No man is the absolute lord of his life.
You, my friend, have a home, and a sweet and dear
wife

If I often have sigh’d by my own silent fire,
With the sense of a sometimes recurring desire
For a voice sweet and low, or a face fond and fair,
Some dull winter evening to solace and share
With ne love which the world, its good children al-
lows

To shake hands with,—in short, a legitimate spouse,
This thought has consoled me: ‘at least I have given
For my own good behavior no hostage to heaven.’
You have, though. Forget it not! faith, if you do,
I would rather break stones on a road than be you.
If any man willfully injured, or led
That little girl wrong, would sit on his head,
Even though you yourself were the sinner!

: “ And this
Leads me back (do not take it, dear cousin, amiss!)
To the matter I meant to have mentioned at once,
But these thoughts put it out of my head for the

nonce.

Of all the preposterous humbugs and shams,

Of all the old wolves ever taken for lambs,

The wolf best received by the flock he devours

Is that uncle-in-law, my dear Alfred, of yours,

At least, this has long been my settled conviction,
And I almost would venture at once the prediction
That before very long—but no matter! I trust

For his sake and our own, that I may be unjust.
But Heaven forgive me, if cautious I am on

The score of such men as, with both God and Mam.

mon,
Seem so shrewdly familiar,
“ Neglect not this warning.
There were rumors afloat in the City this morning
Which I scarce like the sound of. Who knows?
would he fleece ‘ r
At a pinch, the old ocrite, even his own niece?
For the sake of Matilda I cannot importune
Your attention too early. If all your wife’s fortune
Is yet in the hands of that specious old sinner,
0 would dice with the devil, and yet rise up
winner,
Lgay, lose no time! get it out of the grab
Of her trustee and uncle, Sir Ridley MacNab.
I trust those deposits, at least, are drawn out,
And safe at this moment from danger or doubt.
A wink is as good as a nod to the wise.
Verbum sap. I admit nothing yet justifies
My mistrust; but I have in my own mind a notion
That old Ridley’s white waistcoat, and airs of devo-

tion,
Have long been the only ostensible capital
On which he does business. If so, time must sap it

3 *

Sooner or later. Look cia Do not wait,
Draw at once, Ina fortnight it may be too late.
IT admit I know nothing. ean but suspect;
ae ie you my notions. Form yours and reflect,

y love to Matilda. Her mother looks well.
I saw her last week. Ihave nothing to tell
Worth your hearing. We think that the Government

ere i

Will not last our next session, Fitz Funk is a peer,

You will see by the Times. There are symptoms
which show ‘

That the ministers now are preparing to go,

And finish their feast of the loaves and the fishes.

It is evident that they are eer ene dishes,

And cramming their pockets with bonbons,
news

Your

—

 

 

|
|
ih
}
=

 

|

Will be always see Vere, of the Blues, |
Has bolted with Lady Selina. And so

You have met with that hot-headed Frenchman? I |

know
That the man is a sad mauvais sujet. Take care
Of Matilda. I wish I could join you both there;
But, before I am free, you are sure to be gone.
Good-by, my dear fellow. Yours, anxiously,
. “ Joun.””

ad;
This is just the advice I myself would have given
TO Lond Alfred, had I been his cousin, which, Heaven
Be praised, lam not. But it reach’d him indeed
In an unlucky hour, and received little heed.
A half-languid glance was the most that he lent at
That time to these homilies. Primuwm dementat

em Deus vult perdere. Alfred in fact

as behaving jnst then in a way to distract

Job’s self had Job known him. The more you'd
have thought

The Duke’s court to Matilda his eye would have
caught,

The more did his aspect grow listless to hers

And the more did it beam to Lucile de Nevers.

And Matilda, the less she found love in the look

Of her husband, the less did she shrink from the

Duke.
‘With each day that pass’d o’er them, they each,
heart from heart,
Woke to feel themselves further and further apart.
More aud more of his time Alfred pass’d at the
table:
Played high; and lost more than to lose he was able.
He grew feverish, querulous, absent, perverse—
rons here I must mention, what made matters worse,
That Lucile and the Duke at the self-same hotel
With the Vargraves resided. It needs not to tell
That oa all too much of each other, The
weather
Was so fine that it brought them each day all to-

ether

In the cated, to listen, of course, to the band.
The house was a sort of phalanstery; and
Lucile and Matilda were pleased to discover
A mutual passion formusic. Moreover _
The Duke was an excellent tenor: could ne 3
“ Ange si pure” in a way to bring down on the wing
All the angels St. Cicel, ag to. My lord
‘Would also at on when he was not too bored,
Play Beethoven, and Wagner’s new music, not, ill;
With some little things of his own, showing skill.
For which reason, as well as for some others too,
Their rooms were a pleasant enough rendezvous.
Did Lucile, then, encourage (the heartless coquette !)
All the mischief she could not but mark?

tt Patience yet!

In that garden, an arbor, withdrawn from the sun,

By laburnum and lilac with blooms overrun,

Form’d a vault of cool verdure, which made, when
the heat

Of the noontide hung heavy, a gracious retreat.

And here, with some friends of their own little world,

In the warm afternoons, till the shadows uncurl’d

From the feet of the lindens, and crept through the

Their Dine hours would this fa. little colony pass.
The men loved to smoke, and the women to bring,
Undeterr’d by tobacco, their work there, and sing
Or converse, till the dew fell, and homeward the

pee
Floated, heavy with honey, Toward eve there was

tea
A luxury due to Matilda), and ice, :
ruit, and coffee. O Hespere, panta ae f
Such an evening it was while Matil oe
O’er the rustic arrangements thus daily provided,
With the Duke, and a small German Prince with a
thick head.
And two Austrian Colonels,—that Alfred, who yet
Was lounging alone with his last cigarette,
Saw Lucile de Nevers by herself pacing slow :
*Neath the shade of the cool linden-trees to and fro,
And joining her, cried, ‘‘Thank the good stars, we

ou!”
: Mest 2+,
Serene voice, she replied to him...

meet!
Ihave so much to say to 7 -
$ . with her sweet
“Yes? and I

Was wishing, indeed, to a somewhat to you.”
She was Le er just then than her wont was.
soun :
Of her voice had within it a sadness profound.
“You are ill?” he exclaimed. ;
“No!” she hurriedly said,

The

**No, no!”?
“You alarm me!”
She drooped down her head.
aan) YOR, thoughts have of late sought, or cared, to
ivine ;
The purpose of what has been psssing in mine,
My farewell can scarcely alarm you.’

ALFRED,

Lucile!
Your farewell! you go!
Lucie. .
Yes, Lord Alfred.
ALFRED.

: 2 Reveal
The cause ofthis sudden unkindness, :
Lucte,

Unkind?

Yes! what else is this parting? ‘
Lucie.

No, no! are you blind?
Look into your own heart and home, Can you see
No reason for this, save unkindness in me?

 

LUCILE.

Look into the eyes of your wife—those true eyes
Too pure and too honest in aueee to disguise
The sweet soul shining through them.

ALFRED,
Lucile! (first and last

Be the word, if you will!) let me speak of the past.
I know now, alas! though I know it too late,
What pass’d at that meeting which settled my fate,
Nay, nay, interrupt me not yet! let it be!
I but say what is due to yourself—due to me,
And must say it.

He rushed_ incoherently on,
Describing how, lately, the truth he had known
To explain how, and whence, he had wrong’d her

before,
All the complicate coil wound about him of yore,
All the hopes that had flown with the faith that was |

fled,

‘** And then, oh, Lucile, what was left me,” he said,

“When my life was defrauded of you, but to take

That life, as ’t was left, and endeavor to make

Unobserved by another, the void which remain’d

Unconceal’d to myself? If I have not attain’d,

Thave striven, One word ot unkindness has never

Pass’d my lips to Matilda, Her least wish has ever

Received my submission. And if, of a truth,

T have fail’d to renew what I felt in my Foe,

I at least have been loyal to what I do feel,

Respect, duty, honor, affection. Lucile,

I speak not of love now, nor love’s long regret:

I would not offend you, nor dare I forget

The ties that are round me. But may there not be

A friendship yet hallow’d between ydu and me?

May we not be yet friends—friends the dearest wd
Alas!”

She replied, “for one moment, perchance, did it pass

Through my own heart, that dream which forever

hath brought

To those who indulge it in innocent thought

So fatal and evila waking! But no.

For in lives such as.ours are, the Dream-tree would

TOW
On this porders of Hades: beyond it, what lies?

The wheel of Ixion, alas! and the cries

Of the lost and tormented. Departed, for us,

Are the days when with innocenee we could discuss
Dreams like these. Fled, indeed, are the dreams of

 

my life!
Oh, me me, the best friend you have is ped wife.
And I—in that pure child’s pure virtue, I bow

To the beauty of virtue. I felt on my brow

Not one blush when I first took her hand, With no

blush
Shall I clasp it to-night, when I leave you.
“Hush! hush!

I would say what I wish’d to have said when you, |

came.
Do not ie that years leave us and find us the
e

sam.
The woman you knew long ago, long ago,
Igno more. You, yourself have within you, Iknow,
The germ of a joy in the years yet to be,
Whereby the pas years will bear fruit. As for me,
I go my own way—onward, upward! Me

7 “Oh, yet,
Let me thank you for that which ennobled regret,
When it came, as it beautified hope ere it fled—
The love I once felt for you. True, it is dead,
But it is not corrupted. I too have at ast
Lived to learn that love is not—(such love as is past,
Such love as youth dreams of at least)—the sole part
Of life, which is able to fill up the heart;
Even that of a woman.
“ Between you and me

Heaven fixes a gulf, over which you must see
That our guardian angels can bear us no more.
We each of us stand on an opposite shore.
Trust a woman’s opinion for once. Women learn,
By an instinct men never attain, to discern
Each other’s true natures. Matilda is fair,
Matilda is young—see her now, sitting there !—
How tenderly fashion’d—(oh, is she not? say,)
To love and be loved!” *

AV.

He turn’d sharply away—
“Matilda is young, and Matilda is fair; , .
Of all that you tell me pray deem me aware;
But Matilda ’s a statue, Matilda ’s a child;

Matilda loves not—” *
: Lucile quietly smiled
As she answer’d him.—‘‘ Yesterday, that you

say :
Might be true; it is false, wholly false, though, to-

“How?—what mean you?”

“‘T mean that to-day,” she replied,
“The statue with life has become vivified:
I mean that the child to a woman has grown:
And that woman is jealous.”

“What! she?’ with a tone

Of ironical wonder, he answer’d—‘“ what, she!
She jealous |—Matilda!—of whom, pray?—not me!”

‘““My lord, you deceive yourself; no one but you

Is sae jealous of. Trust me. And thank Heaven,
00,

That so lately this passion within her hath grown.

For who shall declare, if for months she had known

What for days she has known all too keenly, I fear,

The ee e perchance might have cost you more
lear?” e -

“Explain! explain, madam!” he cried, in surprise;
And terror and anger enkindled his eyes.

‘How blind are you men!” she replied. ‘Can you

yu
That a woman, young, fair, and pars c ate

 

He ganna with emotion. “Lucile! you mean—
what?
Do you doubt her fidelity?”
“Certainly not.

Listen to me, my friend, What I wish to explain
Is so hard to shape forth. I could almost refrain
From touching a subject so fragile. However,

Bear with me awhile, if I frankly endeavor

To invade for one moment your innermost life.

Your honor, Lord Alfred, and that of your wife,

Are dear to me—most dear! . And I am convinced
That you rashly are risking that honor.”

He winced,
And turn’d pale, as she spoke.
2 She had aim’d at his heart,
And she saw by his sudden and terrified start
That her aim had not miss’d.
Lucile!” he exclaim’d,

‘

“ Stay.

ae ar in Hee do you mean by these words, vaguely
rame

Toalarmme? Matilda?—My wife?—do you know?—”

‘“T know that your wife is as spotless as snow.

But I know not how far your continued neglect

Her nature, as well as her heart, might affect.

Till at last, by degrees, that serene atmosphere

Of her unconscious purity, faint and yet clear,

Like the indistinct golden and vaporous fleece
Which surrounded and hid the celestials in Greece
From the ae of men, would a and depart
At the sighs of a sick and delirious heart—

| For jealousy is to a woman, be sure,

A disease healed too oft by a criminal cure;
And the heart left too long to its ravage in time
May find weakness in virtue, reprisal in crime.”

Wes
“Such thoughts could have never,” he falter’d, “I

ow,
Reach’d the heart of Matilda.”
“Matilda? Oh, no!

But reflect! when such thoughts do not come of
themselves
To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves
That seek lonely places—there rarely is wanting
Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting
To conjure them to her.”
“Oh, lady, beware!

At this moment, around me I search everywhere
For a clew to your words ’—

4 “You mistake them,” she said,
Half fearing, indeed, the effect they had made.
“Twas putting a mere hypothetical case.”

With a long look of trouble he gazed in her face,

“Woe to him’... he exclaim’d ... “woe to him
that shall feel

Such a hope! for I swear, if he did but reveal

One glimpse—it should be the last hope of his life!’

The clench’d hand and bent eyebrow betoken’d the

strife
She had roused in his heart. it
“You forget,’’ she began,
“That you menace yourself. You yourself are the

man
That is guilty. Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,

And fight our own shadows forever? Oh, t ink!
The trial from which,you, the stronger ones, shrink,
‘You ask woman, the weaker one, still to endure;

You bid her be true to the laws you abjure;

To abide by the ties you yourselves rend asunder,

With the force that has fail’d you; and that too,
when under

The assumption of rights which to her you refuse,

The immunity claim’d for yourselves you abuse!

Where the contract exists, it involves obligation

To both husband and wife, in an equal relation.

You unloose, in asserting your own liberty,

A knot, which, unloosed, leaves another as free.
Then, oh Alfred! be juster at heart: and thank
Heaven >

That Heaven to your wife such a nature has given
That you have not wherewith to reproach her, albeit
You have cause to reproach your own self, could you
see it!”
VIL
In the silence that follow’d the last words she said,
In the heave of his chest, and the droop of his head,
Poor —_ mark’d her words had sufficed to im-
pa
A new germ of motion and life to that heart
Of which he himself had so recently spoken
As dead to emotion—exhausted, or broken!
New fears would awaken new hopes in his life.
In the husband indifferent no more to the wife
She already, as she had foreseen, could discover
That Matilda had gain’d, at her hands, a new lover.
So after some moments of silence, whose spell
They both felt, she extended her hand to him. . . .

VIL

VIII.

“Lucile,” he replied, as that soft quiet hand *
In his own he clasp'd warmly, “I both understand
And obey you.”’ .
s “Thank Heaven!’ she murmur’d,

h yet,
One word, I beseech you! _ I cannot forget,”
He ne ““we are parting for life. You have
shown Z %
My pathway to me; but say, what is your own?”
The calmness with which until then she had spoken

“ Well?”

In a moment seem’d strangely and suddenly broken. _

She turn’d from him nervously, hurriedly. “yy,

I know not,” she murmur’d, “I follow the way. =
Heaven leads me; I cannot foresee to what end,

I know only that far, far away it must tend

 

 

|
|
}
i
e

Out into the n

20

 

THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

 

From all places in which we have met, or might

meet.
Far away !—onward—upward!”

A smile strange and sweet
As the incense that rises from some sacred oer
And mixes with music, stole forth, and breathed up
Her whole face, with those words. ;

“Wheresoever it be,

May all gentlest angels attend you!” sigh’d he,
“ And bear my heart’s blessing wherever you are!”’

And her hand, with emotion, he kiss’d,
Ix,

That kiss was, alas! by Matilda beheld
With far other emotions: her young bosom swell’d,
And her young cheek with anger was crimson’d.

, The Duke
Adroitly attracted toward it her look
By a faint but significant smile.

x
Much ill-construed,
Renown’d Bishop Berkley has fully, for one, strew’d
With arguments page upon page to teach folks
That the world they inhabit is only a hoax.
But it surely is hard, since we can’t do without

them
That eee senses should make us so oft wish to doubt
them! :

From afar

 

CANTO THIRD.
:*
Wuen first the red savage call’d Man strode, a king,
eee the wilds of creation—the very first thing
That his naked intelligence taught him to feel
Was the shame of himself: and the wish to conceal
Was the first step in art. From the apron which Eve
In Eden sat down out of fig-leaves to weave,
To the furbelow’d flounce and the broad crinoline
Of my lady....you all know of course whom I
mean....
This art of concealment has greatly increas’d.
A whole world lies cryptic in each human breast;
And that drama of passions as old as the hills
Which the moral of all men in each man fulfills,
Is only reveal’d now and then to our eyes
In the newspaper-files and the courts of assize.

Tl.

In the group seen so lately in sunlight assembled,

*Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough
trembled,

And the deep-bosom’d lilac, emparadising

The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and
sing, "

The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only,

A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely

The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom;

Conversing at ease in the garden’s green bosom,

Like those who, when Florence was yet in her glories,

Cheated death and kill’d time with Boccacian stories.

But at length the long twilight more deeply grew

shaded,
And the fair night the rosy horizon invaded,
And the bee in the blossom, the bird on the bough,
Through the shadowy garden were slumbering now,
The trees only, o’er every unvisited walk,
Began on a sudden to whisper and talk.
And, as each little sprightly and garrulous leaf
Woke up with an evident sense of relief,
They allseem’d to be saying... ‘‘Once more we’re

alone,
And, thank Heaven, those tiresome people are gone!”’

TL.

Through the deep blue concave of the luminous air,
Large, loving, and languid, the stars here and there,
Like the eyes of shy passionate women, look’d down
O’er the dim world whose sole tender light was their

own,

When Matilda, alone, from her chamber descended,

And enter’d the garden, unseen, unattended.

Her forehead was aching and parch’d, and her breast

By a vague inexpressible sadness oppress’d:

A sadness which led her, she scarcely knew how,

And a scarcely knew why .. . (save, indeed, that
just now

The house, out of which with a gasp she had fled

Half-stifled, seem’d ready to sink on her head)...

ht-air, the silence, the bright

Boundless starlight, the cool isolation of night!

Her husband that day had look’d once in her face,

And press’d both her hands in a silent embrace, —

And reproachfully noticed. her recent dejection

With a smile of kind wonder and tacit affection.

He, of late so indifferent and listless!.. . at last

Was he startled and awed by the change which had

ASS
Over The once radiant face of his young wife?
. Whence came ‘
That long look of solicitous fondness? ... the same
Look and language of quiet affection—the look
And the language, alas! which so often she took
For pure love in the simple repose of its purity—
Her own heart thus lull’d to a fatal security!
Ha! would he deceive her again by his kindness?
Had she been then, oh, fool! in her innocent blind-
ness

The sport of transparent illusion? ah folly!
And that feeling, so tranquil, so happy, so holy,
She had taken, till then, in the heart, not.alone
Of her husband, but also, indeed, in her own,
For true love, nothing else, after all, did it prove
But a friendship profanely familiar?

“And love?...
What was love, then?.. . not calm, not secure—

scarcely kind!

But in one, all intensest emotions combined: -
Life and death: pain and rapture.”

 

Thus wandering astra;

Led by doubt, through the darkness she wander
away.

All silently crossing, recrossing the night,
With faint, meteoric, miraculous light,
The swift-shooting stars through the infinite burn’d,
And into the infinite ever return’d.
And silently o’er the obscure and unknown
In the heart of Matilda there darted and shone
Thoughts, enkindling like meteors the deeps, to ex-

pire.
Leaving traces behind them of tremulous fire.
IV.

She enter’d that arbor of lilacs, in which
The dark air with odors hung heavy and rich,
Like a soul that grows faint with desire.
*Twas the place
In which she so lately had sat, face to face
With her ee her, the pale stranger de-
tested,
Whose presence her heart like a plague had infested.
The whole spot with evil remembrance was haunted.
Through the darkness there rose on the heart which
it daunted
Each dreary detail of that desolate day,
So full and yet so incomplete. Far awa .
The acacias were muttering, like mischievous elves,
The whole story over again to themselves,
Each word—and each word. was a wound! By
degrees . ¥ t
Her memory mingled its voice with the trees.
Vv,

Like the oe Eve heard, when she paused by the
roo

Of the sad tree of knowledge, and gazed on its fruit,
To the heart of Matilda the trees seem’d to hiss
Wild instructions, revealing man’s last right, which

is
The right of reprisals.
An image uncertain,

And vague, dimly shaped itself forth on the curtain
Of the darkness around her. It came, and it went;
Through her senses a faint sense of peril it sent:

It pass’d and repass’d her; it went and it came
Forever returning; forever the same;

And forever more clearly defined; till her eyes

In that outline obscure could at last recognize

The man to whose image, the more and the more
That her heart, now aroused from its calm sleep of

yore
From‘her husband detach’d itself slowly, with pain,
Her thoughts had return’d, and return’d to, again,
As ioe by_some secret indefinite law—
The vigilant Wrenchman—Eugene de Luvois!

Mile

A light sound behind her. She trembled. By some

Night-witcheraft her vision a fact had become.

On a sudden she felt, without turning to view,

That a man was approaching behind her. She
knew

By the fluttering pulse which she could not restrain-

And the quick-beating heart, that this man was Eu-

ene,
ler frst Sue was flight; but she felt her slight
0"

‘0.

As heavy as though to the soil it had root. a

And the Duke’s voice retain’d her, like fear in a
dream, vr

* Ah, lady! in life there are meetings which seem
Like afate. Dare I think like a sympathy too?
Yet what else can I bless for this vision of you?
Alone with my thoughts, on this starlighted lawn,
By an instinct resistless, I felt myself drawn
To revisit the memories leftin the place
Where so lately this evening I look’d in your face.
And I find—you, yourself—my own dream!

“Can there be
In this world one thought common to you and to me?
Ifso,.... I, who deem’d buta moment ago »
My heart uncompanion’d, save only by woe,
Should indeed be more bless’d than I dare to be-

lieve—
—Ah, but one word, but one from your lips to re-
ceive”. .

Interrupting him eed she murmur’d, ‘‘ I sought,

Here, a moment of solitude, silence, and thought,

Which I needed.” . . .

. “Lives solitude only for one?

Must its charm by my presence so soon be undone?

Ah, cannot two share it? What needs it for this?—

The te thought in both hearts—be it sorrow or
bliss;

If my heart be the reflex of yours, lady—you,

Are you not yet alone—even though we be two?”

“Yor that,” . . . said Matilda,. . . “needs were,

‘ou should read
What I havein my heart”...

“Think you, lady, indeed,

You are yet of that age when a woman conceals .
In her heart so completely whatever she feels
From the heart of the man whom it interests to know
And find out what that feeling may be? Ah, not so,
Lady Alfred! Forgive me that init I look,
But I read in your heart as I readin a book.”

“Well, Duke! and what read you within it? inless
It be, of a truth, a profound weariness,
And some sadness?’

“No doubt. To all facts there are laws.
The effect has its cause, and I mount to the cause.”

Vill.

Matilda shrunk back; for she suddenly found
That a finger was press’d on the yet bleeding wound
She, bareere had but that day perceived in her

*

 

‘You are sad,”’, . . said the Duke (and that finger,
yet press’d

With a cruel persistence the wound it made bleed)—

“You are sad, Lady Alfred, because the first need

Of a young and a beautiful woman is to be

Beloved, and to love. You are sad: for you see

That you are not beloved, as you deem’d that you

were:
You are sad: for that knowledge hath left you

aware

That you have not yet loved, though you thought that
you had.

Yes, vet 1 ¢ YOu are sad—because knowledge is
sad!

He could not have read more profoundly her heart.
“What gave you,” she cried, with a terrified start,
“Such strange power?” .. .

“To read in your thoughts?” he exclaim’d,
“Oh, lady—a love, deep, profound—be it blamed
Or rejected—a love, true, intense—such, at least,
As you, and you only, could wake in my breast!’’

“Hush, wees ...I beseech you... for pity!” she
asp’d,

Snatehing hurriedly from him the hand he had clasp’d

In her effort instinctive to fly from the spot.

“Yor pity?” ... he echoed, “for pity! and what

Is the pity you owe him? his pity for you!

He, the lord of a life, fresh as new-fallen dew!

The guardian and guide of a woman, young, fair,

And matchless! (whose happiness did he not swear

To cherish through life?) he neglects her—for whom?

For a fairer than she? No! the rose in the bloom

Of that beauty which, even when hidd’n, can prevail

To keep sleepless with song the aroused nightingale,

Is not fairer; for even in the pure world of flowers

Her symbol is not, and this poor world of ours

Has no second Matilda! Forwhom? Let that pass!

*T is not I, *t is not you, that can name her, alas!

And / dare not question or judge her. But why,

Why cherish the cause of your own es

Why think of one, lady, who thinks not of you?

Why bs ea ‘by a chain which himself he breaks
rough?

And why, sinc you have but to stretch forth your

nan
The love which you need and deserve to command,
Why shrink? hy repel it?”
“Oh, hush, sir! oh, hush!’’
Cried a, as though her whole heart were one
lush.
“Cease, cease, I conjure you, to trouble my life!
Is not Alfred your friend? and am I not his wife?”
Ix.

“ And haveI not, lady.”’ he answer’d, ... “respected
His rights as a friend, tll himself he neglecte:
Your rights as a wife? Do you think ’t is alone
For three days I have loved you? My love may have

rown
I dette day by day, since I first felt your eyes,
In watching their tears, and in sounding your sighs,
But, oh, lady! I loved you before I believed
That your eyes ever wept, or your heart ever griev’d.
Then coe you were happy—I deem’d you pos-

sess’ ;

All the love you deserved—and I hid in my breast
My own love, till this hour—when I could not but feel
Your grief gave me the right aa own grief to reveal!
I knew, pone ago, of the singular power,
Which Lucile o’er your husband possess’d, ‘Till the

hour
In which he reveal’d it himself, did I—say |—
By a word, or a look, such a secret betray?
No! no! do me justice. I never have spoken
Of this gate heart of mine, till all ties he had broken
Which bound your heart to him, And now—now,
that his love
For another hath left your own heart free to rove,
What is it—even now—that I kneel toimplore you?
Only this, Lady Alfred! ... to let me adore you
Unblamed: to have confidence in me: to spend
On me not one thought, save to think me your friend.
Let me speak to you—ah, let me speak to you still!
Hush to silence my words in your heart, if you will.
Lask no response: I ask only your leave
To live yet an your life, and to grieve when you
eve

‘Leave me, leave me!”’. .. she gasp’d, with a voice
thick and low

From emotion, ‘For pity’s sake, Duke, let me go!
I feel that to blame we should both of us be, ‘
Did I linger.”

“To blame? yes, no doubt!”. . . answer’d he,
‘Tf the love of your husband, in bringing you peace,
Had forbidden you hope. But he signs your release
By the hand of another. One moment! but one!
Who knows when, alas! I may see you alone
As to-night I have seen you? or when we may meet
As to-night we have met? when, entranced at your

feet,
As in this blessed hour, I may ever avow
The Seen which aré pining for utterance now?”
“Duke! Duke!” . . she exclaim’d... ‘‘for heaven’s
sake let me fo! :
It islate. In the house they will miss me, I know,
We must not be seen here together. The night
Is advancing. I féel overwhelm’d with affright!
It is time to return to my lord.”
“To your lord?”
He repeated, with lingering reproach on the word,
“To your lord? do you think he awaits you, in truth?
Is he anxiously missing your presence, forsooth?
Return to your lord!... his restraint to renew? ~
And hinder the glances which are not for you?
No, no!... at this moment his looks seek the face
Of another! another is there in your place!
Another consoles him! another receives .
The soft speech which from silence your absence re-
lieves!”’

 

|

 

 
+

anc

 

 

 

 

 

 

LUCILE.

a4

 

 

XI.
“You mistake, sir!... responded a voice, calm, se-

vere,
And sad, ... ‘‘ You mistake, sir! that other is here.”
Eugene and Matilda both started.

“Lucile!”

With a half-stifled scream, as she felt herself reel
From the place where she stood, cried Matilda,

“Ho, oh!
What! eaves-dropping, madam?”’. . the Dukecried. .
“And so

You were listening?” :
“Say, rather,” she said, ‘‘ that I heard,
Without wishing to hear it, that infamous word—
Heard—and therefore reply.”
“Belle Comtesse,” said the Duke,
‘With concentrated wrath in the savage rebuke,
Which betray’d that he felt himself baffled....
“you know
That your place is not here.”
“Duke,” she answer’d him slow,
a iy ie is wherever my duty is clear; _
And therefore my place, at this moment, is here.
Oh, lady, this morning my place was beside
Your husband, because (as she said this she sigh’d)
I felt that from folly fast growing to crime—
The ee of self-blindness—Heaven yet spared me
ime
To save for the love of an innocent wife
All that such love deserved in the heart and the life
Of the man to whose heart and whose life you ‘alone
Can with safety confide the pure trust of your own.”

She turned to Matilda, and lightly laid on her

Her soft quiet hand....
‘oT is, oh, lady, the honor
Which that man has confided to you, that, in spite
Of his friend, I now trust I may yet save to-night —
Save for both of you, lady! for yours I revere;
Due See what say you?—my place is not
ere?!

XII.
And, so saying, the hand of Matilda she caught,
Wound one arm round her waist unresisted, and
sought :
ca softly, to draw her away from the oe
The Duke stood confounded, and follow’d them not.
But not Ries the house had they reach’d when Lucile
Her tender and delicate burden could feel
Sink and falter beside her. Oh, then she knelt down,
Flung her arms round Matilda, and press’d to her

own
The poor bosom beating against her.
: e moon,
Bright, breathless, and buoyant, and brimful of
une,
Floated up from the hillside, Sioned. over the vale,
And poised herself loose in mid-heaven, with one
pale,
Minute, scintillescent, and tremulous star
Swinging under her globe like a wizard-lit car,
Thus to each of those women revealing the face
Of the other. Each bore on her features the trace
Of a vivid emotion. A deep inward shame
The cheek of Matilda had flooded with flame.
With her enthusiastic emotion, Lucile
Trembled visibly yet; for she could not but feel
That a heavenly hand was upon her that night,
And it touch’d her pure brow to a heavenly light.
“In the name of your husband, dear lady,” she said;
Tay so of your mother, take heart! Lift your

For those blushes are noble. Alas! do not trust

To that maxim of virtue made ashes and dust,

That thefault of the husband can cancel the wife's.
Take oe and take refuge and strength in your

‘e's

Pure ae kneel, pray, and hope, weep,

2 ec ma !” sobb’d Matilda, “but saved to what
‘a

Tears, prayers, yes! not hopes.”
; “ Hush PF the sweet voice replied.
‘‘Fool’d away by a fancy, again to your side
Must yout husband return. Doubt not this, And
return
For the love you can give, with the love that you
arn.

ye!
To receive, lady. What was it chill’d you both
Not the absence of love, but the ie pierce a
Love is nourish’d by love. Well! henceforth you
ro

will prove
Your heart worthy of love—since it knows how to

love.”
“What gives you such power over me, that I feel
Thus drawn to spe fon What are you, Lucile?”
$i ne cata and lifted her eyes to the face
‘ cile.

There pass’d suddenly through it the trac
of a: | RAE and o’er that fair tovehead eaia
A shadow which yet was too sweet
“The pupil of sorrow. perchance * ae ett
“Of sorrow?” Maltild . “Oh, confide

a exclaim’d . .

To my heart pour affliction. In all you madeknown |

I should fin
own!’’

* And I some consolation, no doubt; for ¢ :
Of another have not flow’d for me many vee

It was then that Matilda herself seized the hand
Of Lucile in her own, and uplifted her; and
Thus together they enter’d the house.

XTV.

some instruction, no doubt, for my

*T was the room

Of Matilda.
The languid and delicate gloom
Of a lamp of pure white alabaster, aloft

 

From the ceiling suspended, around it slept soft.
The casement oped into the garden. The pale
Cool moonlight stream’d through it. One lone night-

ingale
Sung aloof in the laurels.
And here, side by side,
Hand in hand, the two women sat down undescried,
Save by guardian angels. :
As, when, sparkling yet
From the rain, that, with drops that are jewels,
leaves wet Sick
The bright head it humbles, a young rose inclines
To some pale lily near it, the fair vision shines
As one flower with two faces, in hush’d, tearful

speech,
Like the showery whispers of flowers, each to each
Link’d, and leaning together, so loving, so fair,
So united, yet diverse, the two women there
—e indeed, like two flowers upon one drooping

stem,
In the soft light that tenderly rested on them. |

All that sou!

nows?
All that heart gain’d from heart?
Leave the lily, the rose,
Undisturb’d with their secret within them. For who
To the heart of the floweret can follow the dew?
A night full of stars! O’er the silence, unseen,
The pote of sentinel angels, between _
The dark land and deep sky were moving. You

heard

Pass’d oi earth up to heaven the happy watch-
wor

‘Which brighten’d the stars as among them it fell

From earth’s heart, which it eased .. . is well!
all is well!” ‘

said to soul in that chamber, who |

 

CANTO FOURTH.
1.

THE Poets pour wine; and, when ‘tis new all decry it,

But, once let it be old, every trifler must try it.

And Polonius, who praises no wine that’s not Mas-
sic, .

ee of my verse, that my verse is not classic.

And Miss Tilburina, who sings, and not badly,

My earlier verses, sighs ‘‘ Commonplace sadly!”

As for you, oh Polonius, you vex me but slightly;
But you, Tilburina, your eyes beam so brightly

In despite of their languishing looks, on my word,
That to see you look cross I can scarcely afford.
Yes! the silliest woman that smiles on a bard
Better far than Longinus himself can reward

The appeal to her feelings of which she approves;
And the critics I most care to please are the Loves.

Alas, friend! what boots it, a stone at his head
And a brass on his breast—when a man is once dead?
Ay! wee fame the sole guerdon, poor guerdon were
en
Theirs who, stripping life bare, stand forth models
or men.
The reformer’s?—a creed by peers, learnt
A century after its author is burnt!
The poet’s?—a laurel that hides the bald brow
It hath blighted! The painter’s?—ask Raphael now
Which Madonna’s authentic! The statesman’s?—
a name
For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim!
The soldier’s?—three lines on the cold Abbey pave-

ment!
Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant,
All it ends in, thrice better, Nezera, it were
Unregarded to sport with thine odorous hair,
Untroubled to lie at thy feet in the shade
And be loved, while the roses yet bloom overhead,
Than to sit by the lone h ;and think the long
thought,
A severe, sad, blind schoolmaster, envied for naught
Save the name of John Milton! For all men, indeed,
Who in some choice edition may graciously read,
With falr illustration, and erudite note,
The song which the poet in bitterness wrote,
Beat the sen and notably beat him, in this—

The joy of the genius is theirs, while they miss
The grief < e man: Tasso’s song—not his mad-
ness

Dante’s dreams—not his waking to exile and sadness!
Milton’s music—but not Milton’s blindness! . . .
i Yet rise,
My Milton, and answer, with those noble eyes
Which the aa of heaven hath blinded to earth!
Say—the life, in the living it, savors of worth:
That the deed, in the doing it, reaches its aim:
That the fact has a value apart from the fame:
That a deeper a in the mere labor, pays
Scorn of lesser del: hts, and laborious days:
Shaks; Se though all Shakspeare’s writings.
were lost,
And his genius, though never a trace of it crossed
eke Be path, not the less would have dwelt
In the isle with Miranda, with Hamlet have felt
All that Hamlet had utter’d, and haply where, pure
On its death-bed, wrong’d Love lay, have moan’d
with the Moor!

IL.

 

When Lord Alfred that night to the salon, return’d
He found it deserted. The lamp dimly burn’d

As . half out of humor to find itself there
Forced.

Never yet
Did the heavens a lovelier evening beget

Sinee Latona’s bright childbed ¢

moon!
The dark world lay still, in a sort of sweet swoon,
Wide eee to heaven: and the stars on the stream
ee rembling like eyes that are loved on the

ream
Of a lover; and all things were glad and at rest

|
| Save the unquiet heart in his own troubled breast,

He endeavor’d to think—an unwonted employment,
Which appear’d to afford him no sort of enjoyment.

are
“Withdraw into yourself. “But, if peace you seek
there for,

Your reception, beforehand, be sure to prepare for,”
Wrote the tutor of Nero; who wrote, be it said,
Better far than he acted—but peace to the dead!

He bled for his pueDe what more could he do?

But Lord Alfred, when into himself he withdrew,
Found all there in disorder. For more than an hour
He = with his head droop’d like some stubborn

ower

Beaten down by the rush of the rain—with such force
Did the thick, gushing thoughts hold upon him the

course
Of their sudden descent, rapid, eee and dim,
| From the cloud that had darken’d the evening for

him.
At one moment he rose—rose and open’d the door,
And wistfully look’d down the dark corridor
Toward the room of Matilda. Anon, with a sigh
Of an incomplete purpose, he crept quietly
Back again to his place in a sort of submission
To doubt, and return’d to his former position—
That —— fall of the arms, that, dull droop of the
‘ace,
And the eye vag uely fix’d on impalpable space.
The dream, which till then, had been lulling his life,
As one prope the winds, had seal’d thought; and his
wife
And his home for a time he had = like Ulysses,
Forgotten; but now o’er the troubled abysses
Of the spirit within him, seolian, forth leapt
To their freedom new-found, and resistlessl a

| All his heart into tumult, the thoughts whic’

been °
Long pent up in their mystic recesses unseen.
How long he thus sat there, himself he knew not.
Till he started, as though he were suddenly shot,

To the sound of a voice too familiar to doubt,
Which was making some noise in the passage with-

out.
A sound English voice, with a round English accent,
Which the scared German echoes resentfully back

sent;
The complaint of a much disappointed cab-driver
Mingled with it, demanding some ultimate stiver;
Then, the heavy and hurried approach of a boot
Which reveal’d by its sound no diminutive foot:
And the door was oe ee. open, and on
The threshold Lord A by bachelor John
Was seized in that sort of affectionate
Frenzy of hugs which some stout Ursa or
On some lean Ursa Minor would doubtless Ww
With a warmth for which only starvation and snow
Could render one grateful. As soon as he could,
Lord Alfred contrived to escape, nor be food
Any more for those somewhat voracious embraces.
Then the two men sat down and scann’d each other’s

faces;
And Alfred could see that his cousin was taken
With unwonted emotion. The hand that had shaken
His own trembled somewhat. In truth he descried,
At aglance, something wrong.

ve

“What's the matter?’’ he cried.
“What have you to tell me?”

e or

JOHN.
What! have you not heard?
ALFRED. *
Heard what?
JouN.
This sad business—
ALFRED.
I? no, not a word.

é Jou.
You received my last letter?

I think so. If not,
What then?

JOHN.
You have acted upon it?
ALFRED.
On what?
JOHN.
The advice that I gave you—
ALFRED.
Advice?—let me see!
You always are giving advice, Jack, to me.
About Parliament was it?

JouN.
Hang Parliament! no,
The Bank, the Bank, Alfred!

LFRED.
What Bank?

JOHN.
Heavens! I know
You are careless;—but surely you have not forgot-

| ten—

I | am he whole thing was
light for no purpose a room that was bare. | yes + pi ie ign Se
| He sat down by the window alone,

rotten.

_ | You have drawn those deposits at least?
hat bore the new |

To have written to-day; but the note shall be sent

ALFRED.
No, I meant

To-morrow, however.
JOHN.
., , To-morrow? too late!
Too late! Oh, what devil bewitch’d you to wait?

oS ee

a pa

SR

osama:

we oe

eee

 
 

22 THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

LFRED.
Mercy save us! you don’t mean to say...

JOHN.
Yes, I do.
ALFRED.
What! Sir Ridley? ...

JOHN.
Smash’d, broken, blown up, bolted too!
ALFRED. 3
But his own niece? . . . In heaven's name, Jack. .
JOHN.
Oh, I told you
The old hypocritical scoundrel would . . .
ALFRED.
Hold! you
Surely can’t mean we are ruin’d?
JOHN,
Sit down!
A fortnight ago a report about town
ade me most apprehensive. Alas, and alas!
I at once wrote and warn’d you. Well, now let that

pass,

A run on the Bank about five days ago

Confirm’d my forebodings too terribly, though,

I drove down to the city at once; found the door

Of the Pak closed; the Bank had stopped payment
at four.

Next morning the failure was known to be fraud;

Warrant out for MacNab; but_ MacNab was abroad:

Gone—we cannot tell where. I endeavor’d to get

Information: have learn’d nothing certain as yet

Not even the way that old Ridley was gone:

Or with those securities what he had done:

Or whether they had been already call’d out:

If they are not, their fate is, I fear, past a doubt.

aoe iy families ruin’d, 2 say; what was left—

Unable to find any clew to the cleft

The old fox ran to earth in—but join you as fast

As I could, my dear Alfred ?*

He stopp’d here, aghast
At the change in his cousin, the hue of his face
Had grown livid; and glassy his eyes fixed on space.
“Courage, courage!” . .. said John,. . . “bear the
blow like a man!” ‘
And he caught the cold hand of Lord Alfred. There

ran
Through that hand a quick tremor, “I bear it,” he

“But Matilda? the blow is to her!” And his head
Seem’d fore’d down, as he said it.”

OHN.
Matilda? Pooh, pooh,

I half think I know the girl better than you.

She =~ courage enough—and to spare. She cares

less
Than most women for luxury, nonsense and dress.
A iD.
The fault has been mine.
JOHN.
Be it yours to repair it:
If you did not avert, you may help her to bear it.

ALFRED,
I might have averted.
JOHN.
; Perhaps so. But now
There is clearly no use in considering how,
Or whence, came the mischief. The mischief is here.
Broken shins are not mended by crying—that’s clear!
One has but to rub them, and get up again
And push on—and not think too much of the pain.
And at least itis much that you see that to her
You ea too much to think of yourself. You must
stir a
And ae yourself, Alfred, for her sake, Who
nows
Something yet may be saved from this wreck. I sup-

ose
We sean make him disgorge all he can, at the least.

“Oh, Jack, I have been a brute idiot! a beast!
A fool! Ihave sinn’d, and to her I have sinn’d!
I have been heedless, blind, inexcusably blind!
And now, in a flash, I see all things!”
As though

To shut out the vision, he bow’d his head low

On his hands; and the great tears in silence roll’d on,
And fell, momently, heavily, one after one,

John felt no desire to find instant relief

_For the trouble he witness’d.

He guess’d, in the grist
Of his cousin, the broken and heartfelt admission
Of some error demanding a heartfelt contrition:
Some oblivion perchance which could plead less ex-

cuse
To the heart of a man re-aroused to the use
Of the conscience God gave him, than simply and

merely
The neglect for which now he was paying so dearly.
So he rose without speaking, and paced and down
The long room, much afflicted, indeed, in his own
Cordial heart for Matilda.
. Thus, silently lost
Tn ous reflections, he cross’d and recross’d
The p) where his cousin yet hopelessly hung
O’er the table; his fingers entwisted among
The rich curls they were knotting and dragging. and

there,
That sound of all sounds the most pe to hear,
The sobs of aman! Yet so far in his own

 

* These events, it is needless to say, Mr. Morse,
Took pide when Bad News as: rat travel’d by horse;
Ere the world, like a cockchafer, buzz’d on a wire,
Or Time was calcined by electrical fire;

Ere a cable went under the hoary Atlantic,

Or the word Telegram drove grammarians frantic.

 

Kindly thoughts was he plunged, he already had
grown
Unconscious of Alfred.
And so for a space
There was silence between them.

At last, with sad face
He stop *d short, and bent on his cousin awhile
A pain ¢ sort of wistful, compassionate smile,
Approach’d him,—stood o’er him,—and suddenly

aid
One hand on his shoulder—
‘“ Where is she?”’ he said.
Alfred lifted his face, all disfigured with tears
And gazed vacantly at him, like one that appears
Tn some foreign language to hear himself greeted,

Unable to answer.
‘“‘ Where is she?’’ repeated

He motion’d his band to the door;
“There, I think,” he replied. Cousin John said no
more,
And appear’d to relapse to his own coetatiers
Of which not a gesture vouchsafed indications.
So again there was silence.

His cousin.

A timepiece at last
Struck the twelve strokes of midnight.
Roused by them, he cast
A half-look to the dial: then quietly threw
His arm round the neck of his cousin, and drew
The hands down from his face.
“Tt is time she should know
What has happen’d,” he said, . . . ‘‘let us go to her
now.”

Alfred started at once to his feet.
_.. Drawn and wan
Though his face, he look’d more than his wont was
—a man.
oe for once, in his weakness. Uplift’d, fill’d
hrough

With a manly resolve.
: If that axiom be true

Of the “ Sum quia cogito,”’ I must opine

That “id sum quod ‘o”’:—that which, in fine,

A man thinks and feels, with his whole force of

thought
And feeling, the man is himself,
- He had fought

With himself, and rose up from his self-overthrow
The survivor of much which that strife had laid low.
At his feet, as he rose at the name of his wife,

Lay in ruins the brilliant, unrealized life

Which, though yet unfulfill’d, seem’d till then, in that

name,
To be his, had he claim’d it. The man’s dream of

fame
And of power fell shatter’d before him; and only
There rested the heart of the woman, so lonely
In all save the love he could give her. The lord
Of that heart he arose. Blush not, Muse, to record
That his first thought, and last, at that moment was

not
Of the power and fame that seem’d lost to his lot,
But the love that was left to it; not of the pelf
He had cared for, yet squander’d; and not of him-

Sell,
But of her; as he murmur’d,
“One moment, dear Jack!
We have a up from boyhood together. Our
t

rac|

Has been through the same meadows in childhood;
in youth

page ry same silent gateways, to manhood, In

ruth,
There is none that can know me as you do; and
none
To whom I more wish to believe myself known.
Speak the truth; you are not wont to mince it, I

know.
Nor I, shall I shirk it, or shrink from it now.
In despite of a wanton behavior, in spite
Of vanity, folly, and pride, Jack, which might
Have turn’d from me many a heart strong and true
As yours own, I have never turn’d round and miss’d

From my side in one hour of affliction or doubt

By = own blind and heedless self-will brought
about,

Tell me truth. Do TI owe this alone to the sake

of ere eaenst of porbood ies ug

In your heart yet some clinging and crying appe:

Risa a ae more harsh, which I cannot but

fee
Might have sentenced our friendship to death long

ago
Or is it . . . would I could deem it were so!)
That, not all overlaid by a listless exterior,
Your heart has divined in me something superior
To that which I seem; from my innermost nature
Not wholly expell’d by the world’s usurpature?
Some instinct of earnestness, truth, or desire
For truth? Some one spark of the soul’s native fire
Moving under the ashes, and cinders, and dust
‘eee say hath heap’d o’er it? Some one fact to
rus'

And to hope in? Or by you alone am I deem’d
The mere frivolous fool I so often have seem’d
To my own self?”

JOHN.

No, Alfred! you will, I believe,
Be true, at the last, to what now males you grieve
For having belied your true nature so long.
Necessity is a stern teacher, Be strong!
“Do you think,” he resumed ... “what I feel

while I speak '

Is no more than a transient emotion, as weak
As these weak tears would seem to betoken it?”

JOHN,

No!

 

 

 

ALFRED.
Thank you, cousin! your hand then. And now I will

go
Alone, Jack. Trust to me, S

nH,

JOHN,
Ido. But ’tis late,
If she sleeps, you’ll not wake her?

ALFRED.

No, no! it will wait

Mitt infant!) too surely, this mission of sorrow;
f she sleeps, I will not mar her dreams of to-morrow.

He open’d the door, and pass’d out.
, 7 Cousin Johr
Watch’d him wistful, and left him to seek her alone,
Ix.

His heart beat so loud when he knocked at her door,

He could hear no reply from within, Yet once more

He paged lightly. No answer. The handle he
ried:

The door open’d: he enter’d the room undescried.

xX,

No brighter than is that dim circlet of light
Which enhaloes the moon when rains form on the

night,
The pale lamp an indistinct radiance shed
Round the chamber, in which at her pure snowy bed
Matilda was xneelaes so wrapt in deep prayer
That she knew not her husband watching her

there.
With a lamplight the moonlight had mingled a
‘aint

And unearthly effulgence which seem’d to acquaint

The whole place with a sense of deep peace made
secure

By the —— of ee angelic and pure.

And not purer some angel Grief carves o’er the tomb

Where Love lies, than the lady that kneel’d in that

‘loom.
She had put off her dress; and she look’d to his eyes
Like a young soul escaped from its earthly dis; :
Her fair neck and innocent shoulders were bare,
And over them i. her soft golden hair;

Her simple and slender white bodice unlaced

Confined not one curve of her delicate waist.

As the light that, from water reflected, forever
Trembles up oat ie tremulous reeds of a river,
So the beam f her 34 went trembling in him,
Through the thoughts it suffused with a sense soft

and dim,
Reproducing itself in the broken and bright
Lapse and pulse of a million emotions,
That sight
Bow’d his heart, bow’d his knee. Knowing scarce
what he did,
To her side through the chamber he silently slid,
And knelt down beside her—and pray’d at her side,

xi.

Upstarting, she then for the first time descried
That ae usband was near her; suffused with the

Which came o’er her soft pallid cheek with a gush ~
Where the tears sparkled yet.
As a young fawn uncouches,
Shy with fear, from the fern where some hunter ap-
roaches,
She shrunk back; he caught her, and circling his

arm
Round her waist, on her brow press’d one kiss long
and warm.
Then La fear changed in impulse; and hiding her
e

‘ac ;
On his breast, she hung lock’d in a clinging embrace
With a a t arms wound heavily round him, as
ough
She fear’d, if their clasp were relax’d, he would go;
Her smooth naked shoulders, uncared for, convulsed
By sob after sob, while her bosom yet te
In its pressure on his, as the effort within it
Lived and died with each tender, tumultuous minute.
“Oh Alfred, oh Alfred! forgive me,’’ she cried—
“Forgive me!” -
“Forgive you, my poor child!” he sigh’d;
“ ButI never have blamed you for aught that I know,
And I have not one thought that reproaches you
now.”
From her arms he unwound himself gently. And so
He forced her down softly beside him. Below
The canopy shading their couch, they sat down,
And he said, clasping firmly her hand in his own,
xf eae a pe man, Matilda, has found out at
length,
That he s but a child in the midst of his strength,
But a fool in his wisdom, to whom can he own
The weakness which thus to himself hath been
shown? :
From whom seek the strength which his need of is
sore,
Although in his pride he might perish, before
He could plead for the one, or the other avow
Mid his intimate friends? Wife of mine, tell me now,
Do you join me ia feeling, in that darken’d hour,
The sole friend that can have the right or the power
To be at his side, is the woman that shares
His fate, if he falter; the woman that bears
The name dear for her sake, and hallows the life
She has a her own with—in short, that man’s
wife?”
“Yes,” murmur’d Matilda, ‘‘oh yes!”
“Then,” he cried,
“This chamber in which we two sit, side by side
(And his arm, as he spoke, seem’d more softly to
press her),
Is now a confessional—you, my confessor !”*
“Ty?” she falter’d, and timidly lifted her head.
“Yes! but first answer one other question,” he said;

ie
 

 

 

 

\¥
|

 

 

23

 

“When a woman once feels that she is not alone;

That the heart of another is warm’d by her own;

That another feels with her whatever she feel,

And halves her existence in woe or in weal;

That a man for her sake will, so long as he lives,

Live to put forth his strength which the thought of

er gives;

Live to shield her from want, and to share with her
SOITow;

Live to solace the day, and provide for the morrow;

Will that woman feel less than another, oh say,

The loss of what life, sparing this, takes away?

Will she feel (feeling this), when calamities come

That they brighten the heart, though they darken
the home?” 4

She turn’d, like a soft rainy heaven, on him

Eyes that smiled through fresh tears, trustful, ten-

der and dim,
Fe ae ee she murmur’d, ‘indeed were thrice
9

“Then courage, true wife of my heart!” to his
breast

As he folded and gather’d her closely, he cried.

“or the refuge, to-night in these arms open’d wide

To your heart, can never be closed to it again,

And this room is for both an asylum! For when

I pass’d through that door, at the door I left there

A calamity, sudden, and heavy to bear.

One step from that threshold, and daily, I fear,

We must face it henceforth: but it enters not here,

For that door shuts it out, and admits here alone

A heart which calamity leaves all your own!”

She started . . . ‘‘ Calamity, Alfred! to you?”

“To both, my ce child, but ’twill bring with it too

The courage, I trust, to subdue it.” Stier arvautt

Speak!” she falter’d in tones timid, qidots, ind
ea.

we
“ Oh yet for a moment,” he said, ‘‘ hear me on!
Matilda, this morn we went forth in the sun,
Like those children of sunshine, the bright summer

flies.

That s ort in the sunbeam, and play through the
skies

While ie skies smile, and heed not each other: at

9,
When their sunbeam is gone, and their sky overcast,
‘Who recks in what ruin they fold their wet wings?
So indeed the morn found us—poor frivolous things!
Now our sky is o’ercast, and our sunbeam is set.
And the night brings its darkness around us. Oh,

yet,
Have we weather’d no storm through those twelve
cloudless hours?
Yes; you, too, have ae
; “While the world was yet ours,
While its sun was upon us, its incense stream’d to us,
And its myriad voices of joy seem’d to woo us,
We stray’d from each other, too far, it may be,
Nor, wantonly wandering. then did I see
How deep was my need of thee, dearest, how great
Was pm “aoe on my heart and thy share in my
‘a
But, Matilda, an angel was near us, meanwhile,
Watching o’er us, to warn, and to rescue!
: / a “That smile
Which oe saw with suspicion, that presence you

ey:
With resentment, an angel’s they were at your side
And at mine; nor perchance is the day fata far,
er both in our prayers, when most heartfelt

ey are,
May murmur the name of that woman now gone
From our sight evermore.
“Here, this evening, alone,

I seek your forgiveness in opening my heart
Unto yours—from this clasp be it never to part!
Matilda, the fortune you brought me is gone,
But a prize richer far than that fortune
It is yours to confer, and I kneel for that prize
"fis the heart of my wife!” With suffused happy

eyes

y'
She sprung from her seat, flung her arms wid
And tenderly closing them pond him, his mea
Clasp’d in one close embrace to her bosom; and

there
Droop’d her head on his shoulder; and sobb’d.
Not despair,
Not sorrow, not even the sense of her loss,
Flow’d in those happy tears, so oblivious she was
~s all save iar bea 1 of ra Aan love! a
owever, his words rush’d back to her,

The fortune you brought me!” 4 ee?
; And eyes that were di
With port oo she upraised; but those tears were

‘or him.
“Gone! my husband?’ she said, ‘tell me all! see! I

need,

To sober this rapture, so selfish indeed,

Fuller sense of affliction.”

r 5 “Poor innocent child!”

He kiss’d her fair forehead, and mournfully smiled,

As he told her the tale he had heard—something
more

The gain found in loss of what gain lost of yore.

“Rest, my heart, and my brain, and my right hand

‘or you;

And with these, my Matilda, what may I not do?

You know not, { knew not myself till this hour,

Which so sternly reveal’d it, my nature’s full

ower.”

* And I too,” she murmur’d, ‘‘I too am no more

The mere infant at heart you have known me
before.

Thave suffer’d since then. I have learn’d much in

ife.
Oh take, with the faith I have pledged as a wife,
The heart f have learn’d as a woman to feel!
For I—love you, my husband !”’
As though to conceal

LUCILE.

 

 

Less from him, than herself, what that motion ex

ress’d, ij ;
She desc a her bright head, and hid all on his
breast.
“‘Oh lovely as woman, beloved as wife!
Evening star of my heart, light forever my life!
If from eyes fix’d too long on this base earth

far
You have miss’d your due homage, dear guardian

thus

star,
Believe that, Bee eee eyes unto heaven,
There I see you, and know you, and bless the light

given
To lead me to life’s late achievement; my own,
My blessing, my treasure, my all things in one!”

XIL

How lovely she look’d in the lovely ae ee
That stream’d thro’ the pane from the blue balmy

night!
How lovely she look’d in her own lovely youth,
As she clung to his side full of trust, and of truth!
How lovely to him as he tenderly press’d
Her young head on his bosom, and sadly caress ’d
The glittering tresses which now shaken loose
Shower’d gold in his hand, as he smooth’d them!

XII.
Oh Muse,
Interpose not one pulse of thine own beating heart
*Twixt these two silent souls! There’s a joy be-

yond art,
And beyond sound the music it makes in the breast.
XIV.

Here ‘ae lovers twice wed, that were happy at
leas’

No music, save such as the sen aneee sung,

Breath’d their bridals abroad; and no cresset, up-

hung,
Lit that festival hour, save what soft light was given
a pure stars that peopled the deep-purple
eaven.
He open’d the casement: he led her with him,
Hush’d in heart, to the terrace, dipp’d cool in the

dim
Lustrous gos of the shadowy laurels. They heard
Aloof the invisible, rapturous bird,

With aes wild note bewildering the woodlands:

ey saw

Not unheard, afar off, the hill-rivulet draw

His ace ripple of moon-kindled wavelets with cheer
From t) . throat of the vale; o’er the dark-sapphire

sphere
The mild, multitudinous lights lay asleep.
Pastured free on the midnight, and bright as the

shee,
Of Apollo ts pastoral Thrace; from unknown
Hollow glooms freshen’d odors around them were

blown
Intermittingly; then the moon dropp’d from their

sight,
Sirsa in the mountains, and put out the light
Which no longer they needed to read on the face
Of each other life’s last revelation.

The place
Slept sumptuous round them; and Nature, that
never
Sleeps, but waking reposes, with patient endeavor
Continued about them, unheeded, unseen,
Her old, quiet toil in the heart of the green
Summer silence, preparing new buds for new blos-

soms,

And stealing a finger of change o’er the bosoms

Of the Sead woodlands; and Time, that halts
no’

His forces, how lovely soever the spot

Where their march lies—the wary, gray strategist,

Time
With the armies of Life, lay encamp’d—Grief and
rime.
Love and Faith, in the darkness unheeded; matur-

ing,
For his great war with man, new surprises; securing
All outlets, pursuing and pushing his foe
To his last narrow refuge—the grave.

XV,
Sweetly though
Smiled aa like new hopes out of heaven, and
sweetly
Their ed beat thanksgiving for all things, com-
letely
Confiding in that yet untrodden existence
Over which they were pausing. To-morrow, resist-
ance :
And strug le; to-night, Love his hallow’d device
Hung forth, and proclaim’d his serene armistice.

CANTO FIFTH.
at

Wuen Lucile left Matilda, she sat for long hours

In her chamber, fatigued by long overwrought
jowers,

*Mid the signs of departure, about to turn back

To her old vacant life, on her old homeless track.

a felt her oa ted within tp She sat

€ some poor player, gazing dejectedly at

The insignia of royalty worn for a night;

Exhausted, fatigued, with the dazzle and light,

‘And the effort of passionate feigning; who thinks

Of her own meager, rush-lighted garret, and shrinks

From the chill of the change that awaits her.

Il.
; From these
viene and comfortless, blank reveries,
nable to sleep, she descended the stair
That led from her room to the garden,

 

The air,
With the chill of the dawn, yet unris’n, but at hand,
Strangely smote on her feverish forehead. The land
Lay in darkness and change, like a world in its
ave:

No sound, save the voice of the long river wave,
And the crickets that sing all the night!

: She stood still,
Naan watching the thin cloud that curl’d on the

Emotions, long pent in her breast, were at stir,

And the deeps of the spirit were troubled in her.
Ah, pale woman! what, with that heart-broken look,
Didst thou read then in nature’s weird heart-break-

ook?
Have the wild rains of heaven a father? and who
Hath in pity begotten the drops of the dew?
Orion, Arcturus, who pilots them both?

What leads forth in his season the oe Mazaroth?
Hath the darkness a dwelling,—save there, in those

eyes?
And oe name hath that half-reveal’d hope in the
skies?
Ay, question, and listen! What answer?
e sound

Of the long river wave through its stone-troubled

bound,
And the crickets that sing all the ae
here are hours
Which belong to unknown, supernatural powers,
Whose sudden and solemn suggestions are all
‘hat to this race of worms,—stinging creatures, that

crawl,
Lie, and fear, and die daily, beneath their own

stings,—
Can extcuse the blind boast of inherited wings.
When oe on the impulse of anguish, hath
pass
Beyond anguish, and risen into rapture at last;

en she traverses nature and space, till she stands"

In the ae of Fate; where, through tremulous
nds,
Hum the threads from an old-fashioned distaff un-

curled,
And those three blind old women sit spinning the
world.
Ii.
The — was blanched wan, overhead. One green

star
Was slipping from sight in the pale void afar;

The spirits of change, and of awe, with faint breath,
Were shifting the midnight, above and beneath.

The spirits of awe and of change were around,

And about, and upon her,
A dull muffled sound,

And a hand on her hand, like a ghostly surprise, -
And she felt herself fix’d by the hot hollow eyes
Of the Frenchman before her; those eyes séem’d to

burn.
And scorch out the darkness between them, and
umm

Into fire as they fix’d her. He look’d like the shade
Of a creature by fancy from solitude made.
And sent forth by the darkness to scare and oppress
Some soul of a monk in a waste erness,

IV.

‘* At last, then—at last, and alone,—I and thou,
Lucile de Nevers, have we met?
“Hush! I know

Not for me was the tryst. Never mind! it is mine;
And whatever led hither those proud steps of thine,
They remove not, until we have spoken. My hour
Is come; and it holds thee and me in its power,
As the darkness holds both the horizons. °T is well!
The timidest maiden that e’er to the spell
ou her od fan wate aeeoes a oe deli =

en soft stars were brightly uphanging the night,
Never listen’d, I swear, more enicaliottiagty. =
Than thy fate hath compell’d thee to listen to me!”’
To the sound of his voice, as though out of a dream,
She appear’d with a start to awaken.

The stream,

When he ceased, took the night with its moaning

ain,
Like the voices of spirits departing in pain.
“Continue,” she answer’d, ‘‘I listen to hear,”
For a moment he did not reply.

Through the drear
And dim aoa between them, she saw that his face
Was disturb’d. To and fro he continued to pace,
With A arms folded close, and the low restless

stride

Of a panther, in circles around her, first wide,
Then narrower, nearer, and quicker. At last

..| He stood still, and one look upon her he cast.

“Lucile, dost thou dare to look into my face?

Is aoe sight so repugnant? ha, well! Canst thou
race

One word of thy writing in this wicked scroll,

With aes name scrawl’d through it, defacing
a soul?”

In his face there was something so wrathful and

wud,
That the sight of it scared her. é
He saw it, and smiled,
And then turn’d him from her, renewing again _
That short restless stride; as though searching

vain
For the point of some purpose within him.
= ik “Lucille,
You shudder to look in my face: do you feel
No reproach when you look in your own heart?’
“No, Duke,
In my conscience I do not deserve your rebuke:

Not yours!” she replied.
“No,” he mutter’d again.
Se or justice! you first bid Life hope not, and
2en.
To Despair you say ‘ Act not!’

cr nN an NE

a eee

so rp tn 8 nr

——————————————————————————
wr,

24

THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

 

W,

|
|

He watch’d her awhile |

With a chill sort of restless and suffering smile.

‘They stood by the wall of the garden. The skies,
Dark, somber, were troubled with vague prophecies
Of the dawn yet far distant. The moon had long set,
And all in a glimmering light, pale, and wet

| His shadow ’twixt me and the sun. .

With the night-dews, the white roses sullenly loom’d |

Round about her. She spoke not.
resumed,

“Wretched creatures we are!
and all!

Only able to injure each other, and fall

Soon or late, in that void which ourselves we pre-

At length he

I and thou — one

are
For the souls that we boast of! weak insects we
r

e!
Oh heaven! and what has become of them! all
Those instincts of Eden surviving the Fall:
That glorious faith in inherited things:
That sense in the soul of the length of her wings;
Gone! all gone and the wail of the night wind
sounds human,
Bewailing those once nightly visitants! Woman,
Woman, what hast thou done with my youth?
- Give again. i
Give me back ite young heart that I gave thee
ain!”

Sve aa :
“Duke!” she falter’d.

“Yes, yes!’ he went on, ‘‘I was not

Always thus! what I once was, I have not forgot.”

VI.

As the wind that heaps sand in a desert, there stirr’d
Through 7 voice an emotion that swept every
wor
Into one angry wail; as, with feverish change,
He continued his monologue, fitful and strange.
PE BBs Aad in whose nature, once kindled, the
re
Of Passion burns downward to blacken and scorch!
But shame, shame andsorrow, Oh woman, to thee
Whose hand sow’d the seed of destruction in me!
Whose lip taught the lesson of falsehood to mine!
en looks made me doubt lies that look’d so
vine!
My soul by thy beauty was slain in its sleep:
And if tears I mistrust, ’tis that thou too canst
weep! .
Welbisas Sa utter soever it be, one mistake
In the love of a man, what more change need it

make
In the steps of his soul through the course love

began,
Than all other mistakes in the life of a man?
And I said to myself, ‘I am young yet: too young
To have wholly survived my own portion among
The at needs of man’s life, or exhausted its joys;
What is broken? one only of youth’s poor toys!
Shall I be the less welcome, wherever I go,
For one passion survived? No! the roses will blow
As of yore, as of yore will the nightingale sing,
Not less sweetly for one blossom cancel’

es!

Hast thou loved, oh my heart? to thy love yet re-
mains

All the wide loving-kindness of nature. The plains

And the hills with each summer their verdure renew.

Wouldst thou be as they are? do thou then as they

do,
Let the dead sleep in peace. Would the living divine
Where ney, slumber? Let only new flowers be the
sign!”

from

“Vain! all vain! ..
I would oe, ,

I remember’d too well all it cost me to laugh.

Through the revel it was but the old Hong heard,

eis the crowd the old footsteps behind me they

s
In the night-wind, the starlight, the murmurs of

. For when, laughing, the wine

even,
In the ardors of earth, and the See of heaven,
could trace nothing more, nothing more through
the spheres,
But the sound of old sobs, and the tracks of old tears!
It was with me the night long in dreaming or wak-

ing,
It abided in loathing, when daylight was breaking,
The burden of the bitterness in me! Behold,
All my days were become as a tale that is Ride ate
And T said to my sight, ‘No good thing shalt thou

see,
For the noonday is turned to darkness in me.
In the house of Oblivion my bed I have made.’
And I said to the grave, ‘Lo, my father!’ and said
To the worm, ‘Lo, my sister!’ e dust to the dust,
And one end to the wicked shall be with the just!”

VIL,

He ceased as a wind that wails out on the night,
And one itself mute. Through the indistinct

it
A voice clear, and tender, and pure with a tone
Of ineffable pity replied to his own.
And say you, and deem you, that I wrecked your

life?

Alas! Duc de Luvois, had I been your wife
By a fraud of the heart which could yield you alone
For the love in your nature a lie in my own,
Should I not, in deceiving, have injured you worse?
Yes, I then should have merited justly your curse,
For I then should have wrong’d you!’

‘““Wrong’d? ah, is it so?
You could never have loved me?

“Duke!”
“Never? Ohno!”
(He broke into a fierce an; laugh, as he said)
‘Yet, lady, you knew that [ loved you; you led

My love on to lay to its heart, hour by hour,

All the pale, cruel, beautiful, passionless power
Shut up in that cold face of yours! was this well?
But enough! not on you would I vent the wild hell
ne ae grown inmy heart. Oh that man, first and
asi

He tramples in triumph my life! he has cast
. let it pass!
My hate yet may find him!”

She murmur’d, ‘‘ Alas!

| These words at least, spare me the ye of reply.

 

Enough, Duc de Luvois! farewell. I shall try
To forget every word I have heard, every sight

| That has grieved and appall’d me in this wretched

night
eee witness our final farewell. May you,
uke,
Never know greater cause your own heart to rebuke
ae mine thus to wrong and afflict you have had!
ieu!”’
“Stay, Lucile, stay!” ... he groaned, ... “I
am mad,
Brutalized, blind with pain! I know not what I said.
I meant it not. But” (he moan’d, drooping his head)
‘Forgive me. I—haveIso wrong’d you, Lucile?
havel... forgive me, forgive me!”
“T feel
Only sad, very sad to the soul,’’ she said, “far,
Far too sad for resentment.”’
“Yet stand as you are
One moment,” he murmur’d, “I think, could I gaze
Thus awhile on your face, the old innocent days
‘Would come back upon me, and this scorching heart
Free itself in hot tears. Do not, do not depart
Thus, He stay one moment. I know why you
shrin.
Why oe shudder; I read in your face what you
ink,
Do not speak to me of it. And yet, if you will,
Whatever you say, my own lips shall be still.
Ilied. And the truth, now, could justify naught.
There are battles, it may be, in which to have fought
Is more shameful than, simply, to fail. Yet, Lucile,
Had you help’d me to bear what you forced me to

e]—

“Could I help you,” she murmur’d, ‘but what can
say

That your life will respond to?” ‘My life?” he
igh’d. ‘Na

Si é
My life hath brought forth only evil, and there
The wild wind hath planted the wild weed: yet ere
You exclaim, ‘Fling the weed to the flames,’ think

again
Why the field is so barren. With all other men
First love, though it perish from life, only goes |
Like the primrose that falls to make way for the rose.
For a man, at least most men, may love on through

life:
Love ae love in knowledge; in work: earth is
rife
With labor, and therefore with love, for a man,
If one love fails, another succeeds, and the plan
Of man’s life includes love in all objects! But I?
All such loves from my life through its whole destiny
Fate excluded. The love that I gave you, alas!
Was the sole love that life gave to me. Let that pass!
It perish’d, and all perish’d with it. Ambition?
Wealth left nothing to add to my social condition.
Fame? But fame in itself presupposes some great
Field wherein to pursue and attain it. The State?
I, to cringe to an upstart? The camp? I, to draw
rom its sheath theold sword of the Dukes of Luvois
To defend usurpation? Books, then? Science, Art?
But, alas! I was fashion’d for action: my heart,
Wither’d thing though it be, I should hardly com-

TESS
"Twit the leaves of a treatise on Statics: life’s stress
Needs pene, not contraction! what rests? to wear

ow
At some dark northern court an existence, no doubt,
In wretched and paltry intrigues for a cause
As hopeless as is nN own life! By the laws
Of a fate I can neither control nor dispute,
Iam what Iam!”

VII.

For a while she was mute.
Then she answer’d, ‘‘We are our own fates. Our
own deeds
Are our doomsmen, Man’s life was made not for
men’s creeds,
But men’s action. And, Due de Luvois, I might say
That all life attests, that ‘ the will makes the way.’
Is the land of our birth less the land of our birth,
Or its claim the less strong, or its cause the less

wo!
Our upholding, because the white lily no more
Is as sacred as all that it bloom’d for of yore?
Yet be that as it ig be; I cannot perchance
Judge this matter. Iam but a woman, and France
Has ou me simpler duties. Large hope, though,
ene
De Lavole should be yours. There is purpose in pain,
Otherwise it were devilish, I trust in my soul
That the great master hand which sweeps over the

whole
Of this Seer, of life, if at moments it stretch
The go nsion some one wailing nerve, means to
e

Its response the truest, most stringent, and smart,
Its pathos the purest, from out the wrung heart,
Whose faculties, flaccid it may be, if less

Sharply strung, sharply smitten, had fail’d to ex-

Tress

Just the one note the great final harmony needs.

And ear proves there’s life in a heart?—that it
leeds!

Grant a cause to remove, eee an end to attain,

Grant both to be just, and what mercy in !

Cease the sin with the sorrow! See mor: begin!

 

 

Pain must burn itself out if not fuel’d by sin.
There is hope in yon hill-tops, and love in yon light.
Let hate and despondency die with the night!”

He was moved by her words. As some poor wretch
confined

In cells loud with meaningless laughter, whose mind

Wanders trackless amid its own ruins may hear

A voice heard long since, silenced many a year,

And now, ’mid mad ravings recaptured again,

Singing through the caged lattice a once well-known
strain,

Which brings back his boyhood upon it, until

The mind’s ruin’d crevices graciously fill

With music and memory, and, as it were,

The long-troubled spirit grows slowly aware

Of ba mockery round it, and shrinks from each
hing

It once sought—the poor idiot who pass’d for a king,

Hard by with his squalid straw crown, now confess d

A madman more painfully mad than the rest—

So the sound of her voice, as it there wander’d o’er

His echoing heart, seem’d in part to restore

The forces of thought: he recaptured the whole

Of his life by the light which, in passing, her soul

Reflected on his: he appear’d to awake

Sd eet and perceived he had dream’d a mis-
ake:

His ppt was soften’d, yet troubled in him:

He felt his lips falter, his eyesight grow dim,

But he murmur’d . .

: “Lucile, not for me that sun’s light
Which reveals—not restores—the wild havoc of night.
argh sgme creatures born for the night, not the

lay.
Butiencapicted the nightingale hides in the spray,
And the owl’s moody mind in his own hollow tower
Dwells muffl’d.

dower.
Light, be sure, in that darkness there dwells, by
which eyes,

Grown familiar with ruins may yet recognize
Enough desolation.” «= iz

“The pride that claims here
On earth to itself (howsoever severe
To itself it may be) God’s dread office and right
Of pons sin, is a sin in heayen’s sight,
And against heaven’s service.

e darkness henceforward my

““Hugene de Luvois,
heave, the judgment to Him who alone knows the
aw.

Surely no man can be his own judge, least of all

His own doomsman.”’
Her words seem’d to fall
With the weight of tears in them.
He looked up and saw
That sad serene countenance, mourful as law
And tender as pity, bow’d o’er him: and heard
In some thicket the matinal chirp of a bird.

x

“Vulgar natures alone suffer vainly.

“ Eugene,”
She continued, “‘in life we have met once again,
And once more life parts us. Yon day-spring for me
Lifts the vail of a future in which it may be
We shall meet nevermore. Grant, oh grant to me

yet
The belief that it is not in vain we have met!
I plead for the future. A new horoscope
I would cast: will you read it? I plead for a hope:
I plead for a memory; yours, yours alone,
To restore or to spare. Let the hope be your own,
Be the memory mine.

“Once of yore, when for man

Faith yet lived, ere this age of the sluggard began,
Men, aroused to the knowledge of evil, fled far
From the fading rose-gardens of sense, to the war
With the Pagan, the cave in the desert, and sought
Not repose, but employment in action or thought,
Life’s strong earnest, in all things! oh think not of

me, ‘
But yourself! for I plead for ee own. destiny;

I plead for your life with its duties undone,

with its claims De and its trophies unwon;
And in pleading for life’s fair fulfillment, I plead
For all that you miss, and for all that you need.”

XL.
Through ey calm crystal air, faint and far, as she

spoke
A clear, chilly chime from a church-turret broke;
And the sound of her voice, with the sound of the

bell.
On his ear, where he kneel’d, softly, era fell,
All within him was wild and confused, as within

A chamber deserted in some roadside inn,

Where, passing, wild travelers paused over night,

To quaff and carouse; in each socket each lig: t

Is extinct; crash’d the glasses, and scrawl’d is the

wall

With wild ribald ballads: serenely o’er all,

For the first time perceived, where the dawn-light
eae faint

Through the wrecks of that orgy, the face of a saint,

Seen through some broken frame, appears noting
meanwhile

The ruin all round with a sorrowful smile.

And = gazed round. The curtains of Darkness half

rawh
Oped Ee her; and pure as the pure light of

awn
She stood, bathed in morning, and seem’d to his eyes
From their sight to be melting away in the skies
That expanded around her.

XI.

There pass’d through his head
A fancy—a vision. That woman was de

 

 

 
 

 

si =

 

LUCILE.

25

 

 

He had loved dome. ago—loved and lost! dead to him

Dead to all the life left him; but there in the dim

Dewy light of the dawn, stood a spirit; ’twas hers;

And he said to the soul of Lucile de Nevers:

‘* Oh soul to its sources eae away!

Pray for mine, if one soul for another may pray.

I to ask have no right, thou to give hast no power,

One hope to my heart. But in this i our

I name not my heart, and I speak not to thine.

Answer, soul of Lucile, to this dark soul of mine,

Does not soul owe to soul, what to heart heart de-
nies,

Hope, when hope is salvation? Behold, in yon skies,

This wild night is passing away while I speak;

Lo, above us, the day-spring beginning to break!

Something wakens meats ‘me, and warms to the

beam.
Is it hope that awakens? or do I but dream?
Iknow not. It may be, perchance, the first spark
Of a new light within me to solace the dark
Unto which I return; or pennies it may be
The last spark of fires extinguish’d in me,
Iknow not. Thou goest thy way: I my own:
For good or for evil, I know not. Alone
This I know; we are parting. I wish’d to say more,
But no matter! ’twill pass. All between us is o’er.
Forget the wild words of to-night. "Twas the pain
For long years hoarded up, that rush’d from me
again.
Iwas unjust: forgive me. Spare now to reprove
Other words, other deeds. It was madness, not love,
That Sr thwarted this night. What is done is now
one.
Death remains to avenge it, or life to atone.
I was madden’d, delirious! I saw you return
To him—not to me; and I felt my heart burn
With a fierce thirst for vengeance—and thus . . . let

it pass!
Long eet these, and so brief the moments,
alas

Thou goest thy way, andI mine. I suppose

°Tis to meet nevermore. Is it not so? Who knows,

Or who heeds, where the exile from Paradise flies?

Or what altars of his in the desert may rise?

Is it not so, Lucile? Well, well! Thus then we part

Once Seain, ,soul from soul, as before heart from
Cart?

xu.

And again clearer far than the chime of the bell,
That voice on his sense softly, soothingly fell.
“Our two paths must part us, Eugene; for my own
Seems no more through that world in which hence-
forth alone
You must work out (as now I believe that PA will)
The ae which you speak of, That work I shall
si
llive) watch and welcome, and bless far away.
oubt not this. But mistake not the thought, if I

sa,

That the; eat moral combat between human life
And each human soul must be single. The strife
None en share, though by all its results may be

own.
When the soul arms for battle, she goes forth alone.
isay not, indeed, we shall meet nevermore,
For I know not. But meet, as we have met of yore,
Iknow that we cannot. Perchance we may meet
By the death-bed, the tomb, in the crowd, in the

street,
Or in solitude even, but never again
Shall we meet from henceforth as we have met
Eugene. 3
For we know not the way we are going, nor yet
Where a ve ways may meet, or may cross. Life
se

No landmarks before us. But this, this alone,

I will promise: whatever your path, or my o

If, for once in the conflict before you, it chance
That cw Dragon prevail, and with cleft shield, and

ce
Lost or shatter’d, borne down by the stress of the

war,
Yon falter and hesitate, if from afar
I, still watching (unknown to yourself, it may be
O’er the conflict to which I conjure you, should see
t my presence could rescue, support you, or

e,
In the hour of that need I shall be at your side,

To warn, if you will, or incite, or control;

And again, once again, we shall meet, soul to goul!””

He uplifted his eyes,
one

All al

He stood on the bare edge of dawn. She was gone,
Like a star, when up bay after bay of the night,
neg in, wave on wave, the broad ocean of light,
And at once, in her place, was the Sunrise! It rose
Tn its sumptuous splendor and solemn repose,
The supreme revelation of light. Domes of gold,

of rose, in the Orient! And breathless, and

The voice ceased.

bold,
While the great gates of heaven roll’d back one by
one,
The bright herald angel stood stern in the sun
Thrice holy Eospheros! Light’s reign began
In the heaven, on the earth, in the heart of the man.
The dawn on the mountains! the dawn everywhere!
Light! silence! the fresh innovations of air!
Oh earth, and oh ether! A butterfly breeze
Floated up, flutter’d down, and poised blithe on the
.

Tees,

cee tee the reveling woods, o’er the sharp-rippled
stream,

Up the vale slow uncoiling itself out of dream

Around the brown meadows, adown the hill-slope,
‘The spirits of morning were whispering, ‘‘ Hope'/””

 

Xv.

He uplifted his eyes. In the place where he stood
But a moment before, and where now roll’d the flood
Of the sunrise all golden, he seem’d to behold.

In the young light of sunrise, an image unfol

Of his own youth,—its ardors—its promise of fame—
Its ancestral ambition; and France by thename _
Of his sires seem’d to call him. There, hover’d in

ht,
Phat mange aloft, o’er the shapeless and bright
And a cape clouds, which themselves seem’d to

Brilliant fragments of that golden world, wherein he
Had once dwelt, a native!
There, rooted and bound

To the earth, stood the man, gazing at it! Around
The rims of the sunrise it hover’d and shone
Transcendent, that type of a youth that was gone;
And he—as the body may be for the soul
So he yearn’d to embody that image. His whole
Heart arose to regain it.

“ And is it too late?”
No! For time is a fiction, and limits not fate.
Thought alone is eternal. Time thralls it in vain.
For the thought that springs upward and yearns to

regain

The pure source of spirit, there is no Too LATE.
As the stream to its first mountain levels, elate
In the fountain arises, the spirit in him
Arose to that image. The image waned dim’
Into heaven; and heavenward with it, to melt
As it melted, in day’s broad expansion, he felt
With a thrill, sweet and strange, and *intense—awed,

a au
Something soar and ascend in his soul, as he gazed.

 

CANTO SIXTH.
I

Man is born on a battle-field. Round him, to rend

Or resist, the dread Powers he displaces attend,

By the cradle which Nature, amidst the stern shocks

That have shatter’d creation, and shapen it, rocks.

He leaps with a wail into being; and lo!

His own mother, fierce Nature herself, is his foe.

Her whirlwinds are roused into wrath o’er his head:

*Neath his oo roll her earthquakes: her solitudes

sprea

To daunt him: her forces dispute his command:

Her ae fall to freeze him: her suns burn to
rand:

Her seas St to ingulf him: her rocks rise to
rush:

c :
And the lion and leopard, allied, lurk to rush
On their startled invader,
In lone Malabar,

Where the infinite forest spreads breathless and far,
’Mid the cruel of eye and the stealthy of claw
(Striped and spotted destroyers!) he sees, pale with

awe,

On the menacing edge of a fiery s

Grim Doorga, De edge Oh and porate. go by,

And the first thing he worships is Terror, an
on,

Still impell’d by necessity hungrily on,

He conquers the realms of his own self-reliance,

And the last cry of fear wakes the first of defiance.

From the serpent he crushes its poisonous soul:

Smitten down in his path see the dead lion roll!
On toward Heaven the son of Alemena strides high

on
The heads of the Hydra, the spoils of the lion:
And man, Sia aaa Terror, is worship’d by man.
A camp has this world been since first it began!
From his tents pr the pe Arabian; at
A mere wandering shepherd that follows the eece;
But, warring his way through a world’s destinies,
Lo, from Delhi, from Bagdadt, from Cordova, rise
Domes of empiry, dower’d with science and art,
Schools, libraries, forums, the palace, the mart!
New more to man’s soul have been conquer’d. But
ose,

Forthwith they are peopled for man by new foes!
The stars keep their secrets, the earth hides her own,
And bold must the man be that braves the Unknown!
Not a truth has to art or to science been given,
But are have ached for it, and souls toil’d and

striven; «
And many have striven, and m0ey. have fail'd,
And many died, slain by the truth they assail’d.
But when Man has tamed Nature, asserted his place
And dominion, behold! he is brought face to face
With a new foe—himself! ;

Nor may man on his shield

Ever rest, for his foe is forever afield.
Danger ever at hand, till the armed Archangel
Sound o’er him the trump of earth’s final evangel.

Il.
Silence straightway, stern Muse, the soft cymbals of

’

eure

Be all bronzen’ these numbers, and martial the
measure! ;

Breathe, sonorously breathe, o’er the spirit in me

One strain, sad and stern, of that deep Epopee

Which thou, from the fashionless cloud of far time,

Chantest lonely, when Victory, pale, and sublime

In the light of the aureole over her head,

Hears, and heeds not the wound in her heart fresh

and F
Blown wide by the blare of the clarion, unfold
The shrill clanging curtains of war!

And behold
A vision!
The ae Heraclean seats;
And the long Black Sea billow that once bore those

fleets,
Which said to the winds, ‘“‘ Be ye, too, Genoese!”

 

And the red angry sands of thé chafed Chersonese; |

And the two foes of man, War and Winter allied
Round the Armies of England and France, side*by

side
Enduring and dying (Gaul and Briton abreast!)
Where the towers,of the North fret the skies of the

Im.
Since that sunrise, which rose through the calm lin-
den stems
O’er Lucile and Eugene, in the garden at Ems,
oe twenty-five seasons encircling the sun,
This planet of ours on his pathway hath gone,
And - fates that I sing of have flow’d with the

‘ates
Of a world, in the red wake of war, round the gates
Of that doom’d and heroical city, in which
(Fire crowning therampart, blood bathing the ditch!)
At bay, fights the Russian as some hunted bear,
Whom the huntsmen have hemm’d round at last in
his lair. =

A fang’d arid pain, sapp’d with underground fire,
Soak’d with snow, torn with shot, mash’d to one

gory mire!
There Fate’s iron scale hangs in horrid suspense,
While those two famish’d ogres—the Siege, the De-

fense,

Face to face, through a vapor frore, di and di

Glare, scenting the breath of each ae -
The one

Double-bodied, two headed—by separate ways

Winding, serpent-wise, nearer; the other, each day’s

Sullen toil ing size to—concentrated, solid,

ees eal e brass-fronted, embodied,

The audible autos gone somberly forth -

To the world from that Autocrat Will of the north!

we

In the dawn of a moody October, a pale
Ghostly motionless vapor began to prevail
Over city and camp: like the garment of death
Which (is formed by) the face it conceals.

= *Twas the breath
War, yet drowsily yawning, began to suspire;
Where through, here and there, flash’d an eye of red

fire,
And closed, from some rampart beginning to bellow
2 challenge; replied to anon, through the yel-

low
And sulphurous twilight: till day reel’d and rock’d,
And roar’d into dark. Then the midnight was

With fic ean iti Ring’d db
i erce aj pat ons. roun' a rain
Of red fire ma of e y,

iron, the murtherous plain
Flared with fitful combustion; where fitfully fell
Afar off the fatal, disgorged scha: :

And fired the horizon, and singed the coil’d gloom
With wings of swift flame round that city of Doom.

vw
So the day—so the night! So b: ‘ht, so by day,
With tern ient Geis: while tise wears awan?
In the Lt si flooded through, in the wind where it

Wi y- -
In the snow where it falls, in the fire where it hails
Shot and shell—link by link, out of hardship and

ain,
Toil, nea endurance, is forged the bronze chain
Of those terrible siege-lines!

No change to that toil

Save the mine’s sudden leap from the treacherous
SO} ;
Save the midnight attack, save the groans of the

And Death’s daily obolus due, whether claim’d
By man or by nature.
? VI.

Se See The dumb,
Bitter, snow-bound, and sullen November is come.
And = snows have been bathed in the blood of the
rave:
And many a young heart has glutted the grave;
And on Inkerman yet the wild bramble igor e
And those bleak hights henceforth shall be ‘famous
in story.

The moon, swathed in storm, has long set: through
the cam

No sound save the sentinel’s slow sullen tramp,
The distant explosion, the wild sleety wind,
That seems searching for something it neyer can

ind,
The midnight is turning: the lamp is nigh spent:
And, wounded and lone, in a desolate tent
Lies a young British soldier whose sword . . .
In this place,

However, my Muse is compell’d to retrace
Her precipitous steps and revert to the ti.
The shock which had suddenly shatter’d at last
Alfred Vargrave’s fantastical holiday nature,
Had sharply drawn forth to his full size and stature
The real man, conceal’d till that moment beneath
All ne Teh owe appear’d. From the gay broider’d

eal

Which a man in his wrath flings aside, even so
ecg keen trenchant steel summon’d forth by a

low.
And thus loss of fortune gave value to life.
The wife gain’d a husband, the husband a wife,

In that home which, though humbled and narrow’d —

by fate.
Was enlanged and ennobled by love. Low their state,
But large their possessions.
Sir Ridley, forgiven

By those he unwittingly brought nearer heaven
By one fraudulent ae eee through all his sleek

speech
The hypocrite brought his own soul, safe from reach
26

THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

 

 

Of the law, died abroad.
Cousin John, heart and hand,
Purse and pore, henceforth (honest man!) took his
stand
By Matilda and Alfred; guest, guardian, and friend
Of the home he both shared ani assured, to the end,
With his large lively love. Alfred Vargrave mean-

while

Faced the world’s frown, consoled by his wife’s faith-
ful smile.

Late in life he began life in earnest; and still,

With the tranquil.exertion of resolute will,

pts long, and laborious, and difficult days,

Out of manifold failure, by wearisome ways,

Work’d his tay through the world; till at last he

hoe
(Reconciled to the work which mankind claims from

man),
After years of unwitness’d, unwearied endeavor,
Years impassion’d yet patient, to realize ever
More clear on the broad stream of current opinion
The reflex of powers in himself—that dominion
Which the life of one man, if his life be a truth,
May assert o’er the life of mankind. Thus, his youth
In his manhood renew’d, fame and fortune he won
Working only for home, love, and duty. 6

ne son

Matilda had borne.him; but searce had the boy,
With all Eton yet fresh in his full heart’s young joy,
The darling walcaae soldier comrades, dea. glance:
Down the ¢) dawn of manhood at life, when it

chanced
That $ plisht sharp and sudden was breath’d o’er the
loom.

Of his joyous and generous years, and the gloom

Of a grief premature on their fair promise fell:

No light cloud like those which, for June to dispel,
Captious April engenders; but deep as his own
Deep nature. Meanwhile, ere I fully make known
The cause of this sorrow, i track the event.

When first a wild war-note through England was

sent.
He, transferring without either token or word,
To friend, parent, or comrade, a yet virgin sword,
From a holiday troop, to one bound for the war,
Had march’d forth, with eyes that saw death in the
star
Whence others sought glory. Thus, fighting, he fell
On the red field of Inkerman; found, who can tell
By what miracle, breathing, though shatter’d, and

borne
To the rear by his comrades, pierced, bleeding, and

torn.
Where for long days and nights, with the wound in

his side,
He lay, dark,

Ix.
But a wound deeper far, undescried,

Inthe young heart was rankling; for there, of a truth,
In the first earnest faith of a pure pensive youth,
A love large as life, deep and changeless as death,
Lay ensheathed: and that love, ever fretting its

sheath, fi

The frail scabbard of life pierced and wore through
and shronet,

There are loves in man’s life for which time can re-

new
All oes pee may destroy. Lives there are, though,
ove,

Which cling to one faith, and die with it; nor move,

Though earthquakes may shatter the shrine.
Whence or how

Love laid claim to this young life, it matters not now.

x.
Oh, is it a phantom? a dream of the night?
A vision which fever had fashion’d to sight?
The wind wailing ever, with motion uncertain,
Sways sighingly there the drench’d tent’s tatter’d

curtain,
To and fro, up and down.
But it is not the wind
That is lifting it now: and it is not the mind
That hath molded that vision,
A pale woman enters,
As wan as the lamp’s waning light, which concenters
Its dull glare upon her. With eyes dim and dimmer
There, all in a slumberous and shadowy glimmer,
The sufferer sees that still form floating on,
And feels faintly aware that he is not alone.
She is flitting before him. She pauses. She stands
By his bedside, all silent. She lays her white hands
On the brow of the boy. A light finger is pressing
Softly, — the sore wounds: the hot blood-stain’d
dressin:

gs
Slips from them, A comforting quietude steals
ees the rack’d, weary frame: and throughout
it, he feels
The slow sense of a merciful, mild neighborhood.
Something smooths the toss’d pillow. Beneath a

gray hood q
of rough serge, two intense tender eyes are bent
over hi

m,
And thrill through and through him, The sweet
form before him,
Tt is surely Death’s angel Life’s last vigil keeping!
A soft voice says... “Sleep!”
And he sleeps: he is sleeping.

xI

He waked before dawn. Still the vision is there:
Still that pale woman moves not. A minist’ring

care
Meanwhile has been silently changing and cheering
The aspect of all things around him.

Revering
Some power unknown and benignant. He bless’d
In silence the sense of salvation. And rest
Bane loosen’d the mind’s tangled meshes, he
‘aintly ;

 

Sigh’d... “‘ Say what thou art, blessed dream of a

saintly
And minist’ring spirit |’’

A whisper serene

Slid, softer than silence... ‘‘ The Sceur Seraphine,
A poor Sister of Charity, Shun to inquire
Aught further, young soldier. The son of thy sire,
For the sake of that sire, I reclaim from the grave.
Thou didst not shun death: shun not life, "Tis

more brave
To L.ve, than to die. Sleep!”’

He sleeps: he is sleeping.
xi.

He waken’d again, when the dawn was just steeping

The are with chill splendor. And there, never
itting,

Never flitting, that vision of mercy was sitting.

As the dawn to the darkness, so life seem’d return-

ing
Slowly, feebly within him. The night-lamp, yet

burning,
Made ghastly the glimmering daybreak. 4 c
e said,
‘“Tf thou be of the living, and not of the dead,
Sweet minister, pour out yet further the healing
Of that balmy voice; if it may be, revealing
Thy mission of merey! whence art thou?”
“Oh son
Of Matilda and Alfred, it matters not! One
Who is not of the living nor yet of the dead:
To thee, and to others, alive yet”... shesaid... -
“So long as there liveth the poor gift in me
Of this ministration; to them, and to thee,
Dead in ab things beside, A French Nun, whose vo-
cation
Is now by this bedside. A nun hath no nation.
Wherever man suffers, or woman may soothe,
There her land! there her kindred!”
She bent down to smooth
The bat pions and added... ‘‘ Yet more than an-
other

Is thy life dear to me. For thy father, thy mother,
I knew them—I know them.”
“Oh, can it be? you!

My dearest dear father! my mother! you knew,
You know them?”
She bow’d, half averting, her head
In silence,
He brokenly, timidly said,

‘Do they know I am thus?”

‘“*Hush!’?... shesmiled, as she drew
From her bosom two letters: and—can it be true?
That beloved and familiar writing!

He burst
Into tears... ‘‘My poor mother—my father! the

worst
Will have reach’d them!”
“No, no!” she exclaim’d, with a smile,
“They know you are living; they know that mean-

while
I am ee beside you. Young soldier, weep
not!”

But still on the nun’s nursing bosom, the hot
Fever’d brow of the boy weeping wildly is press’d.
There, at last, the young heart sobs itself into rest:
And he hears, as it were, between smiling and weep-

ing,
The calm voice say... “Sleep!”
And he sleeps, he is sleeping.
xml.

And day follow’d day. And, as wave follows wave,
With the tide, day by day, life, reissuing, drave
hates young hardy frame novei currents of

Yet some strange obstruction, which life’s self by

stealt!
Seem’d to cherish, impeded life’s progress. And still
A feebleness, less of the frame than the will.
Clung about the sick man; hid and harbor'd within
The sad hollow eyes: pinch’d the cheek pale and

thin:
And clothed the wan fingers with languor.
And there,
Day by day, night by night, unremitting in care,
Unwearied in watching, so cheerful of mien,
And so gentle of hand, sat the Scour Seraphine!
XIV.

A stran e woman truly! not young, yet her face,
Wan and worn as it was, bore about it the trace
Of a beauty which time could not ruin, For the

whole
Quiet cheek, youth’s lost bloom left transparent, the

sou
Seem’d to fill with its own light, like some sunny
fountain
Tivertnatieary fed from far off in the mountain
That pours, in a garden deserted, its streams,
And all the more lovely for loneliness seems.
So that, watching that face, you would scarce pause

to guess

The years which its calm careworn lines might ex-
press.

Feeling only what suffering with these must have

past
To have perfected there so much sweetness at last.

XV.

Thus, one bronzen evening, when day had put out
His brief thrifty fires, and the wind was about,
The nun, watchful still by the boy, on his own
Laid a firm quiet hand, and the deep tender tone
Of her voice moved the silence.
i . “T have heal’d

: She said. .
These on of the body. Why hast thou con-
ceal’d,
Young soldier, that yet open wound in the heart?

Wilt thou trust no hand near it?”
He winced, with a start,

 

As of one that is suddenly touched on the t
From which every nerve derives aamreriig
“What?

Lies my heart, then, so bare?” he moan’d bitterly.

‘With compassionate accents she hastened to say, F

“Do you think that these eyes are with sorrow,
young man,

So all unfamiliar, indeed, as to scan

Her features, yet know them not?

; ? “Oh, was it spoken

Go ye forth, heal the sick, lift the low, bind the broken |

Of the body alone? Is our mission, then, done,

‘When we leave the bruised hearts, if we bind the
bruised bone?

Nay, is not the mission of mercy twofold?

Whence eer perchance, are the powers, that we

hold -
To fulfill it, of Heaven! For Heaven doth still
To us, Sisters, it may be, who seek it, send skill
‘Won from long intercourse with affliction, and art
Help’d of Heaven, to bind up the broken of heart.

Trust to me!” (His two feeble hands in her own
She drew gently). “Trust to me!” (she said, with
soft tone);

“Tam not so dead in remembrance to all
T have died to in this world, but what I recall
Enough of its sorrow, enough of its trial,
To grieve for both—save from both haply! The dial
Receives many shades, and each points to the sun.
The shadows are many, the sunlight is one.
Life’s sorrows still fluctuate: ’slove does not.
And His love is unchanged, when it changes our lot.
Looking up to this eae which is common to all,
And down to these shadows, on each side, that fall
In time’s silent circle, so various for each,
Is it nothing to know that they never can reach
So far but what light lies beyond them forever?
Trust tome! Oh if in this hour I endeavor
To trace the shade creeping across the young life
Which, in prayer till this hour, I have watch’d
throug its strife
With the shadow of death, ’t is with this faith alone,
That, in tracing the shade, I shall find out the sun.
Trust to me!”
She paused: he was weeping, Small need
Of added appeal, or entreaty, indeed,
Had those gentle accents to win from his pale
And parch’d, trembling So as it rose, the brief tale
Of a life’s early sorrow. ‘The story is old,
And in a an few as may be shall straightway be
XVI.
A few years ago, ere the fair form of Peace
Was driven from Europe, a young girl—the niece
Of a French noble, Jeaving an old Norman pile
oie the wild northern seas, came to dwell for a while
ith a lady allied to her race—an old dame
Of a threefold legitimate virtue, and name,
In the Faubourg Saint Germain.
Upon that fair child,
From childhood, nor father nor mother had smiled,
One uncle their place in her life had supplied,
And their place in her heart: she had grown at his

side
And under his roof-tree, and in his regard,
From childhood to girlhood.
This fair orphan ward

=o ae sole human creature that lived in the

ea

Of that stern rigid man, or whose smile could impart
One ray of response to the eyes which, above

Her fair infant forehead, look’d down with a love
That seem’d almost stern, so intense was its chill
Lofty stillness, like sunlight on some lonely hill
Which is colder and stiller than sunlight elsewhere,

Grass grew in the court-yard; the chambers were bare

In that ancient mansion; when first the stern tread

Of its owner awaken’d their echoes long dead:

Bringing with him this infant (the child of a brother),

Whom, dying, the hands of a desolate mother

Had placed on his bosom. "I was said—right or
wrong—

That, in eae lone mansion, left tenantless long,

To which, as a stranger, its lord now return’d,

In years yet recall’d, through loud midnights had

burn’d
The light of wild orgies. Be that false or true,
Slow s a was the footstep which now wander’d
rou, :

Those desolate chambers; and calm and severe)
Was the life of their inmate, *

Men now saw appear
Every morn at the mass that firm sorrowful face,
Which seem’d to lock up in a cold iron case
Tears harden’d to crystal. Yet harsh if he were,
His severity seem’d to be trebly severe
In the rule of his own rigid life, which, at least,
Was benignant to others. The poor parish priest,
Who lived on his largess, his piety praised,
The peasant was fed, and the chapel was raised,
And the cottage was built, by his liberal hand,
Yet he seem’d in the midst of his good deeds to stand
A lone, and unloved, and unlovable man,
There appear’d some inscrutable flaw in the plan
Of his life, that love fail’d to pass over,

That child

Alone did not fear him, nor shrink from him; smiled
To his frown, and dispell’d it. .

The sweet sportive elf
Seem’d the type of some joy lost, and miss’d in him-

self.

Ever welcome he suffer’d her glad face to glide

In on hours when to others his door was denied:

And many a time with a mute moody look

He ene ce her at prattle and play, like a
broo!

Whose babble disturbs not the quietest spot,

But soothes us because we need answer it not,

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

LUCILE.

=

 

But few years had pass’d o’er that childhood before
A change came among them. A letter, which bore
Sudden consequence with it, one morning was placed
In the hands of the lord of the chateau. He paced
To and fro in his chamber a whole night alone

After reading that letter. At dawn he was gone.
Weeks pass’d. When he came back again he re-

turn’d

With a tall ancient dame, from whose lips the child
earn’d :

That they were of the same race and name. With a
f

‘ace
Sad and anxious, to this wither’d stock of the race
He confided the orphan, and left them alone
In the old lonely house.

In a few days ’t was known
To the an, surprise of half Paris, that one
Of the chiefs of that party which, still clinging on
To the banner that bears the white lilies of France,
Will fight ‘neath no other, nor yet for the chance
of Seen? their own, had fenounced the watch-

word
And the creed of his roa in unsheathing his sword
For a Fatherland father’d no more (such is fate!)
By legitimate parents.
And meanwhile, elate

And in no wise disturbed by what Paris might say,
The new soldier thus wrote to a friend far away :—
“To the life of inaction farewell! After all,
Creeds the oldest may crumble, and dynasties fall,
But the sole grand Legitimacy will endure,
In whatever makes death noble, life strong and pure.
Freedom! action! ... the desert to breathe in—the

of eng aes to follow! Igo! Vivela France!”

Few and rare were the meetings henceforth, as years
"Twixt “the child and th» soldier. The two women
Lone lives in the lone house. Meanwhile the child

ew
Into ginthood: and, like a sunbeam, sliding through
Her green ee years, changed by gentle degrees
To the loveliest vision of youth a youth sees
In his loveliest fancies: as oe as a pearl,
And as perfect; a noble and innocent girl, z
With eighteen sweet summers dissolved in the light
Of her lovely and lovable eyes, soft and bright! |
Then her guardian wrote to the dame,... “ Let
Constance

Go with you to Paris. I trust that in France
I may be ere the close of the year. I confide
My life’s treasure to you, Let her see, at your side,
The world which we live in.”

To Paris then came

Constance to abide with that old stately dame
In that old stately Faubourg.

The young Englishman
°T was there their acquaintance be-

Thus met her,

‘an,

There® it closed, That old miracle—Love-at-first-
sight—

Needs no explanations. The heart reads aright

Its destiny sometimes. His love neither chidden

Nor check’d, the young soldier was graciously bid-

den
An habitual guest to that house by the dame.
His own candid , the world-honor’d name
Of his father me im not dishonor’d) were both
Fair titles to favor. His love, nothing loath,
The old lady observed, was return’d by Constance.
And as the child’s uncle his absence from France

Yet eee a she (thus easing long self-gratula-
ion)

Wrote to him a lengthen’d and moving narration

Of the es and gifts of the young English wooer;
His father’s fair fame; the boy’s deference to her;
His love for Constance, unaffected, sincere;

And the girl's love for him, read by her in those

clear

Limpid eyes then the pleasure with which she
awa

Her cousin’s approval of all she had stated.

At length from that cousin an answer there came,
Brief, stern; such as stunn’d and astonish’d the
e.

“ Let Constance leave Paris with you on the day
You receive this. Until my return she may stay
At her convent awhile. my niece wishes ever
To behold me again, understand, she will never
Wed that man. :

“You have broken faith with me. Farewell!’’
No appeal from that sentence.

It needs not to tell

The tears of Constance, nor the grief of her lover:
The dream they had laid out their lives in was over.

Bravely strove the young soldier to look in the face

Of a life, where invisible hands seem’d to trace
O’er the threshold, these words... “Hope no
more!’

Unreturn’d
Had his love been, the strong manful heart would
have spurn’d

That weakness which suffers a woman to lie
At the roots of man’s life, like a canker, and dry
And wither the sap of life’s purpose. But there
Lay the bitter part of the pain! Could he dare
To forget he was loved? that he grieved not alone?
Reco’ a love that drew sorrow upon
The woman he loved, for himself dare he seek
Surcease to that sorrow, which thus held him weak,
Beat down, and destroyed him?

ews reach’d him indeed,

 

Pig O0e comrade, who brought him a letter to
re

From the dame who had care of Constance (it was

one
To whom, when at Paris, the boy had been known,
A Frenchman, and friend of the Faubourg,) which

said
That Constance, although never a murmur betray’d
What she suffer’d, in silence grew paler each day, _
And seem’d visibly drooping and dying away.
It was then he sought death.

XVI.

Thus the tale ends. "Twas told
With such broken, passionate words, as unfold
In glimpses alone, a coil’d grief. Through each

pause
Of its fitful recital, in raw gusty flaws,
The rain shook the canvas, unheeded; aloof,
And unheeded, the night-wind around the tent-roof
‘At intervals wirbled. And when all was said,
The sick man, exhausted, droop’d backward his head,
And fell into a feverish slumber.

Long while

Sat the ee Seraphine, in deep thought. The still
smile

That was wont, angel-wise, to inhabit her face
And make it like heaven, was fled from its place,
In her eyes, on her lips; and a deep sadness there
Seem’d to darken the lines of long sorrow and care,
As low to herself she sigh’d . . .

“Hath it, Eugene,
Been so jones, then, the struggle? . . . and yet, all in

vain!

Nay, not allin vain! Shall the world gath a man,
And yet heaven lose a soul? Have I done all I can?
Soul to soul, did he say? Soul to soul, be it so!

And then—soul of mine, whither? whither?”

XVI.
Large, slow,
Silent tears in those deep eyes ascended, and fell.
“ Here, at least, I have fail’d not”... she mused
«+» ‘this is-well!”’
She drew from her bosom two letters.
In one

A mother’s heart, wild with alarm for her son,
Breathed bitterly forth its despairing appeal.

“The pledge of a love owed to thee, oh Lucile!

The hope of a home saved by thee—of a heart
Which hath never since then (thrice endear’d as thou

art!)
Ceased to bless thee, to pray for thee, savel...
save my son!
And if not”... the letter went brokenly on,
“ Heaven help us!”’
Then follow’d, from Alfred, a few
Blotted heart-broken pages. He mournfully wy
With pathos, the picture of that earnest youth,
So unlike his own: how in beauty and truth
He had nurtured that nature, so simple and brave!
And how he had striven his son’s youth to save
From the errors so sadly redeem’d in his own,
And so deeply repented: how thus, in that son,
In whose i e had garner’d his age, he
seem’
To eo ae by a pledge that the past was re-
eem’d,
And forgiven. He bitterly went on to speak
Of 8 ae baffled love; in which fate seem’d to
rei
Unawares on his dreams with retributive
And the ghosts of the past rose to scourge back again
The hopes of the future. To sue for consent
Pride forbade: and the hope his old foe might relent
Experience rejected . . . “‘ My life for the boy’s!”’
He exclaim’d); ‘for I die with my son, if he dies!
ucile! Heaven bless you for all you have done!
Save him, save him, Lucile! save my son, save my

son!”
xIx.
“ Ay!” murmur’d the Sosur Seraphine . . . “heart

to heart!
There, at least, I have fail’d not! Fulfill’d is my
par
are my mission? One act crowns the
ole. :

whole.
Dollinger? Nay, be it so, then! . . . Soul to soul!”
She knelt down, and pray’d, Still the boy slumber’d

on,
Dawn broke, The pale nun from the bedside had

gone,
xX,

Meanwhile, ’mid his aides-de-camp, busily bent
O’er the daily reports, in his well-order’d tent
There sits a French General—bronzed by the sun
And sear’d by the sands of Algeria, One,

Who forth from the wars of the wild Kabylee
Had strangely and rapidly risen to be

The idol, the darling, the dream, and the star

Of the younger French chivalry: daring in war,
And wary in council. He enter’d, indeed,

Late in life (and discarding his Bourbonite creed)
The Army of France: and-had risen, in part,
From a singular ce proved for the art

Of that wild desert warfare of ambush, surprise,
And stratagem, which to the French camp supplies
Its subtlest intelligence; partly from chance;
Partly, too, from a name and position which France
Was proud to put forward; but mainly, in fact,
From the prudence to plan, and the daring to act,
In frequent emergencies startlingly shown,

To the rank which he now held,—intrepidly won
With many a wound, trench’d in many a scar,
From fierce Milianah and Sidi-Sakhdar.

XXi.
All au, and without, that warm tent seems to
ear
Smiling token of provident order and care.

All about, a well-fed, well-clad soldiery stands
In groups round the music of mirth-breathing bands.

 

In and out of the tent, all day long, to and fro,
The messengers come, and the messengers go,
Upon missions of mercy, or errands of toil:
To report how the sapper contends with the soil
In the terrible trench, how the sick man is faring
In the hospital tent: and, combining, comparing,
Constructing, within Moves the brain of one man,
Moving all.
He is bending his brow o’er some plan

For the hospital service, wise, skillful, humane.
The officer standing beside him is fain
To refer to the angel solicitous cares
Of the Sisters of rity: one he declares
To be known through the camp as a seraph of grace:
He has seen, all have seen her indeed, in éach place
Where suffering is seen, silent, active—the Soeur...
Soeur .. . how do they all her?

“* Ah, truly, of her

I have heard much,’’ the General, ee replies;
“ And we owe her already (unless rumor lies)

The lives of not few of our bravest. You mean...
Ay, how do they call her? . . . the Scour. . . Sera-

phine
ds it not so?), I rarely forget names once heard.”

“Yes; the Scour Seraphine. Her I meant.”

y “On my word,
I have much wish’d to see her. I fancy I trace,
In some facts traced to her, something more than

the grace
Of an angel: I mean an acute human mind,
Ingenious, constructive, intelligent. Find,
And, if possible, let her come tome, We shall,
I think, aid each other.”
“ Qui, mon General;

I believe she has lately obtain’d the permission
To tend some sick man in the Second Division
Of our Ally: they say a relation.”
; : “AY, So?
A relation?”
“°T is said so.”
“The name do you know?”
“Non, mon General.”
While they spoke yet, there went
A murmur and stir round the door of the tent.
“A Sister of Charity craves, in a case
Of urgent and serious importance, the EES
Of brief private speech with the General there, |
Will the General speak with her?”
“Bid her declare
Her mission.”

“She will not. She craves to be seen
And be heard.”
“Well, her name then?”
“The Sceur Seraphine,”
“ Clear the tent. She may enter.”

XXII.

The tent has been clear’a,
The chieftain stroked moodily somewhat his beard,
A sable long silver’d: and press’d down his brow

On his hand, heavy vein’ All his countenance,

now
Unwitness’d, at once fell dejected, and dreary,
As a curtain let fall by a hand that’s grown weary,
Into puckers and folds. From his lips, unrepress’d,
Steals th’ impatient quick sigh, which reveals in

man’s breast .
A conflict conceal’d, an experience at strife
With itself—the vex’d heart’s pasting pioces on life,
He turn’d to his papers. He heard the light tread
Of a faint foot behind him: and, lifting his head,
Said, “Sit, Holy Sister! your worth is well known
To the hearts of our soldiers; nor less to my own.
I hevgseuch wish’d to see you. I owe you some

anks:
In the name of all those you have saved to our ranks
Irecord them. Sit! Now, then, your mission?”
The nun
oer a ned General a a eer Bciats
ore keenly. is aspect grew trou

Darken’d over his features. He muttered...

“Strange! strange!
Any face should so strongly remind me of her/
Fool! again the delirium, the dream! does it stir?
Does it move as of old? Psha!

“Sit, Sister id wait

it

Your answer, my time halts but hurriedly. tate
The cause why you seek me?’

: + ee be ad ay, the cause!”
She vaguely repeated. en, ra pause—
As one who, awaked unawares, would put back
The sleep that forever returns in the track
Of dreams which, though scared and dispersed, not

the less -
Settle back to faint eyelids that yield neath their
stres:
Like copenie a penthouse—a movement she made,
Less eee him than away from herself: droop’d
er
And folded her hands on her bosom: long, spare,
Fatigued, mournful hands! Not a stream of stray

hair

Escaped the pale bands; scarce more pale than the
‘ace

Which they bound and lock’d up in a rigid white

case.
She fix’d her eyes on him. There crept a vague awe
O’er his sense, such as ghosts cast.

i a aene ee Luvois,
The cause which recalls me again to your side.
Ts a promise that rests unfulfill’d,” she replied.

“TI come to fulfill it.”
He sprung from the place
Where he sat, press’d his hand, as in doubt, o’er his

ace
And cautiously feeling each step o’er the ground
That he trod on (as one who w: fearing the sound
Of his footstep may startle and scare out of sight
28

   

THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRARY.

 

 

Some sieange sleeping creature on which he would
‘lig

Unawares), crept toward her; one heavy hand laid
On her shoulder in silence; bent o’er her his head
Search’d her face with a long look of troubled

Speen
Against doubt; stagger’d backward, and murmur’d
tat LLY

Thus we meet then? ... here]... thus?”
“Soul to soul, ay, Eugene,
As I pledged you my word that we should meet

again,
Dead, ...’? she murmur’d, “long dead! all that
lived in our lives—
Thine and mine—saving that which ev’n life’s self

survives,
The soul! °*Tis my soul seeks thine own, What may

reac’
From my life to thy life (so wide each from each!)
Save the ecu to the soul? To thy soul I would
speak.

May I aD s0?””

He said (work’d and white was his cheek
As he raised it), ‘Speak to me!”

Deep, tender, serene,

And sad was the gaze which the Sceur Seraphine
Held on him, She spoke.

XX,

: As some minstrel may fling,

Preluding the music yet mute in each string,
A swift hand athwart the hush’d heart of the whole,
king which note most fitly may first move the

soul;
And, leaving untroubled the deep chords below,
Move pathetic in numbers remote—even so
The voice which was moving the heart of that man
Far away from its yet voiceless purpose began,
Far away in the pathos remote of the past;
Until, through her words, rose before him, at last,
Bright and dark in their beauty, the hopes that were

gone
Unaccomplish’d from life.
He was mute.

XXIV.
; She went on.
And still further down the dim past did she lead
Each elaine. remembrance, far, far off, to feed
*Mid the pastures of youth, in the twilight. of hope,
And the valleys of poRBANd, the fresh-flower’d slope

Of life’s dawning lan: F
°*T is the heart of a boy,

With its indistinct, passionate prescience of joy!
The unproved desire—the unaim’d aspiration—
The deep conscious life that forestalls consumma-

tion;
With ever a flitting delight—one arm’s length
In advance of the august inward impulse.
The strength
Of the spirit which troubles the seed in the sand
With the birth of the Petenee Let ages expand
The glorious creature! The ages lie shut
Safe, see!) in the seed, at time’s al to put
‘orth foo beauty and power, leaf by leaf, layer on
yer,
Till palm strikes the sun, and stands broad in
ue air.
So the palm in the palm-seed! so, slowly—so, wrought
Year 5 year unperceived, hope on hope, thought by

Si

0
Trace the growth of the man from its germ in the boy,
Ah, but Nature, that nurtures, may also ae

Charm the wind and the sun, lest some chance inter-

vene!
While the leaf’s in the bud, while the stem’s in the
gree!
A ae bird — the branch, a light breeze breaks
ie bou,
Which, if Gpabet by the light breeze, the light bird,
Ww

may gro
To baffle the tempest, and rock the high nest,
And take both the bird and the breeze to its breast.
Shall we save a whole forest in ee one seed?
Save the man in the boy? in the thought save the

deed?
Let the whirlwind uproot the grown tree, if it can!
Save the seed from the north-wind, So let the

grown man
Face out fate. Spare the man-seed in youth.
e was dumb.
She went one step further.
XXV. e
Lo! manhood is come,

And love, the wild song-bird, hath flown to the tree.
And the whirlwind comes after. Now prove we, and

see:
What os one the leaf? what support from the |

brane!

Spreads the leaf broad and fair? holds the bough
strong and staunch?

There, he saw himself—dark, as he stood on that

night,
The ianeehien they met and they parted: a sight
For heaven to mourn o’er, for hell to rejoice!
An ineffable tenderness troubled her voice;
It grew weak, and a sigh broke it Seni
en he said

(Never looking at her, never lifting his head.

‘As though, at his feet, there lay visibly hurl’d
Those ere ne “Tt was nota love, ’t was a world,
*T was a life that lay ruin’d, Lucile!”

XXVI.
She went on.
**So be it! Perish Babel, arise Babylon!
From ruins like these rise the fanes that shall last.
And to build up the future heaven shatters the past.”
“Ay,” he aavodlily: murmur’d, ‘‘ and who cares to scan

d

 

The heart’s perish’d world, if the world gains aman?
From the past to the present, though late, I appeal;
To the nun Seraphine, from the woman Lucile!”

XXVII.

Lucile! , . . the old name—the old self! silence long:
Heard once more! felt once more!

As some soul to the throng
Of invisible spirits admitted, baptized
= death to a new name and nature—surprised
*Mid the songs of the seraphs, hears faintly, and far
Some voice from the earth, left below a dim star,
Calling to her forlornly ; and (sadd’ning the psalms
Of the angels, and piercing the Paradise palms!)
The man borne ’mid earthly beloveds on earth
Sigh’d above some lone grave in the land of her

birth;—
So that one word... Lucile!... stirr’d the Sceur
Seraphine,
For a moment. Anon she resumed her serene
And concentrated calm,
‘Let the Nun, then, retrace
The life of the soldier!’’... she said, with a face
That glow’d gladdening her words.
“To the present I come,
Leave the Past,”

There her voice rose, and seem’d as when some
Pale Priestess ode from her temple the praise
Of the hero whose brow she is crowning with bays.
Step by step did she follow his path from the place
Where their two paths diverged. Year by year did

she trace
(Familiar with all) his, the soldier’s existence.
Her words were of trial, endurance, resistance;
Of the leaguer around this besieged world of ours,
And the same sentinels that ascend the same towers,
And report the same foes, the same fears, the same

strife,
Waged alike to the limits of each human life.
She went on to speak of the lone moody lord,
Shut up in his lone moody halls: every word
Had the weight of a tear: she recorded the good
He gee ao wrought through a whole neigh-
orhood;
And the blessing that lived on the lips of the
By the peasant’s hearthstone, or the cottager’s door.
T ei : i paused: and her accents seem’d dipp’d in
e hue
Of his own somber heart, as the picture she drew
Of the poor, proud, sad spirit, tet love's A
Yet working love’s work; reading backward life’s

pages
For penance; and stubbornly, many a time.
Both missing the moral, and marring the rhyme.
Then she spoke of the soldier!... the man’s work
and fame, dl
The pride of a nation, a world’s just acclaim!
Life’s inward approval!

XXXVI.

Her voice reach’d his heart,
And sunk lower. She spoke of herself; how, apart,
And unseen—far away—she had watch’d, year by

ear,
With to many a blessing, how many a tear,
And how many a prayer, every seg in the strife,
ns 3 thought in the deed: traced the love in
the life:

Bless’d the man in the man’s work!

“Thy work... oh, not mine;
Thine, Tucile!” . . . he exclaim’d. . . ‘all the worth

of it thine
If worth there be in it!”
Her answer conveyed

His reward, and her own: joy that cannot be said

Alone by the voice. . . eyes—face—spoke silently:

All the woman, one grateful emotion! tae
nd she

A r Sister of Charity! hers a life spent
es a silent effort for others!.... ae
She bent

Her divine face above him, and fill’d up his heart
With the look that glow’d from it.

Then slow, with soft art,
Fix’d her aim, and moved to it.

XXIX,

He, the soldier humane,
He, the hero; whose heart hid in glory the pain
Of a. youth, disappointed; whose life had made
nown .
The value of man’s life! . . . that youth overthrown
And retrieved, had it left him no pity for youth
In another? his own life of strenuous trut!

| Accomplish’d in act, had it taught him no care

For the life of another? . . . Oh no! everywhere
In the camp which she moved through, she came
face to face
With some noble token, some generous trace
Of his active h Dil chore *
“Well,” he replied,
“Tf it be so?”

“T come from the solemn bedside
Of a man that is dying,” she said. ‘‘ While we

A life rai je0 par ‘dy .
Quick then! you seek

Aid or medicine, or what?’
3 “Tis not needed,” she said.
“* Medicine? age for the mind! "Tis a heart that
needs aid!
You, Eugene de Luvois, you (and you only) can
Save the life of this man, Will you save it?”
: “What man?
How?... where? ... can you ask?”
She went rapidly on
To her object in brief vivid words ... The young
son

 

Of Matilda and Alfred—the boy lying there
Half a mile from that tent door—the father’s de-

spair,

The mother’s deep anguish—the pride of the boy

In the father—the father’s one ene and one soy

In the son—the son now—wounded, dying! She told

Of re ee stern struggle with ‘life: the boy’s

Old,

Pure, and beautiful nature: the fair life before him

If that life were but spared... yet a word might
restore him!

The boy’s broken love for the niece of Eugene!

Its pathos: the girl’s love for him; how, half slain

In . Bd she found him: won from him the

ie;
Sout - nurse back his life; found her efforts still
ails

Beaten back by a love that was stronger than life;
Of how bravely till then he had stood in that strife
Wherein England and France in their best blood, at

ast.

Had bathed from remembrance the wounds of the
ast.

And shall nations be nobler than men? Are not

rea
Men oe models of nations? For what is a state
But the many’s confused imitation of one?
Shall he, the fair hero cf France, on the son
Of his ally seek vengeance, destroying perchance
An innocent life—here, when England and France
Have forgiven the sins of their fathers of yore,
And baptized a new hope in their sons’ recent gore?
She went on to tell how the boy had clung still
To life, for the sake of life’s uses, until
From his weak hands the strong effort dropp’d,
stricken down
By the news that the heart of Constance, like his

own,
Was breaking beneath...

But there, ‘‘ Hold!’ he exclaim’d,
Interrupting, ‘‘forbear!’’ , . . his whole face was in-

flam
With the heart’s swarthy thunder which yet, while

she spoke,
Had been gathering silent—at last the storm broke
In grief or in wrath. ....

“1 is to him, then,” he eried, . .

Checking suddenly short the tumultuous stride,
“That I owe these late greetings—for him you are

. here—
For his sake you seek me—for him, it is clear,
You have deign’d at the last to bethink you again
Of this long-forgotten existence!”
‘Wugene!”’
“ and

“Ha! fool that Iwas!”...hewenton,...

just now,
While you spoke yet, my heart was beginning to
grow

Almost boyish again, almost sure of one friend!

Yet this was the meaning of all—this the end!

Beit so! There’sa sort of slow justice (admit!)

a this--that the word that man’s finger hath writ

fire on my heart, I return him at last,

Let him learn that word—Never!”’

“ Ah, still to the past

Must the present be vassal?’ she said. ‘In the
our
We last parted I urged you to put forth the power

Which I felt to be yours, in the conquest of life.

Yours, the promise to strive: mine,—to watch
o’er the strife.

I foresaw you would conquer; you have conquer’d

much,
Much, indeed, that is noble! I hail it as such,

And am here to record and applaud it. I saw

Not the lessin your nature, Eugene de Luvois,

One peril—one point where I fear’d you would fail
To subdue that worst foe which a man can assail,—
Himself: and I promised that, if I should see

My champion once falter, or bend the brave knee,
That moment would bring me again to his side.
That moment is come! for that peril was pride,

And you falter. I plead for Ne and one other,
For that gentle child without father or mother,

To whom you are both. I plead, soldier of France,
For your own nobler nature—and plead for Con-

s

At the sound of that name he averted his head.

“Constance! .... Ay, she enter’d my lone life”
(he said)

“When its sun was long set; and hung over its night

Her own starry childhood. I have but that light,

In the midst of much darkness! Who names me

but she

With titles of love? and what rests there for me
In the silence of age save the voice of that child?
The child of my own better life, undefiled!
My creature, carved out of my heart of hearts ei ;

. ¢ ,
Said the Sceur Seraphine—“ are you able to lay .
Your hand as a knight on your heart as a man
And swear that, whatever may happen you can
Feel assured for the llfe you thus ¢ erish?”

“How so?”

He look’d up. ‘If the boy should die thus?”

What your look would imply ... this sleek
stranger forsooth!

Because on his cheek was the red rose of youth

The heart of my niece must break for it!’

She cried,
“Nay, but hear me yet further!”
With slow heavy stride,
Unheeding her words, he was pacing the tent,
He was muttering low to himself as he went.
‘* Ay, these young things lie safe in our heart just

Yes, I know 3

so mn

As their wings are in growing; and when these
are strong

They break it, and farewell! the bird flies!” ...

 

\)

 

 
 

 

 

—_——

x

 

Sakiseel

 

The nun
Laid her hand on the soldier, and murmur’d,
“The sun
Is descending, life fleets while we talk thus! Oh, yet
Let this day tag final eee set,
a mques'
And complete a life’s conq! at eaid, “ Understand!

If Constance wed the son of this man, by whose |
hand

an < ;
My heart hath been robb’d, she is lost to my life! |

Can her home be my home? Can I claim in the wife
Of that man’s son the child of my age? At her side
Shall he stand on my hearth? Shall I sue to the

bride
« « - ONO

ee De * Ah, and you immemorial halls

Of my Norman forefathers, whose shadow yet falls

On my sou and fuses hope, memory, past,

Present,—all, in one silence! old trees to the blast

Of the North Sea repeating the tale of old days,

Nevermore, nevermore in the wild bosky ways

Shall I hear through your umbrage ancestral the

wind
Prophesy as of yore, when it shook the dee mind
Of my boyhood, with whispers from out the far

ears ‘
of toe fame, the raptures life cools down with
tears

Henceforth shall a tread of a Vargrave alone
use your oes?”
oer ‘Oh, think not,’’ she said, ‘‘ of the son
Of the man whom unjustly you hate; only think
Of this ygune human creature, that cries from the
bi

ur mercy!
Cte crave oo Sails Recall your own words

my memory mournfully ever records!
eal nfm may be wreck’ a whole ite then,

Eugene
Look with me (still those words in our ears!) once
ain -
At this young soldier sinking from life here—dragg’d
down

By the weight of the love in his heart: no renown,

NO fame comforts him/ nations shout not above

The lone grave down to which he is bearing the love

Which life has rejected! Will you stand apart?

You, on such at ore ee deep a

e hero, whose

Aetough the’ deeds it hath wrought to the fame it
hath won.

By recalling the visions and dreams of a youth, :

Such as lies at your door now: who have but, in
trutl

To stretch forth a hand, to spea’

7 if one word,

that wo ou rescue a life

a E z He was stirr’d.

Still ne sought to put from him the cup; bow’d his
‘ace

On his hand; and anon, as though wishing to chase ~

With one ae gesture his own thoughts aside,
He sprung up, brush’d past her, and bitterly cried,
** No!|—Const wed a Vargrave!—I cannot con-

nee the Soeur Seraphine.
rose the Sceur Sera: .
or e The low tent,

In her = uprising, seem’d dwarfed by the

From which those imperial eyes pour’d the light
Of their deep silent kices Sen tans.
No wonder

He felt, as it were, his own stature shrink under
The compulsion of that grave regard! For between
The Duc de Luvois and the Soeur Seraphine

At that moment there rose all the hight of one soul
O’er another; she look’d down on him from the

whole

Lonely length of a life. There were sad nights and
days.

There ae long months and years in that heart-

AZe;
And her voice, 7pen she spoke, with sharp pathos
i'd through

*d him.
Pe “ Bugene de Luvois, but for you,
I might have been now—not this wandering nun,
But a mother, a eee a “a hah

eC.
Of another, but b! pasing: som ; eh that

His,—the man’s that I once loved! .

which is done
Ir not. I breathe no reproaches. That ’s best
Which God sends. "TI was will: itismine. And

the rest
Of that riddle I will not look back to, He reads
In a3 cee? that judges of all thoughts and

21 '.
With eyes, mine forestall not! This only I say:
You have not the sagt (read it, you, as you may!)
am the wrong’d.’”’

G05: ote dios Behe ee
ae “ Have I wrong’d thee?—wrong’d thee!”
He faltered, ‘‘ Lucile, ah, Lucile!”
“Nay, not me,”

She murmur’d, “but man! The lone nun standing
here

Has no claim upon earth, and is pass’d from the
sphere

of earth's wrongs and earth’s reparations. But she,

The dead woman, Lucile, she whose ve is in me,

Demands from her grave reparation to man,

Re oe to ae at oh heed, while you can,
's voice from the grave

> ee Hush!’’ he moan’d, “I obey

The Sceur Seraphine. There, Lucile! let this pay

fivery debt that is due to that grave. Now lead on:

{ follow you, Soeur Seraphine! . . . To the son

Of Lord Alfred Vargrave ... and are
mnt bnbehilte Miia a eee
e tent ir, an own the dun smoke
Pointed ont the dark bastions, with batteries
crown

 

*

| And valete et plaudite, soon as ma;

29

 

 

Of the city beneath them...
“Then, there, underground,
y be!
‘Let the old tree go down to the earth—the old tree,
With the worm at its heart! Lay the ax to the root!

Who wee — the old stump, so we save the young
shoo

ie ... this paysall...Leadon!...In
the seed

e
Save the forest! ...
“Tfollow ... forth, forth! where you lead.”

XxX.
The day was declining; a day sick and damp.
In a blank ghostly glare shone the bleak ghostly
camp
Of the ae Alone in his dim, spectral tent
Himself the wan specter of youth), with eyes bent
n the daylight departing, the sick man was sitting
eter = low pallet. These thoughts, vaguely flit-
ing,
Cross’d the silence between him and death, which
seem’d near,
—‘*Pain o’erreaches itself, so is balk’d! else, how

bear
This intense and intolerable solitude,
With its eye on my heart and its hand on my blood?
Pulse by et ay goes down: yet she comes not

again.

Other suffering, doubtless, where hope is more plain,

peas oe pena I die, strange! and scarcely
ee!

Oh, to think of Constance thus, and not to So mad!

But Death, it would seem, dulls the sense to his
own

Dull doings...”

XXXII.

Between those sick eyes and the sun
A shadow fell thwart.

XXXII.

°T is the pale nun once more!
But who stands at her side, mute and dark in the

door?
How oft had he watch’d through the glory and
gloom
of Se aperees with long, longing looks that dim
lume
Which, eee stray sunbeam upon it) shook,

s
To where Tne tent-curtain, dividing, was loop’d!
How aon stern face had haunted hover’d
about
The dreams it still scared! through what fond fear
and doubt,
Had pa boy yearn’d in heart to the hero! (What’s
e
A boy’s love for some famous man?) ... Oh, to
strike
A wild Ror through the battle, down striking per-
chance
Some rash foeman too near the great soldier of
‘ance :
And 80 fall ‘in his glorious regard! . . . Oft, how
0
Had his heart flash’d this hope out, while watch-
ing aloft
The dim battle that plume dance and dart—never

seen

So near till this moment! how eager to glean ;

SI ANY, hab ie dropp’d through the camp-bab-
le in

Of his hero-each tale of old venturous days
In the desert! And now... could he speak out

his heart

Face to face with that man ere he died!
XXXII.
With a start
The ee sprung up: the blood sprung up
im,

To his throat, and o’erthrew him: he reel’d back:

a
a fill’d his eyes; in his ears rose the
And rush, as of cataracts loosen’d within.

Through which he saw faintly, and heard the pale

a larger than life, where she stood in the sun
oint = him and murmur, “Behold!” Then thay

lume
Seem’d to wave like a fire, and fade off in the gloo:
Which momently put out the world. moe

XXXIV.
To his
- oa ee yet loved .
. he ,
“The smooth brow, “fe fair Vargrave face! and
those eyes,
All the mother’s! The old things again!

side
Moved the man ‘
SORT

“Do not rise.
You suffer, young man?”
Tue Boy.
Sir, I die,
~ Tue Dux. ae
ot so young!
Tur Boy. Yo

So young? yes! and yet I have tangled among
The fray’d warp and woof of this brief life of mine
Other lives than my own. Could my death but un-

twine
The vext skein. .. but it will not. Yes, Duke,
young—so young!
And I knew you not? Yet I have done you a wrong
Irreparable!. . . late, too late to repair.
If I knew any means... but I know none!..,I

swear,
If this broken fraction of time could extend

 

Into infinite lives of atonement, no end ‘
Would seem too remote for my grief (could that be!)
To include it! Not too late, however, for me
To entreat: is it too late for you to forgive?
THE DUKE.
You wrong—my forgiveness—explain.
Tue Boy.
Could I live!

Such a very few hours left to life, yet I shrink,
I falter . . . Yes, Duke, your forgiveness I think
Should free my soul hence.

: Ah! you could not surmise
That a boy’s beating heart, burning thoughts, long-

ing eyes,
Were following you evermore (heeded not!)
While the battle was flowing between us: nor what
Eager, dubious footsteps at nightfall oft went
With the wind and the rain, round and round your
blind tent, .

Persistent and wild as the wind and the rain, -
Unnoticed as these, weak as these, and as vain!
Oh, how obdurate then looked yourtent! The waste

air
Grew stern as the gleam which said .. . “‘ Off! he is
there!”

I know not what merciful mystery now

—~ on here, whence the man whom you see
ng low

Other Lootstops (mot those) must soon bear to the
ve.

But death is at hand, and the few words I have
Yet to speak, I must speak them at so i
Swear,

2,
As I lie here, (Death’s angel too close not to hear ih
That I meant not this wrong to you. Ducde Luvois,
Iloved your niece—loved? why, I love her! I saw,
And, seeing, how could I but love her? I seem’d
Born to love her. Alas, were that all! hadI dream’d
Of this love’s cruel consequences as it rests now
Ever fearfully present before me, I vow
That the secret, unknown, had gone down to the

tomb
Into which I descend . . . ‘Oh, why, while there was

room
In life left for warning, had no one the heart
To warn me? Hadany one whisper’d ... “Depart!”
To ag ss whole world seem’d in league then
nurse
Had any one hinted . . . ‘‘ Beware of the curse
Which is coming!’ There was not a voice raised to

tell,
Not a hand moved to warn from the blow ere it fell.
And then... then the blow fell on b0th/ This is

why
Iimplore you to pardon that injury
Wrou ‘ht da her, and, through her, wrought on you,
Howunwitingly?
iow un’ ly
Ah! ate di
... and, yo soldier, suj
That I came here to seek, not pte 4 pardont—oo
THE Boy.
Of whom?
Tue DuKE.
Of yourself.

Tue Boy.
Duke, I bear in my heart to the tomb
No boyish resentment; no one lonely thought
That honors you not. all this there is naught
Tis for me to forgive.
Every glorious act

Of your great life starts forward, an eloquent fact,
To vont in “3 boy’s heart its faith in your own.
And have I not hoarded, to ponder upon,

A hundred great acts from your life? Nay, all these,
Were they so many lying and false witn

Does there rest not one voice, which was never un-

true?
I believe in Constance, Duke, as she does in you!
In this great world around us, wherever we turn,
Some grief irremediable we discern;
And yet there sits God, calm in Heaven above!
Do we trust one whit less in his justice or love?
I judge not.

Tue DvKE.
Enough! Hear at last, then, the truth.

Your father and I—foes we were in our youth.
It matters not why. Yet thus much .
The hope of my youth was sign’d out by his hand.
I was not of those whom the buffets of fate
ae and my heart buried slain love in

hat
If your own frank young heart, yet unconscious of
Which turns the heart’s blood in its springtide to

And wnat le to guess even aught that the furrow

Across these gray brows hides of sin or of sorrow,
mprehends not the evil and grief of my life,

"Twit at least comprehend how intense was the strife

Which is closed in this act of atonement, whereby

I seek in the son of my yas enemy

The friend of my age. t the present release

Here acquitted the past! In the name of my niece,

Whom for my life in yours as a hostage le

Are you great enough, boy, to forgive mi live?

While he spoke thus, a doubtful tumultuous joy
Chased its fleet effects o’er the face of the boy:
As when some stormy moon, in a long cloud con-

Struggles outward through shadows, the varying
win
eres, and bursts, self-surprised, from her
mn,
$3o thitt slow da grew clear in his face. He had risen

To answer the ‘e; but strength failed every limb;
A ppy feebleness trembled oh him.

ha) thro
With a faint ery of rapturous wonder he sank “
 

Fe see ee

30 THE SUNNYSIDE LIBRA

On the breast of the nun, who stood near.
“Yes, boy: thank
This guardian angel,” the Duke said. ‘‘I—you,
We owe all to her. Crown her work. Live! be true
To FORE FOUNE, life’s fair promise, and live for her
sake!

“Yes, Duke: I willlive. I must live—live to make
My whole life the answer you claim,” the boy said.
e Yor joy does not kill!” -

Back again the faint head
Declined on the nun’s gentle bosom. Shé saw
His lips quiver, and motion’d the Duke to withdraw
And leave them a moment together.

He eyed

Them both with a wistful regard; turn’d, and sigh’d
And lifted the tent-door, and pass’d from the tent.

XXXV.

Like a furnace, the fervid, intense occident

From its hot seething levels a great glare struck up

On the sick metal an And, as out of a cup

Some witch watches boiling wild portents arise,

Monstrous clouds, mass’d, misshappen, and ting’d
with strange dyes,

a over the red fume, and changed to weird
shapes

As of snakes, salamanders, efts, lizards, storks, apes,

Chimeras, and hydras: while—ever the same—

In the. midst of all these (creatures fused by his

flame,
And changed by his influence!) changeless as when,
Ere he lit down to death generations of men.
O’er that crude and ungainly creation, which there
With wild shapes this cloud world seem’d to mimic
in air
The Xe of Heaven’s all-judging witness, he shone,
And shall shine on the ages we reach not—the sun!

: XXXVI.

Nature posted her parable thus in the s' ies,

And - man’s heart bore witness. Life’s vapors
arise é

And fall, 7 and change,. group themselves and
revolve

Round the great central life, which if Love: these
dissolve

And resume themselves, here assume beauty, there

TTOr;
And eens of infinite error,

And endless complexity lasts but a while;

Life’s self, the immortal, immutable smile

Of God, on the soul, in the deep heart of Heaven
Lives changeless, unchanged; and our. morning and

even
Are earth’s alternations, not Heaven’s.
XXXVII.
, While he yet
Watched the skies, with this thought in his heart;
while he set din
Thus unconsciously all his life forth in his mind,
pane’ it up, search’d it out, proved it vapor and
wind,
And embraced the new life which that hour had re-
veal’d—
Love’s ee which earth’s life had defaced and con-
ceal’d;
Lucile left the tent and stood by him.
Her tread

Aroused him; and turning toward her, he said:
“Oh, Sceur Seraphine, are you happy?” -

ugene,
What is happier than to have hoped not in vain?” $
She answer yet And you?”

‘Yes.’
aa “You do not repent?”
‘No.’
“Thank Heaven!” she murmur’d, He musingly
bent :

His looks on the sunset, and somewhat apart
Where he stood, sigh’d, as though to his innermost

eart,
“Oh, blessed are they, among whom I was not,
Whose morning unclouded, without stain or spot,
Predicts a pure evening who, sunlike, in ligh t
Have traversed, unsullied, the world, and set bright!”

But she in response, ‘‘ Mark yon Bhip far away,
Asleep on the wave, in the last light of day,
With all its hush’d thunders shut up! ould you

know
A thought which came to me a few days ago,
While Patching those ships’... When the great
Ship of Life
Surviving, though shatter’d, the tumult and strife
Of earth’s a’ element—masts broken short.
Decks drench’d, bulwarks beaten—drives safe into

port,
When the Pilot of Galilee, seen on the strand,
Stretches over the waters a welcoming hand;
When, heeding no SOE the sea’s baffi’d roar,
The mariner turns to his rest evermore;
What will then be the answer the helmsman must

give?
Will wee ... ‘Lo our log-book! Thus once did we
ive
In the Zones of the South; thus we traversed the

seas
Of the Orient; there dwelt with the Hesperides;
Thence follow’d the west-wind; here, eastward we

turn’d;
The stars fail’d us there; just here land we discern’d
On our lee; there the storm overtook us at last;
That day went the bowsprit, the next day the mast;
There the mermen came round us, and there we saw

bask -
A siren?’ The Captain of Port will he ask
ay one of such questions? I cannot think so!
But . be Nee is the last Bill of Health you can
ow

 

Of the
. With i

Not—How fared the soul through the trials she |

ass’d?
But—what is the state of that soul at the last?”

a ee — he sigh’d. ‘‘There! the sun drops,
pehold!””

And indeed, while he spoke all the purple and gold

In the west had turn’d ashen, save. one fading strip

Of light that ye gleam’d from the dark nether lip ,

Of a long reef of cloud; and o’er sullen ravines

And ridges the raw damps.were hanging white

screens
Of melancholy mist.
‘“ Nunc dimittis/” she said,

“Oh, God of the living! while yet ’mid the dead
And the dying we stand here alive, and thy days
Returning, admit space for prayer and for praise,
In both these confirm us!
“The helmsman, Eugene,
Needs the compass to steer by. Pray always. Again
We nae part: each to work out Heaven’s will: you,
trust,
In the world’s ample witness; and I, as I must,
In secret and silence: you, love, fame, await;
Me, sorrow and sickness. We meet at one gate
When all’s over. The ways they aremany and wide,
And seldom are two ways the same. Side by side
May we stand at the same little door when all’s done!
The ways they are many, the end it is one.
He that knocketh shall enter: who asks shall obtain:
And who seeketh, he findeth.. Remember, Eugene!”
She turn’d to depart.
‘“Whither? whither?” . . . he said.
She stretch’d forth her hand where, already out-
spread
On the darken’d horizon, remotely they saw
The French camp-fires kindling.
“Oh Due de Luvois,
“See yonder vast host, with its manifold heart
Made as one man’s by one hope! That hope ‘tis
your part
To aid toward achievement, to save from reverse:
Mine, through suffering to soothe, and through sick-
ness to nurse.
I go to my work: you to yours.”

XXXVI. 3
While she spoke,
On the wide Wpsting droning there distantly broke
The low roll of musketry. Straightway, anon,
From the dim flagstaff battery bellow’d a gun,
“Our chasseurs are at it!” he mutter’d.

She turn’d,
Smiled, and pass’d up the twilight.
He faintly discern’d
Her form, now and then, on the flat lurid sky.
Rise, and sink, and recede through the mists; by and

The vapors closed round, and he saw her no more.

XXXIX.
Nor’shall we. For her mission, accomplish’d, is o’er.
The mission of genius on earth! To uplift,
Purify, and confirm by its own gracious gift,
The world, in despite of the world’s dull endeavor
To degrade, and drag down, and oppose it forever.
The mission of genie: to, watch and to wait,
To renew, to redeem, and to regenerate.
The mission of woman on earth! to give birth
To the merey of Heaven descending on earth,
The mission of woman: permitted to bruise
The head of the serpent, and sweetly infuse,
Through the sorrow and sin of earth’s registered

curse,
The blessing which mitigates all: born to nurse,
And to soothe, and to solace, to help and to heal
The sick world that leans on her. This was Lucile.

XL.
A power hid in pathos: a fire vail’d in cloud:
Yet e eos outward: a branch which, though

Ww
By the bird in its passage, springs upward again:
Through all symbols T search for her sweetness—in

vain!

Judge her love by her life. For our life is but love

Inact. Pure was hers: and the dear God above,

Who knows what His creatures have need of for life,

And whose love includes all loves, through much pa-
tient strife

Led her soul into peace. Love, though love may be
given

In vain, is yet bs Her own native heaven

More clearly she mirror’d, as life’s troubled dream

Wore away; and love sigh’d into rest, like a stream

That breaks its heart over wild rocks toward the
shore

t sea whicn hushes it up evermore

little wild wailing. No stream from its
source

Flows seaward, how lonely soever its course,

But what some land is gladden’d. No star ever rose

And set, without influence somewhere. Who knows

ete needs from earth’s lowest creature? No

e

Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife

And all life not be vier and stronger thereby.

The spirits of just men made perfect on high,

The army of martyrs who stand by the Throne

‘And gaze into the Face that makes glorious their

own.

Know this, surely, at last. Honest love, honest sor-

* row,

Honest work for the day, honest hope for the mor-
row

‘Are these worth nothing more than the hand they
make wear,

The a they have sadden’d, the life they leave

reary? ;
Hush the sevenfold heavens to the voice of the
t
Echo: He that o’ercometh shall all things inherit.

ae

 

XLI.
The moon was, in fire, carried up through the fog;
The loud fortress bark’d at her like a chain’d dog.
The horizon puls’d flame, the air sound. All without,
War and winter, and twilight, and terror, and doubt;
All within, light, warmth, calm!

. In the twilight, long while
Eugene de Luvois, with a deep, thoughtful smile,
Linger’d, looking, and listening, lone by the tent.

At last he withdrew, and night closed as he went.
THE END.

 

LEOLINE.

In the molten-golden moonlight,
In the deep grass warm and dry,

We watch’d the fire-fly rise and swim
In floating sparkles by.

All night the hearts of nightingales,
Song-steeping, slumbrous leaves,

Flow’d to us in the shadow there

. Below the cottage-eaves.

We sung our songs together
Till the stars shook in the skies.
We spoke—we spoke of common things,
Yet the tears were in our eyes.
And my hand—I know it trembled
To each light warm touch of thine,
But we were friends, and only friends,
My sweet friend, Leoline!

How large the white moon look’d, dear!
There has not ever been

Since those old nights the same great light
In the moons which I have seen.

I often wonder, when I think,
If you have thought so too,

And the moonlight has grown dimmer, dear,
Than it used to be to you.

And sometimes, when the warm west wind
Comes faint across the sea,

It seems that you have breath’d on it,
So sweet it comes to me:

And sometimes, when the long light wanes
In one deep crimson line,

I muse, ‘‘ and does she watch it too,
Far off, sweet Leoline?”’

And often, leaning all an long
eee head upon my hands,
me eart aches for the vanish’d time
use we Aa on oe
ing sadly—‘‘ Is she ha; 2
Has she tears for those ae ee
And the cottage in the starlight?
And the songs among the flowers?”

One night we sat below the porch,
And out in that warm air,
A fire-fly, like a dying star,
Fell tangled in her hair;
But I kiss’d him lightly off again,
And he glitter’d up the vine,
And died into the darkness
For the love of Leoline!

Between two songs of Petrarch
I’ve a purple rose-leaf press’d,
More sweet than common rose-leaves,
For it once lay in her breast.
When she gave me that her eyes were wet:
The rose was full of dew.
The rose is wither’d long ago:
The page is blister’d too.

There’s a blue flower in my Sie.
The bee loves more than all:

The bee and I, we love it both,
Tho’ it is frail and small.

She loved it too—long, long ago!
Her love was less than mine.

Still we are friends, but only friends,
My lost love, Leoline!

CHANGES.

Wuom first we love, you know, we seldom wed.
Time rules-us all. And Life, indeed, is not
The thing we planned it out ere hope was dead.
And then, we women cannot choose our lot.

Much must be borne which it is hard to bear:
Much given away which it were sweet to keep.

God help us all! who need, indeed, His care.
And yet, I know, the Shepherd loves his sheep.

My little boy begins to babble now S
Upon my knee his earliest infant prayer.
He his father’s “oe eyes, I know.
And, they say too, his mother’s sunny hair.

But when he ee and smiles upon my knee,
And I can feel his light breath come and go,

I think of one (Heaven help and pity me!)
Who loved me, and whom I loved, long ago.

Who might have been... ah, what I dare not think!
We all are changed. God qudges for us best.

God help us do our duty, and not shrink,
And trust in heaven humbly for the rest.

| But blame us women not, if some appear

Too cold at times; and some too gay and light.
Some griefs gnaw deep. Some woes are hard to bear.
‘Who knows the Past? and who can judge us right?

Ah, were we judged by what we might have been,
And not by what we are, too apt to fall!
My little child—he sleeps and smiles between
anes thoughts and me. In heaven we shall know
all!

 

 
 

 

 

 

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27-28. CHARLOTTE’S INHERITANCE. By Miss M. E. Braddon-.----- 20c.
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