Along the landscape lay
The hazy rime of winter's dawning day:
Snake-like the curving mists betray'd the rill,
The last star gleam'd upon the Eastern hill,
Still slept beneath the leafless trees the herd;
Still mute the sharp note of the sunless bird;
No sound, no life; as to some hearth, bereft
By death, of welcome, since his wanderings left,
Comes back the traveller;—so to earth, forlorn
Returns the ungreeted melancholy Morn.
Forth from the threshold stole the Indian!—far
Spread the dim land beneath the waning star.
Alas! how wide the world his heart will find
Who leaves one spot—the heart's true home, behind!
He paused—one upward look upon the gloom
Of the closed casement, the love-hallow'd room,
Where yet, perchance, while happier Suffering slept
Its mournful vigil tender Duty kept;
One prayer! What mercy taught us prayer?—as dews
On drooping herbs—as sleep tired life renews,
As dreams that lead, and lap our griefs in Heaven,
To souls through Prayer, dew, sleep, and dream, are given!
So bow'd, not broken, and with manly will,
Onwards he strode, slow up the labouring hill!
If Lucy mourn'd his absence, not before
Her sire's dim eyes the face of grief she wore;
Haply her woman heart divined the spell
Of her own power, by flight proclaim'd too well;
And not in hours like these may self control
The generous empire of a noble soul:
Lo, her first thought, first duty—the soft reign
Of Woman—patience by the bed of pain!
As mute the father, yet to him made clear
The cause of flight untold to Lucy's ear;
Thus ran the lines that met, at morn, his eyes:—
"Farewell! my place a daughter now supplies!—
Thou hast pass'd the gates of Death, and bright once more
Smile round thy steps the sunlight and the shore.
Farewell; and if a soul, where hatred's gall
Melts into pardon that embalmeth all,
Can with forgiveness bless thee;—from remorse
Can pluck the stone which interrupts the course
Of thought to God;—and bid the waters rest
Calm in Heaven's smile,—poor fellow-man, be blest!
I, that can aid no more, now need an aid
Against myself; by mine own thoughts dismay'd:
I dare not face thy child—I may not dare
To commune with my heart—thy child is there!
I hear a voice that whispers hope, and start
In shame, to shun the tempter and depart.
How vile the pardon that I yield would seem,
If shaped and colour'd from the egoist's dream;
A barter'd compromise with thoughts that take
The path of conscience but for passion's sake—
If with the pardon I could say—'The Tomb
Devours the Past, so let the Moment bloom,
And see Calantha's brother reconciled,
Kneel to Calantha's lover, for his child!'
It may not be; sad sophists were our vain
Desires, if Right were not a code so plain;
In good or ill leave casusits on the shelf,
'He never errs who sacrifices self!'"
Great Natures, Arden, thy strange lot to know
And lose!—twin souls thy mistress and thy foe!
How flash'd they, high and starry, through the dull
World's reeking air—earnest and beautiful!
Erring perchance, and yet divinely blind,
Such hero errors purify our kind!
One noble fault that springs from Self's disdain
May oft more grace in Angel eyes obtain,
Than a whole life, without a seeming flaw,
Which served but Heaven, because of Earth in awe,
Which in each act has loss or profit weigh'd,
And kept with Virtue the accounts of Trade!
He too was born, lost Idler, to be great,
The sins that dwarf'd, he had a soul to hate.
Ambition, Ease, Example had beguiled,
And our base world in fawning had defiled;
Yet still, contrasting all he did, he dream'd;
And through the Wordling's life the Poet gleam'd.
His eye not blind to Virtue; to his ear
Still spoke the music of the banish'd sphere;
Still in his thought the Ideal, though obscured,
Shamed the rank meteor which his sense allured.
Wreck if he was, the ruin yet betray'd
The shatter'd fane for gods departed made;
And still, through weeds neglected and o'erthrown,
The blurr'd inscription show'd the altar-stone.
So scorn'd he not, as folly or as pride,
The lofty code which made the Indian's guide;
But from that hour a subtle change came o'er
The thoughts he veil'd, the outward mien he wore;
A mournful, weary gloom, a pall'd distaste
Of all the joys so warmly once embraced.
His eye no more looks onward. but its gaze
Rests where Remorse a life misspent surveys:
What costly treasures strew that waste behind;
What whirlwinds daunt the soul that sows the wind!
By the dark shape of what he is, serene
Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been:
Here the vast loss, and there the worthless gain—
Vice scorn'd, yet woo'd, and Virtue loved in vain.
'Tis said, the Nightingale, who hears the thrill
Of some rich lute, made vocal by sweet skill,
To match the music strains its wild essay,
Feels its inferior art, and envying, pines away:
So, waked at last, and scarcely now confest,
Pined the still Poet in the Worldling's breast!
So with the Harmony of Good, compared
Its lesser self—so languish'd and despair'd.
Awhile, from land to land he idly roved,
And join'd life's movement with a heart unmoved.
No more loud cities ring with Arden's name,
Applaud his faults, and call his fashion "Fame!"
Disgust with all things robes him as he goes,
In that pale virtue, Vice, when weary, knows.
Yet his, at least, one rescue from the past;
His, one sweet comfort—Lucy's love at last!
That bed of pain o'er which she had watch'd and wept—
That grave, where Love forgot its wrongs and slept—
That touching sorrow and that still remorse
Unlock'd her heart, and gave the stream its course.
From her own grief, by griefs more dark beguiled,
Rose the consoling Angel in the Child!
Yet still the calm disease, whose mute decay
No leech arrests, crept gradual round its prey.
Death came, came gently, on his daughter's breast,
Murm'ring, "Remember where this dust should rest."
They bear the last Lord of that haughty race
Where winds the wave round Mary's dwelling-place;
And side by side (oh, be it in the sky
As in the earth!)—the long-divided lie!
Doth life's last act one wrong at least repair—
His nameless child to wealth at least the heir?
So Arden's will decreed—so sign'd the hand;
So ran the text—not so Law rules the land:
"I do bequeath unto my child,"[Y]—that word
Alone on strangers has the wealth conferr'd.
O'erjoy'd Law's heirs the legal blunder read,
And Justice cancels Nature from the deed.
O moral world! deal sternly if thou wilt
With the warm weakness as the wily guilt,
But spare the harmless! Wherefore shall the child
Be from the pale which shelters Crime exiled?
Why heap such barriers round the sole redress
Which sin can give to sinless wretchedness?
Why must the veriest stranger thrust aside
Our flesh—our blood, because a name's denied?
Give all thou hast to whomsoe'er thou please,
Foe, alien, knave, as whim so Law decrees;
But if thy heart speaks, if thy conscience cries—
"I give my child"—the law thy voice belies;
Chicanery balks all effort that atones,
And Justice robs the wretch that Nature owns!
So abject, so despoil'd, so penniless,
Stood thy love-born in the world's wilderness,
O Lord of lands and towers, and princely sway!
O Dust, from whom with breath has pass'd away
The humblest privilege the beggar finds
In rags that wrap his infant from the winds!
In the poor hamlet where her grandsire died,
Where sleeps her mother by the magnate's side,
The orphan found a home. Her story known,
Men's hearts allow the right men's laws disown.
Though lost the birthright, and denied the name,
Her pastor-grandsire's virtues shield from shame;
Pity seeks kind pretext to pour its balms,
And yields light toils that saves the pride from alms.
A soft respect the orphan's steps attends,
And the sharp thorn at least the rose defends.
So flows o'ershadow'd, but not darksome by,
Her life's lone stream—the banks admit the sky
Day's quiet taskwork o'er, when Ev'ning grey
Lists the last carol on the quivering spray,
When lengthening shades reflect the distant hill,
And the near spire, upon the lullëd rill;
Her sole delight with pensive step to glide
Along the path that winds the wave beside,
A moment pausing on the bridge, to mark
Perchance the moonlight vista through the dark:
Or watch the eddy where the wavelets play
Round the chafed stone that checks their happy way,
Then onward stealing, vanish from the view,
Where the star shimmers on the solemn yew,
As shade from earth and starlight from the sky
Meet—and repose on Death's calm mystery.
Moons pass'd—Behold the blossom on the spray!
Hark to the linnet!—On the world is May!
Green earth below and azure skies above;
May calling life to joy, and youth to love;
While Age, charm'd back to rosy hours awhile,
Hears the lost vow, and sees the vanish'd smile.
And does not May, lone Child, revive in thee,
Blossom and bud and mystic melody;
Does not the heart, like earth, imbibe the ray?
Does not the year's recal thy life's sweet May?
When like an altar to some happy bride,
Shone all creation by the loved one's side?
Yes, Exile, yes—that Empire is thine own,
Rove where thou wilt, awaits thee still thy throne!
Lo, where the paling cheek, the unconscious sigh,
The slower footstep, and the heavier eye,
Betray the burthen of sweet thoughts and mute,
The slight tree bows beneath the golden fruit!