Her hand lay trembling on his arm,
Averted glow'd the happy face;
A softer hue, a mightier charm,
Grew mellowing o'er the hour—the place;
Along the breathing woodlands moved
A PRESENCE dream-like and divine—
How sweet to love and be beloved,
To lean upon a heart that's thine!
Silence was o'er the earth and sky—
By silence Love is answer'd best—
Her answer was the downcast eye,
The rose-cheek pillow'd on his breast.
What rustles through the moonlit brake?
What sudden spectre meets their gaze?
What face, the hues of life forsake,
Gleams ghost-like in the ghostly rays?
You might have heard his heart that beat,
So heaving rose its heavy swell—
No more the Idiot—at her feet,
The Dark One, roused to reason, fell.
Loosed the last link that thrall'd the thought,
The lightning broke upon the blind—
The jealous love the cure had wrought,
The Heart in waking woke the Mind.
VI.
THE MARRIAGE.
To and fro the bells are swinging,
Cheerily, clearly, to and fro;
Gaily go the young girls, bringing
Flowers the fairest June may know.
Maiden, flowers that bloom'd and perish'd
Strew'd thy path the bridal day;
May the Hope thy soul has cherish'd,
Bloom when these are pass'd away!
The Father's parting prayer is said,
The daughter's parting kiss is given;
The tears a happy bride may shed,
Like dews ascend to heaven;
And leave the earth from which they rise,
But balmier airs, and rosier dyes.
VII.
THE HERMIT.
Years fly; beneath the yew-tree shade
Thy father's holy dust is laid;
The brook glides on, the jasmine blows;
But where art thou, the wandering wife,
And what the bliss, and what the woes,
Glass'd in the mirror-sleep of life?
For whether life may laugh or weep,
Death the true waking—life the sleep.
None know! afar, unheard, unseen—
The present heeds not what has been;
This herded world together press'd,
Can miss no straggler from the rest—
Not so! Nay, all one heart may find,
Where Memory lives, a saint enshrined—
Some altar-hearth, in which our shade
The Household-god of Thought is made,
And each slight relic hoarded yet
With faith more solemn than regret.
Who tenants thy forsaken cot—
Who tends thy childhood's favourite flowers—
Who wakes, from every haunted spot,
The Ghosts of buried Hours?
'Tis He whose sense was doom'd to borrow
From thee the Vision and the Sorrow—
To whom the Reason's golden ray,
In storms that rent the heart was given;
The peal that burst the clouds away
Left clear the face of heaven!
And wealth was his, and gentle birth,
A form in fair proportions cast;
But lonely still he walk'd the earth—
The Hermit of the Past.
It was not love—that dream was o'er!
No stormy grief, no wild emotion;
For oft, what once was love of yore,
The memory soothes into devotion!
He bought the cot:—The garden flowers—
The haunts his Eva's steps had trod,
Books—thought—beguiled the lonely hours,
That flow'd in peaceful waves to God.