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
Which the black cloud unbosom'd just now. Lo! the lurching
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!
XIII.
Through the darkness and awe
That had gather'd around him, Lord Alfred now saw,
Reveal'd in the fierce and evanishing glare
Of the lightning that momently pulsed through the air
A woman alone on a shelf of the hill,
With her cheek coldly propp'd on her hand,—and as still
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
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 plangent and laboring tempests 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 sound
Of the battering thunder's indefinite peal,
And Lord Alfred had sprung to the feet of Lucile.
XIV.
She started. Once more, with its flickering wand,
The lightning approach'd 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.
"See! see!
Where the whirlwind 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!"
"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 yon terrible heaven that is watching above
To avenge if I lie when I swear that I love,—
And beneath yonder terrible heaven, at your feet,
I humble my head and my heart. I entreat
Your pardon, Lucile, for the past—I implore
For the future your mercy—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.
"Yes, the rights! for what greater to man may belong
Than the right to repair in the future the wrong
To the past? and the wrong I have done you, of yore,
Hath bequeath'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 good angel, my all upon earth,
And accept, for the sake of what yet may give worth
To my life, its contrition!"
XV.
He paused, for there came
O'er the cheek of Lucile a swift flush like the flame
That illumined at moments the darkness o'erhead.
With a voice faint and marr'd by emotion, she said,
"And your pledge to another?"
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 I live
In the light of those young 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.
O speak! and restore me the blessing I lost
When I lost you—my 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,
When our souls their white wings yet exulting unfurl'd!
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
I have wearily wander'd the world, and I feel
That the least of your lovely regards, O 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 life's untraversed ocean! I know the sole path
To repose, which my desolate destiny hath,
Is the path by whose course to your feet I return.
And who else, O 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.