‘Night by night must I pace the shore,
Longing, lingering, to and fro,
Questioning, “May I not see her once more,
Alice of Ormskirk?” answering—“No!”
‘And still the echoing sea-cave rings
With one unceasing pitiless strain;
And still the wild wave dashes and sings—
“Never again, love! never again.”’
The episode of idolatry and madness was fast drawing to a close. When the Queen and her household went to establish themselves in the lodging where they designed to pass the night, Chastelâr remained on the beach, apparently unconscious of all about him, gazing out to seaward, as a man does who is utterly lost to the interests and occupations of the shore. Amongst the many mysterious sympathies that connect natural objects so inexplicably with the mind, there is a strange affinity between human sorrow and the watery element—be it the gentle ripple of a running stream, or the dash and recoil of the mounting wave breaking on the beach, or the dark-blue line of a sea-horizon clear against the sky.
There is some morbid attraction to mortal grief in the contemplation of each of these; there is something that takes man out of himself, and though it speaks not of hope or consolation, seems to promise oblivion and repose at last. Ay, we love to prate of the beauties of nature, to enlarge upon the pleasures of smiling skies and gorgeous landscapes and magnificent scenery. Are we quite honest about the effect produced by such objects? and can we declare that they create sensations of unmixed gratification? On the contrary, most of us, if sincere, will confess that when we were happy, we took very little notice of them; and it was but in some keen, hopeless sorrow we turned to nature for an anodyne, and found she added sharpness to our pangs and mocked us with a smile as she poured fresh venom into the wound. No; if we would be consoled, we must look to where the running stream loses itself in the ocean that we have never seen; we must carry our thoughts athwart the far horizon in search of the eternal shore; we must strain our eyes to pierce the smiling heaven, and catch if but a glimpse of the undying world beyond.