No change is on the blessed Sky—
The quiet Earth has none—
Nature has still her constancy,
And Thou art changed alone!
The "Review" for September 13, 1830, has a poem of Whittier's prefaced by a curious story about Lord Byron:—
The Spectre.—There is a story going the rounds of our periodicals that a Miss G., of respectable family, young and very beautiful, attended Lord Byron for nearly a year in the habit of a page. Love, desperate and all-engrossing, seems to have been the cause of her singular conduct. Neglected at last by the man for whom she had forsaken all that woman holds dear, she resolved upon self-destruction, and provided herself with poison. Her designs were discovered by Lord Byron, who changed the poison for a sleeping potion. Miss G., with that delicate feeling of affection which had ever distinguished her intercourse with Byron, stole privately away to the funeral vault of the Byrons, and fastened the entrance, resolving to spare her lover the dreadful knowledge of her fate. She there swallowed the supposed poison—and probably died of starvation! She was found dead soon after. Lord Byron never adverted to this subject without a thrill of horror. The following from his private journal may, perhaps, have some connection with it:—
"I awoke from a dream—well! and have not others dreamed?—such a dream! I wish the dead would rest forever. Ugh! how my blood chilled—and I could not wake—and—and—
"Shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than could the substance of ten thousand—
Armed all in proof—
"I do not like this dream—I hate its foregone conclusion. And am I to be shaken by shadows? Ay, when they remind us of—no matter—but if I dream again I will try whether all sleep has the like visions."—Moore's "Byron," page 324.
She came to me last night—
The floor gave back no tread,
She stood by me in the wan moonlight—
In the white robes of the dead—
Pale—pale, and very mournfully
She bent her light form over me—
I heard no sound—I felt no breath
Breathe o'er me from that face of death;
Its dark eyes rested on my own,
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone;
Yet in their fixed, unchanging gaze,
Something which told of other days—
A sadness in their quiet glare,
As if Love's smile were frozen there,
Came o'er me with an icy thrill—
O God! I feel its presence still!
And fearfully and dimly
The pale cold vision passed,
Yet those dark eyes were fixed on me
In sadness to the last.
I struggled—and my breath came back,
As to the victim on the rack,
Amid the pause of mortal pain
Life steals to suffer once again!
Was it a dream? I looked around,
The moonlight through the lattice shone;
The same pale glow that dimly crowned
The forehead of the spectral one!
And then I knew she had been there—
Not in her breathing loveliness,
But as the grave's lone sleepers are,
Silent and cold and passionless!
A weary thought—a fearful thought—
Within the secret heart to keep:
Would that the past might be forgot—
Would that the dead might sleep!
These are the concluding lines of a long poem written in 1829, while he was editing the "American Manufacturer." The poem as a whole was never in print; but these lines of it I find in the "Essex Gazette" of August 22, 1829, from which paper they were copied, as were most of his productions of that period, by the newspapers of the country. They were never in any collection of his works:—
A FRAGMENT
Lady, farewell! I know thy heart
Has angel strength to soar above
The cold reserve—the studied art
That mock the glowing wings of love.
Its thoughts are purer than the pearl
That slumbers where the wave is driven,
Yet freer than the winds that furl
The banners of the clouded heaven.
And thou hast been the brightest star
That shone along my weary way—
Brighter than rainbow visions are,
A changeless and enduring ray.
Nor will my memory lightly fade
From thy pure dreams, high-thoughted girl;—
The ocean may forget what made
Its blue expanse of waters curl,
When the strong winds have passed the sky;
Earth in its beauty may forget
The recent cloud that floated by;
The glories of the last sunset—
But not from thy unchanging mind
Will fade the dreams of other years,
And love will linger far behind,
In memory's resting place of tears!