There upon the rugged stranger,
Gazed, with momentary check,
Gazed, but for a passing moment,
And then fell upon his neck.
Twice ten weary summers absent;
By his faithful wife deplored;
Like Ulysses to his Consort,
Good Sir Francis is restored.
'Tis a time of double gladness—
Never was a scene like this;
Joy o'erflows the Hall, the Village—
'Tis a time of boundless bliss!
Clothed as instantly became him,
Of Vile Skins all disarrayed,
In his old Paternal Mansion
He is honoured and obeyed.
All he prayed for to the Virgin,
She has granted him and more;
Not to die, his own beholding,
First, when on his native shore.
Added years of happy ending,
Are accorded him of right;
'Midst a cloud of friends descending,
In a sunset warm and bright.
The True Lover's Knot Untied:
Being the right path whereby to advise princely Virgins how to behave themselves, by the example of the renowned Princess the Lady Arabella, and the second son of the Lord Seymour, late Earl of Hertford.
The beautiful, much-injured, and ill-fated Lady Arabella of this touching ballad, whose sole crime was that she was born a Stuart, was the daughter of Elizabeth Cavendish of Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, by her husband Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, who was brother to Lord Darnley, the husband of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. She was grand-daughter of Sir William Cavendish of Chatsworth, and of his wife, the celebrated "Bess of Hardwick," afterwards Countess of Shrewsbury.
The incidents of the life of this young, beautiful, and accomplished lady, which form one of the most touching episodes in our history,—the jealous eye with which Elizabeth looked upon her from her birth,—the careful watch set over her by Cecil,—the trials of Raleigh and his friends,—her troubles with her aunt (Mary, Countess of Shrewsbury),—her being placed under restraint,—her marriage with Seymour,—her seizure, imprisonment, sufferings, and death as a hopeless lunatic in the Tower of London, where she had been thrown by her cousin, James the First,—are all matters of history, and invest her life with a sad and melancholy interest.