The castle menials hear in bed
Their master's foot-fall overhead—
All in the silent midnight hour,
All under unrest's chafing power,
On and on upon the floor,
On and on both back and fore—
Bereaved, betrayed, disgraced, forlorn,
His brain on fire, his bosom torn
By fancy's images—sad lumber
Of man's proud spirit—care and cumber
Waxing brighter as they keep
From the vexed soul the frightened sleep.
III.
By balustrade and corridor
That lead him to his lady's bower,
He stands before that crape-draped frame—
Its hidden face of beauteous shame—
And holds aloft in his shaking hand
The glimmering lamp, nor can withstand
The fierce desire to feed his eye
With that fair-painted treachery.
He lifts the crape, he peers below—
The fire of wrath upon his brow;
He lets it fall—he lifts again,
To feed on the pleasure of his pain,
And gazes without stint or measure
To gloat on the pain that is his pleasure;
He turns the picture upon its face,
And reads the curse of his broken peace.
He turns the picture round again,
Then away to toss in his bed of pain.
IV.
Some moral thrusts can stab the heart,
And love bestowed returned in hate
May play with some a deadlier part
Than strokes that seem of sterner fate.
In yonder vault down by the aisle
Thou'lt read the good Sir Gregory's name—
His death the sequel of the tale
Inscribed upon that pictured frame.
Yet not forgot while rustic swain
Atunes his throat to melodie,
And warbles forth the soft refrain,
"Alace! alace I for Dowielee."
V.
Her father dead, Burde Olive fair—
Her mother's image—grows apace,
And oft she throws in pensive care
A glance upon that crape-veiled face:
She wonders what may be beneath.
But fears to lift the veil to know;
Her father with his latest breath
Forbade it, on the pain of woe,
Till she to eighteen years had grown,
With woman's wisdom duly fraught,
When she might take that picture down
And learn the lesson which it taught.
Yet as she sat within the bower
That bore a mother's sacred name,
She felt the heart's divining power
And guessed the face within the frame—
Her mother's! who they said was dead:
And hence the crape—appropriate sign.
But why debarred the simple meed
To look upon her face divine,
And as she looked revive again
Those lines that had been once impressed
By love upon her infant brain,
And never thence to be defaced?
Not ever fairest painted theme,
Or triumph of the graver's art,
Could match the image of her dream
Enshrined within a daughter's heart—
So gently kind, so sweetly fair:
They were the features she assigned
To creatures of yon upper air
When they look down on humankind:
And oft she sighed that morn would shine
When that dark crape she could remove,
And she would feast those eydent eyne
On those that taught her first to love;
And oft she scanned her own sweet face,
Reflected to her anxious view,
To see if therein she could trace
Those lineaments—the first she knew.
VI.
On Time's swift wing the years have passed:
The morn has come, the hour is now,
When she would feast her heart at last
By looking on that sacred brow!
She took the picture from the nail,
She held it in her trembling hands,
She lifted up the envious veil,—
And there confessed the mother stands.
The charm is wrought! that painted gleam
Brought up the lines impressed of yore,
As flash of the bright morning beam
On twilight things seen long before.
Her mother seemed from death returned;
She kissed the lips, the cheeks, the chin;
She sobbed, she sighed, she laughed—she mourned
To think it was a painted sign;
And then at last she turned it round,
As if she feared her sire's decree,
And there, in written words, she found
The dreaded curse of Dowielee: