The lady, finding that her lover continues to hang back, dries her tears, and very properly gets married to another man. During the celebration of the ceremony, the poet recurs to his hero, who has taken up his position in the park—
“Leaning against an aged tree,
By thunder stricken bare.
“The moonshine shineth in his eye,
From which no tear doth fall,
Full of vacuity as death,
Its slaty parched ball
Fixedly, though expressionless,
Gleams on the distant hall.”
Witchaire then goes and drowns himself, in a river which “runneth round” the lady’s property—a dreadful warning to all young lovers “who love too much to sue.”
On a fine day in the following summer, the poet brings the lady to the banks of this river. His evident intention is, to raise in the reader’s mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover’s body, or some other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This expectation, however, he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is, that the lady does not find the corpse, nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive conclusion the reader is befooled.
The only incident which we ever heard of, at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending, is one which we once heard related at a party, where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered, and restored to their owners—the ring of Polycrates, which was found in the maw of a fish after having been sunk in deep waters, being, as the reader knows, the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations, the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it, à la Patmore, conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his story of “The River.”
The Ring and the Fish.
A lady and her lover once
Were walking on a rocky beach:
Soft at first, and gentle, was
The music of their mutual speech,
And the looks were gentle, too,
With which each regarded each.
At length some casual word occurr’d
Which somewhat moved the lady’s bile;
From less to more her anger wax’d—
How sheepish look’d her swain the while!—
And now upon their faces twain
There is not seen a single smile.
A ring was on the lady’s hand,
The gift of that dumb-founder’d lover—
In scorn she pluck’d it from her hand,
And flung it far the waters over—
Far beyond the power of any
Duck or drag-net to recover.