For ever singing, as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
The summer months glided over the youthful pair imperceptibly; but with returning health, imperative duty impelled the enamoured scholar to resume his studies; to resign the delicious society of her he loved for the musty tome, the midnight lamp, and the emulation approaching hostility, within the time-hallowed walls of Oxford. Already had his trunks been packed, the day of his departure fixed, and his adieus uttered—all but one.
They met for this purpose one Sabbath evening in a sequestered glen; the larch and laburnum formed a rude arbour over them, and a nameless streamlet murmured at their feet. The stock-doves uttered mournful cadences, and the plovers over the neighbouring heath sent forth ominous wailings. The early autumnal breeze moaned through the thick foliage, and the rustle of the overhanging leaves gave a dreary response. ’Twas a sad hour; they vowed eternal fidelity—mingled their tears—exchanged Bibles—and parted—he to the crowded haunts of science, she to the solitude of her own little apartment, to brood over the waking dreams of bliss which she had so lately experienced. On opening the little Bible which she had received from the hands of her lover, she found the following text written on the fly-leaf, in a tremulous hand:—“Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths,” and she could trace, moreover, certain globular stains, the cause of which was not ill to define. “Yes!” she exclaimed, while the tears started from her large blue eyes, “I will perform all I have vowed to thee, to the very letter. I will love thee as woman never loved—in sorrow and in sickness, in poverty and in exile—nay, in death itself I will love thee; neither shall the influence of wealth, rank, talent, manly beauty, nor shall the authority, which preponderates more than all these together, even that of my only parent, ever alienate my affections from thee, thou chosen of my heart!”
At this moment the door was opened, and her father stood before her. A harsh expression pervaded his rigid countenance; there was a stern inflexibility in his eye, and his lip quivered with emotion; he held his staff with a convulsive grasp, and his whole frame trembled with conflicting passions.
“Daughter,” said he, in a tremulous and hollow voice, “daughter, I had indeed suspected that the corbie was attempting to gain the dove’s nest—that the descendant of the malignant, with malicious wile, was endeavouring to secure an interest in thine affections, and bitterly do I rue that I did not put a stop to it sooner. But little did I think that thou, the child of my love, the only daughter of thy sainted mother, whom I have cherished like the apple of mine eye, wouldst have so far forgotten thy duty as to vow love and obedience to a scion of an abjured prelatical stock, against whom thy father and thy father’s fathers have lifted up their testimony, since the glorious carved work of the sanctuary has been defaced by their unhallowed hands. Did they not shed the blood of the saints in torrents? Were they not butchered in the face of the sun, and in cold blood? And did not their cries enter—but my blood curdles to enumerate the half of their enormities, and I shall therefore refrain from adverting to branding, mutilation, fine, imprisonment, exile, and death. Daughter,” said he, in a sepulchral voice, “thou must break off all intercourse and connection with this young man instantly; between us there is an impassable gulf. And if thou perseverest in thine ill-starred choice; if thou art disobedient to thy hoary-headed father; if thou cherish his image in thy bosom, or even at some future period, when I am gathered to my fathers, become his wife, I shall bequeath thee my malison for thy dowry, and my ban for thine inheritance.”
So saying, he flung himself out of the chamber in a paroxysm of rage. His beauteous daughter, meanwhile, had become inanimate on the couch. The usual remedies in these cases were promptly resorted to; and after a short interval, she opened her eyes, but it was only to gaze on vacancy. The “silver cord was loosed, and the golden bow was broken.” Her reason had fled, and never returned. In one month she was where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest. Her father, though he deemed he had only done an imperative duty, could not withstand the shock. Nature sunk beneath the unlooked-for calamity; he mourned, and he would not be comforted. In a few weeks he breathed his last; and another tenant was added to the house appointed for all living.
But who may paint the misery of the unhappy youth when he learnt the harrowing intelligence? Sorrow is sacred, and we shall not enter into its detail. Suffice it to say, that he gave up his studies, returned to his native vale with a broken heart; and in the words of his celebrated countryman (who no doubt had the pair in his mind’s eye when he penned the touchingly simple ballad), he is reported to have said—
Low there thou lies, my lassie,
Low there thou lies;