The gale now slowly dies away,
With the approach of dawning day,
And every wave that chafes the shore,
Salutes the strand with sullen roar,
And on the beach in sadness flings
All that to Hope was once so sweet,
Like trophies which a warrior brings,
And lays them at his country’s feet.
Records that blood and death had earned,
When mercy from her shrine was spurned.
Alas! when angry storms break forth,
And wake the waters into wrath;
Ah! then the treacherous heaving wave
Rolls over many a wanderer’s grave,
And striving winds and foaming surge
Sing many a mournful funeral dirge.
* * * * * *
Oh, Heaven! that such a lovely form
Could brave so dread and fierce a storm,
That one so beautiful and frail
Could bide the harsh and bitter gale;
And she who angels might have kept
In hallowed watches while she slept,
Is pillowed on the sandy shore,
Her lullaby the waters’ roar:
And frowning skies in sorrow spread
Their canopy around her head.
And now beside the maiden kneels
A messenger of fond relief,
One who with sweet religion heals
The wounded spirit’s cankering grief;
And raises from the chilly sand
The form that cold and lifeless lay,
Sustains it with a trembling hand,
And wraps it in his mantle grey.
And from that frontlet wipes away
The wanton water’s brackish spray.
And now her wild and anxious gaze
Is fixed upon his swarthy cheek,
And faint and feebly she essays
Her wonder and despair to speak;
And he who looked so calm before,
Is moved to tears of sorrow now,
That as he bends the maiden o’er,
Those drops of pity damp her brow.
He turns as though ashamed to own
His heart has soft and yielding grown.
And now is many an offer made
Of home and hospitable aid,
By those who throng around the maid,
To them the monk his charge commends,
With promises of bounteous pay,
And with a heart of trouble wends
His steps to Broomholme Abbey “grey.”
* * * * * *
What charm is there in Nature’s smile,
When Hope be dead the weary while,
Or what in all the world can please,
When aching hearts are ill at ease.
And, oh! what rapture could he feel,
Who left the fair and beaten track
Of sweet Religion’s holy zeal,
And to the cold world wandered back;
Whose only oriflamme should be
The sanguine cross of Calvary.
Yes, he whose life had aye been spent
In self denial’s lowly creed,
In turning sinners to repent,
And share the Abbey’s thrifty meed.
Yes, he who taught that heavenly love
Should all absorb the anxious mind,
That hearts should look to hopes above,
And leave the thoughtless world behind:
Yes, he whose years though few had been,
In much of deep devotion past,
Who joy’d the smiling summer scene,
And braved the winter’s bitter blast;
Yes, he who told how dear and sweet
Was holy influence to the mind,
Who walked the world with weary feet,
To succour helpless human kind;
Yes, he forgot for beauty’s smile,
His oath to Heaven, his hopes above,
He gave his heart to pleasures wile,
And lost his soul for woman’s love.
Yes, he forgot the lowly mien,
The holy mass, the rosary,
And all that he had ever been,
For hopeless love and misery.
Alas! that grief should ever wear
So pale a cheek with sorrow’s tear,
That anguish and remorse should trace
Their furrowed lines on Beauty’s face,
And early troubles lead the way
For dread disease and slow decay.
There is a canker of the breast
That pleasure cannot charm away,
When the young heart becomes a prey
To dread disquiet, and un-rest.
Day after day—day after day,
Along that smooth and sandy shore,
Did Herbert with fair Edith stray,
Oft listening to the angry roar
Of the wild ocean’s troubled sound,
Till the fair earth had wandered round
The presence of the glorious sun;
And when the winter had begun
To shackle every limpid river,
And silence every gurgling rill,
And in the woodland on the hill
The aspen leaves had ceased to quiver,
And every minstrel in the wood
Was silent in its solitude,
Those lovely birds that gaily chanted
Their songs of gladness from the grove;
Ah! oft had Edith’s bosom panted
With silent and supreme delight,
When they have woke the lovely night
With their melodious songs of love.
Ah! many and many a lovely eve,
Beneath the Heaven’s bespangled roof,
Did her young heart delight to weave
The future like a fairy woof:
And with her Herbert by her side,
In the sweet hush of eventide,
When night-blown flowers of beauty rare
With perfume filled the stilly air;
Often in those delightful hours,
When the young dreamy heart of youth
Plucks many a wreath from Fancy’s bowers,
And knits them on the brow of truth.
And once she said, with tearful eye,
With quivering lip, yet tender tone,
As if her weak and trembling heart
Were half afraid its fears to own—
“Herbert forgive, I know thou wilt,
Or else my heart the wish would rue,
Ah! if it bears the taint of guilt,
In mercy, Heaven, absolve me too.
When death with chilling hand shall sever
The souls that nought but death could part,
Herbert, a slow consuming fever
Is burning at my brain and heart:
I feel that death is calmly stealing
Over my senses, day by day,
Immortal longings and a feeling
Of rapture charms my pulse away.
Herbert, dear Herbert, my request,
My last sad dying wish would be,
That in the last embrace of death,
My rest may then be near to thee;
And by the willows that o’ershade
The streamlet on the woodland hill,
Our dust may be in sadness laid,
And, though in death, together still.”
Down Herbert’s cheeks the drops of woe
Coursed sad and slowly—whilst the maid
Her last and earnest wishes prayed.
It was a dread and bitter throe—
Such as fond hearts, when doomed to sever,
At once unheeded and for ever,
Pure ardent souls alone could know.
He clasped her to his aching heart—
Her brow, alas! how pale and chill;
An icy glaze is o’er her eye,
And yet her lips are quivering still.
Ah! what is all the world to him?
A sleepless night, a cheerless day,
Now those endearing eyes are dim,
And his twin spirit passed away.
Now what to him is hill or dale,
The summer’s sun or winter’s gale?
Alas! they only tell a tale
That wakes a sorrow in his breast,
Whispering o’er and o’er again,
That he was blest, supremely blest.
Autumn or winter, summer or spring,
What are they now to him?
He walks the earth like a withered thing,
Whose lamp of life is dim.
* * * * * * *
The keenest pangs of mortal woes,
And Sorrow’s agonizing throes,
The briny drops of Misery
That overflow the mourning eye,
When Hope has lost its faintest gleam,
Will make the sweetest Eden seem
A barren and unkindly waste.
Alas! how bitter to the taste
Is that dark cup Remembrance fills
With all the worst of human ills,
And crowns with pleasures past away.
As waters silently decay
The flinty rocks they hourly fret,
So does the wildness of Despair,
And the slow canker of Regret,
The weary human bosom wear.
In Broomholme’s cloistered turret now
Herbert de Colville lowly lies,
And withered is his burning brow,
And haggard are his frenzied eyes;
Those wandering orbs whose meteor light
Shines wildly from their mortal spheres,
When Fever like a deadly blight,
The wavering sense with madness sears;
It fills the eye and rends the heart,
When Reason’s heavenly rays depart,
And leave the mind so faint and dim.
That it had ever been to him,
To leave the Abbey’s holy wall,
And from that sweet Religion fall,
That should have been his hope—his all,
When earthly scenes began to pall;
That he should learn the bitter truth,
When buoyant hours are all gone by,
That the wild erring steps of youth
Must be retraced, when health and prime
Have left the frame, and when the eye
Is dim with pain and misery;
When the lone heart is worn and weak,
And the untiring hand of Time
Hath written Manhood on his cheek.