In her home, her native home,
She dwelt begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty,—but behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lid was charged with unshed tears.
It was not without a fearful outraging of trusting affections, the desolation of a spirit trodden and crushed by that which should have shielded it, that
She was changed
As by the sickness of the soul: her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm; her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others’ sight, familiar were to hers.
There must have come a day, a soul-prostrating day, when she must have felt the grand mistake she had made, in casting away a heart that never ceased to love her and sorrow for her, and a mind that wrapt her, even severed as it was from her, in an imperishable halo of glory.
There is nothing in all the histories of broken affections and mortal sorrows, more striking and melancholy than the idea of this lady, so bright and joyous-hearted in her youth, sitting in her latter years, for days and weeks, alone and secluded, uninterrupted by any one, in this old house, weeping over the poems which commented in burning words on the individual fortunes of herself and Lord Byron—
The one
To end in madness—both in misery.
With this idea vividly impressed on our spirits, a darker shade seemed to settle down on those antiquated rooms;—we passed out into the garden, at the door at which Byron passed; we trod that stately terrace, and gazed at the old vase placed in the centre of its massy balustrade, bearing the original escutcheon of the Lord Chaworth, and standing a brave object as seen from the garden, into which we descended, and wandered amongst its high-grown evergreens. But every thing was tinged with the spirit and fate of that unhappy lady. The walks were overgrown with grass; and tufts of snowdrop leaves, now grown wild and shaggy, as they do after the flower is over, grew in them; and tufts of a beautiful and peculiar kind of fumitory, with its pink bloom, and the daffodils and primroses of early spring looked out from amongst the large forest trees that surround the garden. Every thing, even the smallest, seemed in unison with that great spirit of silence and desolation which hovered over the place; and the gusty winds that swept the long wood-walk by which we came away, gave us a most fitting adieu.
We only saw just in time, this interesting old place in its desolation. It is now repaired, altered, and, I understand, every historical identity as far as possible destroyed.