UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 SMb 7^6 
 
2T^ 
 
 | 828Kn.;..hs;.v 
 
6fe 
 
 ~Dkh OloL W2U IjAJL- 
 
POEMS 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, 
 
 COLLECTED AND EDITED RV 
 
 JAMES OSBORKE WRIGHT. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 JOHN WILEY & SONS. 
 
 188G. 
 
Copyright, 1882, 
 
 By JOHN WILEY & SOSS. 
 $6 <Z>6*> 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The poems collected in the following pages have been 
 printed from the original published copies, great care 
 having been taken to follow the author's text, with the ex- 
 ception of certain needed changes in the orthography. 
 
 It must be remembered that all of Ruskin's verse-making 
 was confined to his youthful days, and was for the most 
 part dated from Christ Church, Oxford, over the initials 
 J. R. The first poem, "Saltzburg," was written in the 
 authors sixteenth year, the last "The Glacier" but eleven 
 years later. " The Broken Chain " was appropriately pub- 
 lished at intervals — the first two parts appearing in 1840, 
 the third in 1841, the fourth in 1842, and the fifth and last 
 part in the year following. 
 
 All of these poems, with the exception of " Salsette and 
 
 Elephanta," were published in the Annuals so popular during 
 
 England's golden-age of steel engraving, but no collection 
 
 was made until 1850, when the author issued a privately 
 
 iii 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 printed edition, of such limited number, that copies have 
 become virtually inaccessible except to the most rabid bib- 
 liomaniac, whose heavy purse enables him to successfully 
 
 outbid competitors in the auction room and bookstore.* 
 
 To those who appreciate the intense personality of the 
 author, these verses will afford much insight into his char- 
 acter. The weird and somewhat melancholy train of 
 thought which pervades all of his poetry is certainly re- 
 markable, when we consider that it was written at an age 
 thai is popularly supposed to be under the influence of 
 rose-colored visions rather than the grim churchyard aspect 
 which pervades every line of these metrical effusions of the 
 autocratic art-critic. 
 
 * Two years ago a copy sold by auction, in London, for 41 guineas. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Saltzburg 1 
 
 Fragments. — Andernacht. — St. Goar 4 
 
 TnE Months 7 
 
 The Last Smile 9 
 
 Song 10 
 
 Spring 11 
 
 The Scythian Grave 13 
 
 Remembrance 17 
 
 Christ Church, Oxford 19 
 
 Aristodemus at Plat.ea 21 
 
 Salsette and Elephanta. — A Prize Poem , 24 
 
 A Scythian Banquet Song 41 
 
 The Scythian Guest 62 
 
 The Broken Chain 75 
 
 The Tears of Psammenitus 169 
 
 The Two Paths 181 
 
 v 
 
vi CONTEXTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Old Water-Wheel 184 
 
 TnE Departed Lights 186 
 
 Agoxia 188 
 
 Tm: Last Song of Ariox 190 
 
 The Bills of Carrara 203 
 
 Tm: Battle of Moxtexotte 206 
 
 A Walk ix Chamouki 220 
 
 / TnE Old Seam ax 226 
 
 The Alps 230 
 
 The Basses Alps 232 
 
 The Glacier ~'A 
 
 The Recreant 235 
 
 The Wreck 238 
 

 SALTZBURG. 
 
 Ox Salza's quiet tide the westering sun 
 
 Gleams mildly ; and the lengthening shadows dun, 
 
 Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof, 
 
 Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof, 
 
 Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil, 
 
 Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale. 
 
 A minute since, and in the rosy light 
 
 Dome, casement, spire, were glowing warm and bright ; 
 
 A minute since, St. Rupert's stately shrine, 
 
 Rich with the spoils of many a Hartzwald mine,* 
 
 Flung back the golden glow ; now, broad and vast, 
 
 The shadows from yon ancient fortress cast, 
 
 • The dome of the Cathedral of St. Hubert is covered with copper ; 
 and there are many altars and shrines in the interior constructed of 
 different sorts of marble, brought from quarries in the vicinity. St. 
 Hubert, to whom the Cathedral is dedicated, was by birth a Scotch- 
 man. 
 
SALTZBURG. 
 
 Like the dark grasp of ^ome barbaric power, 
 Their leaden empire stretch o'er roof and tower. 
 
 Sweet is the twilight hour by Salza's strand, 
 Though no Arcadian visions grace the land : 
 Wakes not a sound, that floats not sweetly by, 
 While day's last beams upon the landscape die ; 
 Low chants the fisher where the waters pour, 
 And murmuring voices melt along the shore ; 
 The plash of waves comes softly from the side 
 Of passing barge slow gliding o'er the tide ; 
 And there arc sounds from city, field, and hill, 
 Shore, forest, flood ; yet mellow all and still. 
 
 But change we now the scene, ere night descend, 
 And through St. Rupert's massive portal wend. 
 Full many a shrine, bedeckt with sculpture quaint 
 Of Bteel-clad knight and legendary saint : 
 Full many an altar, where the incense-cloud 
 Rose with the pealing anthem, deep and loud; 
 
SALTZBURG. 
 
 And pavements worn before each marble fane 
 By knees devout — (ah ! bent not all in vain !) 
 There greet the gaze ; with statues, richly wrought, 
 And noble paintings, from Ausonia brought, — 
 Planned by those master minds whose memory stands 
 The grace, the glory, of their native lands. 
 As the hard granite, 'midst some softer stone, 
 Starts from the mass, unbuttressed and alone. 
 And proudly rears its iron strength for aye, 
 "While crumbling crags around it melt away ; 
 So midst the ruins of long eras gone, 
 Creative Genius holds his silent throne, — 
 While lesser lights grow dim, — august, sublime, 
 Gigantic looming o'er the gulfs of Time ! 
 
FRAGMENTS 
 
 FROM A METRICAL JOURNAL. 
 
 Andernacht. 
 Twilight's mists are gathering grey 
 Round us on our winding way ; 
 Yet the mountain's purple crest 
 Reflects the glories of the west. 
 Rushing on with giant force, 
 Rolls the Rhine his glorious course ; 
 Flashing, now, with flamy red. 
 O'er his jagg'd hasaltic bed ; 
 Now, with current calm and wide, 
 Sweeping round the mountain's side ; 
 Ever noble, proud, and free, 
 Flowing in his majesty. 
 Soon upon the evening skies 
 Andernacht's grim ruins rise ; 
 
ANDEENACHT. 
 
 Buttress, battlement and tower, 
 
 Remnants hoar of Roman power. 
 
 Monuments of Caesar's sway, 
 
 Piecemeal mouldering away. 
 
 Lo, together loosely thrown, 
 
 Sculptured head and lettered stone ; 
 
 Guardless now the arch-way steep 
 
 To rampart huge and frowning keep ; 
 
 The empty moat is gay with flowers, 
 
 The night-wind whistles through the towers, 
 
 And, flapping in the silent air, 
 
 The owl and bat are tenants there. 
 
 St Goar. 
 
 Past a rock with frowning front, 
 Wrinkled by the tempest's brunt, 
 By the Rhine we dowmward bore 
 Upon the village of St. Goar. 
 Bosomed deep among the hills, 
 Here old Rhine his current stills. 
 
ST. GOAR. 
 
 Loitering the banks between, 
 As if, enamored of the scene, 
 He had forgot his onward way 
 For a live-long summer day. 
 Grim the crags through whose dark cleft, 
 Behind, he hath a passage reft ; 
 While, gaunt as gorge of hunted boar, 
 Dark yawns the foaming pass before, 
 Where the tormented waters rage, 
 Like demons in their Stygian cage, 
 In giddy eddies whirling round 
 With a sullen choking sound ; 
 Or flinging far the scattering spray. 
 O'er the peaked rocks that bar his way. 
 — No marvel that the spell-bound Rhine, 
 Like giant overcome with wine, 
 Should here relax his angry frown. 
 And, soothed to slumber, lay him down 
 Amid the vine-clad banks that lave, 
 Their tresses in his placid wave. 
 
THE MONTHS. 
 
 I. 
 
 From your high dwellings in the realms of snow 
 
 And cloud, where many an avalanche's fall 
 Is heard resounding from the mountain's brow, 
 
 Come, ye cold winds, at January's call, 
 On whistling wings, and with white flakes bestrew 
 
 The earth, till February's reign restore 
 The race of torrents to their wonted flow, 
 
 Whose waves shall stand in silent ice no more ; 
 But, lashed by March's maddened winds, shall roar 
 With voice of ire, and beat the rocks on every shore. 
 
 II. 
 
 Bow down your heads, ye flowers in gentle guise, 
 
 Before the dewy rain that April sheds, 
 Whose sun shines through her clouds with quick surprise, 
 
 Shedding soft influences on your heads ; 
 
8 THE MONTHS. 
 
 And wreathe ye round the rosy month that flies 
 
 To scatter perfumes in the path of June ; 
 Till July's sun upon the mountains rise 
 
 Triumphant, and the wan and weary moon 
 Mingle her cold beams with the burning lume 
 That Sirius shoots through all the dreary midnight gloom. 
 
 in. 
 Rejoice ! ye fields, rejoice ! and wave with gold, 
 
 When August round her precious gifts is flinging; 
 Lo ! the crushed wain is slowly homeward rolled: 
 
 Tlie sunburnt reapers jocund lays are singing; 
 September's steps her juicy stores unfold, 
 
 If I he Spring blossoms have not blushed in vain: 
 October's foliage yellows with his cold: 
 
 In rattling showers dark November's rain. 
 From every stormy cloud, descends amain. 
 Till keen December's snows close up the year again 
 
THE LAST SMILE. 
 
 She sat beside me yesternight, 
 
 With lip, and eye, so blandly smiling 
 So full of soul, of life, of light, 
 
 So sweetly my lorn heart beguiling, 
 That she had almost made me gay — 
 Had almost charmed the thought away— 
 (Which, like the poisoned desert wi^d, 
 Came sick and heavy o'er my mind) — 
 That memory soon mine all would be, 
 And she would smile no more for me. 
 
SONG. 
 
 [From Leoni, a Romance of Italy.] 
 
 Full, broad, and bright, is the silver light 
 Of moon and stars on flood and fell ; 
 
 But in my breast is starless night, 
 For I am come to say farewell. 
 
 How glad, how swift, was wont to be 
 
 The step that bore me back to thee; 
 
 Now coldly comes upon my heart 
 
 The meeting that is but to part. 
 
 I do not ask a tear, but while 
 
 I linger where I must not stay, 
 Oh, give me but a parting smile. 
 
 To light me on my lonely way. 
 
 To shine a brilliant beacon star, 
 
 To my reverted glance, afar. 
 
 Through midnight, which can have no morrow, 
 
 O'er the dee}), silent, surge of sorrow. 
 
 10 
 
SPRING. 
 
 Infakt Spirit of the Spring ! 
 On thy fresh-plumed pinion, bring 
 Snow-drops like thy stainless brow — 
 Violet, primrose— cull them now, 
 With the cup of daffodil, 
 Which the fairies love to fill, ^ 
 Ere each moon-dance they renew, 
 With the fragrant honey dew; 
 Bring them, Spirit !— bring them hither 
 Ere the wind have time to wither ; 
 Or the sun to steal their dyes, 
 To paint, at eve, the western skies. 
 Bring them for the wreath of one- 
 Fairest, best, that Time hath known. 
 
 Infant Spirit ! dreams have told 
 
 Of thy golden hours of old, 
 
 II 
 
12 SPRING. 
 
 When the amaranth was flung 
 
 O'er creation bright and young ; 
 
 When the wind had sweeter sound 
 
 Than holiest lute-string since hath found ; 
 
 When the sigh of angels sent 
 Fragrance through the firmament : 
 Then thy glorious gifts were she d 
 O'er full many a virgin head : 
 Of those forms of beauty, none 
 Gladden now this earth, save one ! 
 Hither, then, thy blossoms bring, 
 Infant Spirit of the Spring ! 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GRAVE. 
 
 The following stanzas refer to some peculiar and affecting cus- 
 toms of the Scythians, as avouched by Herodotus (Melpomone 71), 
 relative to the burial of their kings,* round whose tombs they were 
 wont to set up a troop of fifty skeleton scarecrows — armed corpses — in 
 a manner very horrible, barbarous and indecorous ; besides sending out 
 of the world to keep the king company, numerous cup-bearers, grooms, 
 lackeys, coachmen, and cooks ; all which singular, and, to the individuals 
 concerned, somewhat objectionable proceedings appear to have been the 
 result of a feeling, pervading the whole nation, of the poetical and 
 picturesque. 
 
 I. 
 
 They laid the lord 
 
 Of all the land 
 Within his grave of pride ; 
 
 They set the sword 
 
 Beside the hand 
 That could not grasp nor guide ; 
 
 * These are the kings to whom the prophecies in the Old Testament 
 refer :— "They shall go down to the grave with their weapons of war, 
 though they were a terror to the mighty in the land of the living." 
 
 13 
 
14 TIIE SCYTHIAN GRAVE. 
 
 They left to soothe and share his rest 
 
 Beneath the moveless mould, 
 A lady, bright as those that live, 
 But oh ! how calm and cold ! 
 They left to keep due watch and ward, 
 Thick vassals round their slumbering lord- 
 Ranged in menial order all — 
 They may hear, when he can call. 
 
 n. 
 
 They built a mound 
 
 Above the breast 
 Whose haughty heart was still ; 
 
 Each stormy sound 
 
 That wakes the west, 
 Howls o'er that lonely hill. 
 Underneath an armed troop 
 
 In stalwart order stay ; 
 Flank to flank they stand, nor stoop 
 
 Their lances, dnv by day, 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GRAVE. 15 
 
 Round the dim sepulchral cliff 
 
 Horsemen fifty, fixed and stiff — 
 
 Each with his bow, and each with his brand, 
 
 With his bridle grasped in his steadfast hand. 
 
 in. 
 
 The soul of sleep 
 
 May dim the brow, 
 
 And check the soldier's tread* 
 
 But who can keep 
 
 A guard so true, 
 As do the dark-eyed dead ? 
 The foul hyena's howl and haunt 
 
 About their charnel lair ; 
 The flickering rags of flesh they flaunt 
 
 Within the plague-struck air. 
 But still the skulls do gaze and grin, 
 Though the worms have gnawed the nerves within. 
 And the jointed toes, and the fleshless heel 
 Clatter and clank in their stirrup of steel. 
 
16 THE SCYTHIAN GRAVE. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The snows are swift, 
 
 That glide bo pale 
 Along the mountain dim ; 
 
 Beneath their drift 
 
 Shall rust the mail, 
 And blanch the nerveless limb : 
 While shower on shower, and wreath on wreath, 
 
 From vapours thunder-scarred,* 
 Surround the misty mound of death 
 
 And wh-dm its ghastly guard ; 
 Till those who held the earth in fear, 
 Lie meek, and mild, and powerless here, 
 Without a single sworded slave 
 To keep their name, or guard their grave. 
 
 * It ia one of the peculiarities of the climate, according to Herodotus 
 that it thunders in the winter, not in the summer. 
 

 REMEMBRANCE. 
 
 I ought to be joyful, the jest and the song 
 
 And the light tones of music resound through the throng 
 
 But its cadence falls dully and dead on my ear, 
 
 And the laughter I mimic is quenched in a tear. 
 
 For here is no longer, to bid me rejoice, 
 The light of thy smile, or the tone of thy voice, 
 And, gay though the crowd that's around me may be, 
 I am alone, when I'm parted from thee. 
 
 Alone, said I, dearest ? 0, never we part, — 
 
 For ever, for ever, thou'rt here in my heart : 
 
 Sleeping or waking, where'er I may be, 
 
 I have but one thought, and that thought is of thee. 
 
 17 
 
18 kj:membrax< e. 
 
 When the ])lanets roll red through the darkness of night. 
 When the morning bedews all the landscape with light. 
 When the high sun of noon-day is warm on the hill, 
 And the breezes arc quiet, the green leafage still ; 
 
 I love to look out o'er the earth and the sky, 
 For nature is kind, and seems lonely as 1 ; 
 Whatever in nature most lovely I see, 
 Has a voice that recalls the remembrance of thee. 
 
 Remember — remember. Those only can know 
 How dear is remembrance, whose hope is laid low ; 
 'Tis like clouds in the west, that are gorgeous still. 
 When the dank dews of evening fall deadly and chill. 
 
 Like the bow in the cloud that is painted so bright, — 
 Like the voice of the nightingale, heard through the night, 
 Oh, sweet ie remembrance, most sad though it be. 
 For remembrance is all that remaineth for me. 
 
CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 Faint from the bell the ghastly echoes fall, 
 
 That grates within the gray cathedral tower ; 
 Let me not enter through the portal tall, 
 
 Lest the strange spirit of the moonless hour 
 Should give a life to those pale people, who 
 Lie in their fretted niches, two and two, 
 Each with .his head on pillowy stone reposed, 
 And his hands lifted, and his eyelids closed. 
 
 From many a mouldering oriel, as to flout, 
 Its pale, grave brow of ivy-tressed stone, 
 
 Comes the incongruous laugh, and revel shout- 
 Above, some solitary casement, thrown 
 
 Wide open to the wavering night wind, 
 
 Admits its chill, so deathful, yet so kind, 
 
 10 
 
20 CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD. 
 
 Unto the fevered brow and fiery eye 
 
 Of one, whose night hour passeth sleeplessly. 
 
 Ye melancholy chambers ! I could shun 
 
 The darkness of your silence, with such fear, 
 
 As places where slow murder had been done. 
 How many noble spirits have died here, 
 
 Withering away in yearnings to aspire, 
 
 Gnawed by mocked hope — devoured by their own fire ! 
 
 Methinks the grave must feel a colder bed 
 
 To spirits such as these, than unto common dead. 
 
ARLSTODEMUS AT PLAT^EA. 
 
 [Of two Spartans who were prevented by illness from taking part in 
 the battle of Thermopylae, and who were, in consequence, degraded to 
 the level of helots, one, unable to endure the scorn of his countrymen, 
 killed himself ; the other, by name Aristodemus, waited, and when, at 
 the battle of Plata:a, thirty-three thousand allied Greeks stood to receive 
 the final and desperate attack of three hundred thousand chosen 
 Asiatics, and the Spartans, unused to Persian arms, hung slightly back, 
 he charged alone, and, calling to his countrymen to "follow the 
 coward, " broke the enemy's mass, and was found, when the victorious 
 Greeks who followed him had laid two hundred thousand of their enemy 
 dead on the field, lying on a low hillock, with his face turned up to 
 heaven, a group of the Persian nobles lying slaughtered around him. 
 He was refused the honors of burial, because, it was said, he was only 
 courageous in despair.] 
 
 Ye have darkened mine honor and branded my name, 
 Ye have quenched its remembrance in silence and shame. 
 Yet the heart ye call craven, unbroken, hath borne 
 The voice of your anger, the glance of your scorn. 
 
 But the life that hath lingered is now in mine hand,* 
 My waiting was but for a lot of the land, 
 
 1 Sam. xxviii. 21, Job xiii. 14. 
 
 21 
 
22 ARISTUDEMUS AT PLAT.EA. 
 
 Which his measure, who ruleth the battle array, 
 May mete for your best and your bravest to-day. 
 
 My kinsmen, my brothers, your phalanx is fair, 
 There's a shield, as I think, that should surely be there ; 
 Ye have darkened its disk, and its hour hath drawn near 
 To be reared as a trophy or borne as a bier.* 
 
 What said I ? Alas, though the foe in his flight, 
 Should quit me unspoiled on the held of the fight, 
 Ye would leave me to lie, with no hand to inurn, 
 For the dog to devour, or the stranger to spurn ! 
 
 What matter ? Attendants my slumber shall grace, 
 With blood on the breast, and with fear on the face ; 
 And Sparta may own that the death hath atoned 
 For the crime of the cursed, whose life she disowned. 
 
 *[If his body were obtained by the enemy it would be reared as a 
 trophy. If recovered by his friends, borne as a bier, unless, as he im- 
 mediately called to mind, they should deny him funeral honors.] 
 
ARISTODEJIUS AT PLATTE A. 23 
 
 By the banks of Eurotas her maidens shall meet, 
 And her mountains rejoice in the fall of your feet ; 
 And the cry of your conquest be lofty and loud, 
 O'er the lengthened array of the shield or the shroud. 
 
 And the fires of the grave shall empurple the air, 
 When they lick the white dust of the bones ye shall bear ; 
 The priest and the people, at altar and shrine, 
 Shall worship their manes, disdainful of mine. 
 
 Yet say that they fought for the hopes of their breast, 
 For the hearts that had loved them, the lips that had blessed ; 
 For the roofs that had covered, the country that claimed, 
 The sires that had named them, the sons they had named. 
 
 And say that I fought for the land of the free, 
 
 Though its bosom of blessing beat coldly for me ; 
 
 For the lips that had cursed me, the hearts that had scorned, 
 
 And the desolate hope of the death unadorned. 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHAXTA. 
 A PRIZE POEM. 
 
 " Religio. . . .pedibus subjecta vicissim 
 Obteritur. Nos exaequat victoria ccelo." 
 
 — Lucretius. 
 
 'Tis eve — and o'er the face of parting day 
 Quick smiles of summer lightning flit and play ; 
 In pulses of broad light, less seen than felt, 
 They mix in heaven, and on the mountains melt ; 
 Their silent transport fills the exulting air — 
 'Tis eve, and where is evening half so fair ? 
 Oli ! deeply, softly sobs the Indian sea 
 O'er thy dark sands, majestic Dharavee,* 
 When, from each purple hill and polished lake, 
 The answering voices of the night awake 
 The fitful note of many a brilliant bird, — 
 The lizard's plunge, o'er distant waters heard. — 
 
 * The southern promontory of the island of Salsette. 
 
 24 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 25 
 
 The thrill of forest leaves — how soft, how swift 
 
 That, floats and follows where the night-winds drift ; 
 
 Or, piercing through the calmness of the sky, 
 
 The jungle tigers sharp and sudden cry. 
 
 Yet all is peace, for these weak voices tell 
 
 How deep the calm they break but not dispel. 
 
 The twilight heaven rolls on, like some deep stream 
 
 When breezes break not on its moving dream ; 
 
 Its trembling stars continual watches keep 
 
 And pause above Canarah's haunted steep ;* 
 
 Each in its path of first ascension hid 
 
 Behind the height of that pale pyramid, — 
 
 (The strength of nations hewed the basalt spire, f 
 
 And barbed its rocks like sacrificial fire. ) 
 
 Know they the hour's approach, whose fateful flight 
 
 Was watched of yore from yonder cloudless height ? 
 
 Lone on its utmost peak, the Prophet Priest 
 
 Beheld the night unfolded from the East ; 
 
 * The central peak of Salsette. 
 
 f M. Anguetil du Perron, in his accounts of Canarah, says that its 
 peak appears to have been hewn to a point by human art as an emblem 
 of the solar ray. 
 
26 SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 
 
 In prescient awe perused its blazing scroll, 
 And read the records stretched from Pole to Pole ; 
 And though their eyes are dark, their lips are still, 
 "Who watched and Worshipped on Canarah's hill, 
 Wild superstition's visionary power 
 Still rules and fills the spirit of the hour : 
 The Indian maiden, through the scented grove, 
 Seeks the dim shore, and lights the lamp of love ; 
 The pious peasant, awe-struck and alone, 
 With radiant garland crowns the purple stone,* 
 And shrinks, returning through the star-lit glade, 
 When breezes stir the peepul's sacred shade ; f 
 For well his spirit knows the deep appeal 
 That love must mourn to miss, yet fear to feel ; 
 Low sounds, faint rays, upon the senses shed — 
 The voices of the lost, the dark eyes of the dead. 
 
 • "A stone painted with red, and placed at the foot of their favorite 
 tree, is sufficient to call forth the devotion of the poor, who bring to 
 it flowers and simple offerings."— J. S. Buckingham. 
 
 f The superstitious feeling of the Indian with respect to the peepul- 
 tree is well known. Its shade is supposed to be loved and haunted by 
 the dead. 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANT A. 27 
 
 How awful now, when night and silence brood 
 
 O'er Earth's repose and Ocean's solitude, 
 
 To trace the dim and devious paths that guide 
 
 Along Canarah's steep and craggy side, 
 
 Where, girt with gloom — inhabited by fear, — 
 
 The mountain homes of India's gods appear ! 
 
 Eange above range they rise, each hollow cave 
 
 Darkling as death, and voiceless as the grave ; 
 
 Save that the waving weeds iu each recess 
 
 With rustling music mock its loneliness ; 
 
 And beasts of blood disturb, with stealthy tread, 
 
 The chambers of the breathless and the dead. 
 
 All else of life, of worship, past away, 
 
 The ghastly idols fall not, nor decay ; 
 
 Retain the lip of scorn, the rugged frown ; 
 
 And grasp the blunted sword and useless crown ; 
 
 Their altars desecrate, their names untold, 
 
 The hands that formed, the hearts that feared — how 
 
 cold ! 
 Thou too — dark Isle ! whose shadow on the sea 
 Lies like the gloom that mocks our memory 
 
28 SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 
 
 When one bright instant of our former lot 
 "Were grief, remembered, but were guilt, forgot. 
 Rock of the lonely crest ! how oft renewed 
 Have beamed the summers of thy solitude, 
 Since first the myriad steps that shook thy shore 
 Grew frail and few — then paused for evermore ! 
 Answer- -ye long-lulled echoes ! Where are they 
 Who clove your mountains with the shafts of day ; 
 Bade the swift life along their marble fly, 
 And struck their darkness into deity. 
 Nor claimed from thee— pale temple of the wave — 
 Record or rest, a glory or a grave ? 
 Now all are cold — the votary as his god, — 
 And by the shrine he feared, the courts he trod, 
 The livid snake extends his glancing trail, 
 And lifeless murmurs mingle on the gale. 
 
 Yet glorious still, though void, though desolate, 
 Proud Dharapori ! * gleams thy mountain gate, 
 
 * The Indian name for Elephanta.- 
 
SALSETTE AKD ELEPHANTA. 29 
 
 What time, emergent from the eastern wave, 
 
 The keen moon's crescent lights thy sacred cave ; 
 
 And moving beams confuse, with shadowy change, 
 
 Thy columns' massive might and endless range. 
 
 Far, far beneath, where sable waters sleep, 
 
 Those radiant pillars pierce the crystal deep, 
 
 And mocking waves reflect, with quivering smile, 
 
 Their long recession of refulgent aisle ; * 
 
 As, where Atlantis hath her lonely home, 
 
 Her grave of guilt, beneath the ocean's foam ; 
 
 Above the lifeless hearth and guardless gate, 
 
 The wildly-walking surges penetrate, 
 
 And sapphire tints of phosphor lightning fall 
 
 O'er the broad pillar, and the sculptured wall. — 
 
 So, Dharapori ! through thy cold repose 
 
 The flooding lustre of the moonlight flows ; 
 
 New forms of fear, f by every touch displayed, 
 
 Gleam, pale and passioned, through the dreadful shade, 
 
 * The interior of Elephanta is usually damp, and its floor covered with 
 water two or three feet deep. 13y moonlight its shallowness would be 
 unperceived. 
 
 f The sculptures of Elephanta have such "horrible and fearful formes 
 that they make a man's hayre stande upright." — Linschoten. 
 
30 SALSETTE AND ELEPHAKTA. 
 
 In wreathed groups of dim, distorted life, 
 
 In ghastly calmness, or tremendous strife ; 
 
 "While glaring eye and grasping hand attest 
 
 The mocked emotion of the marble breast. 
 
 Thus in the fevered dream of restless pain, 
 
 Incumbent horror broods upon the brain, 
 
 Through mists of blood colossal shapes arise, 
 
 Stretch their stiff limbs, and roll their rayless eyes. 
 
 Yet knew not here the chisel's touch to trace 
 
 The finer lineaments of form and face ; 
 
 No studious art of delicate design 
 
 Conceived the shape, or lingered on the line. 
 
 The sculptor learned, on Indus' plains afar, 
 
 The various pomp of worship and of war ; 
 
 Impetuous ardor in his bosom woke, 
 
 And smote the animation from the rock. 
 
 In close battalions kingly forms advance,* 
 
 Ware the broad shield, and shake the soundless lance ; 
 
 * "Some of these figures have helmets of pyramidal form ; others 
 Wear crowns richly decorated with jewels; others display large bushy 
 ringlets of curled or flowing hair. In their hands they grasp sceptres 
 and shields, the symbols of justice and the ensigns of religion, the wea- 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHAXTA. 31 
 
 With dreadful crests adorned, and orient gem, 
 Lightens the helm and gleams the diadem ; 
 Loose o'er their shoulders falls their flowing hair 
 With wanton wave, and mocks the unmoving air ; 
 Broad o'er their breasts extend the guardian zones 
 Broidered with flowers, and bright with mystic stones ; 
 Poised in setherial march they seem to swim, 
 Majestic motion marked in every limb ; 
 In changeful guise they pass — a lordly train, 
 Mighty in passion, unsubdued in pain ; * 
 Revered as monarchs, or as gods adored, 
 Alternately they rear the sceptre and the sword. 
 Such were their forms and such their martial mien, 
 Who met by Indus' shores the Assyrian queen, f 
 "When, with reverted force, the Indian dyed 
 His javelin in the pulses of her pride, 
 
 pons of war and the trophies of peace." — Maurice, Antiq. of India, 
 vol. ii., p. 145. 
 
 * Many of them have countenances expressive of mental suffering. 
 
 f Semiramis. M D'Ancarville supposes the cave to have been ex- 
 cavated by her army ; and insists on the similarity between the costume 
 of the sculptured figures and that of her Indian adversaries. — See 
 D'Ancarville, vol. i., p. 121. 
 
32 &AL8ETTE AND ELEPHAXTA. 
 
 And cast in cleath-heaps, by the purple flood, 
 Her strength of Babylonian multitude. 
 
 And mightier ones arc there — apart — divine, 
 
 Presiding genii of the mountain shrine : 
 
 Behold, the giant group, the united three, 
 
 Faint symbol of an unknown Deity ! 
 
 Here, frozen into everlasting trance, 
 
 Stern Siva's quivering lip and hooded glance ; 
 
 There, in eternal majesty serene, 
 
 Proud Brahma's painless brow and constant mien ; 
 
 There glows the light of Veeshnu's guardian smile, 
 
 But on the crags that shade yon inmost aisle 
 
 Shine not, ye stars ! Annihilation's lord * 
 
 There waves, with many an arm, the unsated sword. 
 
 Relentless holds the cup of mortal pain, 
 
 And shakes the spectral links that wreathe his ghastly 
 
 chain. 
 Oli, could these lifeless lips be taught to tell 
 (Touched by Chaldean art, or Aral) spell) 
 
 * Alluding to a Bculpture representing the evil principle of India ; 
 
 he seems engaged in human sacrifice, and wears a necklace of skulls. 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 33 
 
 What votaries here have knelt, what victims died, 
 In pangs, their gladness, or in crimes, their pride, 
 How should we shun the awful solitude, 
 And deem the intruding footsteps dashed in blood ! 
 How might the altar-hearths grow warm and red, 
 And the air shadowy with avenging dead ! 
 Behold ! — he stirs — that cold, colossal king ! — 
 "Tis hut the uncertain shade the moonbeams fling ; 
 Hark ! a stern voice awakes with sudden thrill ! — 
 'Twas but the wandering wind's precarious will : 
 The distant echo dies, and all the cave is still. 
 
 Yet Fancy, floating on the uncertain light, 
 
 Fills with her crowded dreams the course of night ; 
 
 At her wild will sethereal forms appear, 
 
 And sounds, long silent, strike the startled ear : 
 
 Behold the dread Mithratic rite reclaim * 
 
 Its pride of ministers, its pomp of flame ! 
 
 * Throughout the description of the rites of Mithra, I have followed 
 Maurice, whose indefatigable research seems almost to have demon- 
 strated the extreme antiquity, at least, of the Elephanta cavern, as well 
 as its application .to the worship of the solar orb, and of fire. For a 
 detailed account of this worship, see Maurice, Indian Antiq.., vol. ii., 
 sec. 7. 
 
34 SALSETTE AND ELEPHAXTA. 
 
 Along the winding walls, in ordered row, 
 
 Flash myriad fires — the fretted columns glow ; 
 
 Beaming above the imitative sky 
 
 Extends the azure of its canopy, 
 
 Fairest where imaged star and airy sprite 
 
 Move in swift beauty and entrancing light ; 
 
 A golden sun reflected lustre flings, 
 
 And wandering Dewtahs* wave their crimson wings ; 
 
 Beneath, fed richly from the Arabian urn, 
 
 Undying lamps before the altar burn ; 
 
 And sleepless eyes the sacred sign behold, 
 
 The spiral orb of radiated gold ; 
 
 On this the crowds of deep voiced priests attend, 
 
 To this they loudly cry, they lowly bend ; 
 
 O'er their wan brows the keen emotions rise, 
 
 And pious phrenzy flashes from their eyes ; 
 
 Phrenzy in mercy sent, in torture tried, 
 
 Through paths of death their only guard and guide, 
 
 * Inferior spirits of various power and disposition, holding in the 
 Hindoo mythology the place of angels. They appear in multitudes on 
 the roof of the Elephant* cavern. 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 35 
 
 When, in dread answer to their youth's appeal, 
 
 Rose the red fire and waved the restless steel,* 
 
 And rushed the wintry billow's wildest wreck, — 
 
 Their God hath called them, and shall danger check ? 
 
 On — on — for ever on, though roused in wrath 
 
 Glare the grim, lion on their lonely path ; 
 
 Though, starting from his coiled malignant rest, 
 
 The deadly dragon lift his crimson crest ; 
 
 Though corpse-like shadows round their footsteps flock, 
 
 And shafts of lightning cleave the incumbent rock ; 
 
 On, for behold, enduring honors wait 
 
 To grace their passage through the golden gate ; f 
 
 Glorious estate, and more than mortal power, 
 
 Succeed the dreadful expiating hour ; 
 
 * Alluding to the dreadful ceremonies of initiation which the priests 
 of Mithra were compelled to undergo, and which seem to have had a 
 close correspondence with the Eleusinian mysteries. See Maurice, 
 Antiq. of India, vol. v. p. 620. 
 
 f The sidereal metempsychosis was represented in the Mithratic rites 
 by the ascent of a ladder, on which there were seven gates : the first of 
 lead, representing Saturn ; the second of tin, Venus ; the third brass, 
 Jupiter ; the fourth iron, Mercury ; the fifth mixed, Mars ; the sixth 
 silver, the Moon ; the seventh of gold, the Sun. 
 
36 SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 
 
 Impurpled robes their weary limbs enfold 
 With stars enwoven, and stiff with heavenly gold ; 
 The mitra* veils their foreheads, rainbow-dyed, 
 The measured steps imperial sceptres guide ; 
 Glorious they move, and pour upon the air 
 The cloud of incense and the voice of prayer ; 
 While through the hollow vault, around them rise 
 Deep echoes from the couch of sacrifice, 
 In passioned gusts of sound, — now loud, now low, 
 With billowy pause, the mystic murmurs flow 
 Far dwindling on the breeze. Ere yet they die 
 Canarah hears, and all his peaks reply ; 
 His crested chasms the vocal winds explore, 
 Waste on the deep, and wander on the shore. 
 Above, the starry gloom is thrilled with fear, 
 The forests shake, the circling hamlets hear, 
 And wake to worship. Many an isle around, 
 Assembling votaries swell the sacred sound, 
 
 * The attire of Mithra's priests was splendid : the robes of purple, 
 with the heavenly constellations embroidered on them in gold. They 
 wore girdles representative of the zodiacal circle, and carried a golden 
 sceptre in the form of a serpent. Ezekiel speaks of them as " exceed 
 ing in dyed attire upon their heads " (xxiii. 15). 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 3? 
 
 And, troop by troop, along the woodland ways, 
 
 In equal measures pour responsive praise : 
 
 To Mithra first their kindling songs addressed, 
 
 Lull his long slumbers in the watery west ; 
 
 Next to the strength of each celestial sign 
 
 They raise the choral chaunt, the breathing line ; 
 
 Keen through the arch of heaven their hymns arise, 
 
 Auspicious splendors deck the answering skies. 
 
 The sacred cohorts, maddening as they sing, 
 
 Far through the air their flashing torches fling ; 
 
 From rock to rock the rushing glories leap, 
 
 Climb the wide hills, and clothe the central steep, 
 
 Till through the endless night a living line 
 
 Of lustre opens on the bounding brine ; 
 
 Ocean rejoices, and his isles prolong, 
 
 With answering zeal, those bursts of flame and song, 
 
 Till the strong vulture on Colombo's peak 
 
 Awakes with ruffled plume and startled shriek, 
 
 And the roused panther of Almorah's wood 
 
 Howls through his violated solitude. 
 
•°>8 SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 
 
 'Tis past, — the mingled dream, — though slow and grey 
 
 On mead and mountain break the dawning day ; 
 
 Though stormy wreaths of lingering cloud oppress 
 
 Long time the winds that breathe — the rays that bless, - 
 
 They come, they come. Night's fitful visions fly 
 
 Like autumn leaves, and fade from fancy's eye ; 
 
 So shall the God of might and mercy dart 
 
 His day-beams through the caverns of the heart ; 
 
 Strike the weak idol from its ancient throne, 
 
 And vindicate the temple for His own. 
 
 Nor will He long delay. A purer light 
 
 Than Mithra cast, shall claim a holier rite ; 
 
 A mightier voice than Mithra's priests could pour 
 
 Resistless soon shall sound along the shore ; 
 
 Its strength of thunder vanquished fiends shall own, 
 
 And idols tremble through their limbs of stone. 
 
 Vain now the lofty light — the marble gleam — 
 Of the keen shaft that rose by Gunga's stream ! 
 When round its base the hostile lightnings glowed, 
 And mortal insult mocked a god's abode, 
 
SALSETTE AND ELEPHANTA. 39 
 
 What power, Destroyer,* seized with taming trance 
 
 Thy serpent sceptre, and thy withering glance ? 
 
 Low in the dust, its rocky sculptures rent, 
 
 Thine own memorial proves thee impotent. 
 
 Thy votaries mourn thy cold unheeding sleep, 
 
 Chide where they praised, and where they worshipped weep. 
 
 Yes — he shall fall, though once his throne was set 
 Where the high heaven and crested mountains met ; 
 Though distant shone with many an azure gem 
 The glacier glory of his diadem ; 
 
 Though sheets of sulphurous cloud and wreathed storm 
 Cast veil of terror round his shadowy form. 
 All, all are vain ! It comes, the hallowed day, 
 Whose dawn shall rend that robe of fear away ; 
 
 * Siva. This column was dedicated to him at Benares ; and a tradi- 
 tion prevailed among his worshippers, that as soon as it should fall, one 
 universal religion would extend over India, and Bramah be no more 
 worshipped. It was lately thrown down in a quarrel between the 
 Hindoos and Mussulmans. (See Heber's Journal.) Siva is spoken of 
 in the following lines, as representative of Hindoo deities in general. 
 His worship seems to have arisen in the fastnesses of the Himalayas, 
 accompanied by all the gloomy features characteristic of the supersti- 
 tions of hill countries. 
 
40 8AL6ETTE AXD ELEPHANTA. 
 
 Then shall the torturing spells that midnight knew 
 Far in the cloven dells of Mount Meru, 
 Then shall the moan of frenzied hymns, that sighed 
 Down the dark vale where Gunga's waters glide, 
 Then shall the idol chariot's thunder cease 
 Before the steps of them that publish peace. 
 Already arc they heard, — how fair, how fleet, 
 Along the mountains flash their bounding feet ! 
 Disease and death before their presence fly ; 
 Truth calls, and gladdened India hears the cry, 
 Deserts the darkened path her fathers trod, 
 And seeks redemption from the Incarnate God, 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 [The Scythians, according to Herodotus, made use of part of their 
 enemies' bodies after death, for many domestic purposes ; particularly 
 of the skull, which they scalped, wrapped in bull's hide, and filled up 
 the cracks with gold ; and having gilded the hide and parts of the 
 bone, used the vessel as a drinking-cup, wreathing it with flowers at 
 feasts.] 
 
 I. 
 
 I thikk my soul was childish yet, 
 
 When first it knew my manhood's foe ; 
 But what I was, or where we met, 
 
 I know not — and I shall not know. 
 But I remember, now, the bed 
 
 On which I waked from such sick slumber 
 As after pangs of powerless dread, 
 Is left upon the limbs like lead. 
 
 Amidst a calm and quiet number 
 
 Of corpses, from whose cold decay 
 
 Mine infant fingers shrank away ; 
 
 41 
 
42 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SOXG. 
 
 My bruin was wild, my limbs were weak, 
 And silence swallowed up my shriek — 
 
 Eleleu. 
 ii. 
 Alas ! my kindred, dark and dead 
 
 Were those from whom I held aloof ; 
 I lay beneath the ruins red 
 
 Of what had been my childhood's roof ; 
 And those who quenched its wasted wood, 
 
 As morning broke on me, and mine, 
 Preserved a babe baptized in blood, 
 And human grief hath been its food, 
 
 And human life its wine. 
 What matter ? — Those who left me there 
 Well nerved mine infant limbs to bear 
 What, heaped upon my haughty head, 
 I might endure — but did not dread. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 in. 
 A stranger's hand, a stranger's love, 
 
 Saved my life and soothed my woe, 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 43 
 
 And taught my youth its strength to prove, 
 To wield the lance, and bend the bow. 
 
 I slew the wolf by Tyres' * shore, 
 
 I tracked the pard by chasm and cliff ; 
 
 Eich were the warrior sj^oils I wore ; 
 
 Ye know me well, though now no more 
 The lance obeys these fingers stiff ; 
 
 My hand was strong, my hope was high, 
 
 All for the glance of one dark eye ; 
 
 The hand is weak, the heart is chill — 
 
 The glance that kindled, colder still. 
 
 Eleleu, 
 
 IV. 
 
 By Tyres' bank, like Tyres' wave, 
 
 The hours of youth went softly by. 
 Alas ! their silence could not save 
 
 My being from an evil eye : 
 It watched me — little though I knew 
 
 The wrath around me rising slow, 
 
 * Tyres, a river of Scythia. now the Dneister. 
 
44 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 Nor deemed my love like Upas dew, 
 A plague, that where it settled, slew. 
 
 My time approached ; I met my foe : 
 Down with a troop he came by night,* 
 AVe fought them by their lances' light. 
 On lifeless hearth, and guardless gate, 
 The dawn of day came desolate. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 Away, away — a Persian's slave, 
 
 I saw my bird of beauty borne, 
 In wild despair, too weak to save, 
 
 Too maddening to mourn. 
 There dwells a sound within my brain 
 
 Of horses hoofs' beat swift and hollow, 
 Heard, when across the distant plain. 
 Elaira stretched her arms in vain, 
 
 To him whose limbs were faint to follow : 
 
 * There were frequent incursions made by the Persians upon the 
 Scythians before the grand invasion of Darius. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 45 
 
 The spoiler knew not, when he fled, 
 The power impending o'er his head ; 
 The strength so few have tameless tried, 
 That love can give for grief to guide. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 VI. 
 
 I flung my bow behind my back, 
 
 And took a javelin in my hand, 
 And followed on the fiery track 
 
 Their rapine left upon the land. 
 The desert sun in silence set, 
 
 The desert darkness climbed the sky ; 
 I knew that one was waking yet, 
 Whose heart was wild, whose eye was wet, 
 
 For me and for my misery. 
 One who had left her glance of grief, 
 Of earthly guides my chosen and chief ; 
 Through thirst and fear, by wave and hill, 
 That dark eye watched and wooed me still. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
46 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Weary and weak their traces lost, 
 
 I roved the brazen cities through ; 
 That Helle's undulating coast 
 
 Both lift beside its billows blue. 
 Till in a palace-bordered street, 
 
 In the dusk starlight of the day, 
 A stalkless flower fell near my feet, 
 Withered and worn, yet passing sweet ; 
 
 Its root was left, — how far away ? 
 Its leaves were wet, though not with dew ; 
 The breast that kept, the hand that threw, 
 Were those of one who sickened more, 
 For the sweet breeze of Tyres' shore. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 My tale is long. Though bolts of brass 
 Held not their captive's faint upbraiding, 
 
 They melt like wax, they bend like grass, 
 At sorrow's touch, when love is aiding ; 
 
A SCYTHIAN" BANQUET SONG. 4? 
 
 The night was dim, the stars were dead, 
 The drifting clouds were grey and wide ; 
 
 The captive joined me and we fled. 
 
 Quivering with joy, though cold with dread, 
 She shuddered at my side. 
 
 We passed the streets, we gained the gate, 
 
 Where round the wall its watchers wait ; 
 
 Our steps beneath were hushed and slow, 
 
 For the third time — I met my foe. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Swift answering as his anger cried, 
 
 Came down the sworded sentinels ; 
 I dashed their closing spears aside ; 
 
 They thicken, as a torrent swells, 
 When tempests feed its mountain source, 
 
 O'er-matched, borne down, with javelins rent, 
 I backed them still with fainting force, 
 Till the life curdled in its course, 
 
 And left my madness innocent. 
 
48 A 3< \TIIIAN. BANQUET SOXG. 
 
 The echo of a maiden's shriek, 
 Mixed with my dreaming long and weak, 
 And when I woke the daybreak fell 
 Into a dark and silent cell. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 Know ye the price that must atone, 
 
 "When power is mocked at by its slave ? 
 Know ye the kind of mercy shown, 
 
 When pride condemns, though love would save ? 
 A sullen plash was heard that night 
 
 To check the calm of Helle's flow ; 
 And there was much of love and light, 
 Quenched, where the foam-globes moved most white, 
 
 With none to save and few to know, 
 Me they led forth, at dawn of day. 
 To mock, to torture, and to slay : 
 They found my courage calm and mild, 
 Until my foe came near and smiled. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 49 
 
 XI. 
 
 He told me how the midnight chasm 
 
 Of ocean had been sweetly fed : 
 He paled — recoiling, for a spasm 
 
 Came o'er the limbs they dreamed were dead : 
 The earth grew hot — the sky grew black — 
 
 The twisted cords gave way like tow ; 
 I felt the branding fetters crack, 
 And saw the torturers starting back, 
 
 And more I do not know, 
 Until my stretched limbs dashed their way 
 Through the cold sea's resulting spray, 
 And left me where its surges bore 
 Their voices to a lifeless shore. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Mine aged eyes are dim and dry ; 
 
 They have not much to see or mourn, 
 Save when in sleep, pale thoughts pass by — 
 
 My heart is with their footsteps worn 
 
50 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 Into a pathway. Swift and steep 
 
 Their troops pass down it— and I feel not — 
 
 Though they have words would make me weep 
 
 If I could tell their meaning deep — 
 But / forget— and they reveal not : 
 
 Oh, lost Elaira ! — when I go 
 
 Where cold hands hold the soundless bow, 
 
 Shall the black earth, all pitiless, 
 Forget the early grave 
 
 Of her, whom beauty did not bless, 
 
 Affection could not save ? 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Oh, lost Elaira ! long for thee 
 
 Sweet Tyres' banks have blushed in vain ; 
 And blight to them and death to me 
 
 Shall break the link of memory's chain. 
 My spirit keeps its lonely lair 
 
 In mouldering lile to burn and blacken ; 
 The throbs that moved it once arc there 
 Like wind- that stir a dead man's hair, 
 
 Unable lo awaken. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 51 
 
 Thy soul on earth supremely smiled, 
 In beauty bright, in mercy mild, 
 It looked to love, it breathed to bless — 
 It died, and left me — merciless. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 And men shrink from me, with no sense 
 
 That the fierce heart they fear and fly, 
 Is one, whose only evidence 
 
 Of beating is in agony. 
 They know, with me, to match or melt, 
 
 The sword or prayer alike are vain ; 
 The spirit's presence, half unfelt, 
 Hath left, — slow withering where it dwelt, 
 
 One precedence of pain. 
 All that my victims feel or fear 
 Is well avenged by something here ; 
 And every curse they breathe on me 
 Joins in the deep voice of the sea. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
52 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 XV. 
 
 It rolls — it coils — it foams — it flashes, 
 
 Pale and putrid — ghastly green ; 
 Lit with light of dead men's ashes 
 
 Flickering through the black weed's screen, 
 Oh ! there along the breathless land, 
 
 Elaira keeps the couch allotted ; 
 The waters wave her weary hand, 
 And toss pale shells and ropy sand 
 
 About her dark hair, clasped and clotted. 
 The purple isles are bright above 
 The frail and moon-blanched bones of love ; 
 Their citron breeze is full of bliss, 
 Her lips are cool without its kiss. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 My thoughts are wandering and weak ; 
 
 Forgive an old man's dotard dreaming ; 
 I know not sometimes when I speak 
 
 Such visions as have quiet seeming. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 I told you how my madness bore 
 
 My limbs from torture. When I woke, 
 I do remember something more 
 Of wandering on the wet sea-shore, 
 
 By waving weed and withered rock, 
 Calling Elaira, till the name 
 Crossed o'er the waters as they came — 
 Mildly — to hallow and to bless 
 Even what had made it meaningless — 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The waves in answering murmurs mixed, 
 
 Tossed a frail fetter on the sand ; 
 Too well I knew whose fingers fixed, 
 
 Whose arm had lost the golden band ; 
 For such it was, as still confines 
 Faint Beauty's arm who will not listen, 
 The words of love that mockery twines 
 To soothe the soul that pants and pines 
 Within its rose-encumbered prison. 
 
54: A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 The waters freed her ; she who wore 
 Fetter or armlet needs no more ; 
 Could the waves tell, who saw me lift, 
 For whom I kept, their glittering gift, 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XYIII. 
 
 Slow drifts the hour when Patience waits 
 
 Eevenge's answering orison ; 
 But — one by one the darkening Fates 
 
 Will draw the balanced axle on, 
 Till torture pays the price of pride, 
 
 And watches wave with sullen shine, 
 The sword of sorrow justified. 
 The long years kept their quiet glide, 
 
 His hour was past : they brought me mine. 
 When steed to steed, and rank to rank, 
 With matched numbers fierce and frank, 
 (The war- wolves waiting near to see 
 Our battle bright) my Foe met Me. 
 
 Ha — Hurra ! 
 
• 
 
 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 As the tiger tears through the jungle reeds, 
 
 As the west wind breaks through the sharp corn ears, 
 As the quick death follows where the lightning leads, 
 
 Did my dark horse bear through the bended spears ; 
 And the blood came up to my brain like a mist, 
 
 With a dark delight and a fiery feel ; 
 For the black darts hailed, and the javelins hissed, 
 To the corpses clasped in their tortured twist, 
 
 From mine arms like rain from the red-hot steel. 
 Well went the wild horses — well rode their lords — 
 Wide waved the sea of their circling swords; 
 But down went the wild steeds — down went the sea — 
 Down went the dark banners — down went He. 
 
 Ha — Hurra ! 
 
 xx. 
 
 For, forward fixed, my frenzy rushed, 
 
 To one pale plume of fitful wave ; 
 With failing strength, o'er corpses crushed, 
 
 My horse obeyed the spurs I gave. 
 
56 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 Slow rolled the tide of battle by, 
 
 And left me on the field alone 
 Save that a goodly company 
 Lay gazing on the bright blue sky, 
 
 All as stiff as stone. 
 And the howling wolves came, merry and thick, 
 The flesh to tear and the bones to pick. 
 I left his carcass, a headless prize, 
 To these priests of mine anger's sacrifice. 
 
 Ha — Hurra! 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Hungry they came, though at first they fled 
 
 From the grizzly look of a stranger guest — 
 From a horse with its hoof on a dead man's head, 
 
 And a soldier who leaned on a lance in his breast. 
 The night wind's voice was hoarse and deep, 
 
 But there were thoughts within me rougher, 
 When my foiled passion could not keep 
 His eyes from settling into sleep 
 
 That could not see, nor suffer. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 57 
 
 He knew his spirit was delivered 
 By the last nerve my sword had severed, 
 And lay — his death pang scarcely done, 
 Stretched at my mercy — asking none. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 His lips were pale. They once had worn 
 
 A fiercer paleness. For awhile 
 Their gashes kept the curl of scorn, 
 
 But now — they always smile. 
 A life like that of smouldering ashes, 
 
 Had kept his shadowy eyeballs burning. 
 Full through the neck my sabre crashes — 
 The black blood burst beneath their lashes 
 
 In the strained sickness of their turning. 
 By my bridle-rein did I hang the head, 
 And I spurred my horse through the quick and dead, 
 Till his hoofs and his hair dropped thick and fresh, 
 From the black morass of gore and flesh. 
 
 Ha — Hurra ! 
 
58 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 My foe had left me little gold 
 
 To mock the stolen food of the grave, 
 Except one circlet : I have told 
 
 The arm that lost, the surge that gave, 
 Flexile it was, of fairest twist : 
 
 Pressing its sunlike, woven line, 
 A careless counter had not missed 
 One pulse along a maiden's wrist, 
 
 So softly did the clasp confine. 
 This — molten till it flowed as free 
 As daybreak on the Egean sea, 
 He who once clasped — for Love to sever 
 And death to lose, received — for ever. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 I poured it round the wrinkled brow, 
 Till hissed its cold, corrupted ;skin ; 
 
 Through sinuous nerves the liery flow 
 Sucked and seared the brain within. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 59 
 
 The brittle bones were well annealed, 
 A bull's hide bound the goblet grim, 
 
 Which backwards bended, and revealed 
 
 The dark eye sealed, the set lips peeled : 
 Look here ! how I have pardoned him. 
 
 They call it glorious to forgive ; 
 
 'Tis dangerous, among those that live, 
 
 But the dead are daggerless and mild, 
 
 And niv foe smiles on me — like a child. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Fill me the wine ! for daylight fades, 
 
 The evening mists fall cold and blue ; 
 My soul is crossed wdth lonelier shades, 
 
 My brow is damp with darker dew ; 
 The earth hath nothing but its bed 
 
 Left more for me to seek, or shun ; 
 My rage is passed— my vengeance fed — 
 The grass is wet with what I've shed, 
 
 The air is dark with what I've done ; 
 
60 A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 
 
 And the gray mound, that I have built 
 Of intermingled grief and guilt, 
 Sits on my breast with sterner seat 
 Than my old heart can bear, and beat. 
 
 Eleleu. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Fill wine ! These fleshless jaws are dry, 
 
 And gurgle with the crimson breath ; 
 Fill me the wine ! for such as I 
 
 Are meet, methinks, to drink with death. 
 Give me the roses ! They shall weave 
 
 One crown for me, and one for him, 
 Fresher than his compeers receive, 
 Who slumber where the white worms leave 
 
 Their tracks of slime on cheek and limb. 
 Kiss me, mine enemy ! Lo ! how it slips, 
 The rich red wine through his skeleton lips ; 
 His eye-holes glitter, his loose teeth shake, 
 Bui their words arc all drowsy and will not wake. 
 
A SCYTHIAN BANQUET SONG. 61 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 That lifeless gaze is fixed on me ; 
 
 Those lips would hail a boimden brother ; 
 "We sit in love, and smile to see 
 
 The things that we have made each other. 
 The wreaking of our wrath has reft 
 
 Our souls of all that loved or lightened : 
 He knows the heart his hand has left, 
 He sees its calm and closeless cleft, 
 
 And I — the bones my vengeance whitened. 
 Kiss me, mine enemy ! Fill thee with wine ! 
 Be the flush of thy revelling mingled with mine ; 
 Since the hate and the horror we drew with our breath 
 Are lost in forgiveness, and darkened in death. 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 
 
 When the master of a Scythian family died he was placed in his 
 state chariot, and carried to visit every one of his blood relations. Each 
 of them gave him and his attendants a splendid feast at which the dead 
 man sat at the head of the table, and a piece of everything was put on 
 his plate. In the morning he continued his circuit. This round of 
 visits generally occupied nearly forty days, and he was never buried 
 till the whole number had elapsed. I have taken him at about six 
 days old when a little phosphoric light might play about his skin in 
 the dark, and yet the corruption would not, in a cool country, have 
 made anything shapeless or decidedly unpleasant. — See Herodotus, 
 Melpomene, 73. 
 
 I. 
 
 The feast is full, the guests are gay, 
 
 Though at his lance-illumined, door 
 Still must the anxious master stay, 
 
 For, by the echoing river shore, 
 Ee hears the hot and hurrying beat 
 Of harnessed horse's flying feet, 
 And waits to watch and yearns to greet 
 
 The coming of the brave. 
 
 62 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 63 
 
 Behold — like showers of silver sleet, 
 His lines of lances wind and wave : 
 He comes as he was wont to ride 
 By Hypanis' war troubled tide, 
 When, like the west wind's sternest stoop, 
 Was the strength of his tempestuous troop, 
 And when their dark steed's shadows swift 
 Had crossed the current's foamless drift, 
 The light of the river grew dazzled and dim, 
 With the flash of the hair and the flight of the limb. 
 
 ii. 
 He comes — urged on by shout and lash, 
 
 His favorite courser flies ; 
 There's frenzy in its drooping dash, 
 
 And sorrow in its eyes. 
 Close on its hoofs the chariots crash, 
 Their shook reins ring — their axles flash — 
 The charioteers are wild and rash ; 
 Panting and cloven the swift air feels 
 The red breath of the whirling wheels, 
 
64 THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 
 
 Hissing with heat, and drunk with speed 
 
 Of wild delight, that seems to feed 
 
 Upon the fire of its own flying ; 
 
 Yet he for whom they race is lying 
 
 Motionless in his chariot, and still 
 
 Like one of weak desire or fettered will, 
 
 Is it the sun-lulled sleep of weariness 
 
 That weighs upon him ? Lo ! there is no stress 
 
 Of slumber on his eyelids — some slow trance, 
 
 Seems dwelling on the darkness of his glance ; 
 
 Its depth is quiet, and its keenness cold 
 
 As an eagle's quenched with lightning, the close fold 
 
 Of his strong arms is listless, like the twine 
 
 Of withered weeds along the waving line 
 
 Of flowing streams ; and o'er his face a strange 
 
 Deep shadow is cast, which doth not move nor change. 
 
 III. 
 
 At the known gate the coursers check, 
 With panting breast and lowly neck ; 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. C5 
 
 From kingly group, from menial crowd, 
 The cry of welcome rings aloud : 
 It was not wont to be so weak, — 
 Half a shout and half a shriek, 
 Mixed with the low yet penetrating quiver 
 Of constrained voices, such as creep 
 Into cold words, when, dim and deep, 
 Beneath the wild heart's death-like shiver 
 Mocks at the message that the lips deliver. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Doth he not hear ? Will he not wake ? 
 That shout of welcome did not break, 
 Even for an instant on the trace 
 Of the dark shadow o'er his face. 
 Behold, his slaves in silence lift 
 That frame so strong, those limbs so swift 9 
 Like a sick child's ; though half erect 
 He rose when first his chariot checked, 
 He fell — as leaves fall on the spot 
 Where summer sun shall waken not 
 
66 THE SCYTHIAN" GUEST. 
 
 The mingling of their veined sensation, 
 With the black earth's wormy desolation. 
 With stealthy tread, like those that dread 
 To break the j^eace of sorrow's slumber, 
 
 They move, whose martial force he led, 
 "Whose arms his passive limbs encumber : 
 
 Through passage and port, through corridor and court, 
 They hold their dark, slow-trodden track ; 
 
 Beneath that crouching figure's scowl 
 The household dogs hang wildly back, 
 
 With wrinkled lip and hollow howl ; 
 And on the mien of those they meet, 
 
 Their presence passes like the shadow 
 Of the gray storm-cloud's swirling sheet, 
 
 Along some soft sun-lighted meadow ; 
 For those who smiled before they met, 
 
 Have turned away to smile no more; 
 Even as they pass, their lips forget 
 
 The words they wove — the hues they wore; 
 Even as they look, the eyes grow wet 
 
 That glanced most bright before ! 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 67 
 
 V. 
 
 The feast is ranged, the guests are met ; 
 
 High on the central throne, 
 That dark and voiceless Lord is set, 
 
 And left alone ; 
 And the revel is loud among the crowd, 
 
 As the laugh on surges free, 
 Of their merry and multitudinous lips, 
 When the fiery foamlight skims and skips, 
 
 Along the sounding sea. 
 The wine is red and wildly shed, 
 The wreathed jest is gaily sped. 
 And the rush of their merrim::it rises aloof 
 Into the shade of the ringing roof ; 
 And yet their cheeks look faint and dead, 
 
 And their lips look pale and dry ; 
 In every heart there dwells a dread, 
 
 And a trouble in every eye. 
 
 VI. 
 
 For sternly charmed, or strangely chill, 
 That lonely Lord sits stiff and still, 
 
G8 THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 
 
 Far in the chamber gathered back 
 
 Where the lamps are few, and the shadows black ; 
 
 So that the strained eye scarce can guess 
 
 At the fearful form of his quietness, 
 
 And shrinks from what it cannot trace, 
 
 Yet feels, is worse than even the error 
 That veils, within that ghastly space, 
 The shrouded form and shadowed face 
 
 Of indistinct, unmoving terror. 
 And the life and light of the atmosphere 
 Are choked with mingled mist and fear, 
 Something half substance and half thought,— 
 A feeling, visibly inwrought 
 Into the texture of the air ; 
 And though the fanned lamps flash and 11. ire 
 Among the other guests — by Him, 
 They have grown narrow, and blue and dim, 
 And steady in their fire, as if 
 Some frigid horror made them stiff. 
 Nor eye hath marked, nor ear hath heard 
 That form, if once it breathed or stirred ; 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST, 69 
 
 Though the dark revel's forced fits 
 Penetrate where it sleeps and sits ; 
 But this, their fevered glances mark 
 Ever, for ever, calm and dark ; 
 With lifeless hue, and changeless trace, 
 That shadow dwells upon his face. 
 
 VII. 
 
 It is not pain, nor passion, but a deep 
 
 Incorporated darkness, like the sleep 
 
 Of the lead-coloured anger of the ocean, 
 
 When the heaven is fed with death, and its gray motion 
 
 Over the waves, invisible — it seems 
 
 Entangled with the flesh, till the faint gleams 
 
 Of natural flush have withered like the light 
 
 Of the keen morning, quenched with the close flight 
 
 Of thunder ; and beneath that deadly veil, 
 
 The coldness of the under-skin is pajp 
 
 And ghastly, and transparent as beneath 
 
 Some midnight vapour's intertwined wreath 
 
 Glares the green moonlight ; and a veined fire 
 
 Seems throbbing through it, like a dim desire 
 
70 THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 
 
 Felt through inanimation, of charmed life 
 Struggling with strong sick pants of beaming strife, 
 That wither and yet warm not : — through its reins, 
 The quenched blood beats not, burns not, but dark 
 
 stains 
 Of congealed blackness, on the cheek and brow, 
 
 Lie indistinct amidst their frightful shade ; 
 The breathless lips, like two thin flakes of snow, 
 
 Gleam with wan lines, by some past agony made 
 To set into the semblance of a smile, 
 Such as strong-hearted men wear wildly, while 
 Their souls are twined with torture ; calm and fixed, 
 
 And yet distorted, as it could not be, 
 Had not the chill with which it froze been mixed 
 
 With twitching cords of some strong agony. 
 And the Avhite teeth gleam through the ghastly chasm 
 Of that strange smile ; close clenched, as the last spasm 
 Of the wrung nerves has knit them; could they move, 
 They would gnash themselves to pieces; from above 
 The veiling shadow of the forehead falls, 
 Yet with an under-glare the fixed balls 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 71 
 
 Of the dark eyes gleam steadily, though not 
 With any inward light, or under-thought, 
 But casting back from their forgetful trance, 
 To each who looks, the flash of his own glance ; 
 So that each feels, of all assembled there, 
 Fixed on himself, that strange and meaning glare 
 Of eyes most motionless ; the long dark hair 
 Hangs tangled o'er the faded feature's gloom, 
 Like withered weeds above a mouldering tomb, 
 Matted in black decay ; the cold night air 
 Hath stirred them once or twice, even as despair 
 Plays with the heart's worn chords, that last retain 
 Their sense of sorrow, and their pulse of pain. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Yet strike, oh ! strike the chorded shell, 
 
 And let the notes be low and skilled; 
 Perchance the words he loved so well 
 
 May thrill as once they thrilled. 
 That deadened ear may still be true 
 To the soft voice that once it knew; 
 
72 THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 
 
 And the throbs that beat below the heart, 
 
 And the joys that burn above, 
 Shall bid the light of laughter dart 
 
 Along the lips of love. 
 Alas ! those tones are all untold 
 On ear and heart so closed and cold ; 
 The slumber shall be sound, — the night, — how long ! 
 That will not own the power of smile or song ; 
 Those lips of love may burn, his eyes are dim ; 
 That voice of joy may wake, but not for him. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The rushing wine, the rose's flush, 
 
 Have crowned the goblet's glancing brim; 
 But who shall call the blossom's blush, 
 
 Or bid the goblet flow for him? 
 For how shall thirst or hunger's heat 
 
 Attend the sunless track. 
 Towards the cool and calm retreat; 
 From which his courser's flashing feet 
 
 Can never bear him back ? 
 
THE SCYTHIAN GUEST. 73 
 
 There, by the cold corpse-guarded hill, 
 The shadows fall both broad and still ; 
 There shall they fall at night, — at noon, 
 
 Nor own the day star's warning, 
 Grey shades, that move not with the moon, 
 
 And perish not with morning. 
 
 Farewell, farewell, thou presence pale ! 
 
 The bed is stretched where thou shouldst be ; 
 The dawn may lift its crimson veil, 
 
 It doth not breathe, nor burn for thee. 
 The mien of might, the glance of light, 
 
 That checked or cheered the war's career, 
 Are dreadless in the fiery fight, 
 
 Are dreadful only here. 
 Exulting hatred, red and rife, 
 
 May smile to mark thine altered brow ; 
 There are but those w r ho loved in life, 
 
 Who fear thee, now. 
 
74 THE SCYTHIAN 0UB8 
 
 Farewell, farewell, thou Presence pale ! 
 
 The couch is near where thou shouldst be ; 
 Thy troops of Death have donned their mail ; 
 
 And wait and watch for thee. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 I. 
 
 It is most sad to see — to know 
 This world so full of war and woe, 
 
 E'er since our parents failing duty. 
 Bequeathed the curse to all below, 
 
 And left the burning breach of beauty. 
 Where the flower hath fairest hue, 
 
 Where the breeze hath balmiest breath, 
 Where the dawn hath softest dew, 
 Where the heaven hath deepest blue, 
 
 There is death. 
 Where the gentle streams of thinking, 
 
 Through our hearts that flow so free, 
 Have the deepest, softest sinking 
 
 And the fullest melody ; 
 Where the crown of hope is nearest, 
 Where the voice of joy is clearest, 
 
 To 
 
76 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Where the heart of youth is lightest, 
 Where the light of love is brightest, 
 There is death. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is the hour when (lay's delight 
 
 Fadeth in the dewy sorrow 
 Of the star inwoven night ; 
 And the red lips of the west 
 Are in smiles of lightning drest, 
 
 Speaking of a lovely morrow : 
 But there's an eye in which, from far, 
 The chill beams of the evening star 
 
 Do softly move, and mildly quiver ; 
 Which, ere the purple mountains meet 
 The light of morning's misty feet, 
 
 Will be dark — and dark for ever. 
 
 in. 
 
 It was within a convent old, 
 
 Through her lips the low breath sighing, 
 
THE BEOKEN CHAIN. 77 
 
 Which the quick pains did unfold 
 With a paleness calm, but cold, 
 
 Lay a lovely lady dying. 
 As meteors from the sunless north 
 
 Through long low clouds illume the air, 
 So brightly shone her features forth 
 
 Amidst her darkly tangled hair ; 
 And, like a spirit, still and slow, 
 
 A light beneath that raven veil 
 Moved, — where the blood forgot to glow, 
 As moonbeams shine on midnight snow, 
 
 So dim, — so sad, — so pale. 
 And, ever as the death came nearer, 
 That melancholy light waxed clearer : 
 It rose, it shone, it never dwindled, 
 
 As if in death it could not die ; 
 The air was filled with it, and kindled 
 
 As souls are by sweet agony. 
 Where once the life was rich and red, 
 The burning lip was dull and dead, 
 As crimson cloud-streaks melt away, 
 Before a ghastly darkened day. 
 
78 THE BROKEN CHAIN - . 
 
 Faint and low the pulses faded, 
 
 One by one, from brow and limb ; 
 There she lay — her dark eyes shaded 
 
 By her fingers dim ; 
 And through their paly brightness burning 
 With a wild inconstant motion, 
 As reflected stars of morning 
 
 Through the crystal foam of ocean. 
 There she lay — like something holy, 
 Moveless — voiceless, breathing slowly, 
 Passing, withering, fainting, failing, 
 Lulled and lost and unbewailing. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The abbess knelt beside, to bless 
 Her parting hour with tenderness, 
 And watched the light of life depart, 
 With tearful eye and weary heart ; 
 And, ever and anon, would dip 
 
 Her fingers in the hallowed water, 
 And lay it on her parching lip, 
 
 Or cross her death damped brow ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 79 
 
 And softly whisper, — Peace, — my daughter, 
 
 For thou shalt slumber softly now. 
 And upward held, with pointing finger, 
 
 The cross before her darkening eye ; 
 Its glance was changing, nor did linger 
 
 Upon the ebon and ivory ; 
 Her lips moved feebly, and the air 
 Between them whispered — not with prayer ! 
 Oh ! who shall know what wild and deep 
 Imaginations rouse from sleep, 
 Within that heart, whose quick decay 
 So soon shall sweep them all away. 
 Oh ! who shall know what things they be 
 That tongue would tell — that glance doth see ; 
 Which rouse the voice, the vision fill, 
 Ere eye be dark, and tongue be still. 
 
 It is most fearful when the light 
 
 Of thoughts, all beautiful and bright, 
 
80 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 That through the heart's illumination 
 
 Darts burning beams and fiery flashes, 
 Fades into weak wan animation, 
 
 And darkens into dust and ashes ; 
 And hopes, that to the heart have been 
 As to the forest is its green, 
 
 (Or as the gentle passing by 
 Of its spirits' azure wings 
 
 Is to the broad, wind-wearied sky) ; 
 Do pale themselves like fainting things, 
 
 And wither, one by one, away, 
 Leaving a ghastly silence where 
 
 Their voice was wont to move and play 
 Amidst the fibres of our feeling, 
 Like the low and unseen stealing, 
 
 Of the soft and sultry air ; 
 That, with its fingers weak unweaves 
 
 The dark and intert angled hair, 
 Of many moving forest leaves ; 
 And, though their life be lost do float, 
 Around us still, yet far remote, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 81 
 
 And come at the same call arranged, 
 
 By the same thoughts, but oh, how changed ! 
 
 Alas ! dead hopes are fearful things, 
 
 To dwell around us, for their eyes 
 Pierce through our souls like adder stings ; 
 
 Vampyre-like their troops arise, 
 Each in his own death entranced, 
 Frozen and corpse-countenanced ; 
 Filling memory's maddened eye 
 With a shadowed mockery. 
 And a wan and fevered vision, 
 Of her loved and lost Elysian ; 
 
 Until we hail, and love, and bless 
 The last strange joy, where joy hath fled, 
 The last one hope, where hope is dead, 
 
 The finger of forgetfulness ; 
 Which, dark as night, and dull as lead, 
 Comes across the sjnrit passing, 
 
 Like a coldness through night air, 
 With its withering wings effacing 
 
 Thoughts that lived or lingered there ; 
 
82 THE BROKEN CHART. 
 
 Light, and life, and joy, and pain, 
 Till the frozen heart rejoices, 
 As the echoes of lost voices 
 
 Die and do not rise again ; 
 And shadowy memories wake no more 
 Along the hearts' deserted shore ; 
 But fall and faint away and sicken, 
 Like a nation fever-stricken, 
 And see not from the bosom reft 
 The desolation they have left. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Yet, though that trance be still and deep, 
 It will be broken ere its sleep 
 
 Be dark and unawaked — forever ; 
 And from the soul quick thoughts will leap 
 
 Forth like a sad, sweet-singing river, 
 Whose gentle waves flow softly o'er 
 That broken heart, — that desert shore ; 
 The lamp of life leaps up before 
 
THE BROKEN CHAItf. 83 
 
 Its light be lost to live no more ; 
 
 Ere yet its shell of clay be shattered, 
 And all the beams at once could pour, 
 
 In dust of death be darkly scattered. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Alas ! the stander-by might tell 
 That lady's racking thoughts too well ; 
 The work within he might descry 
 By trembling brow, and troubled eye, 
 That as the lightning fiery, fierce, 
 
 Strikes chasms along the keen ice plain ; 
 The barbed and burning memories pierce 
 
 Her dark and dying brain. 
 And many mingled visions swim 
 "Within the convent chamber dim ; 
 The sad twilight whose lingering lines 
 Fall faintly through the forest pines, 
 And with their dusky radiance lume 
 That lowly bed and lonely room, 
 Are filled, before her earnest gaze, 
 With dazzling dreams of by-gone days. 
 
84 THE BROKEN" CHAIN. 
 
 They come, they come, a countless host, 
 Forms long unseen, and looks long lost, 
 And voices loved, — not well forgot, 
 
 Awake and seem, with accents dim, 
 Along the convent air to float ; 
 That innocent air that knoweth not, 
 
 A sound except the vesper hymn. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 'Tis past, that rush of hurried thought, 
 The light within her deep dark eye 
 Was quenched by a wan tear mistily. 
 Which trembled though it lightened not, 
 As the cold peace, which all may share, 
 Soothed the last sorrow life could bear. 
 What grief was that, the broken heart 
 Loved to (lie hist, and would not part ? 
 What grief was that, whose calmness cold 
 By deatli alone could be consoled ? 
 As the soft hand of coming resi 
 Bowed her fair head upon her breast, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 85 
 
 As the last pulse decayed, to keep 
 Her heart from heaving in its sleep, 
 The silence of her voice was broken, 
 
 As by a gasp of mental pain ; 
 " May the faith thou hast forgotten 
 
 Bind thee with its broken chain." 
 The Abbess raised her, but in vain ; 
 
 For, as the last faint word was spoken, 
 The silver cord was burst in twain, 
 
 The golden bowl was broken. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 I. 
 The bell from Saint Cecilia's shrine 
 
 Had tolled the evening hour of prayer ; 
 With tremulation, far and fine, 
 
 It w T aked the purple air : 
 The peasant heard its distant beat, 
 And crossed his brow w T ith reverence meet : 
 The maiden heard it sinking sweet 
 
86 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Within her jasmine bower, 
 And treading down, with silver feet, 
 
 Each pale and passioned flower : 
 The weary pilgrim, lowly lying 
 
 By Saint Cecilia's fountain grey, 
 Smiled to hear that curfew dying 
 
 Down the darkening day : 
 And where the white waves move and glisten 
 
 Along the river's reedy shore, 
 The lonely boatman stood to listen, 
 
 Leaning on his lazy oar. 
 
 n. 
 
 On Saint Cecilia's vocal spire 
 
 The sun had cast his latest fire, 
 
 And flecked the west with many a fold 
 
 Of purple clouds o'er bars of gold. 
 
 That vocal spire is all alone, 
 
 Albeit its many winding tone 
 
 Floats waste away — oh ! far away, 
 
 Where bowers are bright and fields are gay; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 87 
 
 That vocal spire is all alone, 
 
 Amidst a secret wilderness, 
 With deep free forest overgrown ; 
 
 And purple mountains, which the kiss 
 Of pale-lipped clouds doth fill with love 
 Of the bright heaven that burns above, 
 The woods around are wild and wide, 
 
 And interwove with breezy motion ; 
 Their bend before the tempest tide 
 
 Is like the surge of shoreless ocean ; 
 Their summer voice is like the tread 
 Of trooping steeds to battle bred ; 
 Their autumn voice is like the cry 
 Of a nation clothed with misery ; 
 And the stillness of the winter's wood 
 Is as the hush of a multitude. 
 
 in. 
 The banks beneath are flecked with light, 
 All through the clear and crystal 'night, 
 For as the blue heaven, rolling on, 
 Doth lift the stars up one by one ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Each, like a bright eye through its gates 
 
 Of silken lashes dark and long, 
 With lustre fills, and penetrates 
 
 Those branches close and strong ; 
 And nets of tangled radiance weaves 
 Between the many twinkling leaves, 
 
 And through each small and verdant chasm 
 Lets fall a flake of fire, 
 
 Till every leaf, with voiceful spasm, 
 Wakes like a golden lyre. 
 
 Swift, though still, the fiery thrill 
 Creeps along from spray to spray, 
 
 Light and music, mingled, fill 
 Every pulse of passioned breath ; 
 Which, o'er the incense — sickened death 
 Of the faint flowers, that live by day, 
 Floats like a soul above the clay, 
 \\ hose beauty hath not passed away. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Hark ! hark ! along the twisted roof 
 Of bough and leafage, tempest-proof, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 89 
 
 There whispers, hushed and hollow, 
 The beating of a horse's hoof, 
 
 Which low, faint echoes follow, 
 Down the deeply-swarded floor 
 
 Of a forest aisle, the muffled tread, 
 
 Hissing where the leaves are dead, 
 Increases more and more ; 
 
 And lo ! between the leaves and light, 
 Up the avenue's narrow sjian, 
 
 There moves a blackness, shaped like 
 The shadow of a man. 
 Nearer now, where through the maze 
 Cleave close the horizontal rays : 
 It moves — a solitary knight, 
 Borne with undulation light 
 
 As is the windless walk of ocean, 
 On a black steed's Arabian grace, 
 Mighty of mien, and proud of pace, 
 
 But modulate of motion. 
 O'er breast and limb, from head to heel, 
 Fall flexile folds of sable steel-; 
 
90 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Little the ligli tning of war could avail, 
 
 If it glanced on the strength of the folded mail. 
 
 The beaver bars his vizage mask, 
 By outward bearings unrevealed : 
 
 He bears no crest upon his casque, 
 Xo'symbol on his shield. 
 
 Slowly and with slackened rein, 
 
 Either in sorrow, or in pain, 
 Through the forest he joaces on, 
 
 As our life does in a desolate dream, 
 When the heart and the limbs arc as heavy as stone. 
 
 And the remembered tone and moony gleam 
 Of hushed voices and dead eyes 
 Draw us on the dim path of shadowy destinies. 
 
 y. 
 The vesper chime hath ceased to beat, 
 And the hill echoes to repeat 
 
 The trembling of the argent bell. 
 What second sounding — dead and deep, 
 And cold of cadence, stirs the sleep 
 
 Of twilight with itfl sullen swell ? 
 
THE BROKEN" CHAIN. 91 
 
 The knight drew bridle, as he heard 
 
 Its voice creep through his beaver barred, 
 
 Just where a cross of marble stood, 
 
 Grey in the shadow of the wood. 
 
 Whose youngest coppice, twined and torn, 
 
 Concealed its access worship-worn : 
 
 It might be chance — it might be art, 
 
 Or opportune, or unconfessed, 
 But from this cross there did depart 
 
 A pathway to the west ; 
 By which a narrow glance was given, 
 To the high hills and highest heaven, 
 To the blue river's bended line, 
 And Saint Cecilia's lonely shrine. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Blue, and baseless, and beautiful 
 Did the boundless mountains bear 
 Their folded shadows into the golden air. 
 The comfortlessness of their chasms was full 
 Of orient cloud and undulating mist, 
 Which, where their silver cataracts hissed, 
 
92 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Quivered with panting colour. Far above 
 
 A lightning pulse of soundless fire did move 
 
 In the blue heaven itself, and, snake-like slid 
 
 Round peak and precipice, and pyramid ; 
 
 White lines of light along their crags alit, 
 
 And the cold lips of their chasms were wreathed 
 
 with it, 
 Until they smiled with passionate fire ; the sky 
 Hung over them with answering ecstasy ; 
 Through its pale veins of cloud, like blushing blood, 
 From south to north the swift pulsation glowed 
 With infinite emotion ; but it ceased 
 
 In the far chambers of the dewy west. 
 There the weak day stood withering, like a spirit 
 
 Which, in its dim departure, turns to bless 
 Their sorrow whom ii leaveth, to inherit 
 Their lonelv lot of night and nothingness. 
 
 Keen in its edge, against the farthest light, 
 The cold calm earth its black horizon lifted, 
 
 Though a faint vapour, which the winds had sifted 
 
 Like thin sea-sand, in undulations white 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 93 
 
 And multitudinous, veiled the lower stars. 
 And over this there hung successive bars 
 Of crimson mist, which had no visible ending 
 But in the eastern gloom ; voiceless and still, 
 
 Illimitable in their arched extending, 
 
 # 
 They kept their dwelling place in heaven ; the chill 
 
 Of the passing night-wind stirred them not ; the ascending 
 
 Of the keen summer moon was marked by them 
 Into successive steps ; the plenitude 
 Of pensive light was kindled and subdued 
 
 Alternate, as her crescent keel did stem 
 Those waves of currentless cloud, the diadem 
 
 Of her companion planet near her, shed 
 Keen quenchless splendor down the drowsy air : 
 
 Glowed as she glowed, and followed where she led, 
 High up the hill of the night heaven, where 
 Thin threads of darkness, braided like black hair, 
 
 "Where in long trembling tresses interwoven, 
 The soft blue eyes of the superior deep 
 Looked through them, with the glance of those w r ho 
 cannot weep 
 
 For sorrow. Here and there the veil was cloven, 
 
94 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 By crossing of faint winds, whose wings did keep 
 Such cadence as the breath of dreamless sleep 
 Among the stars, and soothed with strange delight 
 The vain vacuity of the Infinite. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Stiff as stone, and still as death, 
 
 Stood the knight like one amazed, 
 And dropped his rein, and held his breath, 
 
 So anxiously he gazed. 
 Oh ! well might such a scene and sun 
 
 Surprise the sudden sight, 
 And yet his mien was more of one 
 
 In dread than in delight. 
 His glance was. not on heaven or hill, 
 
 On cloud or lightning, swift or still, 
 azure earth or orient air ; 
 But long his fixed look did lie 
 On one bright line of western sky, — 
 
 What saw he there ? 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 95 
 
 VIII. 
 
 On the brow of a lordly line 
 
 Of chasm-divided crag, there stood 
 The walls of Saint Cecilia's shrine. 
 
 Above the undulating wood 
 Broad basalt bulwarks, stern and stiff, 
 Ribbed, like black bones, the grisly cliff. 
 On the torn summit stretched away 
 The convent walls, tall, old, and grey ; 
 So strong their ancient size did seem, 
 
 So stern their mountain seat, 
 Well might the passing pilgrim deem 
 
 Such desperate dwelling place more meet 
 For soldier true, or baron bold, 
 For army's guard or bandit's hold, 
 Than for the rest, deep, calm, and cold, 
 Of those whose tale of troublous life is told. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The topmost tower rose, narrow and tall, 
 O'er the broad mass of crag and wall; 
 
9G THE BROKEN CHAIN". 
 
 Against the streak of western light 
 
 It raised its solitary height. 
 
 Just above, nor far aloof, 
 
 From the cross upon its roof, 
 
 Sat a silver star. 
 
 The low clouds drifting fast and far, 
 
 Gave, by their own mocking loss, 
 
 Motion to the star and cross. 
 
 Even the black tower was stirred below 
 
 To join the dim, mysterious march, 
 The march so strangely slow. 
 
 Near its top an opening arch 
 Let through a passage of pale sky 
 Enclosed with stern captivity; 
 And in its hollow height there hung, 
 From a black bar, a brazen bell : 
 Its hugeness was traced clear and well 
 The slanting rays among. 
 Ever and anon it swung 
 Halfway round its whirling wheel ; 
 Back again, with rocking reel, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Lazily its length was flung, 
 
 Till brazen lip and beating tongue. 
 
 Met once, with unrepeated peal, 
 
 Then paused ; — until the winds could feel 
 
 The weight of the wide sound that clung 
 To their inmost spirit, like the appeal 
 
 Of startling memories, strangely strung, 
 That point to pain, and yet conceal. 
 
 Again with single sway it rung, 
 And the black tower beneath could feel • 
 The undulating tremor steal 
 Through its old stones, with long shiver, 
 The wild woods felt it creep and quiver 
 Tli rough their thick leaves and bushed air, 
 As fear creeps through a murderer's hair. 
 And the gray reeds beside the river, 
 In the moonlight meek and mild, 
 Moved like spears when war is wild. 
 
 x. 
 
 And still the knight like statue stood, 
 In the arched opening of the wood. 
 
98 THE BROKEN CHALX. 
 
 Slowly still the brazen bell 
 
 Marked its modulated knell ; 
 
 Heavily, heavily, one by one, 
 
 The dull strokes gave their thunder tone. 
 
 So long the pause between was led, 
 
 Ere one rose the last was dead — 
 
 Dead and lost by hollow and hill. 
 
 Again, again, it gathered still ; 
 
 Ye who hear, peasant or peer, 
 
 By all you hope and all you fear, 
 
 Lowly now be heart and knee, 
 Meekly be your orison said 
 
 For the body in its agony, 
 And the spirit in its dread. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Reverent as a cowled monk 
 
 The knight before the cross had sunk ; 
 
 Just as he bowed his helmless head, 
 
 Twice the bell struck faint and dead, 
 
 And ceased. Hill, valley, and winding shore 
 
 The rising roll received no more. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 99 
 
 His lips were weak, his words were low, 
 A paleness came across his brow ; 
 He started to his feet, in fear 
 Of something that he seemed to hear. 
 Was it the w r est wind that did feign 
 Articulation strange and vain ? 
 Vainly with thine ear thou warrest : 
 
 Lo ! it comes, it comes again ! 
 
 Through the dimly woven forest 
 
 Comes the cry of one in pain — 
 " May the faith thou hast forgotten 
 
 Bind thee with its broken chain. " 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 I. 
 On grey Amboise's rocks and keep 
 The early shades of evening sleep, 
 And veils of mist, white-folded, fall 
 Round his long range of iron wall ; 
 O'er the last line of withering light 
 The quick bats cut with angled flight. 
 
100 THE BROKEN CHAIN*. 
 
 And the low breathing fawns that rest 
 
 The twilight forest through, 
 Each on his starry flank and stainless breast 
 
 Can feel the coolness of the dew 
 Soothing his sleep with heavenly weight : 
 Who are these who tread so late 
 Beyond Amboise's castle gate, 
 
 And seek the garden shade ? 
 The flowers are closed, the paths are dark, 
 Their marble guards look stern and stark, 
 The birds arc still, the leaves are stayed, 
 On windless bough, and sunless glade. 
 Ah ! who are these that walk so late, 
 Beyond Amboise's castle gate ? 
 
 II. 
 Steep down the river's margin sink 
 
 The gardens oi Amboise, 
 And all their inmost thickets drink 
 
 The wide, low water-voice. 
 By many a bank whose blossoms shrink 
 
THE BROKEX CHAIN. 101 
 
 Amidst sweet herbage young and cold, 
 Through many an arch and avenue, 
 That noontide roofs with checkered blue, 
 
 And paves with fluctuating gold, 
 Pierced by a thousand paths that guide 
 Grey echo-haunted rocks beside, 
 And into caves of cool recess, 
 Which ever-falling fountains dress 
 With emerald veils, dashed deep in clew, 
 And through dim thickets that subdue 
 
 The crimson light of flowers afar, 
 As sweet rain doth the sunset, decked 
 
 Themselves with many a living star, 
 Which music winged bees detect 
 By the white rays and ceaseless odor shed 
 Over the scattered leaves that every day lays dead. 
 
 in. 
 
 But who are these that pass so late 
 Beneath Amboise's echoing gate, 
 
102 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 And seek the sweet path, poplar-shaded, 
 By breeze and moonbeam uninvaded ? 
 They are two forms, that move like one, 
 
 Each to the music of the other's lips, 
 The cold night thrilling with the tone 
 
 Of their low words — the grey eclipse, 
 Cast from the tangled boughs above. 
 Their dark eyes penetrate with love ; 
 
 Two forms, one crested, calm, and proud, 
 Yet with bowed head, and gentle ear inclining 
 
 To her who moves as in a sable cloud 
 Of her own waving hair — the star-flowers shining 
 
 Through its soft waves, like planets when they keep 
 
 Reflected watch beneath the sunless deep. 
 
 IT. 
 
 Her brow is pure and pale, her eyes 
 
 Deep as the unfathomed sky, 
 Her lips, from which the sweet words rise 
 Like flames from incensed sacrifice, 
 
 Quiver with untold thoughts, that lie 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 103 
 
 Burning beneath their crimson glow, 
 As mute and deathless lightnings sleep 
 At sunset, where the dyes are deep 
 
 On Bosa's purple snow ; 
 She moves all beautiful and bright, 
 With little in that form of light 
 To set the seal of mortal birth, 
 Or own her earthy — of the earth, 
 Unless it be one strange quick trace 
 That checks the glory of her face, 
 A wayward meaning, dimly shed, 
 A shadow, scarcely felt, ere fled ; 
 A spot upon the brow, a spark 
 Under those eyes subdued and dark ; 
 A low short discord in the tone 
 Of music round her being thrown ; 
 A mystery more conceived than seen ; 
 A wildness of the word and mien ; 
 The sign of wilder work within, 
 Which may be sorrow — must be sin. 
 
104 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 V. 
 
 Slowly they moved that knight and dame, 
 Where hanging thickets quench and tame 
 
 The rivers flash and cry ; 
 Mellowed among the leafage came 
 Its thunder voice — its flakes of flame 
 
 Drifted undisturbing by, 
 
 Sunk to a twilight and a sigh. 
 Their path was o'er the entangled rest 
 
 Of dark night flowers that underneath 
 Their feet as their dim bells were j^ressed, 
 
 Sent up warm pulses of soft breath. 
 Ranged in sepulchral ranks above, 
 Grey spires of shadowy cypress clove, 
 With many a shaft of sacred gloom, 
 The evening heaven's mysterious dome ; 
 Slowly above their columns keen 
 Rolled on its path that starred serene ; 
 A thousand fountains soundless flow 
 With imaged azure moved below ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 105 
 
 And through the grove and o'er the tide 
 Pale forms appeared to watch, to glide, 
 O'er whose faint limbs the evening sky 
 Had cast like life its crimson dye ; 
 Was it not life — so bright — so weak — 
 That flushed the bloodless brow and cheek, 
 And bade the lips of wreathed stone 
 Kindle to all but breath and tone ? 
 It moved — it heaved — that stainless breast ! 
 Ah ! what can break such marble rest ? 
 It was a shade that passed — a shade, 
 It was not bird nor bough that made, 
 Nor dancing leaf, nor falling fruit, 
 
 For where it moves — that shadow, gray and chill, 
 The birds are lulled — the leaves are mute — 
 
 The air is cold and still. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Slowly they moved, that dame and knight, 
 As one by one the stars grew bright ; 
 Fondly they moved — they did not mark 
 They had a follower strange and dark. 
 
106 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Just where the leaves their feet disturbed 
 
 Sunk from their whispering tune, 
 (It seemed beneath a fear that curbed 
 
 Their motion very soon), 
 A shadow fell upon them, cast 
 By a less visible form that passed 
 
 Between them and the moon. 
 Was it a fountain's falling shiver ? 
 
 It moveth on — it will not stay — 
 Was it a mist wreath of the river ? 
 
 The mist hath melted all away, 
 And the risen moon is full and clear, 
 And the moving shadow is marked and near. 
 See ! where the dead leaves felt it pass, 
 There are footsteps left on the bended grass — 
 Footsteps as of an armed heel, 
 Heavy with links of burning steel. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Fondly they moved, that dame and knight, 
 By the gliding river's billow light, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 107 
 
 Their lips were mute, their hands were given, 
 
 Their hearts did hardly stir, 
 The maid had raised her eyes to heaven, 
 
 But his were fallen on her. 
 They did not heed, they did not fear 
 That follower strange that trod so near, 
 An armed form whose cloudy mail 
 Flashed as it moved with radiance pale ; 
 So gleams the moonlit torrent through 
 It's glacier's deep transparent blue ; 
 Quivering and keen its steps of pride 
 Shook the sheathed lightning at its side, 
 And waved its dark and drifted plume, 
 Like fires that haunt the unholy tomb 
 Where cursed with crime the mouldering dead, 
 Lie restless in their robes of lead. 
 What eye shall seek, what soul can trace 
 The deep death-horror of its face ? 
 The trackless, livid smile that played 
 Beneath the casque's concealing shade * 
 The angered eye's unfathomed glare, 
 (So sleep the fountains of despair, 
 
108 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Beneath the soul whose sins unseal, 
 
 The wells of all it fears to feel.) 
 
 The sunk, unseen, all-seeing gloom, 
 
 Scarred with the ravage of the tomb, 
 
 The passions that made life their prey, 
 
 Fixed on the feature's last decay, 
 
 The pangs that made the human heart their slave, 
 
 Frozen on the changeless aspect of the grave. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 And still it followed where they went, 
 
 That unregarding pair ; 
 It kept on them its eyes intent, 
 
 And from their glance the sickened air 
 Shrank, as if tortured. Slow, how slow, 
 
 The knight and lady trod ; 
 You had heard their hearts beat just as loud 
 
 As their footsteps on the sod. 
 They paused at length in a leafless place, 
 Where the moonlight shone on the maiden's face ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 109 
 
 Still as an image of stone she stood, 
 
 Though the heave of her breath, and the beat of her 
 
 blood 
 Murmured and mantled to and fro, 
 Like the billows that heave on a hill of snow, 
 When the midnight winds are short and low. 
 The words of her lover came burning and deep, 
 
 And his hand was raised to the holy sky ; 
 Can the lamps of the universe bear or keep, 
 
 False witness or record on high ? 
 He starts to his feet from the spot where he knelt, 
 What voice hath he heard, what fear hath he felt ? 
 His lips in their silence are bloodless and dry, 
 And the love-light fails from his glazed eye. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Well might he quail, for full displayed 
 Before him rose that dreadful shade, 
 And o'er his mute and trembling trance 
 Waved its pale crest and quivering lance ; 
 And traced, with pangs of sudden pain, 
 The form of words upon his brain ; 
 
110 THE BROKEN CHALET. 
 
 " Thy vows are deep, but still thou bears't the chain, 
 Cast on thee by a deeper — vowed in vain ; 
 Thy love is fair, but fairer forms are laid, 
 Cold and forgotten, in the cypress shade ; 
 Thy arm is strong, but arms of stronger trust, 
 Eepose unnerved, undreaded in the dust ; 
 Around thy lance shall bend the living brave, 
 Then arm thee for the challenge of the grave." 
 
 The sound had ceased, the shape had passed away, 
 
 Silent the air and pure the planet's ray. 
 
 They stood beneath the lonely breathing night, 
 
 The lovely lady and the lofty knight ; 
 
 He moved in shuddering silence by her side, 
 
 Or wild and wandering to her words replied, 
 
 Shunning her anxious eyes on his that bent : 
 
 Thou didst not see it, 'twas to me 'twas sent. 
 
 To me, — but why to me ? — I knew it not, 
 
 It was no dream, it stood upon the spot, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. Ill 
 
 Where " — Then with lighter tone and bitter smile, 
 "Nothing, beloved, — a pang that did beguile 
 My spirit of its strength, a dream, a thought, 
 A fancy of the night." And though she sought 
 More reason of his dread, he heard her not, 
 For, mingling with those words of phantom fear, 
 There was another echo in his ear, 
 An under murmur deep and clear, 
 The faint low sob of one in pain, 
 " May the faith thou hast forgotten 
 Bind thee with its broken chain." 
 
 PART FOURTH. 
 
 I. 
 
 'Tis morn ! — in clustered rays increased — 
 Exulting rays, that deeply drink 
 
 The starlight of the East, 
 And strew with crocus dyes the brink 
 Of those blue streams that pause and sink 
 
112 THE BROKEN CHAIX. 
 
 Far underneath their heavenly strand — 
 
 Soft capes of vapour, ribbed like sand. 
 
 Along the Loire white sails are flashing, 
 
 Through stars of spray their dark oars dashing ; 
 
 The rocks are reddening one by one, 
 
 The purple sandbanks flushed with sun, 
 
 And crowned with fire on crags and keep, 
 
 Amboise ! above thy lifted steep, 
 
 Far lightning o'er the subject vale, 
 
 Blaze thy broad range of ramparts pale ! 
 
 Through distance azure as the sky, 
 
 That vale sends up its morning cry. 
 
 From countless leaves, that shaking shade 
 
 Its tangled paths of pillared glade, 
 
 And ceaseless fan, with quivering cool, 
 
 Each gentle stream and slumbrous pool, 
 
 That catch the leaf-song as they flow, 
 
 In tinkling echo pure and low. 
 
 Clear, deep, and moving, as the night, 
 
 And starred with orbs of lily light. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 113 
 
 Nor are they loaves alone that sing, 
 
 Nor waves alone that flow ; 
 The leaves arc lifted on the wing 
 
 Of voices from below ; 
 The waters keep, with shade subdued* 
 The image of a multitude — 
 
 A merry crowd promiscuous met, 
 Of every age and heart united — 
 
 Gray hairs with golden twined, and yet 
 With equal mien and eyes delighted, 
 With thoughts that mix, and hands that lock. 
 Behold they tread, with hurrying feet, 
 Along the thousand paths that meet 
 
 Beneath Amboise's rock ; 
 For there upon the meadows wide, 
 That couch along the river-side, 
 
 Are pitched a snowy flock 
 Of warrior tents, like clouds that rest, 
 Through champaigns of the quiet west, 
 When, far in distance, stretched serene, 
 The evening sky lies calm and green. 
 
114 THE BROKEN" CHAIN. 
 
 Amboise's lord must bear to-day 
 
 His love-gage through the rival fray ; 
 
 Through all the coasts of fiery France 
 
 His challenge shook the air, 
 That none could break so true a lance, 
 
 Nor for a dame so fair. 
 
 II. 
 
 The lists are circled round with shields, 
 
 Like lily-leaves that lie 
 On forest pools in clustered fields 
 
 Of countless company. 
 But every buckler's bosses black 
 Dash the full beams of morning back, 
 In orbed wave of welded lines, 
 With mingled blaze of crimson signs, 
 
 And light of lineage high : 
 As sounds that gush when thoughts are strong, 
 
 But words arc weak with tears, 
 Awoke, above the warrior throng, 
 
 The wind among the spears ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIH. 115 
 
 Afar in hollow surge they shook, 
 As reeds along some summer brook, 
 Glancing beneath the July moon, 
 All bowed and touched in pleasant tune ; 
 Their steely lightning passed and played 
 Alternate with the cloudy shade 
 Of crested casques, and flying flakes 
 Of horse-manes, twined like sable snakes. 
 And misty plumes in darkness drifted, 
 And charged banners broadly lifted, 
 Purpling the air with storm-tints cast 
 Down through their undulation vast, 
 Wide the billowy army strevfing, 
 
 Like to flags of victory 
 From some wretched Armada's ruin, 
 
 Left to robe the sea. 
 
 in. 
 As the morning star new risen 
 
 In a circle of calm sky, 
 Where the white clouds stand to listen 
 
 For the sphered melody 
 
116 THE BKOKEtf CHAIN. 
 
 Of her planetary path, 
 And her soft rays pierce the wrath 
 Of the night storms stretched below, 
 Till they sink like wreaths of snow, 
 (Lighting heaven with their decay) 
 
 Into sudden silentness — 
 
 Throned above the stormy stress 
 Of that knightly host's array, 
 
 Goddess-formed, as one whom mortals 
 Need but gaze on to obey, 
 
 Distant seen, as through the portals 
 Of some temple gray ; 
 
 The glory of a marble dream, 
 Kindling the eyes that gaze, the lips that pray- 
 
 One gentle lady sat, retiring but supreme. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Upon her brow there was no crown, 
 
 Upon her robe no gem ; 
 Yet few were there who would not own 
 
 Her queen of earth, and them, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 117 
 
 Because that brow was crowned with light 
 
 As with a diadem, 
 And her quick thoughts, as they did rise, 
 "Were in the deep change of her eyes, 
 
 Traced one by one, as stars that start 
 Out of the orbed peace of night, 
 
 Still drooping as they dart, 
 And her sweet limbs shone heavenly bright, 
 Following with undulation white, 
 
 The heaving of her heart. 
 
 High she sat, and all apart, 
 Meek of mien, with eyes declined, 
 Less like one of mortal mind. 
 Than some changeless spirit shrined 
 
 In the memories of men, 
 Whom the passions of its kind 
 
 Cannot hurt nor move again. 
 v. 
 High she sat in meekness shaming, 
 
 All of best and brighest there, 
 Till the herald's voice, proclaiming 
 
118 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Her the fairest of the fair, 
 Bang along the morning air ; 
 And then she started, and that shade, 
 Which in the moonlit garden glade 
 Had marked her with its mortal stain, 
 Did pass upon her face again, 
 And in her eye a sudden flash 
 Came and was gone ; but it were rash 
 To say if it were pride or pain ; 
 And on her lips a smile, scarce worn, 
 Less, as it seemed, of joy than scorn. 
 Was with a strange quick quivering mixed, 
 Which passed away, and left them fixed 
 In calm, persisting, colorless, 
 Perchance too perfect to be peace 
 A moment more, and still serene 
 Beturned, yet changed — her mood and mien 
 What eye that traceless change could tell, 
 Slight, transient, — but unspeakable ! 
 She Bat, divine of soul and brow; 
 It passed, —and all is human now 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 119 
 
 VI. 
 
 The multitude, with loud acclaim, 
 
 Caught up the lovely lady's name ; 
 
 Thrice round the lists arose the cry ; 
 
 But when it sunk, and all the sky 
 
 Grew doubly silent by its loss, 
 
 A slow strange murmur came across 
 
 The waves of the reposing air, 
 
 A deep, soft voice that everywhere 
 
 Arose at once, so lowly clear, 
 
 That each seemed in himself to hear 
 
 Alone, and fixed with sweet surprise, 
 
 Did ask around him, with his eyes, 
 
 If t'were not some dream-music dim 
 
 And false, that only rose for him. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " Oh, lady Queen, — Oh, lady Queen ! 
 Fairest of all who tread 
 The soft earth carpet green, 
 Or breathe the blessings shed 
 
120 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 By the stars and tempest free ; 
 Know thou, oh, lady Queen, 
 Earth hath borne, sun hath seen, 
 
 Fairer than thee. 
 " The flush of beauty burnetii 
 
 In the j)alaces of earth, 
 But thy lifted spirit scorneth 
 
 All match of mortal birth : 
 And the nymph of the hill, 
 
 And the naiad of the sea, 
 Were of beauty quenched and chill, 
 
 Beside thee ! 
 " Where the gray cypress shadows 
 
 Move onward with the moon, 
 Round the low mounded meadows, 
 
 And the grave-stones, whitely hewn. 
 Gleam like camp-fires through the night, 
 
 There, in silence of long swoon, 
 
 In the horror of decay ; 
 With the worm for their delight, 
 
 And the shroud for their array, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 121 
 
 With the garland on their brow, 
 
 And the black cross by their side, 
 With the darkness for their beauty, 
 
 And the dust for their pride, 
 With the smile of baffled pain 
 
 On the cold lips half apart, 
 With the dimness on the brain, 
 
 And the peace upon the heart ; 
 Even sunk in solemn shade, 
 
 Underneath the cypress tree, 
 Lady Queen, there are laid 
 
 Fairer than thee ! " 
 
 Till. 
 
 It passed away, that melodie, 
 But none the minstrel there could see ; 
 The lady sat still calm of thought, 
 Save that there rose a narrow spot 
 
 Of crimson on her cheek ; 
 But then, the words were far and weak, 
 Perchance she heard them not. 
 The crowd still listening, feared to speak, 
 
122 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 And only mixed in sympathy 
 
 Of pressing hand and wondering eve, 
 
 And left the lists all hushed and mute, 
 For every wind of heaven had sunk 
 
 To that aerial lute. 
 The ponderous banners, closed and shrunk, 
 Down from their listless lances hung, 
 The windless plumes were feebly flung. 
 With lifted foot, the listening steed, 
 
 Did scarcely fret the fern, 
 And the challenger on his charmed steed 
 
 Sat statue-like and stern, 
 Till mixed with martial trumpet-strain, 
 The herald's voice arose again, 
 Proclaiming that Amboise's lord 
 Dared by the trial of the sword. 
 The bravest knights of France, to prove 
 Their fairer dame or truer love, — 
 And ere the brazen blast had died, 
 That strange sweet singing voice replied, 
 So wild that every heart did keep 
 Its pulse to time the cadence deep : 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 123 
 
 IX. 
 
 :< Where the purple swords are swiftest, 
 
 And the rage of death unreigned. 
 Lord of battle, though thou liftest 
 
 Crest unstooped, and shield unstained, 
 Vain before thy footsteps fail, 
 Useless spear and rended mail, 
 Shuddering from thy glance and blow, 
 Earth's best armies sink like snow ; 
 Know thou this ; unmatched, unmet, 
 Might hath children mightier yet. 
 
 The chapel yaults are deadly damp, 
 
 Their air is breathless all, 
 The downy bats they clasp and cramp 
 
 Their cold wings to the wall ; 
 The bright-eyed eft, from cranny and cleft, 
 
 Doth noiselessly pursue 
 The twining light of the death-worms white, 
 
 In the pools of the earth dew ; 
 
124 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 The downy bat, — the death-worm white, 
 
 And the eft with its sahle coil — 
 The} 7 are company good for a sword ed knight. 
 
 In his rest from the battle toil ; 
 The sworded knight is sunk in rest, 
 
 With the cross-hilt in his hand ; 
 But his arms are folded o'er his breast 
 
 As weak as ropes of sand. 
 His eyes are dark, his sword of wrath 
 
 Is impotent and dim ; 
 Dark lord, in this thy victor path, 
 
 Remember him." 
 
 x. 
 The sounds sunk deeply, — and were gone, 
 
 And for a time the quiet crowd 
 Hung on the long departing tone, 
 
 Of wailing in the morning cloud, 
 In spirit wondering and beguiled ; 
 
 Then turned with steadfast gaze to learn 
 What recked he, of such warning wild — 
 
 Amboise's champion stern. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 12^ 
 
 But little to their sight betrayed 
 
 The yisor bars and plumage shade ; 
 
 The nearest thought he smiled ; 
 
 Yet more in bitterness than mirth, 
 
 And held his eyes upon the earth 
 
 With thoughtful gaze, half sad, half keen, 
 
 As they would seek beneath the screen 
 
 Of living turf and golden bloom, 
 
 The secrets of its under tomb. 
 
 XI. 
 
 A moment more, with burning look, 
 High in the air his plume he shook, 
 And waved his lance as in disdain, 
 And struck his charger with the rein, 
 And loosed the sword-hilt to his grasp, 
 And closed the visor's grisly clasp, 
 And all expectant sate and still ; 
 The herald blew his summons shrill, 
 Keen answer rose from list and tent, 
 For France had there her bravest sent. 
 
126 THE BROKEN CHAIN* 
 
 With hearts of steel, and eyes of flame, 
 Full armed the knightly concourse came ; 
 They came like storms of heaven set free, 
 They came like surges of the sea, 
 
 Kesistless, dark and dense, 
 Like surges on a sable rock, 
 They fell with their own fiery shock, 
 
 Dashed into impotence. 
 O'er each encounters rush and gloom, 
 Like meteor .rose Amboise's plume, 
 As stubble to his calm career ; 
 Crashed from his breast the splintered spear, 
 Before his charge the war-horse reeled, 
 And bowed the helm, and sunk the shield, 
 And checked the heart, and failed the arm ; 
 And still the herald's loud alarm 
 
 Disturbed the short delay — 
 On, chevaliers ! for fame, for love, — 
 For these dark eyes that burn above 
 
 The field of your affray ! 
 
THE BROKEN" CHAIN. 127 
 
 XII. 
 
 Six knights had fallen, the last in death, — 
 
 Deeply the challenger drew his breath. 
 
 The field was hushed, — the wind that rocked 
 
 His standard staff grew light and low. 
 A seventh came not. He unlocked 
 
 His yisor clasp, and raised his brow 
 To catch its coolness. Marvel not 
 If it were pale with weariness, 
 For fast that day his hand had wrought 
 
 Its warrior work of victory ; 
 Yet, one who loved him might have thought 
 
 There was a trouble in his eye, 
 And that it turned in some distress 
 
 Unto the quiet sky. 
 Indeed that sky was strangely still, 
 And through the air unwonted chill 
 
 Hung on the heat of noon ; 
 Men spoke in whispers, and their words 
 Came brokenly, as if the chords 
 
 Of their hearts were out of tune ; 
 
128 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 And deeper still, and vet more deep 
 The coldness of that heavy sleep 
 Came on the lulled air. And men saw 
 In every glance, an answering awe 
 Meeting their own with doubtful change 
 Of expectation wild and strange. 
 Dread marvel was it thus to feel 
 The echoing earth, the trumpet-peal, 
 The thundering hoof, the crashing steel, 
 
 Cease to a pause so dead, 
 They heard the aspens moaning shiver, 
 And the low tinkling of the river 
 
 Upon its pebble bed. 
 The challenger's trump rang long and loud, 
 And the light upon his standard proud 
 
 Grew indistinct and dun ; 
 The challenger's trump rang long and loud, 
 And the shadow of a narrow cloud 
 
 Came suddenly o'er the sun. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 129 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A narrow cloud of outline quaint, 
 
 Much like a human hand ; 
 And after it, with following faint, 
 
 Came up a dull grey lengthening band 
 
 Of small cloud billows, like sea sand, 
 And then out of the gaps of blue, 
 Left moveless in the sky, there grew 
 Long snaky knots of sable mist, 
 Which counter winds did vex and twist, 
 Knitted and loosed, and tossed and tore, 
 Like passive weeds on that sandy shore ; 
 And these seemed with their touch to infect 
 The sweet white upper clouds, and checked 
 Their pacing on the heavenly floor, 
 
 And quenched the light which was to them 
 As blood and life, singing the while 
 
 A fitful requiem, 
 Until the hues of each cloud isle 
 
 Sank into one vast veil of dread, 
 
 Coping the heaven as if with lead, 
 
130 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 With drag'd pale edges here and there, 
 Through which the noon's transparent glare 
 
 Fell with a dusky red. 
 And all the summer voices sank 
 
 To let that darkness pass ; 
 The weeds were quiet on the bank, 
 
 The cricket in the grass ; 
 The merry birds the buzzing flies, 
 
 The leaves of many lips, 
 Did make their songs a sacrifice 
 
 Unto the noon eclipse. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The challenger's trump rang long and loud — 
 
 Hark ! as its notes decay ! 
 Was it out of the earth — or up in the cloud ? — 
 
 Or an echo far away ? 
 Soft it came and none knew whence — 
 Deep, melodious and intense, 
 
 So lightly breathed, bo wildly blown, 
 Distant it seemed — yet everywhere 
 Possessing all the infinite air — 
 
 One quivering trumpet tone ! 
 

 THE BROKEN" CHAIN". 131 
 
 With slow increase of gathering sway, 
 Louder along the wind it lay ; 
 It shook the woods, it pressed the wave, 
 The guarding rocks through chasm and cave 
 
 Koared in their fierce reply. 
 It rose, and o'er the lists at length 
 Crashed into full tempestuous strength, 
 Shook through its storm-tried turrets high 
 
 Amboise's mountain home, 
 And the broad thunder-vaulted sky 
 
 Clanged like a brazen dome. 
 
 XY. 
 
 Unchanged, unchilled in heart and eye ; 
 The challenger heard that dread reply ; 
 His head was bowed upon his breast, 
 And on the darkness in the west 
 His glance dwelt patiently ; * 
 
 Out of that western gloom there came 
 A small white vapor, shaped like flame, 
 TTnscattering, and on constant wing ; 
 Rode lonely, like a living thing, 
 
132 TIIE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Upon its stormy path ; it grew, 
 And gathered as it onward drew — 
 It paused above the lists, a roof 
 Inwoven with a lightning woof 
 Of undulating lire, whose trace, 
 Like corpse-fire on a human face, 
 Was mixed of light and death ; it sank 
 Slowly ; the wild war-horses shrank 
 
 Tame from the nearing flash ; their eyes 
 Glared the blue terror back, it shone 
 On the broad spears, like wavering wan 
 
 Of unaccepted sacrifice. 
 Down to the earth the smoke-cloud rolled- 
 Pale shadowed through sulphurous fold, 
 Banner and armor, spear and plume 
 Gleamed like a vision of the tomb. 
 One form alone was all of gloom — 
 In deep and dusky arms arrayed, 
 Changeless alike through flash and shade, 
 Sudden within the barrier gate 
 Behold, the Seventh champion sate ! 
 
THE BROKEX CHAIN. 133 
 
 He waved his hand — he stooped his lance — 
 The challenger started from his trance ; 
 
 He plunged his spur — he loosed his rein — 
 A flash — a groan — a woman's cry — 
 And up to the receiving sky 
 
 The white cloud rose again ! 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The white cloud rose — the white cloud fled — 
 
 The peace of heaven returned in dew, 
 And soft and far the noontide shed 
 
 Its holiness of bine. 
 The rock, the earth, the wave, the brake 
 
 Rejoiced beneath that sweet succeeding ; 
 No sun nor sound can warm or wake 
 
 One human heart's unheeding. 
 Stretched on the dark earth's bosom, chill, 
 Amboise's lord lay stark and still. 
 The heralds raise him, but to mark 
 The last light leave his eyeballs dark — 
 
134 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 The lust blood dwindle on his cheek — 
 They turned ; a murmur wild and weak 
 
 Passed on the air, in passion broken, 
 The faint low sob of one in pain — 
 
 " Lo ! the faith thou hast forgotten 
 Binds thee with its broken chain ! " 
 
 PART FIFTH. 
 I. 
 The mists, that mark the day's decline, 
 
 Have cooled and lulled the purple air ; 
 The bell, from Saint Cecilia's shrine, 
 
 Hath tolled the evening hour of prayer ; 
 With folded veil, and eyes that shed 
 Faint rays along the stones they tread, 
 And bosom stooped, and step subdued, 
 Came forth that ancient sisterhood ; 
 Each bearing on her lips along 
 Part of the surge of a low song, — 
 A wailing requiem, wildly mixed 
 
 "With suppliant cry, how weak to win, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 135 
 
 From home so far — from fate so fixed, 
 
 A Spirit dead in sin ! 
 Yet yearly must they meet, and pray 
 
 For her who died — how long ago ? 
 
 How long — 'twere only Love could know ; 
 And she, ere her departing day, 
 Had watched the last of Love's decay ; 
 Had felt upon her fading cheek 
 
 None but a stranger's sighs ; 
 Had none but stranger souls to seek 
 
 Her death-thoughts in her eyes ; 
 Had none to guard her couch of clay, 
 
 Or trim her funeral stone, 
 Save those, who, when she passed away, 
 
 Felt not the more alone. 
 
 ii. 
 
 And years had seen that narrow spot 
 Of death-sod levelled and forgot, 
 Ere question came of record kept, 
 Or how she died — or where she slept. 
 
136 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 The night was wild, the moon was late — 
 A lady sought the convent gate ; 
 The midnight chill was on her breast, 
 
 The dew was on her hair, 
 And in her eye there was unrest, 
 
 And on her brow despair ; 
 She came to seek the face, she said, 
 
 Of one deep injured. One by one 
 The gentle sisters came, and shed 
 
 The meekness of their looks upon 
 Her troubled watch. " I know them not, 
 
 I know them not," she murmured still : 
 "Are then her face — her form forgot ? " 
 
 " Alas ! we lose not when we will 
 The thoughts of an accomplished ill ; 
 The image of our love may fade, 
 But what can quench a victim's shade ? 
 
 in. 
 
 " She comes not yet. She will not come. 
 I seek her chamber ; " and she rose 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 137 
 
 With a quick start of grief, which some 
 Would have restrained ; but the repose 
 
 Of her pale brow rebuked them. " Back," 
 She cried, "the path, — the place, — I know, — 
 
 Follow me not — though broad and black 
 
 The night lies on that lonely track. 
 
 There moves forever by my side 
 
 A darker spirit for my guide ; 
 
 A broader curse — a wilder woe, 
 
 Must gird my footsteps as I go." 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sternly she spoke, and, shuddering, sought 
 The cloister arches, marble-wrought, 
 That send, through many a trembling shaft 
 The deep wind's full, melodious draught, 
 Round the low space of billowy turf 
 Where funeral roses flash like surf, 
 O'er those who share the convent grave, 
 Laid each beneath her own green wave. 
 
138 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 V. 
 
 From stone to stone she passed, and spelt 
 The letters with her fingers felt ; 
 The stains of time are drooped across 
 Those mouldering names, obscure with moss ; 
 The hearts where once they deeply dwelt, 
 With music's power to move and melt, 
 Are stampless too — the fondest few 
 Have scarcely kept a trace more true. 
 
 VI. 
 
 She paused at length beside a girth 
 
 Of osiers overgrown and old ; 
 And with her eyes fixed on the earth, 
 
 Spoke slowly and from lips as cold 
 
 As ever met the burial mould. 
 
 VII. 
 
 " I have not come to ask I'm- peace 
 From thee, thou unforgiving clay ! 
 
 The pangs that pass— the throbs that oease 
 From such as thou, in their decay. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 139 
 
 Bequeath them that repose of wrath 
 
 So dark of heart, so dull of ear, 
 That bloodless strength of sworded sloth, 
 
 That shows not mercy, knows not fear, 
 And keeps its death-smile of disdain 
 Alike for pity, as for pain. 
 But, galled by many a ghastly link, 
 
 That bound and brought my soul to thee, 
 I come to bid thy vengeance drink 
 
 The wine of this my misery. 
 Look on me as perchance the dead 
 Can look ; through soul and spirit spread 
 Before thee ; go thou forth, and tread 
 The lone fields of my life, and see 
 
 Those dark large flocks of restless pangs 
 They pasture, and the thoughts of thee, 
 
 That shepherd them, and teach their fangs 
 To eat the green, and guide their feet 
 To trample where the banks are sweet 
 And judge betwixt us, which is best, 
 My sleepless torture, or thy rest ; 
 
140 THE BROKEN CHAIX. 
 
 And which the worthier to be wept, 
 The fate I caused, or that I kept. 
 I tell thee, that my steps must stain 
 With more than blood, their path of pain ; 
 And I would fold my weary feet 
 More gladly in thy winding sheet, 
 And wrap my bosom in thy shroud, 
 And dash thy darkness on the crowd 
 
 Of terrors in my sight, and sheathe 
 Mine ears from their confusion loud, 
 
 And cool my brain with cypress wreath 
 More gladly from its pulse of blood, 
 Than ever bride with orange bud 
 Clouded her moony brow. Alas ! 
 This osier fence I must not pass. 
 Wilt thou not thank me — that I dare 
 
 To feel the beams and drink the breath 
 Thai curse me out of Heaven, nor share 
 The cup that quenches human care, 
 
 The sacrament of death ; 
 But yield thee this, thy living prey 
 Of erring soul and tortured clay, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIK. 141 
 
 To feed thee, when thou convst to keep 
 Thy watch of wrath around my sleep, 
 Or turn the shafts of daylight dim, 
 With faded breast and frozen limb ? 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " Yet come, and be, as thou hast been, 
 Companion ceaseless — not unseen, 
 Though gloomed the veil of flesh between 
 Mine eyes and thine, and fast and rife 
 Around me flashed the forms of life : 
 I knew them by their change — for one 
 I did not lose, I could not shun, 
 Through laughing crowd, and lighted room, 
 Through listed field, and battle's gloom, 
 Through all the shapes and sounds that press 
 The Path, or wake the "Wilderness ; 
 E'en when He came, mine eyes to fill, 
 Whom Love saw solitary still, 
 For ever, shadowy by my side, 
 I heard thee murmur, watched thee glide ; 
 But what shall now thy purpose bar ? 
 The laughing crowd is scattered far. 
 
142 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 The lighted hall is left forlorn, 
 The listed field is white with corn, 
 And he, beneath whose voice and brow 
 I could forget thee — is — as thou." 
 
 IX. 
 
 She spoke, she rose, and from that hour, 
 The peasant groups that pause beside 
 The chapel walls at eventide, 
 To catch the notes of chord and song 
 That unseen fingers form, and lips prolong, 
 
 Have heard a voice of deeper power, 
 Of wilder swell, and purer fall, 
 More sad, more modulate, than all. 
 
 It is not keen, it is not loud, 
 But ever heard alone, 
 
 As winds that touch on chords of cloud 
 Across the heavenly zone, 
 
 Then chiefly heard, when drooped and drowned 
 
 In strength of sorrow, more than sound ; 
 
 That low articulated rush 
 
 Of swift but secret nassion. breaking 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN 143 
 
 From sob to song, from gasp to gush ; 
 
 Then failing to that deadly hush, 
 
 That only knows the wilder waking— 
 
 That deep, prolonged, and dream-like swell, 
 
 So full that rose— so faint that fell, 
 
 So sad — so tremulously clear — 
 
 So checked with something worse than fear. 
 
 Whose can they be ? 
 
 Go, ask the midnight stars, that see 
 
 The secrets of her sleepless cell, 
 
 For none but God and they can tell 
 
 What thoughts and deeds of darkened choice 
 Gave horror to that burning voice- 
 That voice, unheard save thus, untaught 
 
 The words of penitence or prayer ; 
 The grey confessor knows it not ; 
 The chapel echoes only bear 
 Its burst and burthen of despair ; 
 And pity's voice hath rude reply, 
 From darkened brow and downcast eye, 
 That quench the question, kind or rash, 
 With rapid shade, and reddening flash ; 
 
144 THE BROKEN CHALK. 
 
 Or, worse, with the regardless trance 
 Of sealed ear, and sightless glance, 
 That fearful glance, so large and bright, 
 That dwells so long, with heed so light, 
 When far within, its fancy lies, 
 Nor movement marks, nor ray replies, 
 Nor kindling dawn, nor holy dew 
 Reward the words that soothe or sue. 
 
 x. 
 
 Restless she moves ; beneath her veil 
 
 That writhing brow is sunk and shaded ; 
 Its touch is cold — its veins are pale — 
 Its crown is lost — its lustre faded ; 
 Yet lofty still, though scarcely bright, 
 Its glory burns beneath the blight 
 Of wasting thought, and withering crime, 
 And curse of torture and of time ; 
 Of pangs — of pride, endured — degraded — 
 Of guilt unchecked, and grief unaided : 
 Her sable hair is slightly braided, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 145 
 
 Warm, like south wind, its foldings float 
 Round her soft hands and marble throat ; 
 How passive these, how pulseless this, 
 
 That love should lift, and life should warm ! 
 Ah ! where the kindness, or the kiss, 
 
 Can break their dead and drooping charm ! 
 Perchance they were not always so : 
 
 That breast hath sometimes movement deep, 
 Timed like the sea that surges slow 
 Where storms have trodden long ago ; 
 
 And sometimes, from their listless sleep, 
 Those hands are harshly writhed and knit, 
 As grasping what their frenzied fit 
 Deemed peace to crush, or death to quit. 
 And then the sisters shrink aside ; 
 
 They know the words that others hear 
 Of grace, or gloom — to charm or chide, 
 
 Fall on her inattentive ear, 
 As falls the snowflake on the rock, 
 That feels no chill, and knows no shock ; 
 
146 TIIE BROKEN CHAIX. 
 
 Nor dare they mingle in her mood, 
 So dark, and dimly understood ; 
 And better so, if, as they say, 
 'Tis something worse than solitude : 
 
 For some have marked, when that dismay 
 Had seemed to snatch her soul away, 
 That in her eye's unquietness 
 There shone more terror than distress ; 
 And deemed they heard, when soft and dead, 
 By night they watched her sleepless tread, 
 Strange words addressed, beneath her breath, 
 As if to one who heard in death, 
 And, in the night wind's sound and sigh, 
 Imagined accents of reply. 
 
 XI. 
 
 The sun is on his western march. 
 His rays arc red on shaft and arch : 
 With hues of hope their softness dyes 
 The image with the lifted eyes, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Where, listening still, with tranced smile, 
 
 Cecilia lights the glimmering aisle ; 
 
 So calm the beams that flushed her rest 
 
 Of ardent brow, and virgin breast 
 
 Whose chill they pierced, but not profaned, 
 
 And seemed to stir, what scarce they stained, 
 
 So warm the life, so pure the ray : 
 
 Such she had stood, ere snatched from clay, 
 
 When sank the tones of sun and sphere, 
 
 Deep melting on her mortal ear ; 
 
 And angels stooped, with fond control, 
 
 To write the rapture on her soul. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Two sisters, at the statue's feet, 
 Paused in the altar's arched retreat, 
 As risen but now from earnest prayer- 
 One aged and grey— one passing fair ; 
 In changeful gush of breath and blood, 
 Mute for a time the younger stood ; 
 Then raised her head and spoke : the flow 
 Of sound was measured, stern, and slow; 
 
 147 
 
148 THE BROKEN CHAIK. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 " Mother ! thou sajest she died in strife 
 Of heavenly wrath, and human woe ; 
 
 For me, there is not that in life 
 Whose loss could ask, or love could owe 
 As much of pang as now I show ; 
 
 But that the book which angels write 
 "Within men's spirits day by day 
 
 That diary of judgment-light 
 That cannot pass away, 
 
 Which, with cold ear and glazing eye, 
 
 Men hear and read before they die, 
 
 Is open now before me set ; 
 
 Its drifting leaves are red and wet 
 
 With blood and fire, and yet, me thought, 
 
 Its words were music, were they not 
 
 Written in darkness. 
 
 / confess ! 
 
 Say'st thou ? The sea shall yield its dead, 
 Perchance my spirit its distress ; 
 
 Yet there are paths of human dread 
 
 That none but God should trace or tread ; 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 149 
 
 aw 
 
 Men judge by a degraded la 
 
 With Him I fear not : He who gave 
 The sceptre to the passion, saw T 
 
 The sorrow of the slave. 
 He made me, not as others are, 
 
 Who dwell, like willows by a brook, 
 That see the shadow of one star 
 
 Forever with serenest look 
 Lighting their leaves,— that only hear 
 Their sun-stirred boughs sing soft and clear, 
 And only live, by consciousness 
 Of waves that feed, and winds that bless. 
 Me — rooted on a lonely rock, 
 
 Amidst the rush of mountain rivers, 
 He, doomed to bear the sound and shock 
 Of shafts that rend and storms that rock, 
 
 The frost that blasts, and flash that shivers ; 
 And I am desolate and sunk. 
 A lifeless wreck— a leafless trunk, 
 Smitten with plagues, and seared with sin, 
 And black with rottenness within, 
 
150 THE BKOKEST CHAIN. 
 
 But conscious of the holier will 
 
 That saved me long, and strengthens still. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Mine e) r es are dim, they scarce can trace 
 The rays that pierce this lonely place ; 
 But deep within their darkness dwell 
 A thousand thoughts they knew — too well. 
 Those orbed towers obscure and vast,* 
 That light the Loire with sunset last ; 
 Those fretted groups of shaft and spire 
 That crest Amboise's cliff with fire, 
 When, far beneath, in moonlight fail 
 The winds that shook the pausing sail ; 
 The panes that tint with dyes divine 
 The altar of St. Hubert's shrine ; 
 The very stone on which I knelt ; 
 
 When youth was pure upon my brow, 
 Though word I prayed, or wish I felt 
 
 I scarce remember now. 
 
 * Note, page 167. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 151 
 
 Methought that there I bowed to bless 
 
 A warrior's sword — a wanderer's way : 
 Ah ! nearer now, the knee would press 
 
 The heart for which the lips would pray. 
 The thoughts were meek, the words were low — 
 
 I deemed them free from sinful stain ; 
 It might be so. I only know 
 
 These were unheard, and those were vain. 
 
 xv. 
 " That stone is raised ; — where once it lay 
 Is built a tomb of marble grey : * 
 Asleep within the sculptured veil 
 Seems laid a knight in linked mail ; 
 Obscurely laid in powerless rest, 
 
 The latest of his line, 
 Upon his casque he bears no crest, 
 
 Upon his shield no sign. 
 I've seen the day when through the blue 
 Of broadest heaven his banner flew, 
 * Note, page 167. 
 
lb'Z THE BROKEN CIIAIN. 
 
 And armies watched through farthest fight, 
 The stainless symbol's stormy light 
 « Wave like an angel's wing. 
 
 Ah ! now a scorned and scathed thing, 
 It's silken folds the worm shall fret, 
 The clay shall soil, the dew shall wet, 
 Where sleeps the sword that once could save, 
 
 And droops the arm that bore ; 
 Its hues must gird a nameless grave ; 
 Nor wind shall wake, nor lance shall wave, 
 
 Nor glory gild it more : 
 For he is fallen — oh ! ask not how, 
 Or ask the angels that unlock 
 The inmost grave's sepulchral rock ; 
 I could have told thee once, but now 
 'Tis madness in me all, and thou 
 WOiildst deem it so, if I should speak. 
 And I am glad my brain is weak ; — 
 Ah, this is yet its only wrong, 
 To know too well — to feel too long. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 153 
 
 XVI. 
 
 But I remember how he lay 
 When the rushing crowd were all away ; 
 And how I called, with that low cry 
 He never heard without reply ; 
 And how there came no sound, nor sign, 
 And the feel of his dead lips on mine ; 
 And when they came to comfort me, 
 I laughed, because they conld not see 
 The stain of blood, or print of lance, 
 To write the tomb upon the trance. 
 I saw, what they had heeded not, 
 Above his heart a small black spot ; 
 Ah, woe ! I knew how deep within 
 That stamp of death, that seal of sin 
 Had struck with mortal agony 
 The heart so false — to all but me. 
 
 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Mother, methinks my soul can say 
 It loved as well as woman's may ; 
 
154 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 And what I would have given, to gain 
 
 The answering love, to count were vain ; 
 
 I know not — what I gave I know — 
 
 My hope on high, my all below. 
 
 But hope and height of earth and heaven, 
 
 Or highest sphere to angels given, 
 
 Would I surrender, and take up 
 
 The horror of this cross and cup 
 
 I bear and drink, to win the thought 
 
 That I had failed in what I sought. 
 
 Alas ! I won — rejoiced to win 
 
 The love whose every look was sin, 
 
 Whose every dimly worded breath 
 
 Was but the distant bell of death 
 
 For her who heard, for him who spoke. 
 
 Ah ! though those hours were swift and few, 
 The guilt they bore, the vow they broke, 
 
 Time cannot punish — nor renew. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 " They told me long ago that thou 
 
 Hadst seen, beneath this very shade 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 155 
 
 Of mouldering stone that wraps us now, 
 
 The death of her whom he betrayed. 
 Thine eyes are wet with memory, — 
 In truth 'tis fearful sight to see 
 E'en the last sands of sorrow run, 
 Though the fierce work of death be done, 
 And the worst woe that fate can will 
 Bids but its victim to be still. 
 But I beheld the darker years 
 
 That first oppressed her beauty's bloom ; 
 The sickening heart and silent tears 
 That asked and eyed her early tomb ; 
 I watched the deepening of her doom, 
 As, pulse by pulse, and day by day, 
 The crimson life-tint waned away 
 And timed her bosom's quickening beat, 
 
 That hastened only to be mute, 
 And the short tones, each day more sweet, 
 That made her lips like an Eolian lute, 
 When winds are saddest ; and I saw 
 The kindling of the unearthly awe 
 
15G THE BROKEN CHAIN". 
 
 That touched those lips with frozen light, 
 The smile, so bitter, yet so bright, 
 Which grief, that sculptured, seals its own. 
 Which looks like life, but stays like stone ; 
 Which checks with fear the charm it gives, 
 And loveliest burns, when least it lives, — 
 All this I saw. Thou canst not guess 
 How woman may be merciless. 
 One word from me had rent apart 
 The chains that chafed her dying heart : 
 Closer I clasped the links of care, 
 And learned to pity — not to spare. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 She might have been avenged ; for, .when 
 Her woe was aidless among men, 
 And tooth of scorn and brand of shame 
 Had scared her spirit, soiled her name, 
 There came a stranger to her side, 
 Or — if a friend, forgotten long, 
 For hearts are frail, when hands divide. 
 There were who said her early pride 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 157 
 
 Had cast his love away with wrong ; 
 
 But that might be a dreamer's song. 
 He looked like one whom power or pain 
 
 Had hardened, or had hewn, to rock 
 That could not melt nor rend again, 
 
 Unless the staff of God might shock, 
 And burst the sacred waves to birth 
 That deck with bloom the Desert's dearth — 
 Tli at dearth, that knows nor breeze, nor balm, 
 
 lS~or feet that print, nor sounds that thrill, 
 Though cloudless was his soul, and calm, 
 
 It was the Desert still ; 
 And blest the wildest cloud had been 
 That broke the desolate serene, 
 And kind the storm, that farthest strewed 
 Those burning sands of solitude. 
 
 xx. 
 " Darkly he came, and in the dust 
 
 Had writ, perchance, Amboise's shame : 
 
 I knew the sword he drew was just, 
 
 And in my fear a fiend there came ; 
 
158 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 It deepened first, and then derided 
 
 The madness of my youth ; 
 I deemed not that the God, who guided 
 
 The battle blades in truth, 
 Could gather from the earth the guilt 
 Of holy blood in secret spilt. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 "I watched at night the feast flow high ; 
 I kissed the cup he drank to die ; 
 I heard at morn the trumpet call 
 Leap cheerily round the guarded wall ; 
 And laughed to think how long and cleai 
 The blast must be, for him to hear. 
 He lies within the chambers deep, 
 
 Beneath Amboise's chapel floor, 
 Where slope the rocks in ridges steep, 
 
 Far to the river shore ; 
 "Where thick the summer flowers are sown, 
 And, even within the deadening stone, 
 
 A living car can catch the close 
 Of gentle waves forever sent, 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 159 
 
 To soothe, with lull and long lament, 
 
 That murdered knight's repose : 
 And yet he sleeps not well ;— but I 
 
 Am wild, and know not what I say ; — 
 My guilt thou knowest — the penalty 
 
 Which I have paid, and yet must pay, 
 
 Thou canst not measure. O'er the day 
 I see the shades of twilight float — 
 My time is short. Belieyest thou not ? 
 I know my pulse is true and light, 
 My step is firm, mine eyes are bright ; 
 Yet see they — what thou canst not see, 
 The open grave, deep dug for me ; 
 The vespers we shall sing to-night 
 
 My burial hymn shall be : 
 But what the path by which I go, 
 My heart desires yet dreads to know. 
 But this remember, (these the last 
 
 Of words I speak for earthly ear ; 
 Nor sign nor sound my soul shall cast, 
 
 Wrapt in its final fear) : 
 
1G0 THE BROKEN CHAIX. 
 
 For him, forgiving, brave and true, 
 Whom timeless and unshrived I slew, 
 For him be holiest masses said, 
 And rites that sanctify the dead, 
 "With yearly honor paid. 
 For her, by whom he was betrayed, 
 Nor blood be shed, nor prayer be made, — 
 The cup were death— the words were sin- 
 To judge the soul they could not win, 
 And fall in torture o'er the grave 
 
 Of one they could not wash, nor save.'' 
 ***** 
 
 XXII. 
 
 The vesper beads are told and slipped. 
 The chant has sunk by choir and crypt, 
 That circle dark — they rise not yet ; 
 With downcast eyes, and lashes wet, 
 
 They linger, bowed and low ; 
 They must not part before they pray 
 For her who left them on this day 
 
 How many years ago ! 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 161 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 They knelt within the marble screen, 
 Black-robed and moveless, hardly seen, 
 Save by their shades that sometimes shook 
 
 Along the quiet floor, 
 Like leaf-shades on a waveless brook 
 
 When the wind walks by the shore. 
 The altar lights that burned between, 
 Were seven small fire-shafts, white and keen, 
 
 Intense and motionless. 
 They did not shake for breeze nor breath. 
 
 They did not change, nor sink, nor shiver ; 
 They burned as burn the barbs of death 
 
 At rest within their angel's quiver. 
 From lip to lip, in chorus kept, 
 The sad sepulchral music swept, 
 While one sweet voice unceasing led : 
 Were there but mercy for the dead, 
 Such prayer had power to soothe — to save — 
 Ay, even beneath the binding grave ; 
 
162 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 So pure the springs of faith that fill 
 
 The spirit's fount, at last unsealed. 
 A corpse's ear, an angel's will, 
 
 That voice might wake, or wield. 
 Keener it rose, and wilder yet, 
 The lifeless flowers that wreathe and fret 
 Column and arch with garlands white, 
 Drank the deep fall of its delight, 
 Like purple rain at evening shed 
 
 On Sestri's cedar-darkened shore, 
 When all her sunlit waves lie dead, 
 And far along the mountains fled, 
 
 Her clouds forget the gloom they wore. 
 Till winding vale and pasture low 
 Pant underneath their gusli and glow ; 
 So sank, so swept, on earth and air, 
 That single voice of passioned prayer. 
 The hollow tombs gave back the tone, 
 The roof's grey shafts of stalwart stone 
 Quivered like chords, the keen night blast 
 Grew tame beneath the sound. Tis past : 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 163 
 
 That failing cry — how feebly flung ! 
 What charm is laid on her who sung ? 
 
 Slowly she rose — her eyes were fixed 
 On the void, penetrable air ; 
 
 And in their glance was gladness mixed 
 With terror, and an under glare : 
 What human soul shall seize or share 
 
 The thoughts it might avow ? 
 It might have been — ah ! is it now — 
 
 Devotion ? — or despair ? 
 
 XXIY. 
 
 With steps whose short white flashes keep 
 
 Beneath the shade of her loose hair, 
 With measured pace, as one in sleep 
 
 Who heareth music in the air, 
 She left the sister's circle deep 
 Their anxious eyes of troubled thought 
 Dwelt on her but she heeded not ; 
 Fear struck and breathless as they gazed, 
 
 Before her steps their ranks divided ; 
 Her hand was given — her face was raised 
 
104 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 As if to one who watched and guided — 
 Her form emerges from the shade ; 
 Lo ! she will cross, where full displayed 
 Against the altar light 'tis thrown ; 
 She crosses now — but not alone. 
 Who leads her ? Lq ! the sisters shrink 
 Back from that guide with limbs that sink, 
 And eyes that glaze, and lips that blench ; 
 
 For, seen where broad the beams were cast 
 By what it dimmed, but did not quench, 
 
 A dark, veiled form there passed — 
 Veiled with the nun's black robe, that shed 
 Faint shade around its soundless tread ; 
 Moveless and mute the folds that fell, 
 Nor touch can change, nor breeze repel. 
 Deep to the earth its head was bowed, 
 Its face was bound with the white shroud ; 
 One hand upon its bosom pressed — 
 One seemed to lend its mortal gnesi ; 
 The hand it held lay bright and bare, 
 Cold as itself, and deadly fair. 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN. 165 
 
 What oath had bound the fatal troth 
 Whose horror seems to seal them both ? 
 Each powerless in the grasp they give, 
 This to release, and that to live. 
 
 xxv. 
 
 Like sister sails, that drift by night 
 Together on the deep, 
 
 Seen only where they cross the light 
 That pathless waves must pathlike keep 
 From fisher's signal fire, or pharos steep. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 Like two thin wreaths that autumn dew 
 Hath framed of equal paced cloud, 
 Whose shapes the hollow night can shroud, 
 
 Until they cross some caverned place 
 Of moon illumined blue, 
 
 That live an instant, but must trace 
 
 Their onward way, to waste and wane 
 
 Within the sightless gloom again, 
 
166 TIIE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 Where, scattered from their heavenly pride 
 Nor star nor storm shall gild or guide, — 
 So shape and shadow, side by side 
 The consecrated light had crossed. 
 Beneath the aisle an instant lost, 
 
 Behold ! again they glide 
 Where yonder moonlit arch is bent 
 Above the marble steps' descent, — 
 Those ancient steps, so steep and worn, 
 
 Though none descend, unless it be 
 Bearing, or borne, to sleep, or mourn, 
 
 The faithful or the free. 
 The shade yon bending cypress cast, 
 
 Stirred by the weak and tremulous air, 
 Kept back the moonlight as they passed. 
 
 The rays returned : they were not there 
 Who follows ? Watching still, to mark 
 If ought returned --(but all was dark) 
 Down to the gate, by two and three, 
 The sisters crept, how fearfully ! 
 
THE BROKEN CHAIN". 167 
 
 They only saw, when there they came, 
 Two wandering tongues of waving flame, 
 O'er the white stones, confusedly strewed 
 Across the field of solitude. . 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza II. Line 4. 
 " The image with the lifted eyes." — I was thinking of the St. Cecilia 
 of Raphael at Bologna, turned into marble — were it possible — where so 
 much depends on the entranced darkness of the eyes. The shrine of St. 
 Cecilia is altogether imaginary ; she is not a favorite saint in matters 
 of dedication. I don't know why. 
 
 Stanza XIV. Line 5. 
 "Those orbed towers, obscure and vast." — The circular tower, in 
 Amboise, is so large as to admit of a spiral ascent in its interior, which 
 two horsemen may ride up abreast. The chapel, which crowns the 
 precipice, though small, is one of the loveliest bits of rich detail in 
 France . It is terminated by a wooden spire. It is dedicated to St. 
 Hubert, a grotesque piece of carving above the entrance representing 
 his rencontre with the sacred stag. 
 
 Stanza XV. Line 2. 
 ' 'Is built a tomb of marble grey. " — There is no such tomb now in exist- 
 ence, the chapel being circular, and unbroken in design ; in fact, I 
 
168 THE BROKEN CHAIN. 
 
 have my doubts whether there ever was anything of the kind, the lady 
 being slightly too vague in her assertions to deserve unqualified credit. 
 
 Stanza XXI. Line 42. 
 
 " Nor blood be shed." — In the sacrifices of masses the priest is said to 
 offer Christ for the quick and dead. 
 
 Stanza XXIII. Line 26. 
 
 " Like purple rain . " — I never saw such a thing but once, on the moun- 
 tains of Sestri, in the gulf of Genoa. The whole western half of the 
 sky was one intense amber color, the air crystalline and cloudless, the 
 other half, grey with drifting showers. At the instant of sunset, the 
 whole mass of rain turned of a deep rose-color, the consequent rainbow 
 being not varied with the seven colors, but one broad belt of paler rose ; 
 the other tints being so delicate as to be overwhelmed by the crimson 
 of the rain. 
 
 
THE TEARS OF PSAMMEXITUS. 
 
 [Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, made war on Psammenitus of Egypt, 
 and deposed him. His sons were sentenced to death, his daughters to 
 slavery. He saw his children pass to death and to dishonor without 
 apparent emotion, but wept on observing a noble, who had been his 
 companion, ask alms of the Persians. Cambyses sent to inquire the 
 reason of his conduct. The substance of his reply was as follows ; — J 
 
 Say ye I wept ? I do not know : — 
 
 There came a sound across my brain, 
 "Which was familiar long ago ; 
 
 And through the hot and crimson stain 
 That floods the earth and chores the air, 
 I saw the waving of white hair — 
 
 The palsy of an aged brow ; 
 
 I should have known it once, but now 
 
 One desperate hour hath dashed away 
 
 The memory of my kingly day. 
 
 169 
 
j; I THE TEAKS OP PSAMMEXITIS. 
 
 Mute, weak, unable to deliver 
 
 That bowed distress of passion pale, 
 I saw that forehead's tortured quiver. 
 
 And watched the weary footstep fail, 
 With just as much of sickening thrill 
 As marked my heart was human still ; 
 Yes, though my breast is bound and barred 
 With pain, and though that heart is hard, 
 And though the grief that should have bent 
 
 Hath made me, what ye dare not mock, 
 The being of untamed intent, 
 
 Between the tiger and the rock, 
 There's that of pity's outward glow- 
 May bid the tear atone, 
 In mercy to another's woe 
 For mockery of its own ; 
 It is not cold, — it is not less, 
 Though yielded in unconsciousness. 
 And it is well that I can weep, 
 For in the shadow, not of sleep, 
 Through which, as wifh a vain endeavor, 
 These aged eyes must gaze forever, 
 
THE TEAKS OF FSAMMENITUS. 171 
 
 Their tears can east the only light 
 
 That mellows down the mass of night ; 
 
 For they have seen the curse of sight 
 
 My spirit guards the dread detail 
 
 And wears their vision like a veil. 
 
 They saw the low Pelusian shore 
 
 Grow warm with death and dark with gore, 
 When on those widely watered fields, 
 
 Shivered and sunk, betrayed, oppressed, 
 Ionian sword and Carian crest,* 
 And Egypt's shade of shields : 
 They saw, oh God ! they still must see 
 That dream of long dark agony, 
 A vision passing, never past, 
 A troop of kingly forms, that cast 
 Cold quivering shadows of keen pain 
 In bars of darkness o'er my brain : 
 I see them move, — I hear them tread, 
 Each his untroubled eyes declining, 
 
 * The Ionians and Carians were faithful auxiliaries of the Egyptian 
 kings, from the beginning of the reign of Psammenitus. The helmet 
 crest was invented bv the Carians. 
 
172 THE TEAKS OF PSAMMEXITUS. 
 
 Though fierce in front, and swift and red 
 The Eastern sword is sheathless shining. 
 I hear them tread, — the earth doth not ! 
 Alas ! its echoes have forgot 
 The fiery steps that shook the shore 
 With their swift pride in days of yore. 
 
 In vain, in vain, in wrath arrayed, 
 Shall Egypt wave her battle blaTle ; 
 It cannot cleave the dull death shade, 
 Where, sternly checked and lowly laid, 
 Despised, dishonored, and betrayed, 
 That pride is past, those steps are stayed. 
 Oh ! would I were as those who sleep 
 
 In yonder island lone and low.* 
 Beside whose shore, obscure and deep, 
 
 Sepulchral waters flow, 
 And wake, with beating pause, like breath, 
 Their pyramidal place of death ; 
 
 * Under the hill, on which the pyramids of Cheops were erected, were 
 excavated vaults, around which a stream from the Nile was carried by 
 a subterraneous passage. These were sepulchres for the kings, and 
 Cheops was buried there himself.— Herod., II., 187. 
 
THE TEARS OF PSAMMKXITUS. 173 
 
 For it is cool and quiet there, 
 
 And on the calm frankincensed clay 
 Passes no change, and this despair 
 
 Shrinks like the baffled worm, their prey 
 Alike impassive. I forget • 
 
 The thoughts of him who sent ye here : 
 Bear back these words, and say, though yet 
 
 The shade of this unkingly feai- 
 Hath power upon my brow, no tear 
 Hath quenched the curse within mine eyes, 
 And by that curse's fire, 
 
 I see the doom that shall possess 
 His hope, his passion, his desire, 
 
 His life, his strength, his nothingness. 
 I see across the desert led,* 
 
 A plumed host, on whom distress 
 Of fear and famine hath been shed ; 
 
 * Cambyses, after subduing Egypt, led an army against the Ethi- 
 opians. He was checked by famine. Persisting in his intention, un- 
 til the troops were obliged to kill every tenth man for food, he lost the 
 greater part of his army. 
 
174 THE TEAES OF PSA.MMEXITUS. 
 
 Before them lies the wilderness, 
 Behind, along the path the}' tread, 
 
 If death make desolation less, 
 There lie a company of dead 
 
 Who coyer the'sand's hot nakedness 
 With a cool moist bed of human clay, 
 A soil and a surface of slow decay : 
 Through the dense and lifeless heap 
 
 Irregularly rise 
 Short shuddering waves that heave and creep, 
 Like spasms that league the guilty sleep, 
 
 And where the motion dies, 
 A moaning mixes with the purple air. 
 They have not fallen in fight ; the trace 
 
 Of war hath not passed by ; 
 There is no fear on any face, 
 
 No wrath in any eye. 
 They have laid them down with bows unbent, 
 With swords unfleshed and innocent, 
 In the grasp of that famine whose gradual thrill 
 Is fiercest to torture and longest to kill : 
 
THE TEARS OF PSAMMENITUS. 175 
 
 Stretched in one grave on the burning plain 
 
 Coiled together in knots of pain, 
 
 "Where the dead are twisted in skeleton writhe, 
 
 With the mortal pangs of the living and lithe ; 
 
 Soaking into the sand below, 
 
 With the drip of the death-dew, heavy and slow, 
 
 blocking the heaven that heard no prayer, 
 
 TTith the lifted hand and the lifeless stare — 
 
 With the lifted hand, whose tremorless clay, 
 
 Though powerless to combat, is patient to pray. 
 
 And the glance that reflects, in its vain address. 
 
 Heaven's blue from its own white lifelessness ; 
 
 Heaped for a feast on the venomous ground, 
 
 For the howling jackal and herded hound ; 
 
 With none that can watch and with few that will weep 
 
 By the home they have left, or the home they must 
 
 keep, 
 The strength hath been lost from the desolate land, 
 Once fierce as the simoon, now frail as the sand. 
 Not unavenged : their gathered wrath 
 Is dark along its desert path, 
 
17G THE TEARS OF PSAMMEXITUS. 
 
 Nor strength shall bide, nor madness fly 
 The anger of their agony, 
 
 For every eye, though sunk and dim, 
 And every lip, in its last need, 
 
 Hath looked and breathed a plague on him 
 Whose pride they fell to feed. 
 The dead remember well and long, 
 And they are cold of heart and strong, 
 They died, they cursed thee ; not in vain ! 
 Along the river's reedy plain 
 Behold a troop, — a shadowy crowd — 
 Of godlike spectres, pale and proud ; 
 In concourse calm they move and meet, 
 The desert billows at their feet, 
 Heave like the sea when, deep distressed, 
 The waters pant in their unrest. 
 Robed in a whirl of pillared sand 
 
 Avenging Amnion glides supreme ; * 
 
 * Cambyses sent 50,000 men to burn the temple of the Egyptian Jove 
 or Amnion. They plunged into the desert and were never heard of 
 more. It was reported they were overwhelmed with sand. 
 
THE TEARS OF PSAMMEXITUS. 177 
 
 The red sun smoulders in his hand 
 
 And round about his brows, the gleam, 
 As of a broad and burning fold 
 
 Of purple wind, is wrapt and rolled.* 
 "With failing frame and lingering tread, 
 
 Stern Apis follows, wild and worn ; f 
 The blood by mortal madness shed, 
 
 Frozen on his white limbs anguish -torn. 
 What soul can bear, what strength can brook 
 The God-distress that fills his look ? 
 The dreadful light of fixed disdain, 
 The fainting wrath, the flashing pain 
 Bright to decree or to confess 
 Another's fate — its own distress — 
 
 * The simoon is rendered visible by its purple tone of color. 
 
 f The god Apis occasionally appeared in Egypt under the form of a 
 handsome bull. lie imprudently visited his worshippers immediately 
 after Cambyses had returned from Ethiopia with the loss of his army 
 and reason. Cambyses heard of his appearance, and insisted on seeing 
 him. The officiating priests introduced Cambyses to the bull. The 
 king looked with little respect on a deity whose divinity depended on 
 the number of hairs in his tail, drew his dagger, wounded Apis in 
 the thigh, and scourged all the priests. Apis died. From that time 
 the insanity of Cambyses became evident, and he was subject to the 
 violent and torturing passions described in the succeeding lines. 
 
178 THE TEARS OF PSAMMENITUS. 
 
 A mingled passion and appeal, 
 Dark to inflict and deep to feel. 
 
 "Who are these that flitting follow 
 Indistinct and numberless ? 
 
 As through the darkness, cold and hollow, 
 Of some hopeless dream, there press 
 Dim, delirious shapes that dress 
 Their white limbs with folds of pain ; 
 See the swift mysterious train — 
 
 Forms of fixed, embodied feeling, 
 Fixed, but in a fiery trance, 
 Of wildering mien and lightning glance, 
 
 Each its inward power revealing 
 Through its quivering countenance ; 
 Visible living agonies, 
 
 Wild with everlasting motion, 
 Memory with her dark dead eyes, 
 Tortured thoughts that useless rise, 
 
 Late remorse and vain devotion, 
 Dreams of cruelty and crime, 
 Unmoved by rage, untamed by time, 
 
THE TEARS OE PSAMMENITUS. 179 
 
 Of fierce design, and fell delaying, 
 
 Quenched affection, strong despair 
 Wan disease, and madness playing 
 
 With her own pale hair. 
 The last, how woeful and how wild ! 
 
 Enrobed with no diyiner dread 
 Than that one smile, so sad, so mild, 
 
 Worn by the human dead ; 
 A spectre thing, whose pride of power 
 
 Is vested in its pain 
 Becoming dreadful in the hour 
 
 When what it seems was slain. 
 Bound with the chill that checks the sense, 
 
 It moves in spasm-like spell : 
 It walks in that dead impotence, 
 
 How weak, how terrible ! 
 Cambyses, when thy summoned hour 
 Shall pause on Ecbatana's Tower, 
 Though barbed with guilt, and swift, and fierce, 
 Unnumbered pangs thy soul shall pierce 
 
180 THE TEARS OF PSAMMEXITUS. 
 
 The last, the worst thy heart can prove, 
 Must be that brothers look of love ; * 
 Thai look that once shone but to bless, 
 Then changed, how mute, how merciless ! 
 His blood shall bathe thy brow, his pain 
 Shall bind thee with a burning chain, 
 His arms shall drag, his wrath shall thrust 
 Thy soul to death, thy throne to dust ; 
 Thy memory darkened with disgrace, 
 Thy kingdom wrested from thy race,f 
 Condemned of God, accursed of men, 
 Lord of my grief, remember then, 
 The tears of him — who will not weep again. 
 
 *Cambyses caused his brother Smerdis to be slain ; suspecting him of 
 designs on the throne. This deed he bitterly repented of on his death- 
 bed, being convinced of the innocence of his brother. 
 
 f Treacherously seized by Smerdis the Magus, afterwards attained 
 by Darius Ilystaspes, through the instrumentality of his groom. 
 Cambyses died in the Syrian Eebatana, of a wound accidentally 
 received in the part of the thigh where he had wounded Apis. 
 
THE TWO PATHS. 
 
 T. 
 
 The paths of life are rudely laid 
 
 Beneath the blaze of burning skies ; 
 Level and cool, in cloistered shade, 
 
 The church's pavement lies. 
 Along the sunless forest glade 
 
 Its gnarled roots are coiled like crime, 
 Where glows the grass with freshening blade, 
 
 Thine eyes may track the serpent slime ; 
 But there thy steps are unbet rayed, 
 
 The serpent waits a surer time. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The fires of earth are fiercely blent, 
 
 Its suns arise with scorching glow ; 
 
 The church's light hath soft descent, 
 
 And hues like God's own bow. 
 
 181 
 
182 THE TWO PATHS. 
 
 Tho brows of men are darkly bent, 
 
 Their lips arc wreathed "with scorn and guile ; 
 
 But pure, and pale, and innocent 
 
 The looks that light the marble aisle — 
 
 From angel eyes, in love intent, 
 And lips of everlasting smile. 
 
 in. 
 Lady, the fields of earth are wide, 
 
 And tempt an infant's foot to stray : 
 Oh ! lead thy loved one's steps aside, 
 
 Where the white altar lights his way. 
 Around his path shall glance and glide, 
 
 A thousand shadows false and wild ; 
 Oh ! lead him to that surer Guide, 
 
 Than sire, serene, or mother mild, 
 Whose childhood quelled the age of pride, 
 
 Whose Godhead called the little child. 
 
 IV. 
 
 So when thy breast of love untold, 
 That warmed his sleep of infancy, 
 
THE TWO PATHS. 183 
 
 Shall only make the marble cold, 
 
 Beneath his aged knee ; 
 From its steep "throne of heavenly gold 
 
 Thy soul shall stoop to see 
 His grief, that cannot be controlled, 
 
 Turning to God from thee — 
 Cleaving with prayer the cloudy fold 5 
 
 That veils the sanctuary. 
 
THE OLD WATER-WHEEL. 
 
 It lies beside the river ; where its marge 
 Is black with many an old and oarless barge, 
 And yeasty filth, and leafage wild and rank 
 Stagnate and batten by the crumbling bank. 
 
 Once, slow revolving by the industrious mill, 
 It murmured, only on the Sabbath still ; 
 And evening winds its pulse-like beating bore 
 Down the soft vale, and by the winding shore. 
 
 Sparkling around its orbed motion flew, 
 With quick, fresh fall, the drops of dashing dew, 
 Through noon-tide heat that gentle rain was Hung, 
 And verdant round the summer herbage sprung, 
 
 Now dancing light and sounding motion cease, 
 
 In these dark hours of cold continual peace ; 
 
 184 
 
THE OLD WATER-WHEEL. 185 
 
 Through its black bars the unbroken moonlight flows, 
 And dry winds howl about its long repose ; 
 
 And mouldering lichens creep, and mosses grey 
 Cling round its arms, in gradual decay, 
 Amidst the hum of men — which doth not suit 
 That shadowy circle, motionless aud mute. 
 
 So, by the sleep of many a human heart, 
 The crowd of men may bear their busy part, 
 Where withered, or forgotten, or subdued, 
 Its noisy passions haye left solitude. 
 
 Ah, little can they trace the hidden truth ! 
 What wayes haye moyed it in the vale of youth ! 
 And little can its broken chords ayow 
 How they once sounded. All is silent now. 
 
THE DEPARTED LIGHT. 
 
 Thou know'st the place where purple rocks receive 
 
 The deepened silence of the pausing stream ; 
 And myrtles and white olives interweave 
 
 Their cool grey shadows with the azure gleam 
 Of noontide ; and pale temple columns cleave 
 
 Those waves with shafts of light (as through a dream 
 Of sorrow, pierced the memories of loved hours — 
 
 Cold and fixed thoughts that will not pass away) 
 All chapleted with wreaths of marble flowers, 
 
 Too calm to live, — too lovely to decay. 
 And hills rise round, pyramidal and vast, 
 
 Like tombs built of blue heaven, above the clay 
 Of those who worshipped here, whose steps liave past 
 
 To silence — leaving o'er the waters cast 
 
 The light of their religion. There, at eve. 
 
 That gentle dame would walk, when night-birds make 
 
 186 
 
THE DEPARTED LIGHT. 187 
 
 The starry myrtle blossoms pant and heave 
 
 With waves of ceaseless song ; she would awake 
 The lulled air with her kindling thoughts, and leave 
 
 Her voice's echo on the listening lake ; 
 The quenched rays of her beauty would deceive 
 
 Its depths into quick joy. Hill, wave, and brake 
 Grew living as she moved : I did believe 
 
 That they were lovely, only for her sake ; 
 But now — she is not there — at least, the chill 
 
 Hath passed upon her which no sun shall break. 
 Stranger, my feet must shun the lake and hill : — 
 Seek them, — but dream not they are lovely still. 
 
AGONIA. 
 
 Whe^ our delight is desolate, 
 
 And hope is overthrown ; 
 And when the heart must bear the weight 
 
 Of its own love alone ; 
 
 And when the soul, whose thoughts are deep, 
 
 Must guard them unrevealed, 
 And feel that it is full, hut keep 
 
 That fullness calm and sealed ; 
 
 WTien love's long glance is dark with pain — 
 
 With none to inert, or cheer ; 
 Ami words of woe are wild in vain 
 
 For those who cannot hear ; 
 
 188 
 
AGONIA. 189 
 
 AY hen earth is dark and memory 
 
 Pale in the heaven above, — 
 The heart can bear to lose its j oy, 
 
 But not to cease to love. 
 
 But what shall guide the choice within, 
 
 Of guilt or agony, — 
 When to remember is to sin, 
 
 And to forget — to die t 
 
TIIE LAST SONG OF ARION. 
 
 70,9 XiyeiocS jiiopov drfdovoS 
 
 * * » HVHVOV d'lHTJV 
 
 tov v6rcxror us\ip(x6a Oavadmov yuor. 
 
 The circumstances which led to the introduction of Arion to his 
 Dolphin are differently related by Ilerodotus and Lucian. Both agree 
 that he was a musician of the highest order, born at Methymna, in the 
 island of Lesbos, and that he acquired fame and fortune at the court of 
 Periander of Corinth. Ilerodotus affirms that he became desirous of 
 seeing Italy and Sicily, and having made a considerable fortune in 
 those countries, hired a Corinthian vessel to take him back to Corinth. 
 When halfway over the gulf the mariners conceived the idea of seizing 
 the money and throwing the musician into the sea. 
 
 Arion started several objections, but finding that they were over- 
 ruled, requested that he might be permitted to sing them a song. 
 
 Permission being granted he wreathed himself and his harp with 
 flowers, sang, says Lucian, in the sweetest way in the world, and leaped 
 into the sea. 
 
 The historian proceeds with less confidence to state that a dolphin 
 carried him safe ashore. Lucian agrees with this account except in 
 one particular : he makes no mention of the journey to Sicily, and sup- 
 poses Arion to have been returning from Corinth to his native Lesbos 
 when the attack \,as made on him. I have taken him to Sicily with 
 
 190 
 
THE LAST SONG OF ARIOX. 191 
 
 Herodotus, but prefer sending him straight home. He is more inter- 
 esting returning to his country than paying his respects at the court 
 of Corinth. 
 
 I. 
 
 Look not upon me thus impatiently, 
 
 Ye children of the deep ; 
 My fingers fail, and tremble as they try 
 
 To stir the silver sleep with song, 
 Which underneath the surge ye sweep, 
 These lulled and listless chords must keep — 
 
 Alas — how long ! 
 
 II. 
 
 The salt sea wind has touched my harp ; its thrill 
 Follows the passing plectrum, low and chill, 
 Woe for the wakened pulse of Ocean's breath, 
 That injures these with silence — me with death. 
 Oh wherefore stirred the wind on Pindu's chain, 
 When joyful morning called me to the main ? 
 Flashed the keen oars — our canvas filled and free, 
 Shook like white fire along the purple sea, 
 
192 THE LAST SONG OF ARION. 
 
 Fast from the helm the shattering surges flew, 
 Pale gleamed our path along their cloven blue ; 
 And orient path, wild wind and purple wave, 
 Pointed and urged and guided to the grave. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ye winds ! by far Methymna's steep, 
 
 I loved your voices long, 
 And gave your spirits power to keep 
 
 Wild syllables of song, 
 When, folded in the crimson shade 
 
 That veils Olympus' cloud-like whiteness, 
 The slumber of your life was laid 
 
 In the lull of its own lightness, 
 Poised on the voiceless ebb and flow 
 Of the beamy-bil lowed summer snow, 
 Still at my call ye came — 
 Through the thin wreaths of undulating flame 
 That panting in their heavenly home, 
 Willi crimson shadows flush the foam 
 Of Adramyttium, round the ravined hill. 
 Awakened with onp deep and living thrill, 
 
THE LAST SONG OF ARION". 103 
 
 Ye came and with your steep descent, 
 The hollow forests waved and bent, 
 
 Their leaf-lulled echoes caught the winding call. 
 Through incensed glade and rosy dell, 
 Mixed with the breath -like pause and swell 
 
 Of waters following in eternal fall, 
 In azure waves, that just betray 
 The music quivering in their spray 
 Beneath its silent seven-fold arch of day 
 
 High in pale precipices hung 
 
 The lifeless rocks of rigid marble rung, 
 "Waving the cedar crests along their brows sublime, 
 
 Swift ocean heard beneath, and flung 
 His tranced and trembling waves in measured time 
 Along his golden sands with faintly falling chime. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Alas ! had ye forgot the joy I gave, 
 
 That ye did hearken to my call this day ? 
 
 Oh ! had ye slumbered — when your sleep could save, 
 I would have fed you with sweet sound for aye, 
 Now ye have risen to bear my silent soul away. 
 
194 THE LAST SONG OF ARIOX. 
 
 I heard ye murmur through the Etnsen caves, 
 
 When joyful dawn had touched the topmost dome, 
 I saw ye light along the mountain waves 
 
 Far to the east, your beacon fires of foam, 
 And deemed ye rose to bear your weary minstrel home. 
 Home ? it shall be that home indeed, 
 Where tears attend and shadows lead 
 
 The steps of man's return ; 
 Home ! woe is me, no home I need, 
 
 Except the urn. 
 Behold — beyond these billows' flow, 
 I see Methymna's mountains glow ; 
 Long, long desired, their peaks of light 
 Flash on my sickened soul and sight, 
 And heart and eye almost possess 
 Their vales of long lost pleasantness ; 
 But eye and heart, before they greet 
 That land, shall cease to burn and beat. 
 I see, between the sea and land, 
 The winding belt of golden sand ; 
 
THE LAST SONG OF ARION. 195 
 
 But never may my footsteps reach 
 The brightness of that Lesbian beach, 
 
 Unless, with pale and listless limb, 
 Stretched by the water's utmost brim, 
 Xaked, beneath my native sky, 
 With bloodless brow, and darkened eye, 
 An unregarded ghastly heap, 
 For bird to tear and surge to sweep, 
 Too deadly calm — too coldly weak 
 To reck of billow, or of beak. 
 
 VI. 
 
 My native isle ! When I have been 
 
 Reft of my love, and far from thee 
 My dreams have traced, my soul hath seen 
 
 Thy shadow on the sea, 
 And waked in joy, but not to seek 
 Thy winding strand, or purple peak. 
 For strand and peak had waned away 
 Before the desolating day, 
 
 On Aero-Corinth redly risen, 
 
191) THE LAST SONG OF AKIOX. 
 
 That burned above iEgina's bay, 
 
 And laughed upon my palace prison. 
 How soft on other eyes it shone, 
 When light, and land, were all their own, 
 I looked across the eastern brine, 
 I knew that morning was not mine. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But thou art near me now, dear isle ! 
 And I can see the lightning smile 
 By thy broad beach, that flashes free 
 Along the pale lips of the sea. 
 Near, nearer, louder, breaking, beating, 
 
 The billows fall with ceaseless shower ; 
 It comes, — dear isle ! — our hour of meeting- 
 
 Oh God ! across the soft eyes of the hour 
 Is thrown a black and blinding veil ; 
 Its steps are swift, its brow is pale, 
 Before its face, behold — there stoop, 
 From their keen wings, a darkening troop 
 Of forms like unto it — that fade 
 Far in unfathomable shade, 
 
THE LAST SONG OF^CKTON. 197 
 
 Confused, and limitless, and hollow, 
 
 It comes, but there are none that follow, — 
 
 It pauses, as they paused, but not 
 
 Like them to pass away, 
 For I must share its shadowy lot, 
 And walk with it, where wide and grey, 
 That caverned twilight chokes the day, 
 And, underneath the horizon's starless line, 
 Shall drink, like feeble dew, its life and mine. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Farewell, sweet harp ! for lost and quenched 
 
 Thy swift and sounding fire shall be ; 
 And these faint lips be mute and blenched, 
 
 That once so fondly followed thee. 
 Oh ! deep within the winding shell 
 The slumbering passions haunt and dwell, 
 As memories of its ocean tomb 
 Still gush within its murmuring gloom ; 
 But closed the lips and faint the fingers 
 
 Of fiery touch, and woven words, 
 
198 THE LAST SONG OF ARION. 
 
 To rouse the flame that clings and lingers 
 Alonsf the loosened chords. 
 
 o 
 
 Farewell ! thou diver-sounding lute, 
 I must not wake thy wildness more, 
 
 When I and thou lie dead, and mute, 
 Upon the hissing shore. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The sounds I summon fall and roll 
 In waves of memory o'er my soul ; 
 And there are words I should not hear, 
 That murmur in my dying ear, 
 Distant all, but full and clear. 
 Like a child's footstep in its fear, 
 
 Falling in Colono's wood 
 When the leaves are sere ; 
 
 And waves of black, tumultuous blood 
 Heave and gush about my heart, 
 
 Each a deep and dismal mirror 
 Flashing back its broken part 
 
 Of visible, and changeless terror ; 
 
THE LAST SONG OF ARION. 199 
 
 And fiery foam-globes leap and shiyer 
 Along that crimson, living river ; 
 
 Its surge is hot, its banks are black, 
 And weak, wild thoughts that once were bright, 
 And dreams, and hopes of dead delight, 
 
 Drift on its desolating track, 
 And lie along its shore : 
 
 Oh ! who shall give that brightness back, 
 Or those lost hopes restore ? 
 
 Or bid that light of dreams be shed 
 
 On the glazed eye-balls of the dead ? 
 
 That light of dreams ! my soul hath cherished 
 One dream too fondly, and too long, 
 
 Hope — dread — desire — delight have perished, 
 And every thought whose voice was strong 
 To curb the heart to good or wrong ; 
 
 But that sweet dream is with me still 
 
 Like the shade of an eternal hill, 
 Cast on a calm and narrow lake, 
 
200 THE LAST SONG OF ARIOX. 
 
 That hath no room except for it — and heaven : 
 
 It doth not leave me, nor forsake ; 
 And often with my soul hath striven 
 To quench or calm its worst distress, 
 Its silent sense of loneliness. 
 
 And must it leave me now ? 
 Alas ! dear lady, where my steps must tread, 
 
 What veils the echo or the glow 
 That word can leave, or smile can shed, 
 Among the soundless, lifeless dead ? 
 Soft o'er my brain the lulling dew shall fall, 
 While I sleep on, beneath the heavy sea, 
 Coldly, — I shall not hear though thou shouldst calL 
 Deeply, — I shall not dream, — not e'en of thee. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And when my thoughts to ])eace depart 
 
 Beneath the unpeaceful foam, 
 Wilt thou remember him, whose heart 
 
 Hath ceased to be thy home ? 
 Nor bid thy breast its love subdue 
 For one no longer fond nor true ; 
 
THE LAST SONG OF ARION". 201 
 
 Thine ears have heard a treacherous tale, 
 My words were false, — my faith was frail. 
 I feel the grasp of death's white hand 
 
 Laid heavy on my hrow, 
 And from the brain those fingers brand, 
 The chords of memory drop like sand, 
 And faint in muffled murmurs die, 
 The passionate word, the fond reply, 
 
 The deep redoubled vow. 
 Oh ! dear Ismene flushed and bright, 
 
 Although thy beauty burn, 
 It cannot wake to love's delight 
 The crumbling ashes quenched and white, 
 Nor pierce the apathy of night 
 
 Within the marble urn : 
 Let others weafthe chains I wore, 
 
 And worship at the unhonored shrine — 
 For me, the chain is strong no more, 
 
 No more the voice divine : 
 Go forth, and look on those that live, 
 And robe thee with the love they give, 
 
 But think no more of mine ; 
 
202 THE LAST SONG OF ARIOX. 
 
 Or think of all that pass thee by, 
 With heedless heart and unveiled eye, 
 That none can love thee less than I. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Farewell ; but do not grieve ; thy pain 
 
 Would seek me where I sleep, 
 Thy tears would pierce like rushing rain, 
 
 The stillness of the deep. 
 
 Remember, if thou wilt, but do not weep. 
 Farewell, beloved hills, and native isle. 
 Farewell to earth's delight to heaven's smile ; 
 Farewell to sounding air, to purple sea ; 
 Farewell to light, — to life, — to love,— to thee. 
 
THE HILLS OF CARRARA.* 
 
 i. 
 
 Amidst a vale of springing leaves, 
 
 Where spreads the vine its wandering root, 
 And cumbrous fall the autumnal sheaves, 
 And olives shed their sable fruit, 
 And gentle winds, and waters never mute, 
 Make of young boughs and pebbles pure 
 
 One universal lute, 
 And bright birds, through the myrtle copse obscure, 
 Pierce with quick notes, and plumage dipped in dew, 
 The silence and the shade of each lulled avenue. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Far in the depths of voiceless skies, 
 
 Where calm and cold the stars, are strewed, 
 
 * The mountains of Carrara, from which nearly all the marble now 
 used in sculpture is derived, form by far the finest piece of hill scenery 
 I know in Italy. They rise out of valleys of exquisite richness, being 
 themselves singularly desolate, magnificent in form and noble in eleva- 
 tion, but without forests on their flanks and without one blade of grass 
 on their summits. 203 
 
204 TIIE KILLS OF CABBABA. 
 
 The peaks of pale Carrara rise. 
 
 Nor sound of storm, nor whirlwind rude, 
 Can break their chill of marble solitude ; 
 
 The crimson lightnings round their crest 
 May hold their fiery feud — 
 
 They hear not, nor reply ; their chasmed rest 
 No flowret decks, nor herbage green, nor breath 
 Of moving thing can change their atmosphere of death. 
 
 in. 
 
 But far beneath, in folded sleep, 
 Faint forms of heavenly life arc laid, 
 
 With pale brows and soft eyes, that keep 
 Sweet peace of unawakened shade, 
 
 "Whose wreathed limbs, in robes of rock arrayed, 
 Fall like white waves on human thought, 
 
 In fitful dreams displayed; 
 Deep through their secret homes of slumber sought, 
 They rise immortal, children of the day, 
 Gleaming with godlike forms on earth, and her decay. 
 
THE HILLS OF CARRARA. 205 
 
 IV. 
 
 Yes, where the bud hath brightest germ, 
 
 And broad the golden blossoms glow, 
 There glides the snake and works the worm 
 
 And black the earth is laid below. 
 Ah ! think not thou the souls of men to know ; 
 
 By outward smiles in wildness worn ; 
 The words that jest at woe 
 
 Spring not less lightly, though the heart be torn, 
 The mocking heart, that scarcely dares confess 
 Even to itself, the strength of its own bitterness. 
 Nor deem that they whose words are cold, 
 
 Whose brows are dark, have hearts of steel, 
 The couchant strength, untraced, untold, 
 
 Of thoughts they keep and throbs they feel, 
 
 May need an answering music to unseal, 
 Who knows what waves may stir the silent sea, 
 
 Beneath the low appeal 
 From distant shores, of winds unfelt by thee ? 
 What sounds may wake within the winding shell, 
 Responsive to the charm of those who touch it well ! 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 
 
 My patent of nobility " (said Napoleon) "dates from the Battle of 
 Montenotte." 
 
 Slow lifts the night her starry host 
 
 Above the mountain chain 
 That guards the grey Ligurian coast, 
 
 And lights the Lombard plain ; 
 
 That plain, that softening on the sigh 
 
 Lies blue beneath the balm of night, 
 
 "With lapse of rivers lulled, that glide 
 
 In lustre broad of living tide, 
 
 Or pause for hours of peace beside 
 
 The shores they double, and divide, 
 
 To feed with heaven's reverted hue 
 
 The clustered vine's expanding blue : 
 
 206 
 
THE BATTLE OF MOSTENOTTE. 201 
 
 With crystal flow, for evermore, 
 They lave a blood-j)olluted shore ; 
 Ah ! not the snows, whose wreaths renew 
 Their radiant depth with stainless dew, 
 Can bid their banks be pure, or bless 
 The guilty land with holiness. 
 
 ii. 
 
 In stormy waves, whose wrath can reach 
 The rocks that back the topmost beach, 
 The midnight sea falls wild and deep 
 Around Savona's marble steep, 
 
 And Voltri's crescent bay. 
 What fiery lines are these, that flash 
 Where fierce the breakers curl and crash, 
 
 And fastest flies the spray ? 
 No moon has risen to mark the night, 
 Nor such the flakes of phosphor light 
 That wake along the southern wave, 
 By Baiae's cliff and Capri's cave, 
 
 Until the dawn of day : 
 
208 THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 
 
 The phosphor flame is soft and green 
 Beneath the hollow surges seen ; 
 But these are dyed with dusky red 
 Far on the fitful surface shed ; 
 And evermore, their glance between, 
 The mountain gust is deeply stirred 
 With low vibration, felt, and heard, 
 Which winds and leaves confuse, in vain, 
 It gathers through their maze again, 
 Redoubling round the rocks it smote, 
 Till falls in fear the night-bird's note, 
 And every sound beside is still, 
 But plash of torrent from the hill. 
 And murmur by the branches made 
 That bend above its bright cascade. 
 
 in. 
 
 Hark, hark ! the hollow Apennine 
 
 Laughs in his heart afar ; 
 Through all his vales he drinks like wine 
 
 The deepening draught of war ; 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 
 
 For not with doubtful burst, or slow, 
 That thunder shakes his breathless snow, 
 But ceaseless rends, with rattling stroke, 
 The veils of white volcano-smoke 
 That o'er Legino's ridges rest, 
 
 And writhe in Merla's vale : 
 There lifts the Frank his triple crest, 
 
 Crowned with its plumage pale, 
 Though, clogged and dyed with stains of 
 
 death, 
 It scarce obeys the tempest's breath, 
 And darker still, and deadlier press 
 The war-clouds on its weariness. 
 Far by the bright Bormida's banks 
 The Austrian cheers his chosen ranks, 
 In ponderous waves, that, where they check 
 Rise o'er their own tumultuous wreck, 
 Recoiling— crashing — gathering still 
 In rage around that Island hill, 
 
 Where stand the moveless Few — 
 Few — fewer as the moments flit ; 
 
210 THE BATTLE OF MOXTENOTTE. 
 
 Though shaft and shell their columns split 
 
 As morning melts the dew, 
 Though narrower yet their guarding grows, 
 And hot the heaps of carnage close, 
 In death's faint shade and fiery shock, 
 They stand, one ridge of living rock, 
 Which steel may rend, and wave may wear, 
 And bolt may crush, and blast may tear, 
 
 But none can strike from its abiding. 
 The flood, the flash, the steel, may bear 
 Perchance destruction — not despair. 
 
 And death — but not dividing. 
 What matter ? while their ground they keep, 
 Though here a column — there an heap — 
 Though these in wrath — and those in sleep, 
 
 If all are there. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Charge, D'Argenteau ! Fast flies the night, 
 The snows look wan with inward light : 
 Charge, D'Argenteau ! Thy kingdom's power 
 Wins not again this hope, nor hour : 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTEXOTTE. 211 
 
 The force — the fate of France is thrown 
 
 Behind those feeble shields, 
 That ridge of death-defended stone 
 
 Were worth a thousand fields ! 
 In vain — in vain ! Thy broad array 
 Breaks on their front of spears like spray 
 Thine hour hath struck — the dawning red 
 Is o'er thy wavering standards shed ; 
 A darker dye thy folds shall take 
 Before its utmost beams can break. 
 
 v. 
 
 Out of its Eastern fountains 
 
 The river of day is drawn, 
 And the shadows of the mountains 
 
 March downward from the dawn, — 
 The shadows of the ancient hills 
 
 Shortening as they go, 
 Down beside the dancing rills 
 
 Wearily and slow. 
 
212 THE BATTLE OF MOXTEXOTTE. 
 
 The morning wind the mead hath kissed ; 
 
 It leads in narrow lines 
 The shadows of the silver mist, 
 
 To pause among the pines. 
 But where the sun is calm and hot, 
 
 And where the wind hath peace, 
 There is a shade that pause th not, 
 
 And a sound that doth not cease. 
 The shade is like a sable river 
 
 Broken with sparkles bright ; 
 The sound is like dead leaves that shiver 
 
 In the decay of night. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Together came with pulse-like beat 
 
 The darkness, and the tread ; 
 A motion calm — a murmur sweet, 
 
 Yet deathful both, and dread ; 
 Poised en the hill, a fringed shroud, 
 
 It wavered like the sea, 
 Then clove itself, as doth a cloud, 
 
 In sable columns three. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 213 
 
 They fired no shot — they gave no sign, — 
 
 They blew no battle peal, 
 But down they came, in deadly line, 
 
 Like whirling bars of steel. 
 As fades the forest from its place, 
 
 Beneath the lava- flood, 
 The Austrian host, before their face, 
 
 Was melted into blood : 
 They moved, as moves the solemn night, 
 
 With lulling, and release, 
 Before them, all was fear and flight, 
 
 Behind them, all was peace : 
 Before them flashed the roaring glen 
 
 With bayonet and brand ; 
 Behind them lay the wrecks of men, 
 
 Like sea-weed on the sand. 
 
 VII. 
 
 But still, along the cumbered heath, 
 
 A vision strange and fair 
 Did fill the eyes that failed in death, 
 
 And darkened in despair ; 
 
214 THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 
 
 Where blazed the battle wild and hot 
 A youth, deep-eyed and pale, 
 
 Did more amidst the storm of shot, 
 As the fire of God through hail, 
 
 He moved, serene as spirits are, 
 And dying eyes might see 
 
 Above his head a crimson star 
 
 Burning continually. 
 ******* 
 
 VIII. 
 
 With bended head, and breathless tread. 
 The traveller tracks that silent shore, 
 Oppressed with thoughts that seek the dead, 
 
 nd visions that restore, 
 Or lightly trims his pausing bark, 
 Where lies the ocean lulled and dark, 
 Beneath the marble mounds that stay 
 The strength of many a bending bay, 
 And lace with silver lines the flow 
 Of tideless waters to and fro, 
 As drifts the breeze, or dies. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. 215 
 
 That scarce recalls its lightness, left 
 In many a purple-curtained cleft, 
 Whence to the softly lighted skies 
 Low flowers lift up their dark blue eyes, 
 To bring by fits the deep perfume 
 Alternate, as the bending bloom 
 
 Diffuses or denies. 
 Above, the slopes of mountain shine, 
 Where glows the citron, glides the vine, 
 And breathes the myrtle wildly bright, 
 And aloes lift their lamps of light, 
 And ceaseless sunbeams clothe the calm 
 Of orbed pine and vaulted palm, 
 Dark trees, that sacred order keep, 
 And rise in temples o'er the steep — 
 Eternal shrines, whose columned shade 
 
 Though winds may shake, and frosts may fade, 
 
 And dateless years subdue, 
 Is softly builded, ever new, 
 
 By angel hands, and wears the dread 
 
 And stillness of a sacred place, 
 
216 THE BATTLE OF MOXTEXOTTE. 
 
 A sadness of celestial grace, 
 A shadow, God-inhabited. 
 
 IX. 
 
 And all is peace, around, above, 
 The air all balm — the light all love, 
 Enduring love, that burns and broods 
 Serenely o'er these solitudes, 
 Or pours at intervals a part 
 Of Heaven upon the wanderer's heart, 
 Whose subject soul and quiet thought 
 Are open to be touched or taught, 
 By mute address of bud and beam 
 Of purple peak and silver stream — 
 By sounds that fall at nature's choice, 
 And things whose being is their voice, 
 Innumerable tongues that teacli 
 
 The will and ways of God to men, 
 In Avaves that beat the lonely beach, 
 
 And winds that haunt the homeless glen, 
 Where they, who ruled the rushing deep, 
 
 The restless and the brave. 
 
THE BATTLE OF MONTENOTTE. £17 
 
 Have left along their native steep 
 The ruin, and the grave. 
 
 x. 
 
 And he who gazes while the day 
 Departs along the boundless bay, 
 May find against its fading streak 
 The shadow of a single peak, 
 
 Seen only when the surges smile, 
 And all the heaven is clear, 
 
 That sad and solitary isle.* 
 Where, captive, from his red career, 
 He sank — who shook the hemisphere, 
 
 Then, turning from the hollow sea, 
 May trace, across the crimsoned height 
 
 That saw his earliest victory, 
 The purple rainbow's resting light, 
 And the last lines of storm that fade 
 Within the peaceful evening-shade. 
 
 * Elba. 
 
218 THE BATTLE OF MOXTENOTTE. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Stanza 3. — Line 9. 
 That o'er Legino' s ridges rest. 
 
 The Austrian centre, 10,000 strong, had been advanced to Monte- 
 notte in order, if possible, to cut asunder the French force which was 
 following the route of theCorniche. It encountered at Montenotte, only 
 Colonel Rampon, at the head of 1,200 men, who, retiring to the redoubt 
 at Monte Legino, defended it against the repeated attacks of the Aus- 
 trians until nightfall— making his soldiers swear to conquer or die. 
 The Austrian General Roccavina was severely wounded, and his suc- 
 cessor, D'Argenteau, refused to continue the attack. Napoleon was 
 lying at Savona, but set out after sunset with the divisions of Massena 
 and Serruier, and occupied the heights at Montenotte. At daybreak 
 the Imperialists found themselved surrounded on all sides, and were 
 totally defeated, with the loss of two thousand prisoners, and above 
 one thousand killed and wounded. [April 12, 179G.] 
 
 This victory, the first gained by Napoleon, was the foundation of the 
 success of the Italian campaign. Had Colonel Rampon been compelled 
 to retire from Monte Legino. the fate of the world would probably 
 have been changed.— Vide Alison, eh. 20. 
 
 Stanza 7.— Line 6. 
 
 Wliere lies the ocean lulled and dark. 
 
 The view given in the engraving, though not near the scene of the 
 battle, is very characteristic of the general features of the coast. The 
 ruins in the centre are the Chateau de Comolet. near Mcntoni ; the 
 sharp dark promontoiy running out beyond, to the left, is the Capo St. 
 Martin ; that beyond it is the promontory of Monaco. Behind the 
 
THE BATTLE OF MOXTENOTTE. 219 
 
 hills, on the right, lies the Bay of Nice and the point of Antibcs. The 
 dark hills in the extreme distance rise immediately above Frejus. 
 Among them winds the magnificent Pass de L'Esterelle, which, for 
 richness of southern forest scenery, and for general grace of mountain 
 outline, surpasses anything on the Corniche itself. 
 
 Stanza 9. — Line 7. 
 
 That solitary isle. 
 
 Elba is said to be visible from most of the elevated points of this 
 coast. From the citadel of Genoa I have seen what was asserted to be 
 Elba. I believe it to have been Corsica. 
 
A WALK IN CHAMOUNI. 
 
 Together on the valley, white and sweet, 
 
 The dew and silence of the morning lay : 
 Only the tread of my disturbing feet 
 Did break with printed shade and patient beat 
 
 The crisped stillness of the meadow way ; 
 And frequent mountain waters, welling up 
 
 In crystal gloom beneath some mouldering stone, 
 Curdled in many a flower-enamelled cup 
 
 Whose soft and purple border, scarcely blown. 
 
 Budded beneath their touch, and trembled to their tone. 
 
 The fringed branches of the swinging pines 
 
 Closed o'er my path ; a darkness in the sky, 
 That barred its dappled vault with rugged lines> 
 And silver network,* — interwoven signs 
 
 * The white mosses on the meleze, when the tree is very old, are sin- 
 gularly beautiful, resembling frost-work of silver. 
 
A WALK IN CUAMOUNI. 221 
 
 Of dateless age and deathless infancy ; 
 Then through their aisles a motion and a brightness 
 
 Kindled and shook— the weight of shade they bore 
 On their broad arms, was lifted by the lightness 
 
 Of a soft, shuddering wind, and what they wore 
 
 Of jewelled dew, was strewed about the forest floor. 
 That thrill of gushing wind and glittering rain 
 
 Onward amid the woodland hollows went, 
 And bade by turns the drooping boughs complain 
 O'er the brown earth, that drank in lightless stain 
 
 The beauty of their burning ornament ; 
 And then the roar of an enormous river 
 
 Came on the intermittent air uplifted, 
 Broken with haste, I saw its sharp waves shiver, 
 
 And its wild weight in white disorder drifted, 
 
 Where by its beaten shore the rocks lay heaped and rifted. 
 
 But yet unshattered, from an azure arch* 
 
 Came forth the nodding waters, wave by wave, 
 
 * Source of the Arveron. 
 
222 A WALK IN CHAMOUXT. 
 
 In silver lines of modulated march, 
 
 Through a broad desert, which the frost-winds parch 
 
 Like fire, and the resounding ice-falls pave 
 With pallid ruin — wastes of rock — that share 
 
 Earth's calm and ocean's fruitlessness.* — Undone 
 The work of ages lies, — through whose despair 
 
 Their swift procession dancing in the sun, 
 
 The white and whirling waves pass mocking one by one. 
 
 And with their voice — unquiet melody- 
 Is filled the hollow of their mighty portal, 
 
 As shells are with remembrance of the sea ; 
 
 So might the eternal arch of Eden be 
 
 With angels' wail for those whose crowns immortal 
 
 The grave-dust dimmed in passing. There arc here, 
 With azure wings, and scymitars of lire, 
 
 Forms as of Heaven, to guard the gate, and rear 
 Their burning arms afar, — a boundless choir 
 Beneath the sacred shafts of many a mountain spire. 
 
 * 7tapd S/V aAoS LXTftvyiroio. — 1A1A&. A' 
 
A WALK IX CHAMOUXI. 223 
 
 Countless as clouds, dome, prism, and pyramid 
 
 Pierced through the mist of morning scarce withdrawn, 
 Signing the gloom like beacon fires, half hid 
 By storm — part quenched in billows — or forbid 
 
 Their function by the fullness of the dawn : 
 And melting mists and threads of jxirple rain 
 
 Fretted the fair sky where the east was red, 
 Gliding like ghosts along the voiceless plain, 
 
 In rainbow hues around its coldness shed, 
 
 Like thoughts of loving hearts that haunt about the dead. 
 
 And over these, as pure as if the breath 
 
 Of God had called them newly into light, 
 Free from all stamp of sin, or shade of death, 
 With which the old creation travaileth, 
 
 Rose the white mountains, through the infinite 
 
 Of the calm, concave heaven ; inly bright 
 With lustre everlasting and intense, 
 
 Serene and universal as the night, 
 But yet more solemn with pervading sense 
 Of the deep stillness of omnipotence. 
 
224 A WALK 1^ CHAMOUNI. 
 
 Deep stillness ! for the throbs of human thought, 
 Count not the lonely night that pauses here, 
 
 And the white arch of morning findeth not 
 
 By chasm or alp, a spirit, or a spot, 
 
 Its call can waken, or its beams can cheer : 
 
 There are no eyes to watch, no lips to meet 
 Its messages with prayer — no matin bell 
 
 Touches the delicate air with summons sweet ; — 
 That smoke was of the avalanche ; * that knell 
 Came from a tower of ice that into fragments fell. 
 
 Ah ! why should that be comfortless — why cold, 
 
 Which is so near to Heaven ? The lowly earth 
 Out of the blackness of its charnel mould 
 Feeds its fresh life, and lights its banks with gold ; 
 But these proud summits, in eternal dearth, 
 Whose solitudes nor mourning know, nor mirth, 
 
 * The vapor or dust of dry snow which rises after the fall of a large 
 avalanche, sometimes looks in the distance not unlike the smoke of a 
 village. 
 
A WALK IN CHAMOUNI. 225 
 
 Rise passionless and pure, but all unblest : 
 
 Corruption — must it root the brightest birth ? 
 And is the life that bears its fruitage best, 
 One neither of supremacy nor rest ? 
 
THE OLD SEAMAN. 
 
 i. 
 You ask me why mine eyes are bent 
 
 So darkly on the sea, 
 While others watch the azure hills 
 
 That lengthen on the lee. 
 
 n. 
 The azure hills — they soothe the sight 
 
 That fails along the foam ; 
 And those may hail their nearing height 
 
 Who there have hope, or home. 
 
 in. 
 But I a loveless path have trod — 
 
 A beaconless career ; 
 My hope hath long been all with God, 
 
 And all my home is — here. 
 
THE OLD SEAMAN. 227 
 
 IV. 
 
 The deep by day, the heaven by night, 
 Eoll onward swift and dark ; 
 
 Nor leave my soul the dove's delight, 
 Of olive branch, or ark. 
 
 v. 
 For more than gale, or gulf, or sand, 
 
 I've proved that there may be 
 Worse treachery on the steadfast land, 
 
 Than variable sea. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A danger worse than bay or beach— 
 A falsehood more unkind — 
 
 The treachery of a governed speech, 
 And an un governed mind. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The treachery of the deadly mart 
 Where human souls are sold ; 
 
 The treachery of the hollow heart 
 •That crumbles as we hold. 
 
228 THE OLD SEAMAN. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Those holy hills and quiet lakes — 
 Ah ! wherefore should I find 
 
 This weary fever-fit, that shakes 
 Their image in my mind. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The memory of a streamlet's din, 
 Through meadows daisy-drest — 
 
 Another might be glad therein, 
 And yet I cannot rest. 
 
 x. 
 I cannot rest unless it be 
 
 Beneath the churchyard yew ; 
 But God, I think, hath yet for me 
 
 More earthly work to do. 
 
 XI. 
 
 And therefore with a quiet will, 
 I breathe the ocean air. 
 
 And bless the voice that calls me still 
 To wander and to bear. 
 
THE OLD SEAMAN. 2*>{) 
 
 XII. 
 
 Let others seek their native sod, 
 Who there have hearts to cheer ; 
 
 My soul hath long been given to God, 
 And all my home is — here. 
 
THE ALPS. 
 
 SEEN FROM MARENGO. 
 
 The glory of a cloud — without its wane ; 
 
 The stillness of the earth — but not its gloom ; 
 The loveliness of life — without its pain ; 
 
 The peace — but not the hunger of the tomb 3 
 Ye Pyramids of God ! around whose bases 
 
 The sea foams noteless in his narrow cup ; 
 
 And the unseen movements of the earth send up 
 A murmur which your lulling snow effaces 
 Like the deer's footsteps. Thrones imperishable ! 
 About whose adamantine steps the breath 
 Of dying generations vanisheth, 
 Less cognizable than clouds ; and dynast its. 
 
 Less glorious and more feeble than the array 
 
 Of your frail glaciers, unregarded rise, 
 
 Totter and vanish. In the uncounted day, 
 
 230 
 
THE ALPS. 231 
 
 When earth shall tremble as the trump unwraps 
 
 Their sheets of slumber from the crumbling dead. 
 And the quick, thirsty fire of judgment laps 
 
 The loud sea from the hollow of his bed — 
 Shall not your God spare you, to whom He gave 
 
 No share nor shadow of man's crime, or fate ; 
 
 Nothing to render, nor to expiate ; 
 Untainted by his life — untrusted with his grave ? 
 
WRITTEN AMONG THE BASSES ALPS. 
 
 [It is not among mountain scenery that human intellect usually takes 
 its finest temper, or receives its highest development ; but it is at least 
 there that we find a consistent energy of mind and body, compelled 
 by severer character of agencies to be resisted and hardships to be 
 endured; and it is there that we must seek for the last remnants of 
 patriarchal simplicity and patriotic affection— the few rock fragments 
 of manly character that are yet free from the lichenous stain of over- 
 civilization. It must always, therefore, be with peculiar pain that we 
 find, as in the district to which the following verses allude, the savage - 
 ness and seclusion of mountain life, without its force and faithfulness: 
 and all the indolence and sensuality of the most debased cities of 
 Europe, without the polish to disguise, the temptation to excuse, or the 
 softness of natural scenery to harmonize with them.] 
 
 " Why stand ye here all the day idle ? " 
 
 Have you in heaven no hope — on earth no care — 
 No foe in hell — ye things of stye and stall, 
 
 That congregate like flics, and make the air 
 Rank with your fevered sloth — that hourly call 
 
 The sun, which should your servant be, to bear 
 Dread witness on you, with uncounted -wane 
 
WRITTEN AMONG THE BASSES ALPS. 233 
 
 And unregarded rays, from peak to peak 
 
 Of piny-gnomoned mountain moved in vain ? 
 Behold, the very shadows that ye seek 
 
 For slumber, write along the wasted wall 
 Your condemnation. They forget not, the}', 
 
 Their ordered function and determined fall, 
 Nor useless perish. But you count your day 
 By sins, and write your difference from clay 
 In bonds you break and laws you disobey. 
 God ! who hast given the rocks their fortitude, 
 The sap unto the forests, and their food 
 
 And vigor to the busy tenantry 
 
 Of happy soulless things that wait on Thee, 
 Hast Thou no blessing where Thou gav'st Thy blood? 
 
 Wilt Thou not make Thy fair creation whole ? 
 Behold and visit this Thy vine for good — 
 
 Breathe in this human dust its living soul. 
 
THE GLACIER 
 
 The mountains have a peace which none disturb — 
 
 The stars and clouds a course which none restrain — 
 The wild sea-waves rejoice without a curb, 
 
 And rest without a passion ; but the chain 
 Of Death, upon this ghastly cliff and chasm 
 
 Is broken evermore, to bind again, 
 
 Nor lulls nor looses. Hark ! a voice of pain 
 Suddenly silenced ; — a quick passing spasm, 
 
 That startles rest, but grants not liberty, — 
 
 A shudder, or a struggle, or a cry — 
 And then sepulchral stillness. Look on us, 
 
 God ! who hast given these hills- their place of pride, 
 If Death's captivity be sleepless thus, 
 
 For those who sink to it unsanctified. 
 
THE RECREANT. 
 
 In an attack of the Athenians upon the JEgineta?, the former were 
 cut off, with the exception of one man, who went home to tell the tale. 
 He was met in the street of the city by a group of Athenian women, 
 each of whom, inquiring where he had left her husband, wounded him 
 with the clasp of her robe, until he died. — Herod. Terpsichore, chap. 87. 
 
 With the hills of their fathers around them — 
 
 The heaven of their country above, — 
 They stood, in the strength of their manhood ; 
 
 They went in the light of our love. 
 In the pride of their power they departed, 
 
 Down by the path of the sea : 
 Dark eyes of the desolate-hearted 
 
 Were watching for them — and for thee ! 
 
 Who comes from the banquet of blood, 
 Where the guests are as still as a stone ? 
 
 Who dares to return by the road 
 
 Where the steps of his joy are alone ? 
 
23G THE RECREANT. 
 
 They were bound by the oath of the free, — 
 They were true as the steel that they bare, — 
 
 They were true to themselves, and to thee ! 
 Behold ! thou hast left them — and where ! 
 
 Oh ! well has their triumph been told, 
 
 In the time of its terrible crowning ; 
 Poor recreant !— kingly, though cold, 
 
 Is the sleep that thou durst not lie down in ! 
 The swords of the restless are rusted 
 
 In the rest that thou shrankest to share : 
 False helot ! — to whom hast thou trusted 
 
 The pride of the peaceful — and where ? 
 
 For thee,— who wast not of the number 
 That sank in the red battle shade, — 
 
 Thy name shall be cursed in the slumber 
 Of the life that thy baseness betrayed ! 
 
 The strength of the tremorlese tread 
 Of our bravest, our love can resign, — 
 
THE RECREANT. 23? 
 
 But tears, as of blood, shall bo shed 
 For the dastard returning of thine. 
 
 But, what ! when thy soul hath not hearkened 
 
 To the charge of our love, or our fear, 
 Shall the soft eyes of Hellas be darkened 
 
 By the thought of thy birth, or thy bier ? 
 The strength of thy shame shall requite thee, — 
 
 The souls of the lost shall not see, — 
 Mother nor maid of the mighty 
 
 Shed tear for a dastard like thee ! 
 
 J. R. 
 
THE WRECK. 
 
 Its masts of might — its sails so free — 
 
 Had borne the scatheless keel 
 Through many a day of darkened sea, 
 
 And many a storm of steel ; 
 When all the winds were calm, it met 
 (With home-returning prore) 
 With the lull 
 Of the waves 
 On a low lee shore. 
 
 The crest of the conqueror 
 On many a brow was bright ; 
 
 The dew of many an exile's eye 
 Had dimmed the dancing Bight ; 
 
 And for love and for victory, 
 
THE WRECK. 239 
 
 One welcome was in store — 
 
 In the lull 
 
 Of the waves 
 On a low lee shore. 
 
 The voices of the night are mute 
 
 Beneath the moon's eclipse ; 
 The silence of the fitful flute 
 
 Is in the dying lips ! — 
 The silence of my lonely heart 
 Is kept for evermore — 
 In the lull 
 Of the waves 
 On a low lee shore t 
 
CHAKITIE. 
 
 The beams of morning are renew'd, 
 The valley laughs their light to see ; 
 
 And earth is bright with gratitude, 
 And heaven with Charitie. 
 
 Oh, dew of heaven ; oh, light of earth ! 
 
 Fain would our hearts be fill'd with thee, 
 Because nor darkness comes, nor dearth, 
 
 About the home of Charitie. 
 
 God guides the stars their wandering way, 
 He seems to cast their courses free, 
 
 But birds unto himself for aye : 
 And all their chains are Charitie. 
 
 When first he stretch'd the signed zone, 
 And heap'd the hills, # and barr'd the sen. 
 
 Then Wisdom .sit beside his throne, 
 But his own word was Charitie. 
 
CHARITIE. 2-il 
 
 And still, through every age and hour, 
 Of things that were and things that be, 
 
 Are breathed the presence and the power 
 Of everlasting Charitie. 
 
 By noon and night, by sun and shower, 
 By dews that fall and winds that flee, 
 
 On grove and field, on fold and flower, 
 Is shed the peace of Charitie. 
 
 The violets light the lonely hill, 
 
 The fruitful furrows load the lea ; 
 Man's heart alone is sterile still, 
 
 For lack of lowly Charitie. 
 
 He walks a weary vale within — 
 
 No lamp of love in heart hath he ; 
 His steps are death, his thoughts are sin, 
 
 For lack of gentle Charitie. 
 
 Daughter of Heaven ! we dare not lift 
 
 The dimness of our eyes to thee ; 
 Oh ! pure and God-descended gift ! 
 
 Oli ! spotless, perfect Charitie. 
 
242 CHARITIE. 
 
 Yet forasmuch thy brow is crost 
 
 With blood-drops from the deathful tree, 
 
 We take thee for our only trust, 
 Oh ! dying Charitie. 
 
 Ah ! Hope, Endurance, Faith — ye fail like death, 
 But Love an everlasting crown receive th ; 
 
 For she is Hope, and Fortitude, and Faith, 
 Who all things hopeth, beareth and believeth. 
 
rr^VoF 25 CENTS 
 AN INITIAL FINE ,01 1* rETOBN 
 
 DAY AND TO **■ __==== 
 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 
 ~wro^^ 
 
 LD 21-l» 0m " 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY 
 
 BDDD^M^Bfl