M^;W4A>1& ;
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 . 

 
 <) 
 
 < 
 
 poetic Romance. 
 
 IN EIGHT CHNTOS. 
 
 BY H. M. DuBosE. 
 
 1 Then, in a moment, she put forth the charm 
 Of woven paces and of weaving hands; 
 And in the hollow of the oak he lay as dead, 
 And lost to life and use and name and fame. 
 
 1 1 hold it truth with him who sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 Baron Tennyson. 
 
 PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR. 
 PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH. 
 
 J. D. BARBEE, AGENT, NASHVILLE, TENN. 
 
 1889.
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1889, 
 
 BY H. M. DuBoSE, 
 in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 PREFATORY. 
 
 " Poetry is itself, a thing of God; 
 He made His prophets poets." 
 
 I KNOW not whether or not this message of mine be worthy the 
 noble appellation of poetry. It rests with my countrymen to 
 judge of its title to a place in the book of inspired song. But 
 this I say, God taught it me. Ten years and more ago, amid 
 humble labors in a village beside the Father of Waters, and when 
 the shadow of the pestilence that walketh in darkness was but 
 newly lifted from the hearts of a smitten people, my hand was 
 first set to the task. The resonant voices of the onward tides 
 taught me the numbers of a hitherto untried scale ; a peaceful 
 memory, brought from my childhood home in the pwie-sentried 
 hills, kept fresh in my soul the love of nature's reverberant mel 
 odies and her awful hushes of sacred melancholy; and the sad, 
 sad sjory of unmerited bitterness that blighted a life more beau 
 tiful than "the fringed lilies" was the inspiration of this my 
 lowly verse. H. M. DiBosE. 
 
 Los Angeles, Cal., October, 1889. 
 
 762973
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THE conscience of Christendom is becoming more and more 
 sensible of the appalling evils that flow from the use of intoxi 
 cating liquors. Step by step, advancing in every legitimate path 
 that is opened up, the enlightened judgment of the Christian 
 world is taking a forward position, and demanding the rescue of 
 fallen humanity from exposure to the unspeakable horrors of the 
 drunkard's career. 
 
 Every contribution to this much-desired result is a subject of 
 welcome and congratulation to society. Poets have sung the 
 pleasures of the wine-cup; why should not the genius of the 
 poet devote itself to the warning of the exposed and endan 
 gered, and to the reclamation of the enslaved? Can the inspi 
 ration of Parnassus be employed in a nobler service? 
 
 We have displayed in this poem, " Rupert Wise," the fearful 
 truth that "no man liveth unto himself," even in respect to those 
 things that are usually esteemed the chartered rights of personal 
 liberty. Has any man the right to perpetuate, in his own offspring, 
 the detestable vice of drunkenness? Has any man the right to 
 acquire habits that may eventuate in the ruin of those who 
 become the legatees of his errors and his crimes? The possibility 
 of transmitting the taint of slavish bondage to the appetite for 
 drink is the foundation of the argument in "Rupert Wise." Thi.-; 
 remorseless spell, weaving an enchantment too strong for earthly 
 hopes, ambitions, or obligations to destroy, prepares the way for 
 the darkness of the eternal night. 
 
 At the moment of despair, when the vision of female loveli- 
 
 (5)
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 7 . 
 
 ness, of earthly peace and quiet, love and joy, is about to die 
 away in the fumes of the bottomless pit, the strong arm of the 
 Redeemer of man reaches down to the verge of ruin, and snatches 
 the brand from the eternal burning. The lesson is one that should 
 sink deep into the heart of the reader. There is no vicious appe 
 tite that may not be conquered by the power of the grace of God 
 manifested in Jesus Christ our Lord. "I can do all things 
 through Christ which strengthened me." This truth forms the 
 sequel. 
 
 The poem, as a work of art, is before the reader. The author 
 makes his venture before the public unheralded by critics or by 
 interested advocates, but if the "divine afflatus" of the true 
 poet has fallen upon his spirit, and typed itself in this work of his 
 pen, the candid judgment of the reader will indorse that of the 
 editor of this volume. We believe that there is superior merit 
 in this poem, and the promise of the higher work that is yet 
 to be. W. P. HARRISON. 
 
 Nashville, Tenn., October 18, 1889.
 
 PROEMfl. 
 
 WHEN early morn had lift its veil 
 Of woven mist from off a hill 
 That all rny sight with dreams did fill, 
 
 Half-way its slope, one calm and pale 
 
 I saw beneath the virgin shade. . 
 Strange garb was his, but noble all 
 His bearing seemed. Swift at his call 
 
 I moved him near, and deference paid 
 
 To that mild air of worth he wore. 
 Expectant wonder held my soul 
 What time his hands unlaced a scroll, 
 
 That wizard trace of genius bore. 
 
 Wild joy I felt when that his name 
 
 Was breathed no other than the bard 
 Who that Prince Arthur evil stai-red 
 
 Had sung to everlasting fame. 
 
 Brought forth from Alma's hidden scrine 
 That antique roll of goodly knights 
 Of Tanaquil, and those six lights 
 
 Of Faery Queen that ceased to ahine. 
 
 " Swear on this scroll," he gravely said, 
 "As sware Sir Guyon on his shield, 
 By castle wall, in wood or field, 
 
 Fierce vengeance on the Paynim head, 
 
 (7)
 
 PROEMA. 
 
 "And that Acrasia, sorceress vile, 
 Who Modrant and Ainavia slew, 
 Him with the cup's enchanted dew, 
 
 Her through despair and sorceress' wile. 
 
 "Acrasia lives with other name ; 
 
 Swear vengeance here, and move thou hence 
 That others swear, withal, defense 
 
 Of faithful love and manhood's frame." 
 
 I sware, and heard his blessings spoke, 
 And saw him fade, like mist, away, 
 The whiles, with oaten pipe and lay, 
 
 Shepherds the infant day awoke.
 
 GAMO FIRST. 
 
 i. 
 
 t f ARP of the Southland new ! that sad hath slept 
 
 [ Since that wild singer, 'neath the whispering leaves 
 
 That near the river dark their cadence wept, 
 
 Awoke his last and plaintive song ; whose sheaves 
 Of truth and garlands, gleaned through morns and eves 
 
 Of sorrow filled with tread of coming death, 
 He consecrated unto God as heaves 
 
 The reedy bank to Autumn's earliest breath, 
 
 Awake, assist my song of love and vanquished death ! 
 
 The soul that breathes this prayer thy mazes o'er 
 Breathes likewise full its ardent wish abroad, 
 
 E'en to the utmost limit line and shore 
 
 Of this predestined land, made one since strode 
 In hate the form of war with dark inroad 
 
 Through sunny vales whose circles peace had hung 
 With clamb'ring vines and graced with villas bi-oad 
 
 And smiling fields, where late, when morn was young, 
 
 The reaper's harvest lay in rippling echoes rung. 
 
 Once more awake, though but to weep anew ! 
 That voice befits thy strings, befits whose hand
 
 10 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Would teach thy strings to throb hope's measures through. 
 Ah, welladay ! that voice befits the land' 
 That mourns her youngest, greatest bard ; the band 
 
 That walked with him through fire to martial strains, 
 And pallid hosts that kissed the brazen wand. 
 
 Quicken, my touch ! take fire, my dull refrains ! 
 
 Southland harp, awake with wild, unwonted strains t 
 
 II. 
 Hail, city fair, throned on eternal hills, 
 
 Hard by the mighty river's sullen flow ! 
 Far o'er the morning's gilded mist, that fills 
 
 With tow'r and dome and shimm'ring bow 
 
 The wide expanse thy monarch seat below, 
 The weary helmsman hails thee with delight ; 
 
 Or mocks the gloom, if but thy beacons glow, 
 Conjuring oft with fancy's yearning sight 
 The cheerful glimm'rings of his own domestic light- 
 
 Nature's primeval work thy strength reveals ; 
 Where now thy marts, before Itasca rose, 
 
 Time's hoary form hath been and on thy hills 
 Left his memorial ; they knew repose 
 While yon fair land felt aye the wreck and throes. 
 
 The ruin and the waste, of change, nor smiles 
 Perennial now. Full oft in rude embrace 
 
 The am'rous flood of virgin life despoils, 
 Destroys each fond adornment of her face, 
 With recompense of fleecy wealth and vintage place.
 
 RUPERT WISE! A POETIC ROMANCE. 11 
 
 O'er nature's granite ramparts rise thy fanes, 
 
 Pointing in prophecy the multitudes 
 That move with listless mien along thy lanes 
 
 To man's last end ; or when the storm-king broods 
 
 In ether's deep and vaulted solitudes, 
 Or rears his form upon the lightning's path 
 
 And thunder th' elemental strife preludes, 
 Invite his bolts and kiss away his wrath ; 
 For chaos knows his realm and ruin knows his path. 
 
 Red war around thy gates hath flamed, and Mars 
 
 Hath looked with eyes of fiery curse on thee, 
 While fates malign and tracts of evil stars 
 
 Have marked with lurid fears thy destiny ; 
 
 Yet queenly still thou sittest, clothed and free ; 
 The past thou hast in tears, the future's page 
 
 Thou boldest fair for peaceful history ; 
 Though writ with golden pen for golden age, 
 Thou still wilt hold thy past, with good or ill presage. 
 
 To thee relates my song of various key ; 
 
 To thee pertains my tale, in thee 'twas wrought. 
 I own from thee the sense of mystery, 
 
 And power of strong desire, in youth begot; 
 
 To thee anon turns mcm'ry ever fraught 
 With old-time visions of that free, grand tide, 
 
 Moving majestic tow'rd its ocean lot, 
 Life symboling through all its glinting pride ; 
 And thy green hills around, though winter all beside.
 
 12 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Thine are these garlands, gathered most where wave 
 The dark-tressed willow-trees, and lowly blow 
 
 The daffodils on beauty's early grave ; 
 
 From darksome ways the tow'ring cliffs below, 
 Where those red foils, sad bleeding-hearts, do grow, 
 
 Admixed with thorn-set sprays of eglantine 
 
 And nightshade blooms, that fringed petals show 
 
 Through sun-scorched links of resurrection vine, 
 
 Whose germs revive from mold these, mother, these are 
 
 thine ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Well through his northern signs bold Phoebus pressed, 
 
 Now quitted slowly Virgo's starry breast ; 
 
 And Sirius, with dread, unequal sphere, 
 
 Leading the Sothian train through wide career, 
 
 Stood in the Archer's wake till, far and dim, 
 
 He shone serene on evening's azure rim ; 
 
 But ere his exit into nether space 
 
 Eed blazed awhile his ill-portending face ; 
 
 AVhich dire menace, explained by thoughtful wight, 
 
 Spread terror round and din of wild affright ; 
 
 Nor this alone bespoke impending ire : 
 
 The planet train in aug'ry dark conspire 
 
 And held their poised spheres on evil plane, 
 
 What time the comet shook his deadly mane 
 
 O'er pleasant lands, and deep resounding far 
 
 Came tokens of the earthquake's hidden war. 
 
 But mundane nature else reflected wide 
 The pangless scenes of Eden's nascent pride,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 13 
 
 And mocked with piping sounds in sylvan void 
 Each rankling sense that hapless man annoyed ; 
 Calm slept the fields where fruitful summer dreamed ; 
 Full through the vales a wealth of sunlight streamed ; 
 A Sabbath peace the distant spaces filled, 
 Where zephyr's hand along the forest trilled 
 With sounds that spoke Almighty presence nigh ; 
 And latticed paths, besprint with crimson dye, 
 Led toward the sunset city's burnished gate, 
 Where fancy walks and dreams aspiring wait. 
 
 Sad contrast held in that fair city's life, 
 
 Besmit but late of war and wasting strife, 
 
 Yet since renewed in every peaceful thought 
 
 And, in a progress blood and sorrow bought, 
 
 Vying with compeers raised by fortune's hand 
 
 To higher state, the urbarchs of the land. 
 
 No more, alas ! breathed hope where her tall spires, 
 
 Aglow with sunset's wide reflected fires, 
 
 O'erlooked a thousand homes to shame unknown, 
 
 A thousand hearths where humble virtue shone, 
 
 And in the unseen censers of the heart 
 
 The priestess Love her incense burned apart. 
 
 Now apprehension's dread Nemesis walked 
 
 Through erstwhile joyful scenes, and brooding stalked 
 
 Through crowded ways or cast in busy marts 
 
 A haunting shade. Compelled by terror's arts, 
 
 The rabble blanched at folly's idle tale, 
 
 And nobler senses owned the subtle bale;
 
 14 RUPEBT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 A hidden scepter swayed the fateful hour 
 As fear succeeding fear renewed its power, 
 Nor wisdom's word, nor science' just disdain 
 Availed to check the passions' frenzied reign. 
 
 Convened apart by mutual sanction late, 
 As oft their wont, for pleasure and debate, 
 The wise physicians of the town appear 
 In council free to soothe a rising fear 
 By rumor of a distant scourge inspired, 
 And name such action as the case required. 
 
 Assembled once, the healing brotherhood 
 
 With grave demean and words their task pursued. 
 
 Though hope and wisdom speak of fate amiss 
 
 And seem o'erwhelmed, they know the abyss 
 
 And smile the darkness through to walk at last 
 
 In fairer ways, to nobler fashion cast. 
 
 "Whom first the argument of hope to state, 
 
 O verse, affirm, and wisdom celebrate ! 
 
 Of form commanding and imposing mien, 
 
 An air of leisure and a brow serene, 
 
 Past middle years yet youth's inspiring light 
 
 Still kindled in his eye of keenest sight 
 
 And spoke the ready grace of cultured speech 
 
 And skill that knew his fav'rite lore to teach. 
 
 Now flashed his eye as fervidly he said : 
 
 "My faith abides that danger hence is fled ; 
 
 Sure breaks apace the season's deadly spell 
 
 And hope e'en now persuades that all is well.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 15 
 
 Our teaching brooks not seer nor fabler's lore, 
 We draw our wiser proofs from safer store ; 
 Yet, if the countless oracles without 
 Spoke forth, they name no moiety of doubt ; 
 There is no taint upon the moving air; 
 The skies are mild, nor evil tokens bear ; 
 Soft dews renew the chalice of the night 
 And spread elixir through the welcome light ; 
 Nor voice, nor sign the fever plague invites, 
 But each, when told, an ardent hope excites 
 Of long immunity from evil state. 
 Our house in order stands for adverse fate ; 
 As ne'er before we wait the scourge prepared; 
 To famed resorts our affluent ones are fared, 
 While others, lured by peace devoid of pride, 
 In rural cots and neighboring seats abide. 
 To vainly boast is scarce removed from crime, 
 Yet, if I rightly calculate the time, 
 'Tis five years since his saffron face we saw, 
 When science, hand in hand with social law, 
 Challenged his savage and unbridled reign 
 As foreign foe the nation might restrain. 
 Henceforth at ocean's verge the curse must stay, 
 Nor dare renew by stealth his former sway. 
 All this who doubts? is earnest of the day 
 When man, progressed to high and favored state, 
 With dark intrigues and mad decrees of fate 
 And such misfortune as belongs to chance, 
 Shall measure equal strength, and thus enhance
 
 16 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 The glory of his days and raze withal 
 The frowning mass of fate's opposing wall. 
 For that fair goal the general purpose pants 
 And thrills expectant at the next advance ! " 
 
 As silent touch of twilight's dewy spell 
 Falls o'er and stills the rustling wood, so fell 
 This cheerful speech the learned circle on, 
 Approved of all, save one, observant grown 
 From long experience in the plague-cursed climes 
 Of tropic lands. High wish in other times, 
 When youth was strong and science held 
 Commanding sway of thought, had hence impelled 
 To brave insidious death and in his lair 
 Attack that dread whose coming brought despair. 
 
 He, rising, statue poised a moment stood, 
 
 His face betraying old Acadian blood ; 
 
 Then bent his comely form in conscious pride, 
 
 And to his brother's ardent words replied : 
 
 " Your reasoning as it runs is fair to hear, 
 
 And if not sound at least will please the ear; 
 
 'Twere pleasant task such logic to imbibe 
 
 And to your transcendental creed subscribe ; 
 
 But vain I fear your prophecy of good. 
 
 Alas, if time should blight this cheerful mood, 
 
 And leave where hopes rejoice but fortitude ! 
 
 The fever rages now in all Balize ; 
 
 Cuba is not without the fell disease ; 
 
 And Key "West, though the truth is hard to gain, 
 
 I much suspect has kept her isle in vain;
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 17 
 
 And mcm'iy serves me of a time long gone 
 
 My home was in the ancient Creole town 
 
 The ending of a season much like this; 
 
 The summer waned, and nothing went amiss; 
 
 September's sultry days were growing mild; 
 
 The evenings dropped like visions undefiled ; 
 
 The natives dreamed, as thousands from the States, 
 
 No evil nigh, when suddenly the fates 
 
 Seemed all their iron hands to lift and wage 
 
 Relentless war alike on youth and age. 
 
 As bands of armed men that long had lain 
 
 In stealthy wait, the fever rose amain, 
 
 And heaped the city in a day with slain. 
 
 Full fierce it broke, full fierce from fifty points, 
 
 Yet, strange to tell, that year the rule disjoints: 
 
 No fever could be traced on all the seas, 
 
 In tropic lands no tidings of the dread disease, 
 
 And we alone of all the world were cursed. 
 
 We deal with fierce and stealthy foe, nor durst, 
 
 If still our wits abide, a respite take 
 
 Till winter's winds our benison shall make." 
 
 To this a third returned in tones of mirth, 
 Although half moved to own the reason's worth: 
 
 " You then would have us write and seal our wills, 
 Our epitaphs inscribe, since shuffling haste 
 
 Is like to leave no time therefor. But ills 
 There be of greater moment than this last. 
 
 A prudent care is worthy noblest wills; 
 But man by fear unnerved is man debased." 
 2
 
 18 BUPEIIT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Pasteur, for such the mild Acadian's name 
 (With him, as else, not all unknown to fame), 
 Thus made reply : " I speak a danger near, 
 An apprehension nowise born of fear, 
 
 But of that better mind which warns and cheers ; , 
 
 I 
 Yet, though 'tis so, no remedy appears, 
 
 We stand an inland port, nor say nor choose I 
 
 What tonnage we will pass, or what refuse. 
 
 Our Congress should this vital matter meet, 
 
 And give our subtle foe a last defeat. 
 
 The war must open at the* nation's door, 
 
 And press this dragon to the ocean's shore ; 
 
 Ay, more than this, in sooth, must then befall : 
 
 Each lurking-place, each haunt by city's wall, 
 
 Each reeking vault where death resides, 
 
 His ally proves ; a thousand gates besides 
 
 Are open in the viewless air, nor doubt, 
 
 A cause is found within as found without 
 
 These, too, must know the conquering war ; must prove 
 
 The strength of truceless law, ere forward move 
 
 Our people's hopes. As men who own the sense 
 
 Of public trust, the present's dire suspense 
 
 We must with active counsel meet. A plea 
 
 I recommend to every house to see 
 
 Its part in shaping of the city's good 
 
 By strict regard to health in air and food. 
 
 Should all to this without dissent agree, 
 
 I trust me much no plague's advent to see."
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 19 
 
 By tact of skill and drift of various mind, 
 
 To jousts of wit the wordy war inclined. 
 
 The council heard, a moment now concerned, 
 
 iSTow moved to action, now to lightness turned, 
 
 And having met by sage advice the call, 
 
 In social trend the learned gossips fall. 
 
 " Let's to the weed," one cries, " why cheat 
 
 Ourselves of this ? for little seems it meet 
 
 To give to life alone of solemn care, 
 
 When hangs its changing fortunes, bad and fair, 
 
 On such capricious chance ! " 
 
 With no dissent, 
 
 The fragrant weed around the circle went. 
 Thus passed an hour in pleasant sort beguiled, 
 Like bivouac scenes, where thoughts of carnage wild, 
 Though lurks he near with gory hands and feet, 
 Enter no more than into love's retreat, 
 Till he whose proud Acadian features burned 
 With anxious thought the discourse mildly turned : 
 
 " Now pardon grant, if I disposed should seem 
 Too much to chase an interdicted theme ; 
 'Tis social matter that I would unfold 
 Which grows in wonder as the tale is told. 
 You each, no doubt, have marked the rapid rise, 
 The wealth and growing fame of Rupert Wise, 
 Our young Hippocrates who two years since, 
 From lectures fresh, took up his residence 
 In modest style on Celis Parlor Heights ; 
 The case is rare, and me it much delights.
 
 20 RVPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 From first, he showed unusual skill and tact ; 
 
 His birth, his high-born ways but touched the fact ; 
 
 Puzzled, I sought for reasons more exact, 
 
 But wonder late is shorn of sense and word ; 
 
 By this day's post I have the latest Record. 
 
 It bears young .Rupert's autograph descant, 
 
 ' The germs of fever shown to be a plant] 
 
 Eeplete with learning's force, in logic strong, 
 
 Quite bold enough for learned dean, savant, 
 
 Or titled master of the healing art ; 
 
 Indeed, I style the same a- master-part. 
 
 'Tis freely said (the Record gave the hint, 
 
 Seconded by a leading Eastern print) 
 
 This treatise wins its author recognition 
 
 And 't may be, in time, a decoration ; 
 
 'Twere but a step across the water then ; 
 
 A twelvemonth more, perchance, with famous men, 
 
 Though overleaping precedents and rules, 
 
 Our colleague may be named in Old World schools." 
 
 Xow spake the senior of the brotherhood, 
 A man benign, who seemed in youth renewed 
 At threescore years, as if of Heaven's will 
 Some high estate to grace or aptly fill 
 Some lot requiring ripest thought. To him 
 Fortune was not the gross return or whim 
 Of fickle chance, but mind untarnished, clear, 
 With large support of soul to soothe and cheer 
 The mind through arduous tasks. Him they hear :
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 21 
 
 "A lively interest rises in my breast 
 
 For this same youth, and 'tis to be confessed 
 
 As no mean cause for sense of pride to us 
 
 Arid to our calling that he prospers thus ; 
 
 His parts and words show genius' fair impress ; 
 
 His birth and station speak ; nor less express 
 
 His comely modesty and easy bearing 
 
 A dress admired, but one of rarest wearing 
 
 Like any Greek, young Rupert wears his grace ; 
 
 Adonis scarce possessed more handsome face. 
 
 These well might win him foremost rank and place, 
 
 But grounds exist for doubt and friendly fear, 
 
 Indeed, what soon must reach the public ear 
 
 ir Tis safe to iterate in private way ; 
 
 Although in mind and frame and social stay, 
 
 In noble plans, he firm and anchored seems, 
 
 One darkest curse dims all his future dreams, 
 
 And one which, though we understand too well, 
 
 Binds oft our brotherhood with cruel spell, 
 
 This same hath set on him its base impress 
 
 He loves the cup and drinks to mad excess." 
 
 Hereat a third caught up the growing tale 
 A bachelor of prim attire, with pale 
 And smirking face: a gallant in his day, 
 But now grown stern, with but the feeblest ray 
 Of tender light left in his eyes of blue : 
 "Not current goes the story, yet quite true ; 
 This Eupert has a love affair: therein 
 The secret of his life and of his sin
 
 22 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Grows deep in coloring : its heroine 
 
 A fair and fragile girl, one Madeline, 
 
 A planter's child, petted, adored, and sought, 
 
 Yet, strange to say, not spoiled, displaying naught 
 
 In wish or act but speaks uncommon mind. 
 
 Most to such converse seems her thought inclined 
 
 As touches noble action, conquers doubt, 
 
 And calls the subtlest points of logic out ; 
 
 Withal a child and artless as the wind, 
 
 Veering to trivial sense of womankind: 
 
 A kirtled queen, Minerva .sewing floss, 
 
 'Tvvixt stellar problems smoothing birdie's gloss. 
 
 She loves young Wise, nor other passion knew. 
 
 From early childhood side by side they grew, 
 
 But this one vice has cleft them far apart ; 
 
 Her hand she keeps, yet gives him all her heart. 
 
 His bold agnosticism, cold and flippant doubt, 
 
 He hides from her, whose soul is most devout 
 
 And, true to woman's faith, bids love remain 
 
 Till love itself shall heal her every pain. 
 
 She lives a tearful hope that soon or late 
 
 His manhood may assert itself, and fate 
 
 Be changed to happier current in the end ; 
 
 And so her thought preserves a peaceful trend. 
 
 But hope, alas ! is vain. He who can hold 
 
 His treason out against such love is sold 
 
 To baseness and an evil self a slave 
 
 To appetite and merits not to have 
 
 One kindly thought, far less such love as this ! 
 
 Hope there is not this side the grave's abyss,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 23 
 
 This side of Hades or the waves of Styx, 
 
 Or such dread state as guilty fear depicts, 
 
 That he will cease to quaff the fiery shame, 
 
 Though maiden's blood mixed with its liquid flame. 
 
 His father, rich and strong and fitted well 
 
 For honors high in state, and born to tell 
 
 The rights of man, who even in tender youth 
 
 Was forward in such things and loved the truth, 
 
 Later the friend of Prentiss and to him 
 
 Second alone in flexive speech, less dim 
 
 In thought, and bolder in all argument 
 
 Alas, too much like him in evil bent! 
 
 He quenched (sad fate!) in wine that god-like fire 
 
 And died bereft of mind, as beasts expire! 
 
 How can we better of the son, who sprung 
 
 From stem diseased, self-nurtured and so young, 
 
 Reveals the vice as genius of his sire?" 
 
 Pasteur, the darker shades of thought that lay 
 
 Along his mind, like clouds upon the day, 
 
 Chased by the sun of merriment away, 
 
 Twitted these earnest words with hidden jest: 
 
 "You speak with warmth ; in reason one had guessed 
 
 You look yourself with passion's eye that way. 
 
 Too long you've left that matter of the heart 
 
 To want ; too long withstood the tender art ; 
 
 You late confessed to six and fifty years, 
 
 'Tis not a sound to please a maiden's ears, 
 
 So now repress your passion's rising force 
 
 And settle down to pills and dry discourse."
 
 24 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 The answer came as from a long-forbidden source: 
 
 " Too fair and pure a realm is woman's love, 
 
 Too sacred all its heavenly visions prove, 
 
 For soul like mine. Afar I gaze, admire, 
 
 But know no thoughts so mad as thence aspire ; 
 
 Her worth I own, confessed in earlier days, 
 
 ^s or deem a fault the affluence of my praise. 
 
 In sooth, for this fair maid I feel concern, 
 
 Though only such as lighter thoughts might turn ; 
 
 For, truth to tell, acquaintance ne'er so slight 
 
 I boast with Madeline; a stiff, polite, 
 
 And hasty introduction on the guards, 
 
 A friendly salutation afterwards, 
 
 Tell all our intercourse from first to last, 
 
 Xor shade of tender thought its memories cast." 
 
 "Your words," Pasteur replied, "echo romance: 
 
 ' Upon the guards ' a trivial circumstance, 
 
 Yet many life arrangements owe their force 
 
 To no more serious thing an easy course, 
 
 A salutation here or there by chance, 
 
 A glint of moonlight through the night's expanse, 
 
 Mutual tastes discovered, friendly ways, 
 
 An idyl through the sloth of summer days, 
 
 A walk, a drive, and trysts on quiet eves, 
 
 A pledge, a vow, the fall of autumn leaves, 
 
 A dash of winter winds, a burst of light 
 
 Through perfumed halls, the golden circlet's plight, 
 
 A wedding chant, the lapse of life's content, 
 
 A quiet home and so the thread of life is spent."
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 25 
 
 "Avaunt! for shame ! to tickle ears like mine 
 
 With words that speak such gushing thought ! New wine 
 
 Meets not the old, nor can you graft the rose 
 
 Upon the hawthorn bough ; its forms oppose 
 
 The ruder fiber of the weathered tree, 
 
 So dreams of maids and love befit not me. 
 
 Go, put your ravings in a penny book, 
 
 And then, perchance, some maiden, love forsook, 
 
 Some idle dreamer under summer's sky 
 
 Will read, and you more wealth shall gain thereby 
 
 Than you are like to see the whole year through 
 
 By magic of your skill and nostrums too." 
 
 To end this witty tilt, broke in once more 
 
 The senior's voice ; not listless as before 
 
 His air, but changed and heavy was his mood 
 
 With fears augmented and the gath'ring load 
 
 Of danger felt. Thus spake he*, blending well 
 
 A tinge of mirth with sadder words that fell : 
 
 " Enough ! enough ! break off, your speeches tire ; 
 
 They tell a task essayed without desire 
 
 And mind me of a scene that marked the days 
 
 When iron monsters fringed with lurid blaze 
 
 The river's strand before the city's front, 
 
 And through the dragging weeks we felt the brunt 
 
 Of leaden war. The lines of bristling steel 
 
 Fell like a wall across the land; to feel 
 
 The pinch of want became our daily meed, 
 
 For nothing came, and direr grew the need.
 
 26 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 'Twas on that last eventful day J stood 
 
 Before the baker's door in speechless mood. 
 
 He seemed to read my fear nor left a doubt, 
 
 But answered straight: 'My friend, the dough is out! v 
 
 But whence his thought or what his words' import 
 
 'Twere bootless now to ask. Instant report 
 
 Confirmed the town's surrender to the foe. 
 
 Whether 'twere that or lack of cakes and dough 
 
 I did not further seek. In either place 
 
 The rule applies, so rest this fruitless case. 
 
 The hours have far tow'rd somber midnight waxed,. 
 
 Your honored heads for wit are overtaxed ; 
 
 To-morrow's sun will bring to each, I ween, 
 
 New toils ; but hours of slumber intervene, 
 
 And well behooves it us to seek repose ; 
 
 The fear we fain would scorn more real grows. 
 
 A fortnight's space our hopes will make or mar ; 
 
 But, come what may, we're entered for the war." 
 
 :Now midnight clothed in shades and ebon gloom 
 The favored town, and silence as of doom 
 Held cot and lofty dome in mute embrace ; 
 The watch-stars, mounting toward their vigil place, 
 In shining ranks approached the sable tower, 
 And flung their beams creation's vastness o'er. 
 What darkness looked they on ! what sorrow read 
 Through latticed ways, where smothered dread 
 Spoke forth in sleepless eyes or forced its seal 
 On fevered lips and brows too soon to feel 
 The fiercer touch of mortal ill !
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 27 
 
 While yet 
 
 The darkness held its sway and cold dews wet 
 His thick, neglected locks, the night patrol 
 A stern, unflinching man, who softly stole 
 Like some dark specter, year by year, along 
 The silent streets and alleys dark among 
 Anon heard phantom feet upon the wind 
 AVhile viewless hoi-semen trode the night behind, 
 And cried the van-guard of a coming woe, 
 Hurried themselves from peaceful scenes below 
 To that far bourne with dread and evil haste. 
 Others protest a tall fierce spirit paced 
 From cottage door to marble balcony 
 And marked with strange device each casement high 
 Some say with shape like demon's cloven hoof, 
 Others with sign of such attenuate proof 
 As spirit sight alone avails to read 
 Earnest of course the besom death should lead. 
 
 The sexton, old and full of monkish dole, 
 Eclated how a sacred hand had smote 
 In sleep that night his withered form, and led 
 Him forth where slept inurned the mold' ring dead, 
 And planned him twoscore hundred open graves, 
 Blessing with chalice and the prayer that saves, 
 So that the unshriven dead might rest at least 
 In holy ground while death pursued his feast. 
 Protesting still Avith fear and reverend faith, 
 The ancient man recalled his father's wraith
 
 28 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Ofttimes had filled his sight, when that his death 
 
 The circling months had brought to mind; his breath 
 
 Returned to warn some evil must befall 
 
 His offspring near that fatal day; withal 
 
 That night his father's ghost in deep concern 
 
 Appeared, and from its legendary urn 
 
 In Tara old, o'er ocean forced to fly, 
 
 His family banshee lifted mortal cry; 
 
 He, hapless man, the last of that high trust, 
 
 The banshee hence must sleep with Tara's dust!
 
 CANTO SECOND 
 
 I. 
 
 f iQIIO nameth life? The deep portentous gloom 
 ^^ That drops anon when breaks its borrowed spell ; 
 The silent gleam of stars from morning's womb ; 
 
 The sudden burst of daylight's conqu'ring swell ; 
 
 The bounding into sunlit ways, where dwell 
 The living thoughts of shape and mold divine 
 
 That speak of wise and tender wish and tell 
 Some kindred hand, impelled by love's design, 
 
 Hath spread its palm, in kingly wise, to bless; 
 
 And voice that bids the night be day, nor welcome less. 
 
 Who nameth life? A dream, a fading cloud 
 Fantastic wanderer of a boundless sky, 
 
 Gilded with unenduring light, or plowed 
 
 By angry storms. Unchosen choice ! we cry 
 For length of days and drink the chalice dry, 
 
 Supposing this were all. Mystery dread ! 
 Yet sweet because so much a mystery; 
 
 Joy born of pain and life born of the dead : 
 
 And clouds that travail with the thunder's pain 
 AYeep liquid life and sweetness on the fruitful plain. 
 
 (29)
 
 30 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 II. 
 
 Hard by a wide expanse of inland waves, 
 Where primal warmth of summer's sunshine laves 
 The fruitful acres of an old demesne, 
 A lordly homestead rises up between 
 A vistaed range of Lombard boles that stand, 
 Like domelcss columns in a wasted land. 
 Green darkness, cast by elms and ancient limes, 
 Half hides the lofty gables, porch, and rimes 
 Of weathered stucco under Scottish tiles 
 That glisten white and red above the leafy aisles. 
 Northward the boundless furrowed valleys range, 
 Alternate white and brown with staples' change; 
 Southward the verdant pasture lands outroll 
 To marge on sinuous glade and amber pool, 
 Lavish of grassy fens and cockle dells, 
 Eifled by soft-eyed kine to sound of tinkling bells. 
 
 Here dwelt, in exile from the world's desire, 
 That Madeline who cheered her widowed sire 
 With reverent speech and love's adjusted power, 
 Beguiling evening's still and dusky hour 
 With gentlest service, duteous constancy, 
 With lute and lay of pleasing minstrelsy, 
 Yet nursed within her bosom's spotless scrine 
 The cruel pang that passing years refine 
 The pang of hope deferred, of love unwise 
 An angel fearing its own paradise. 
 The wine of joy from bitter lees was bred, 
 And cheerful words, like leaves of roses wed
 
 KUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 31 
 
 To thorny stem, sat on a heart that bore 
 
 Such poignant grief as pierced it to its inmost core 
 
 Now came the eve, such eves as bless 
 
 This favored land : roseate flush and stress 
 
 Of sunset skies and soft south winds that shake 
 
 Ambrosial sweetness from the flow'ry brake, 
 
 And mild intoxicants of odorous breaths 
 
 From clustered elder-boughs and bulbous wreaths 
 
 Of great magnolia-trees ; murmurous sounds 
 
 Of nature's mingling under-tones, and rounds 
 
 Of far-off notes some dusky troubadour 
 
 Chants lustily alone, his labors o'er; 
 
 Or distant throbbings of the heart of steam 
 
 In some grim packet's side, riding the stream 
 
 With fleecy freight its deep and muffled swells 
 
 Prophetic of the plaint that fate compels 
 
 From heart of universal man, who stems 
 
 The tide, distraught of weight that peace condemns. 
 
 Monitions, too, of spirit essence move 
 
 Upon the soul, and every power involve 
 
 In quick gestations of delightful sense. 
 
 Such eve prevailed, and 'neath the soft defense 
 
 Of clamb'ring vines that trailed her garden o'er 
 
 Walked Madeline with anxious thought and sore, 
 
 Caressing as she passed each floret's head, 
 
 And on each petal lip a trembling tear-drop shed. 
 
 O guerdon pure of our lost Eden bliss ! 
 Sweet recompense of grief and hope amiss i
 
 32 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 The flowers that wilding blush in woodland shade, 
 
 Or blow beside the hedge or, beauty rayed, 
 
 Grace garnered fields and home's love-lighted bowers 
 
 God's love be praised for love and leaves and flowers! 
 
 u Behold, into my garden I am come!" 
 
 The Eose of Sharon saith, the sweet Bridegroom. 
 
 Was it the vale of tears, Gethsernane, 
 
 Death gloomed from rugged brow of Calvary, 
 
 Where, with torn hands and anguish-riven heart, 
 
 lie plucked rich spiceiy boughs and myrrh, a part 
 
 Of His own self, that tree of life that grew 
 
 Hard by the fontal \vave, under the seventh blue ? 
 
 lily ! one red spot thy whiteness shows ; 
 
 1 kiss thy petals, and the wonder grows, 
 For in thy deepest heart it crimsons most. 
 Not one sweet drop of that rich blood was lost. 
 Heldest thou forth a chalice pure as love 
 
 To drink ? Irreverent must thou seem to prove, 
 
 O anxious faith ? Howbeit, this I know, 
 
 He loved the flowers, and ever told his woe 
 
 To them, and breathed on them his tend'rest breath, 
 
 Making them tell the tale of life and death 
 
 As seen through his mild eyes, and chose his hour 
 
 When flow'ring Nisan dropped its shower 
 
 Of asphodels and wild thyme everywhere, 
 
 And when he slept at last they laid him there, 
 
 In Joseph's garden where the fringed lilies were. 
 
 Eftsoon a weeping Magdalene found, 
 
 Lingering still that sacred vault around,
 
 RUPEET WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 33 
 
 Iu whom she read the simple gardener's mien 
 Till that his voice revealed the Xazarenc. 
 Might Madeline, the broken-hearted, find 
 Amongst her flowers that same "Eahboni" kind! 
 
 The summer winds toyed with her flowing hair, 
 
 Exotics rained their perfumes on the air, 
 
 And cast a wealth of waxen forms that grew 
 
 More sweet when crushed beneath her dainty shoe. 
 
 A broken urn lay near, its dead anemones 
 
 Typing too well love's wasted memories. 
 
 Her fragile fingers clutched a penciled sheet, 
 
 Its dainty seal and tinted covering neat 
 
 That, dropped by chance, lay on a bed of phlox, 
 
 Like alabaster set in crusted blocks 
 
 Of purple gems above a temple's shrine, 
 
 Bespeaking tracery of words divine, 
 
 "Whose sense must needs have smit with fatal force 
 
 A heart already quenched at vital source. 
 
 Her dark-brown eyes that lustrous shone were fair 
 
 With frcnzying light, but mute despair 
 
 Had settled on the face of perfect mold 
 That showed insensate whiteness like the sheen 
 Of some pale star through vapory moonlight seen ; 
 
 And now the dark eyes' light grew pensive, cold, 
 The quiv'ring lips in troubled accents moved, 
 And breathed a speech that erst too much had proved: 
 
 " Courage, my woman's heart, be brave and stout, 
 Though sorrow lade and passion measure out 
 Each crimson drop that warmly courses thee, 

 
 34 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 And leave with each a grief its own to be, 
 Though thou hast felt of hope the utmost pain 
 Till, suffering long, thou knewest hope was vain ; 
 Though thou hast felt the torturing sense and smart 
 Of newborn shame and fate's relentless art 
 Pathless, my tear-scorched heart, I bid be still, 
 Of bitter tears thou canst but weep thy fill ! 
 
 " ' "Woman, why weepest thou ? ' a tender voice 
 Asked long ago. "Weeping is not thy choice, 
 But aye has been thy lot : a wild swept harp 
 Since first that heart was' bared to feel the sharp, 
 Fierce blasts without those sun-blest vales that made 
 Its earliest home. That thou hast dearly paid 
 Thy fault, let say old tales of sword and lust 
 From leagured towns ; and desert-withered dust 
 Of ancient capitals ; let her that wept 
 Beside the Ilian distaff; they that kept 
 Campana's furrowed fields bedewed with tears, 
 And Punic daughters, from their birth to curse 
 Of foreign shame foredoomed, and Attic maids, 
 And that long line of weeded mourning shades 
 That moves through history's dim-aisled, mystic fane, 
 
 / v 
 
 Attest with soul-born throes of undeserved pain ! 
 
 These filled their tearful lots and went their way, 
 
 Fading at autumn touch of sorrow's day, 
 
 To spring again by some still vernal wave 
 
 Beyond the hazy doubts that skirt the grave, 
 
 No withering leaf of hope to know, no sigh 
 
 Of blasting winds they waited, suffering ; so must I.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 35 
 
 41 If love essays, as oft in other days, 
 
 To cast its horoscope of joyful wish, 
 And sweeps along the future's veiled years, 
 
 But swift, portentous shadows darkly rush, 
 Like evil things, before my troubled gaze, 
 
 And ne'er a favoring star or sign appears. 
 I cannot trust that fond delusive thought 
 
 That strengthened ties and sealed bridal vows 
 Will break an evil pow'r, more evil fraught, 
 That love restrained and hope deferred break not; 
 
 To yield to fate that last restraint endows 
 With evil absolute a now thrice bitter lot. 
 
 " But once again, yet once again; perchance, I slight 
 Some word, some simple, doubly precious word 
 That, like a window tow'rd the dawning light, 
 
 Lets morning through with touch of hallowed peace. 
 O lines by true love tears already blurred, 
 
 And waking fateful echoes that shall cease 
 Only when soul shall stand to soul revealed 
 
 In that consuming Presence, knowing all, 
 Give forth thy secret, if there be concealed 
 
 In thee one gleam of hope or duty's higher call ! " 
 
 The tearful eyes once more review the written sheet 
 Whose passioned words the evening winds repeat : 
 
 " Sweet Madeline, hear this my latest plea 
 So often made 'tis moved by dolorous sighs ; 
 
 Now writ in tears and well-nigh sealed with blood. 
 
 In prison dark, my soul goes out to thee,
 
 36 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC UOMAXCE. 
 
 Lifts up its voice, and fondly, wildly cries 
 
 For help from thy dear hands. A rising flood 
 
 Of fears and doubts o'erwhelm, but in the full 
 Abiding strength of that deep love of thine 
 I seek repose. 'Tis thou, of earthly or divine, 
 
 Hast pow'r to soothe my troubled thoughts and lull 
 The angry storm and wasting strife within. 
 
 Pity, if thou canst pity one so weak, 
 And quickly come, thou radiant dream of love, 
 
 Thou morn of peace, into my life and speak 
 
 The gracious word thqt seals thee ever mine 
 And seals me unto honor's self and prove 
 
 That power which daily I extol as thine ; 
 Bid me attend thy will, and lo ! I come 
 Swift as the mated doves that seek their home 
 
 When sudden storms burst on their aerie flight. 
 'Tis honor bids me say I still am bound ; 
 
 But thou, my angel keeper, thou hast might, 
 When nuptial love shall ripen in its time, 
 
 To break each ling'ring fetter and proclaim 
 
 Me free. Heal thou my soul's corroding wound ; 
 
 Bid me return, as erst, in thy sweet name ! 
 My days are exile ; long I for that clime 
 
 In which my boyhood's heart felt glad surprise 
 
 And drank thy smiles. Forever, Eupert Wise." 
 
 " Nay, never can it be, although each flow'r 
 
 That blossomed fresh in girlhood's peaceful morn 
 
 Be blighted by the word, and envious dust 
 Rest on their petals, and each rapture born
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 37 
 
 With them be turned to grief, and though the rust 
 
 Dim all my altar gold, it may not be. 
 Thou seest, soul, the path grows many a thorn, 
 
 But thou shalt tread it since 'twas made for thee. 
 Decide I must ; be this the moment and the hour. 
 
 O that I had a friend on whom to lean ! 
 Some kindred heart to share my heavy load, 
 
 That walking, in my somber world, between 
 Their love and His who shed his kingly blood 
 
 To give me final peace,! might find strength 
 
 To journey on through all life's weary length ! 
 O for the voice of her who gave me birth ! 
 
 O for a mother's constant thought to lead 
 The way ! But long the cold obstructive earth 
 
 Has claimed that gentlest friend. They laid her head 
 On lowly pillow in the vale where oft I trod 
 
 In childhood's years, undreaming of my loss, 
 Undreaming of this hour, hid save from God, 
 
 Undreaming of the fate that soon should toss 
 The life that she so fondl} T prayed might know 
 
 But peaceful days and fruited joys on seas 
 Thrice turbulent with breaking waves, and show 
 
 Of envious chance that on misfortune preys. 
 O mother, does thy waking spirit hear 
 
 My prayers, the burdening sighs I heave, 
 Or know when I am near thy lonely grave? 
 
 Ray, mother, does thy soul regard thy child 
 \Yhen on that grave she drops the pensive tear, 
 
 And mourns thy life's sweet scope and vision o'er?
 
 38 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 canst thou through this evening twilight mild 
 Look down ay, dost thou see me evermore ? 
 
 1 am a pilgrim in the way, beguiled 
 
 No more by earth, and soon shall be as thou. 
 Oft when I bow at evening time for prayer, 
 
 I feel unearthly impress on my brow, 
 As if some guardian spirit's touch were there; 
 
 O tell me, mother, is that impress thine? 
 Enough ! I know that thou art near me here ; 
 
 Thy life of love, thy memory's constant bloom, 
 Breathe patient trust. The higher will is mine ! 
 
 Yon fair ascending star whose beams are shed 
 In radiance half melodious round thy tomb 
 
 A beacon light becomes, and safe shall lead 
 My trustful spirit heavenward, sunward, home ! ' 
 
 As swells the rising sea with refluent shock, 
 
 "When back recoiling from the buttressed rock, 
 
 So rose the maiden's soul upon the wave 
 
 Of troubled sense that into silence drave 
 
 And seemed to die, but backward turned and wrought 
 
 With misty hands a spectral dread in thought. 
 
 Long time she stood, with strong decision spent 
 
 In one concern, and thus her purpose went : 
 
 " My father wills it, and I make my own 
 
 That kind paternal thought, with kindred near. 
 
 In that dear Old Dominion clime, now grown 
 More dear, to bide the fading of the year;
 
 SUPSJtT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 39 
 
 To those fair mountains lifting their blue heads 
 
 Above the scenes of beauty in the vale 
 Where, like a tender wilding flower that spreads 
 
 Its petals to the wooing breezes, frail 
 As their induing breath, iny mother grew 
 
 To blissful maidenhood, I turn with hope ; 
 There still, perhaps, with sweetness like the dew 
 
 That lingers in the lily's nodding cup 
 When down the night withdraws the bridegroom sun, 
 
 Her spirit, virgin robed, abides my prayer. 
 There will I seek repose, if e'er that boon 
 
 For my torn heart kind Heaven on earth prepare, 
 Or else I shall find rest, unbroken rest, 
 
 In silent sleep beside the gliding wave, 
 While o'er my head the spring doves coo and nest 
 
 And blue-eyed clovers weep above my grave. 
 
 " Who knows that unrcvealed life beyond? 
 
 Enough that in the bosom of its years 
 Love shall not bring despair, nor vital bond 
 
 Be loosed with rain between of fruitless tears ! 
 Ay, Heaven is kind ! perchance I there shall know 
 
 His faultless love, and winds of paradise 
 Shall catch from bowers that dust untarnished blow 
 
 The old-time vows, breathed ere that thralling vice 
 Had walked within the shadow of our faith. 
 
 O Father, must thy noblest work, despoiled 
 And marred, be left to shame eterne? Why saith 
 
 Thy word ' His angels shall have charge, lest toiled 
 Of sin he dash his foot the stones against?'
 
 40 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Shall guardian spirits arch in vain their wings 
 Above that laureled head ? Must that bold light 
 
 Of goodly intellect that flows like springs 
 Of infant day go out in deepest night ? 
 
 Nay ! saith a wish that will not be denied, 
 A wish that by thy certain promise plain'st: 
 
 Must mercy, moved to die, in vain have died ? 
 Yet will I trust and hold thy promise true ; 
 
 Our weakness is thy might, and still thou deign'st 
 Our prayers and cries, nor dost thy pleasure rue. 
 
 I will believe thee better than our fears, 
 Ay, better than our highest faith hath made, 
 
 Or even our tenderest speech can frame 
 A thought of thee ! Whether from sorrow laid, 
 
 Or bliss breathed, on our hearts there wake the flame 
 Of purer joys and nobler wish, appears 
 
 To feeble sight the mask of cruel chance ; 
 But who loves not the weeping harp-string best, 
 
 And who feels not his soul rise on the trance 
 
 Of plaintive song? 
 
 "Alas ! I am unblest 
 
 "With holy memory of a love whose glance 
 Were like some kindly star's, ascendant proved 
 
 At natal hour and holding forth through life 
 A potent charm. Yet to my fate I loved, 
 
 And that deep thought was in my being rife, 
 And wrought into the texture of my soul. 
 
 So long ago my tender mind retained 
 No memory of the day, love on the scroll, 
 
 The fair and hidden scroll, of life detained
 
 . RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 41 
 
 His fiery wand and wrote one only name. 
 
 Dream not, ye winds, I love no more. That fire 
 Shall burn with inextinguishable flame, 
 
 As vestal altar on, lighting the pyre 
 Of every earthly hope, as one by one 
 
 The days consign them to their doom. Yet so 
 We meet redeemed at last from evil done, 
 
 And purged from dross, what matter now I know 
 Such fiery test? what though my spirit cry? 
 
 It shall be well. With that dear hope how short 
 The years to wait; yet doubts, that say not why, 
 
 Are mine ; nor more is made of winds the sport 
 Yon shredded gossamers that toss on high 
 
 Than I the sport of fear and soul's misgivings. 
 Why must we suffer so and lift a fruitless cry 
 
 Who are the crown of life and first of things? 
 The swallow circling toward the brim 
 
 Of yonder sun-dyed wave knows joy alone, 
 And love at evening's close will answer him 
 
 From out the nest beside the chimney stone; 
 Ah, should our summer tide at last begin, 
 
 Through circling of the endless years above, 
 And we, its sunny bosom resting in, 
 
 But hear the purer accents of our love, 
 Chased by the winter of unrest from earth, 
 
 It will be well. God, thou know'st to prove 
 Our love ; in death, to give it better birth! " 
 
 With dusky wings the shadows swept the sky; 
 
 Her owlet horns the moon pushed through the leaves
 
 42 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 That caught the glare of one great open eye, 
 Keeper's, lone gleaming from the western eaves 
 
 Of heaven's blue vault. A chill of dewy air 
 
 Rose from the wave, when Madeline, with change 
 
 To sweet composure of her heart's despair, 
 
 Walked slowly from the garden toward the grange. 
 
 Now mellow lamp-light filled the spacious hall 
 
 And silence, like the awful hush of death, 
 Broke only by the night-bird's call, 
 
 Held earth in dusky arms. The languid breath 
 Of flowers dropped through the lattice wide and bare ; 
 
 And fancy might have heard the muffled steps 
 Of long-departed guests upon the stair, 
 
 Like mem'ries threading down the silent years; 
 And in the heart of Madeline two trains 
 
 Passed ever on, and one was doubts and fears 
 That beckoned backward to the past with plains 
 
 And many bitter words, at sight of days 
 That, bearing signs of hope, brought but despair ; 
 
 And one was trust and faith that moved, apace, 
 From life's spent hopes, upward through paths of prayer, 
 
 "A song," her father cried, "a song, my child ; 
 
 To-morrow takes you hence for many days ; 
 A tender, plaintive song," he said and smiled 
 
 A smile warm with the summer of a parent's praise. 
 
 Seated before the ivory bank anon, 
 
 While unseen fingers swept her heart with pain,
 
 RVPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 43> 
 
 She swept the waking octaves with her own, 
 And rather wept than sang this simple strain : 
 
 1 " Through life's morning fitful, fleeting, 
 
 With its dalliance and caressing 
 
 Waking thought to passion's glow, 
 Quick'ning pulse to higher beating, 
 All the soul's deep force expressing, 
 
 Breathing on its wish below 
 I am waiting, fondly dreaming, 
 
 On the sands of youth's fair shore ; 
 Till my boast shall change from seeming, 
 Till my stately ship comes o'er. 
 
 2 " Now the roseate tints are glowing 
 
 Where the summer skies are bending 
 
 Downward through the depths of light; 
 And my once glad dreams are growing, 
 Like the day with shadows blending, 
 
 Somber with no sail in sight ; 
 Still, with dauntless trust I'm waiting 
 
 On the lone enchanted shore, 
 Heart and brain to hope pulsating, 
 Though no gallant ship comes o'er. 
 
 3 " Months and seasons passing, fleeting, 
 
 In their circles waxing, waning, 
 
 Lengthen into weary years ; 
 Still my heart is wildly beating, 
 And my trust is uncomplaining, 
 
 Though oppressed with gathering fears.
 
 44 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Hope with ardor warm is burning, 
 Beacon midst the silent years, 
 
 Still no earnest of returning, 
 Still no freighted ship appears ! 
 
 4 " Many a bark, the mad wave crossing, 
 
 Has escaped and anchored, resting 
 
 'Neath a placid autumn sky; 
 But amidst the ocean's tossing, 
 
 Where with wind is wind contesting, 
 
 Bides my gallant ship on high, 
 "While with yearnings strange I'm waiting 
 
 On the strand where joys have been, 
 With earth-pride and wish abating, 
 Till my wave-tossed ship comes in 1 
 
 5 " Evening shades of life are falling, 
 
 O'er the hill-tops darkly brooding, 
 
 Settling slowly o'er the main ; 
 And a mystic voice is calling 
 
 Sorrow's surcease sure preluding 
 
 Calling now in hope's refrain ; 
 And my spirit, longing, list'ning, 
 
 Views afar the silent shore 
 Bathed in morn's eternal glist'ning, 
 Where my treasure ship shall moor. 
 
 > "Stars of peace are calmly beaming 
 
 Through the tempest slowly rifting 
 Stars that guide my bark aright,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 45 
 
 Lamps of grace whose kindly gleaming, 
 
 O'er the treacli'rous billows sifting, 
 
 Drives the dangers from the night. 
 Voice of power shall calm its heaving, 
 
 Ocean's deep and sullen roar, 
 And my ship, the waters cleaving, 
 
 Anchor near the golden shore ! "
 
 CANTO THIRD. 
 
 i. 
 
 (( JTlHINE own self know," well spake the ancient sage ; 
 j. But who can know himself, the heart's wide realm 
 That stretches, like an untrod land, with rage 
 
 Along its coast of wild dark waves that whelm 
 In dire dismay who seek their force to stem ? 
 
 Where if, by chance of wisdom taught or sent 
 Of Heaven, one safely hold his storm-tried helm, 
 
 Searching for secret lost to life's intent, 
 
 How must he weep the shame of that dark continent ! 
 
 Or if, perchance, unsent we pensive ride 
 The crested waves far off its mystic strand, 
 
 The distant roar of billowy seas and wide, 
 
 Fierce streams, descending mountain paths, command 
 
 Our various fears, and awe the desert land ; 
 And still abide its secrets, tufted plains 
 
 Hung round with awful wilds, where thickly stand 
 The upas forms, and deadly damp distrains 
 The kindly air, till hope expires and fate complains. 
 
 Yet hath the strong mysterious God-man's feet 
 
 Compassed in pain that mist world's hidden bounds, 
 
 And crimson marked its desert paths, where beat 
 The torrid suns of fiery grief, and sounds 
 
 (46)
 
 liUl'ERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 47 
 
 Of agony have waked its dread profounds 
 A human soul, path-finding love and hope, 
 
 Still pressing on, with loneliness and wounds, 
 Amid the night, on furtherest seas to cope 
 With death and destined lands to heaven's invasions ope. 
 
 II. 
 
 Within his study, passion-tossed and racked 
 
 With fears that o'er his wine-fired fancy tracked 
 
 Their comet paths, paced Rupert Wise and fought, 
 
 Through rugged ways and dark defiles of thought, 
 
 The fierce-waged battles of despair and doubt, 
 
 Till overborne the weary soul wailed out : 
 
 " Life is a cheerless passage through the night 
 
 And hope a pale, delusive meteor's light 
 
 That streaks the gloom with sudden fitful glare, 
 
 But dies the moment of its birth. A snare 
 
 Is that desire which kindles passion's flame 
 
 To tender thoughts pursue or deeds of nobless claim. 
 
 that I had not known this mocking sin, 
 
 Or, better far, that I had never been, 
 
 Since life bears not the pleasure of its name, 
 
 And since, alas ! the future's mystic fame 
 
 Is void of softening sheen or image fair 
 
 Of other life when doomed mortals dare ! 
 
 The cup that rapture brings to kindred lips 
 To mine yields bitterness and fierce despair; 
 
 The orb that nightly into ocean dips 
 Unchains the light anew o'er earth to roll, 
 
 And shakes the tepid dew from morning's urn,
 
 48 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Brings hence to me no morn of sweet control, 
 Nor earnest of my sinless years' return ; 
 
 The stars that smile to other eyes and shed 
 
 Celestial luster on their sight, instead 
 
 I see as jeweled daggers in the hands 
 
 Of that unpitying, sleepless fate who stands 
 Where ends at length the path of mortal fears, 
 
 Ready to quench the last of reason's breath 
 And shroud in night the fitful, fleeting years 
 
 Of suffering man I hail that sleep of death ! 
 
 "And yet, God knows, if through yon mocking deep 
 
 There walks a being such as Christians say, 
 God knows I would have other creed, would weep 
 
 In penitence and, like the humblest, pray; 
 But worse than vain were that, I can't believe ! 
 
 Ah, there's the rock on which my wish is wrecked; 
 Far back as memory's willing pinions cleave, 
 
 Mine was a path by thought of God unflecked ; 
 And still her woof doth reason blindly weave 
 
 With doubts and strong protests thus faith is checked 
 
 " Yet this, alas ! describes but half my woe 
 
 To hush my conscience more were base and craven 
 
 I am a slave, a menial cursed and low, 
 
 Of appetite which, like a black-beaked raven, 
 
 Feasts night and day upon my vital parts ; 
 Nor can I break the Gorgon's hated power, 
 'Tis in my veins, I know the fatal dower 
 
 Of our ancestral blood. Toiled by its arts,
 
 KUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 49 
 
 My father fell in manhood's gifted prime ; 
 And likewise I must fall; or deeper hell! 
 
 Reason must sink, and I shall close my fated time 
 Not with a dash of wine, but in a madman's cell ! 
 
 " O Madeline, thy pale and anxious face 
 
 Looks on me through the night the night that hides 
 From thee and all the world my one disgrace I 
 
 'Tis false to say my fate with thee abides, 
 But thine with me; had I responsive will, 
 
 I need but ope the way and thou wouldst come 
 With all thy wealth of love to keep and fill 
 
 My weary heart. Stricken I stand and dumb, 
 Adored one, before thy pleading gaze ! 
 
 Those tender eyes shall haunt me to my doom, 
 And thy sweet voice I hear in all my ways. 
 
 O God ! this nightshade's death-distilling bloom ! 
 Oft have I cast aside the drunkard's cup 
 
 "With awful oath to spurn it all my days; 
 But ghostly hands have held its madness up, 
 
 While fierce and loud my demon master roared 
 And showed a ghastly whip of serpent thongs, 
 Until I yielded what to man belongs 
 
 And on my writhing soul the red wine poured! 
 
 " Worse than a thousand deaths of death alone, 
 Remorse ! consuming hell within the soul; 
 
 A tossing waste, a burning desert zone ; 
 
 A starless sky where wrathful thunders howl ; 
 
 A curse of madness on the midnight air 
 4
 
 50 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 These, more than these, my shrinking sense appall, 
 And speak anew that awful word despair! 
 
 " Once, goodly legend says, a lonely youth 
 
 Fresh from long wanderings in a desert waste, 
 Seeking for strength in life ay, death, forsooth, 
 
 Sat on a tower's black crown that grimly faced 
 The points of heaven and beetled o'er the massed 
 
 And babbling sons of one wide race, that chased 
 Through forms and feasts a hope that barely cast 
 
 A shadow on their fading realm. He sate 
 Measuring in thought the* depth of that black pit 
 
 Beneath the towering wall, and read dark hate 
 In every face. ' Cast thyself down ; 'tis fit 
 
 That thou shouldst spurn thy soul's untimely fate,' 
 A spirit spake within ; but idle whit 
 
 Moved not that moveless soul, but dared to wait 
 Its fated end. Within me thus there cries 
 
 A voice, loud as the clarion note of war : 
 ' Cast thyself down ; fierce are thine enemies ; 
 
 The pit is fathomless 'tis fitter far.' 
 But else there cries : ' Not yet, not yet ; suffice 
 
 Their wills; bide thou death's final battle jar ! ' 
 
 " But must I bear this rankling to the grave, 
 This thirst for liquid fires that sate not thirst ? 
 
 That youth saw holy grail whose drainings gave, 
 Though dashed with bitter woes, a nameless sweet ; 
 
 That grail whose draught my burning fancies brave 
 Steeps in my heart until it fiercely burst
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 51 
 
 And heals, yet never heals, itself to meet 
 
 The curse again. I have heard say (O mind, 
 My better motions, where ?) a tree hath leaves 
 
 To heal a wounded heart. Some spirit bind 
 Them on the bleeding here, and let me sleep 
 
 Sweet sleep, like those Arcadian dreams I find, 
 When down still memory's vales I lonely go. 
 
 O spirit of the silent hours ! O winds, 
 That deign to kiss my aching, curse-marked brow, 
 
 Where mother's kindly kiss did never fall, 
 Know ye no kingly spell above, below, 
 
 No healing balm, no gift reserved for all 
 That stays the flesh and fortifies the mind. 
 
 Say, ebon night, where chance thy steps to fall, 
 In all the realm that knows thy darker boast, 
 Where still primeval shades and silence awe, 
 
 Is there one hiding-place for man defiled? 
 Deep in Vesuvius' thundering maw 
 
 With stormy waves of ocean o'er it piled, 
 Or on the lone and bleak Siberian coast, 
 
 O is there peace for me a fated child? 
 What sounds? The midnight mocks with scowling brows. 
 
 The wind in idle, bated accents dies 
 Or laughs a ghostly laughter in the cedar boughs ; 
 
 No peace ? the tongue that utters that is false ; it lies 
 Ay, peace there is, of Lethe and of wine ! 
 
 Then touch me, Bacchus, with thy wonted spell, 
 Lay poppies on this throbbing brow of mine, 
 
 This clamorous brood of conscience quell ! "
 
 52 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Herewith he filled a beaker to the brim 
 
 With red resolving juice from Bacchus' bower, 
 And o'er the beaker's chased and crystal rim 
 
 Added the bane of Sinim's deadly flower, 
 Quaffed it and sate as in remorseful pain, 
 
 Then rose and lisped, as moved of newborn power : 
 "Ah, peaceful exit from a dungeon's gloom, 
 
 Now beats my pulse aright, my troubled brain 
 Its normal force renews, my thoughts resume 
 
 Their wonted trend, and now with might and main. 
 I must work up my treatise on the nerves. 
 
 How fast ambition's scattered seeds do grow ! 
 
 To-day they spring, to-morrow leave and blow ; 
 The pupil speaks, and now the master serves ; 
 
 With haste my name has gone abroad ; my pen, 
 
 At will, meets those of all the learned men. 
 
 " Let passion die since timorous faith forbids 
 
 And draws its whiter veil, like daisies' lids 
 
 At eve's ap'proach- ; die every wistful thought 
 
 Save those ambition's fervid soul hath wrought 
 
 To do and dare what meaner minds forego 
 
 From sheer consent that reason falls below ; 
 
 Dark science hence shall o'er my passions reign 
 
 And know my arduous suit, till reason gain 
 
 The longed for goal. Then plucked shall be from out 
 
 The garden of my life that tender doubt 
 
 That long hath swayed my wish and secret lent 
 
 Unto my years its mild atropic scent. 
 
 Plucked let it be, though every spray should bleed
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 53 
 
 And cry, with human anguish, for the meed 
 Of longer stay 'twere folly ! let it bleed ! 
 Ay, perish leaf and root, and leave but scant 
 Of memory's self, ambition's goodly plant 
 Instead grow up a lordly tree, and cast 
 Defiant front before the driven blast. 
 
 " There is no truth in man's evolved frame 
 
 Of nature or of supernature's claim 
 
 I may not know and shall, hence here proclaim 
 
 My freedom from all lesser things ay, more ! 
 
 Hear it, my ampler powers ! there is a store 
 
 Of wisdom in the outer world, and hence 
 
 No mind has dai*ed to climb. "Tis high pretense, 
 
 But thou shalt tread that dizzy eminence. . . . 
 
 Where lore of crucible and astral chart 
 
 Has failed of nature's secrets, braver heart 
 
 And truer science all shall bring to light. 
 
 What rising dreams expand my soul's delight ! 
 
 That which is named for want of nobler sight 
 
 Or fate or death or dire misfortune's might, 
 
 Is but of nature's cause and lies within 
 
 The mastery of mind, as aye hath been 
 
 The ponderous forms of being, soil and tree, 
 
 Rivers and rocks and gold and waste of sea ; 
 
 Be this my task, like those in legends old, 
 
 Yet nobler panoplied with strength as bold, 
 
 To hunt this dragon of a newer age 
 
 Through acne paths and war exterminate Avage 
 
 On all his hateful brood !
 
 54 KUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 " Fade, then, ye dreams 
 Of soft infolding light; before me streams 
 The glare of fiercer days, wherein for fame 
 And sense of proud renown I enter claim. 
 But stay, my thoughts, why weep this buried love 
 That will not die ? The singer, fain to prove 
 In sordid ways and selfish acts, his mind 
 To mammon wealth and worldly greed inclined, 
 Hears sighing oft his long neglected harp, 
 And move him where he may, or join the carp 
 Of idle tongues, he still must hear its notes 
 Harmonious, breathed above the miser's dotes 
 Eeproachful snatches of forgotten lays 
 That plead return, if haply, to their days. 
 All broken lies my harp ; I hence must hear 
 But echoes of its plaints, as on the sear 
 Disrobed willow-boughs its fragments hang, 
 As oft before, when pensive love unstrang 
 Its golden wires. Farewell, love's riven shell, 
 Sweet hopes and tender sighs, adieu ! farewell ! 
 Another life I enter on ; I can, 
 I dare the task that crowns and scepters man ! " 
 
 Loud raps without now reached the student's ear. 
 
 " Who's there, a patient or a visitor ? " 
 " Neither, and yet are both in waiting here." 
 
 "With this wide open flew the lattice door, 
 And one, well known to those who far or near 
 
 Walked through the town, stood in the open way-
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 55 
 
 An ancient man who bore an antique lyre 
 And sang as any chanced to fee his lay. 
 
 " Why up, old man, at this unseemly hour 
 When spooks and bats for hurt of man conspire? 
 
 You should be quiet in your easy bed, 
 For withered limbs like yours demand repose." 
 
 "Alas, to find my crust of daily bread 
 I arn content ; no home the singer knows, 
 
 And it so falls that, though in street and bower 
 I've sung the day-dream out, sad and unfed 
 
 I stand before you now. The generous light 
 That through your open casement shone 
 
 Bade me come in and freely name my plight. 
 Pray lot me cheer you with a song ; alone 
 You seem ; a pittance to the old man thrown 
 
 Will stay his heart and make it glad to-night." 
 
 " Even as you wish, my reverend friend, 
 And, to begin with, here's your fee in gold, 
 But mind you, in your song no knights of old, 
 No love-lorn wight, I'm in no mood for these : 
 Some weird, night-born strain will better please. 
 
 Let it smell of crumbling tombs and church-yard mold, 
 Or ring with goblin shrieks and wails of sprites, 
 Or moan with dirge and cant of priestly rites 
 That mock to shame life's cold and hopeless end." 
 
 Then bent that reverend man a courteous knee 
 
 And murmured low : " Your wish I can fulfill ; 
 What these dim eyes have seen, and yet may see
 
 56 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Before they close in peace their heavy lids 
 To that last sleep, I sing. What is to be 
 
 No mortal knows ; occult is that high Will 
 That ruleth all. The Power that speaks and bids 
 
 The mountains melt, that stills the angry sea, 
 In His own chosen time will changes bring." 
 
 With this the singer swept the wiry maze ; 
 His HDS, responding, these weird accents raise : 
 
 1 " Ere the wake of the morn 
 Was the pestilence born ; 
 
 And his foul and dragon-like wings spread afar, 
 
 As he pondered him there 
 
 In the hot fetid air 
 Over ruin more wasting than famine or war! 
 
 2 " I looked, and a pinion 
 Had claimed as dominion 
 
 The sea and the isles and the salt-scented gale. 
 
 Quickly turned from the sea, 
 
 Like the wind flieth he, 
 Till his pall he had cast over earth's favored vale ! 
 
 3 " The sun seemed to die 
 In his path in the sky, 
 
 And wildness and terror filled city and lane ; 
 The hot tear of sorrow 
 Was quenched ere the morrow, 
 
 And iJio.dead were interred by the moon's silent wane!
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 57 
 
 4 "A low, ceaseless wail 
 For the smite of the vale 
 
 Rose mournfully, ringing from river to sea, 
 And the nations in dread 
 Watched the plague's wasting tread, 
 
 Impotent to stay, but praying the end might be. 
 
 5 " Then away slow it crept, 
 As the fierce cloud is swept 
 
 From the land when war's wild alarums are o'er, 
 And a remnant returned 
 Where its madness had burned, 
 
 But the flower of the valley returned nevermore ! " 
 
 The song was done ; as though he fain would read 
 The singer's thoughts and motives ill ascribe, 
 
 The student stood, but quickly thus instead : 
 "Ah, thou hast well and duly earned thy bribe ! 
 
 Go, therefore, now and find what most you need 
 Some wholesome food and wine then with the tribe 
 
 Of Morpheus blest, seek thou the toiler's meed." 
 
 The singer hence the student left alone, 
 
 Assayed once more to guide the magic steel, 
 But languor named the fiery brain its own, 
 
 And bold designs that logic sought to seal 
 Went fading into dreams and phantasies. 
 
 "Aha ! " he cried, " my friends too quickly steal 
 My sense and touch with velvet sleep my eyes ! 
 
 Decreed, I must my task lay by and snatch 
 From toil an hour of rest, although the prize
 
 58 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Ambition holds demands of all despatch ; 
 And he who would the wreath of laurels wear 
 
 Must comfort, ease, and slumber sacrifice. 
 Before the earliest rays of dawn appear, 
 
 With rested limbs and quiet nerves I'll rise 
 And thus my state will much the theme reveal." 
 
 The brazen clock, held firm and safe on high 
 
 By that grave tufted Sire of all the years, 
 Its gilded hand the lonely hour brought nigh. 
 
 The dial's tale was read : as one who hears 
 The measured waves of oce'an pulsing by 
 
 And sits in dreamy mood, nor recks nor stirs 
 Till beats the tide his chosen seat around, 
 
 So sat the student, while the waves of time 
 Echoed along his soul and sleep profound, 
 
 Like rising seas, closed o'er the outer man. 
 Slow rolled the heavy hours till twice around 
 
 Its measured course the tireless index ran ; 
 The dying hour unloosed the clanging chime 
 
 And thrilled the sleeper's hot and dreamy brain. 
 
 Startled, he woke with sudden, stifled cry 
 
 And bounded from the cushioned seat amain, 
 Smote through the air, as fiends he would defy ; 
 
 Then sorely mocked his fears with cold upbraid 
 And murmured : " Sleep is peaceful now no more ; 
 
 Such dreams and visions, mingling light and shade r 
 Yet most, alas ! of shade, wove in my brain, 
 
 That shattered loom of thought ! But ere they fade-
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 59 
 
 I must their order seize. Portend they do, 
 
 If ever dreams portend, some evil sore. 
 Let's see, the land was fair two woes it knew ; 
 
 Not so there came a darker scene before! 
 So yes! I have it now, the darkness grew, 
 
 Dim horrors rose and night shut out the view! 
 
 " I must at once this vision strange unfold. 
 
 Is it some grim chimera of the night, 
 Disclosure of that world I am so bold 
 
 As to deny? or vision meant to fright 
 And drive me into faith in gods and spooks ? 
 
 If that be so I gladly make the fight ; 
 Eebellion is my flag. I learn from books 
 
 That dreams are baseless things, the idle fruit 
 Of chance concern, the freaks of heavy brains. 
 
 I well believe it so, and this 'twould suit 
 To trace to that old singer's cursed strains 
 
 Wherein he wailed of death ; but here of late 
 I am a coward grown and look for evil ; 
 
 If further creed did not eventuate, 
 I should, from sheer constraint, admit the devil. 
 
 I have a thought, I'll act it out at once ; 
 There is old De Erl who boasts clairvoyance, 
 
 To test his arts I'll be this night a dunce ; 
 The feat, I ween, will cost me small annoyance 
 
 And respite give from thought. The place is near ; 
 'Tis only four, and Stygian darkness reigns. 
 
 I can with ease disguise my face ; I'll wear 
 This cloak, so none, except at greatest pains,
 
 60 RVPEBT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Could tell whether 'twere man or womankind ; 
 I'll hawk this reticule as further blind, 
 So those who see me by the wizard's light, 
 Will say I seek a patient in the night." 
 
 An easy journey through the starlit street 
 His footsteps brought to where abruptly meet 
 The stony pave and river's sloping brink. 
 Here moss-clad oaks and dark magnolias drink 
 The misty air and drag their pendant boughs 
 Along the crumbling cliff. E'en when glows 
 "With scorching flame the noonday's sun, a shade, 
 Like that which filled the Labyrinthic glade, 
 Mantles the slope down to the river's edge 
 And flings itself along a terraced ledge, 
 Midway between the cliff and upper world. 
 In umbrage hid, like shapeless boulder hurled 
 From some primeval rift or igneous trap, 
 A gray adobe, cringing, holds this lap 
 Of flood-disputed earth a fitting place 
 To shelter cunning deeds and hide the face 
 Made gross by sordid thoughts and selfish lore. 
 Therein from imremembered days before 
 Dwelt old De Erl, the wizard known of all 
 Through dark repute, who from his cloister wall 
 Was seldom seen to stray. 
 
 Him, burdened sore, 
 
 The student unannounced now stood before, 
 Who rising, surpliced full in textiles rare 
 And decked with emblem gauds and jewels fail-,
 
 EUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 61 
 
 In gracious wise, received his youthful guest 
 And bade him freely name his mild request : 
 " Great honor 'tis to serve so fair a cause 
 As that I fondly ween, which hither draws 
 Your obvious haste. "Tis granted unto few 
 Such secrets to divine, but wisdom true 
 Is justified of all her faithful ones 
 (The boastful proud are not of wisdom's sons). 
 A mother fond and doting she, her love 
 Is kept much as we seek to win and prove 
 All other preference high ; she must be served 
 With filial warmth and passion unreserved. 
 Full threescore years I thus have sought to fill 
 Her every charge and meet her regal will. 
 The stars I know and tell their occult law ; 
 The human senses own my power ; I draw 
 All secrets forth from envious fate, 
 And point the soul besieged to better state." 
 
 The student heard confounded and amazed, 
 
 Such bold unstaid pretense his reason dazed 
 
 And stirred the bubbling hotness of his brain, 
 
 Till evil visions in perverted train 
 
 Floated before his sight and, madness fed, 
 
 Into his eyeballs each an arrow sped. 
 
 But soon recovering thought and equipoise 
 
 He thus rejoined : " Unless too much annoys 
 
 The theme, explain, I pray, why thus attired 
 
 And at such hour? Whence have you thus acquired
 
 62 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 So rare an art that slumber rules you not, 
 Nor dreams disturb ? Thrice enviable lot ! " 
 
 " No art is that ; I sleep when others wake ; 
 The heavy-hearted most themselves betake 
 For comfort from my lips 'twixt day and day ; 
 The spirits, too, most aid when night holds sway, 
 And dearer far to me than sunshine's glow 
 Are night and yonder darksome river's flow, 
 When wintry shades, like grim and fabled Thor, 
 Walk down its liquid path. The ceaseless war 
 Of midnight torrents dashing past the base 
 Of that dark cliff, transcends the songs that chase 
 With ravishment of light and all sweet sounds 
 The car of day beyond the crimson bounds 
 Of sunset worlds. But this obtrudes the way ; 
 Unfold your wish, I pray, without delay." 
 
 " In me thou seest one whose soul has known 
 This night a weary journey through a land 
 
 Of changing scenes ; a fear now weighs me down, 
 I pray you tell me why ; open, expand 
 
 My sight to see and know the hidden cause. 
 If thou be what thou claimest, to command 
 
 Were easy task. The wild capricious laws 
 Of mind should yield their service unto thee, 
 Since of such knowledge thou hast mastery." 
 
 " Thou asketh much, yet may'st thy wish obtain 
 By spirits' help, and these I may retain.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 63 
 
 This table oft has shown enchantment pure ; 
 
 Herewith 'tis mine departed ghosts to lure, 
 
 And call with certain arts the saints from heaven ; 
 
 These will thy secret thoughts, if they be given, 
 
 Link one by one in wisdom's magic chain 
 
 Until it pierce the future's wide domain : 
 
 Sun cannot shine through wall or pitchy cloud ; 
 
 No ghost walks from the tomb without its shroud ; 
 
 Stars, shadows, dreams and of the mind a stint, 
 
 Suffice my art now of your wish the faintest hint." 
 
 <( Alas, no comfort bideth here ! I seek 
 
 What you by cunning would extort : a dream 
 Disturbed my sleep 'tis gone to have you speak 
 
 Its essence, show its end and firmly seam 
 Its parts I came. But folly's price is paid, 
 
 And as my reason warned, your arts are shams, 
 Like other juggling priests', and I have laid 
 
 Your ghosts ; but know, though twenty drachms 
 Less one, of mad nepenthe fire my brain, 
 
 I see and kindly take your studied pain." 
 
 "With this he turned and left the juggler's door, 
 And soon at home was seated as before, 
 Seeking to drown his troubled thoughts in work, 
 But naught he touched but proved a heavy irk. 
 u No rest, no respite from this dream," he sighed, 
 " Nor can I tell its order, or decide 
 Whether to let it do its work and die, 
 Or seek a further meaning to descry.
 
 64 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Ah! here's a ray of hope: when but a child 
 
 I oft observed the farmer's wife who dressed 
 Our dairy's store (a gentle soul and mild, 
 
 And full of guileless superstitions pressed), 
 "When troubled what to do or left in doubt 
 
 As to the right of aught in act or creed, 
 Take up a well-worn Bible, gaze about 
 
 In thought and then at random ope and read ; 
 And if, perchance, the phrase, ' It came to pass,' 
 
 Should meet her eyes, for good or ill decreed, 
 Forthwith 'twas so, nor dared a soul trespass 
 
 The law. Here lies that Book ; I sometimes read 
 To prove it false, but if it have one word 
 To soothe my fear, it shall with joy be heard." 
 
 "With trembling hands he oped the sacred Book, 
 And caught the page with quick and searching look ; 
 Amazed he read : "And it shall come to pass " 
 O magic sign, flashed through prophetic glass ! 
 "When destined years have purged with crucial fire 
 A nation's life and God has hid his ire, 
 "When lengthening shades portend the peaceful night, 
 In that mild evening time " it shall be light ! " 
 
 As sweep the first soft winds of coming spring 
 Through winter wasted meads, and passing fling 
 A faint perfume, from Southern bowers stole, 
 Along the darkling hedge and wooded knoll, 
 So through the student's inner sense there broke 
 Sweet memories of his golden days, and spoke
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 65 
 
 Of perfumed haunts, hard by the paths of love, 
 Where dulcet voices bade his soul approve 
 The nobler joys of life. Though faint they came, 
 They hushed to calm the siren voice of fame. 
 
 'Tis love transmutes the thorny crown to gold ; 
 How brief soe'er its spell or passioned hold, 
 It fetters ill, bids weak imprisoned hope 
 Once more attempt its grated doom and cope, 
 New panoplied, with fate. Brief, like the cup 
 Of April clouds, love's chalice holden up 
 Baptized his spirit's grief, till moved by straint 
 Of unseen power, he rose and lisping faint 
 Between his parted lips, he swore an oath, 
 An awful oath, to ban his curse. As loath 
 To let its accents die, lest purpose fail, 
 He held the words till seemed his breath to wail. 
 5
 
 CANTO FOURTH, 
 
 i. 
 
 rrtHE earliest rays of dawn gleamed on the east, 
 j. And Love's white planet paled and died before 
 The glow of young Aurora, whose warm breast 
 
 Gave nature joy. Dark ships, with sail and oar 
 
 Of gold, that Argonautic wonders bore 
 Stood slowly out from day's dim rest 
 
 Into the dusky sky, that isle and shore 
 Of magic cloudland filled alas ! that best 
 Of nature's glowing charms should find man still unblest. 
 
 Faint from the quay, where man and driven beast 
 Groaned through the day, came hum of early toil, 
 
 And cry of those whom cruel want oppressed ; 
 The outcast, filled with shame of night's despoil, 
 Shrunk into coverts dark and deeper toil 
 
 Of hell's device, to hide the soul beneath 
 Its curse, its vileness under that more vile ; 
 
 Self-stung, like vipers, tasting of a death 
 
 That guilty fear saith will not end with mortal breath. 
 
 II. 
 
 With thoughts alternate, swaying as before, 
 Sat Eupert Wise. A rap without now drew 
 (66)
 
 KUPEBT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 67 
 
 Him quickly forth : " Ho there ! who storms my door ? " 
 
 "A son of jEsculapius, chilled with dew." 
 He oped, and lo ! the form of Jean Pasteur. 
 
 "Good dawning, Doctor! Enter; health to you!' 
 "And health to you and honors many more ; 
 
 A patient well beyond the town has lain 
 In wavering state. I tarried over night 
 
 To watch his pulse and 'leviate his pain. 
 In passing near, your very brilliant light 
 
 And, as I thought, a troubled voice within 
 
 Caused me to fear you might be ill. The sin 
 Of passing by in doubt would heavier fall 
 
 Than that which risks the rousing one from sleep 
 Even at this hour, for rest the choice of all." 
 
 " In truth, I am not well," said "Wise, " I keep 
 My work in hand, yet find each added call 
 
 Must lack because of slowly ebbing strength. 
 Of late, I get no rest in sleep ; my frame 
 
 Thrills like a tensioned lute-string, and at length, 
 Unless I get relief or seek repose, must fail 
 
 Vain hope the one ; the other voids my aim." 
 
 Pasteur in silence heard, but breathed aside : 
 " The wine-cup, that ever saddest tale I 
 
 With soul enslaved, what boots the smile of fame? 
 
 What's sense of present worth or learning's pride 
 Without that nobler hope to light the vale ? " 
 
 " My dream ! my dream ! " cried Wise, with nervous start, 
 " I had a fearful dream that, palling, fled
 
 68 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Like lowering clouds that angry lightnings part, 
 And left my mind with ragged racks of madness 
 strewed. 
 
 To call it back I toiled, but vain my art ; 
 
 Now all returns ; by chance I catch the thread, 
 
 And though to heed such things would ill beseem 
 Our better minds, yet, on my troubled head, 
 The thing suggests a curious and perplexing dread. 
 
 Thus ran my thoughts and thus proceeds the dream : 
 
 THE pKEAM. 
 
 "Alone within a charnel-house I walked, 
 
 Whose ample dome seemed as the heavens outspread ; 
 The constant shades that filled the awful place 
 
 Were somber 'twixt the gloaming and the dread 
 Of deepest night, so that my eyes might trace 
 
 The aerie outlines of the forms that stalked, 
 Like sullen sentries, through the silence there. 
 
 My footfalls echoed on the crusted floor, 
 As when one treads alone deserted streets, 
 
 Or summer waves break on the sandy shore ; 
 Even now my warm blood back retreats 
 
 To think what reeking foulness filled the air ; 
 My heart grew faint and sick, I tottered, reeled 
 
 And straight must needs have fallen, prone and dead ; 
 But one who seemed to mortal men allied 
 
 Sustained with stalwart arm my sinking head 
 And to my nostrils odorous herbs applied. 
 
 Half borne, half forced by hands the gloom concealed,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 69 
 
 I moved along those dim sepulchral halls, 
 
 Then slowly down a wide and gradual stair; 
 Not long even twilight blessed my aching balls, 
 
 But black Tartarean night and wintry air 
 Engulfed my frame. Upon my ear there fell 
 
 Beseeching cries that sank to sobbing tones, 
 Like wintry winds that sigh through ice-mailed pines. 
 
 As down we moved, still deeper swelled those moans 
 Till all that waste of dark abysmal mines 
 
 Echoed with more than woes of Christian's hell. 
 
 " Kissed by that chill, that dread and rayless night, 
 
 My fevered brow grew cool, my strength returned, 
 And with it came a haunting, voiceless fear. 
 
 I gasped and clutched my speechless guide, who 
 
 spurned 
 My vise-like grip as manhood spurns a tear ; 
 
 My soul was stirred, and in its puny might 
 Stood forth and through my parched lips cried out: 
 
 ' "Whoe'er thou art, and what, to me means naught, 
 Yet thou hast led me hither, and I brave 
 
 Thy deepest dungeon and thy darkest thought ; 
 Lead toward thy extreme wish, or fiend or man, 
 
 Though to that blazoned pit thy hidden plan, 
 Unshrinking hence my willing feet attend, 
 
 That truth to fix earth's sons have vainly sought. 
 
 u 'Ah, mortal,' spake my guide, ' thou dost not well 
 So much in wrath and madness to declaim, 
 
 Thou wanderest not in dungeon or in hell, 
 
 Ay, thou hast sought my mysteries and my name.
 
 70 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 My name is called the Past, and yon lone hall 
 
 "Which late you trod, the Sepulcher of Time ; 
 Those aerie forms are Centuries, Ages, all, 
 
 Those poisonous damps, that foul and reeking slime, 
 That life assault and spirit sense appall, 
 
 Rise from the tombs of avarice, hate, and crime, 
 And crumbling empires in their destined fall 
 
 Heap up their shame and feed the noxious clime ; 
 This yawning gulf, in ebon darkness veiled, 
 
 Unpierced by sight, by mortal unexplored, 
 Is called on earth the abyss t of human woe. 
 
 Hither eterne are brought and deeply stored 
 The griefs of all the years that mortals know, 
 
 Reckoning since man o'er nature's waste prevailed. 
 
 " ' These piercing cries, these wild and dirge-like moans, 
 
 Are borne from lands where war's grim form hath rose, 
 From cities smit with sword and famine cursed ; 
 
 Thebes, Troja, Carthage, all have sent their woes ; 
 Yea, Christian years, with history sad reversed, 
 
 From Acre's gates to Khyber's blood-stained snows, 
 Have made these depths resound with more than mortal 
 groans ; 
 
 Nor wars alone on heathen heads exhaust, 
 But in the name of that sweet Christ who died, 
 
 And dying sceptered love, zealots have tossed 
 To shame and cruel death their kind. To hide 
 
 Their infamy and feed their monstrous lust, 
 Emperors and kings accusing earth have dyed 
 
 With guiltless blood ; hence these ascending groans !
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 71 
 
 And war's twin sister, direst pestilence, 
 
 Hath fed with agonies of blighted homes 
 A mad and Styx-like stream, that coursing down 
 
 Its horrid path into this darkness comes. 
 Thus hast thou seen the sable midnight frown 
 
 That hides the ages dead. Their fetid tomb 
 Has sicked thy soul; and rising moans that drown 
 
 All cheerful thought, and name time's certain doom, 
 Have filled thine ears ; from these much may be known, 
 
 And thou may'st read the future's testaments. 
 
 " ' In Mizraim's land, the tyrant kings of eld, 
 
 Mummied and known through strange-wrought hiero- 
 
 Who that predestined shepherd race compelled 
 
 In bondage sore what years the ecliptic shifts 
 Full thrice three hundred times its blazing field, 
 
 Build ed beneath the desert's sandy rifts 
 Wide wondering halls, high-domed and ceiled 
 
 With stones granitic from old Nilus's gifts ; 
 Neath pyramidal heaps anon concealed, 
 
 With yearnings raised, and time that lifts 
 Its light on all, hath scarce their sites revealed ; 
 
 Still through their waste the gloom of mystery sifts, 
 Yague dreams of what is on thy sense annealed. 
 
 " ' These be the immemorial woes of man, 
 Ever renewed. But thou, or ere thou rise 
 
 To drink again the genial day, shalt scan 
 
 The source of one mad wave that woe supplies
 
 72 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 To this black gulf, surpassing all. Not so 
 
 In long forgotten years ; a, thermal rill, 
 Dropping along the pitchy rocks below, 
 
 But swollen now and hot with lava tides 
 Of mortal and immortal griefs, leaping 
 
 Like those red tongues along Vesuvius' sides ; 
 The Amazon were but a nameless thing 
 
 Beside its liquid leagues. Deem not unwise 
 The past since ever thou hast prayed to know 
 
 The secret springs of mortal miseries 
 This shalt thou see and trace, companioned so.' 
 
 " Upward we moved counter to those first steps, 
 
 And stood, methinks, upon a massive tower, 
 But darkness as* before. As when one sweeps 
 
 With straining eyes at midnight's central hour 
 The wintry sky for one pale star to guide, 
 
 So swept my sight that nether gloom ; but vain 
 The task, save that I saw upon the side, 
 
 That seemed the west thereof, the faintest stain 
 Of crimson, spreading like the first cold gleam 
 
 Of Borealis on the northern skies, 
 Or waking in the mind of other dream 
 
 When from the nightmare's horrid chill we rise." 
 
 " ' That,' spake my guide, ' marks where the living day 
 Begins its course ; thither our passage bends.' 
 
 Swinging a ponderous door, he led the way 
 Along an open vale whose slope descends
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMAXCE. 73 
 
 With gentle sweep toward a stream, whose waves 
 
 Roared like a thousand maddened fiends at war; 
 The mountains trembled overhead, like knaves 
 
 Before the judgment-seat, their ceaseless jar 
 Making the dead air quiver like a snared bird. 
 
 Onward we moved with slow and steady pace 
 Through ever lessening night, and still was heard 
 
 The thunderous sound of waves, but less apace 
 Its volume grew, as lesser grew the tide. 
 
 The quivering air was still, the mountains sank 
 To gentle hills, and round on every side 
 
 "Were pleasant vales, embowered with vines. I drank 
 The breath of morning in uncertain light, 
 
 And owned the smell of vintage ripe and sounds 
 Of revelers and stringed lyres. 
 
 " To right 
 My guide turned quickly, and we pressed the bounds 
 
 Of that fierce river, whose unmeasured length, 
 Our weary feet had tried, and now in twain 
 
 It parted, flowing in unequal strength ; 
 The lesser tide welled from the vintage plain, 
 
 The greater came from marish gloom and fell, 
 Through pitchy banks beneath the rayless night 
 
 Of hemlock shades ; its black and lang'rous swell, 
 Fat with the reeking lees and oozy death 
 
 That dropped from still-house bins and brewing vaults 
 Of one black "Wizard, seated underneath 
 
 A mountain call the Mount of Rest but false 
 The name drinking from golden chalice human tears, 
 
 And feasting night and day on childhood's flesh,
 
 74 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Compelling those who till the vales, through fears 
 
 And magic deeds and threat of wizard leash 
 To waste their wealth for his voracious lust 
 I saw, and with my guide the scene discussed. 
 
 ."As on a cloud my form seemed lifted up 
 
 And home along the liquid, yielding air, 
 Keeping the tenor of the valley's slope. 
 
 What sweet forgetfulness of pain and care 
 Possessed me then ! though all in fancy's scope, 
 And brief; for now the abyss, the vale were gone ;. 
 My feet a goodly mountain rested on, 
 And lo ! from out the nether night a dawn 
 That, breaking, brought celestial splendors forth ; 
 From east to west, from south to north, 
 The slender shafts of morning sped, 
 And Phoebus up his azure pathway led 
 A host of glories, shouting as they went. 
 Young Spring had spread her emerald tent 
 O'er all the hills and plains below ; 
 A silvery brightness touched the flow 
 Of distant streams and threading rills ; 
 While incense, such as sylvan censers fills, 
 
 Perfumed the kiss of every soft-mouthed breeze. 
 With rapture thrilled, entranced I stood 
 As westward rolled the rising flood 
 Of amber sunshine, wave on wave afar, 
 Where, like the beams of morning's amorous star, 
 
 The dew-drops glistened on the trees.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 75 
 
 " Day died, and with a fiery plunge the sun 
 Dropped through a haze behind the level west, 
 
 Trailing new splendors in his wake ; 
 Day dawned, and as the light looked o'er the crest 
 
 Of eastern hills, I saw the plains awake ; 
 The virgin task of Spring was done 
 
 And motherhood was on the fields that spake 
 With other voice and clothed in other hue ; 
 
 Summer had come, and waving corn 
 Stood where but late the rank grass grew, 
 
 And through the mild and balmy morn 
 I saw the glint of spires, the curling blue 
 
 That told where grange and growing village stood ; 
 
 Yet still primeval calm was seen to brood 
 O'er half the world that fruitful summer knew. 
 
 " 'Twas eve again, and night came on, and day 
 
 Eeturned when round his path the Titan rode, 
 And then I heard an unseen Presence say : 
 
 ' Look forth again ; behold the years have strode 
 Beyond thy ken ! ' I looked, and autumn lay 
 
 In wealth of golden glory at my feet ; 
 Paled all the fabled dreams of old Cathay 
 
 Before that world with every good replete. 
 I saw rich cities with their clustering fanes 
 
 And stately towers rise through the, morning haze, 
 While far as sight pursued the level plains 
 
 Was still unrolled the pageants' flash and bhwo ; 
 Hard by their walls great rivers poured along
 
 76 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Or swept in silent majesty their tide 
 Through fertile vales where, stirred by labor's song, 
 
 The millions called with easy toil and pride 
 The harvest forth of fleecy wealth and golden corn. 
 
 Laden with stores and gifts from every clime, 
 With offerings from the sacred gates of morn, 
 
 From lands that knew the happy youth of time 
 The argosies of trade were on their bosoms borne. 
 
 "Anon the sky grew dark, and, pealing far, 
 
 Deep thunders smote the general soul with dread ; 
 I saw the race rise up for glorious war 
 
 And shake the hills with pomp of martial tread, 
 When notes of trump and drum swelled on the air. 
 
 The lords of spreading fields, palatial seats, 
 And liveried trains went forth a knightl}' band ! 
 
 Thrice cruel war when man his kindred meets J 
 "Twas so and kindred blood dyed all the land, 
 
 Till in tumultous rout the weaker hurled, 
 With gory hands, the stronger legions back 
 
 And shook with awful force the listening world ; 
 But breaking thunders in their burning track 
 
 With gathered bolts returned and burst anew 
 With fury multiplied ; the mountains shook, 
 
 The swollen streams ran crimson to the sea, 
 And all the land put on a drear and ghastly look ; 
 
 The fields were waste and bare ; while tongues of fire 
 Licked up the pride that late had made delight. 
 
 Meanwhile a nation's hope must needs expire ;
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 77 
 
 The flickering taper burned with fitful light, 
 
 And then in one great gust of war was lost. 
 Hark ! in that night what heavy chains fall off 
 
 Two races in the conquered land the slave 
 And him who held ! Truth unadorned is truth enough ! 
 
 I saw the last of that chivalrous host 
 Throw down the broken reed of hope and crave 
 
 To die with those more blessed ; in mournings deep 
 They sat amid the ruins of their land ; 
 
 But not for long did they in sorrow steep 
 Their warrior souls, but soon with righteous hand 
 
 Swept down the puny tyrants of the day 
 And swore for freedom's latest smile to keep 
 
 Their rescued homes freedom their ancient stay! 
 And now with peace there came again repose, 
 
 As comes a calm when Boreas' reign is o'er; 
 Yea, and a beauty in the new land rose 
 
 That shamed the tales of Aiden's fairy lore, 
 Dimmed all the glory of the old and strove, 
 
 Sun-like, with hatred wheresoe'er it bore, 
 Till fell on all the radiant light of love. 
 
 "Again the Presence cried : ' One woe is past ; 
 
 Another darkly falls ; part of thy dream 
 Has been, and part shall shortly be; the last 
 
 Is kindred to the first : divine them as they seem. 
 Look forth ! I looked, and lo ! where virgin peace 
 
 Had widely spread a white and sheltering wing 
 O'er ripening fields and city's fair increase
 
 78 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 There crept, with tigress tread, a treacherous thing 
 Whose stealthy touch outrivaled war's red hand, 
 
 For, Herod-like, it spared not tender years. 
 A Memphian wail went ringing through the land, 
 
 A cry that echoed death and all its fears ; 
 The plague, with brazen hand, was everywhere, 
 
 And stalwart men in madness prayed for frost 
 When summer's heat turned hope to blank despair. 
 
 They prayed, and then, as reckoning folly's cost, 
 They cursed their God and faithless died, and none 
 Might pity or remember them ; each one 
 Thought only of himself and of his own. 
 
 "And then, methought, ere slumbering dawn awoke, 
 
 The heavens gave frost ; the while the shrill north wind 
 That drave along the level plain and shook 
 
 The pearl-bespangled trees shrieked like a fiend. 
 The moon, declining toward her quarter next the last, 
 Sat on a heap of lurid clouds and cast 
 A pale and death-like gleam o'er all the scene, 
 
 And here and there a star would faintly glow 
 And then sink back into the night unseen, 
 
 Like eyes that strive to keep the death-sleep off, 
 Yet less each time of vital essence show ; 
 
 Thus in its blessings nature seemed to scoff 
 At man's deep misery and to mock his woe. 
 
 " I sat to watch the multitudes that passed. 
 Some came with shouts of reverent joy to kiss 
 The hem of that white robe and lingering taste,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 79 
 
 In open fields and on the mountain-tops, their bliss ; 
 
 Others with grateful tears bedewed the way 
 And blessed the hand that sent the gracious boon 
 
 To re-establish in her rightful sway 
 Happiness which, like a dove that, soon 
 
 As o'er her home the eagle's shadow glides, 
 Flies swiftly to her covert and abides 
 
 Till all her trembling fears are past, had flown, 
 But now returned to bless and keep her own. 
 
 The mighty temples of the land were filled 
 With thankful worshipers, whose reverent tones 
 
 Mingled in one loud symphony and thrilled 
 The general heart with praise, and orisons 
 
 Arose from nature's every vocal power. 
 
 " I saw a mother, weeping as she came ; 
 
 Palo was the sunken cheek where beauty's flower 
 Had blushed in girlhood's fairer day; her frame 
 
 "Was bowed and trembled on her knotty staff, 
 Like autumn's seared and lately widowed leaf. 
 
 She knelt and kissed the hoar-frost on the ground, 
 As the poor faithful dog might kiss the hand 
 
 That lays the heavy blow ; yet was her wound 
 Not healed, but rather had its fever fanned 
 
 To wild delirium. Thus aloud she spoke, 
 Or rather wailed, for pangs of sharp despair 
 
 Slew woman's faith and doubled sorrow's stroke: 
 
 " ' O faithless one, why hast thou thus delayed ? 
 Why cam'st thou not in early autumn fair,
 
 80 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Ere death had on my tender beauty preyed 
 
 And borne my golden treasures hence ? Went first 
 The orphaned nestlings of my eldest born, 
 
 The beauteous girl that bore my image erst ; 
 But there was still a prop a single stay 
 
 The younger of my twain, the noble boy 
 On whom I leaned, who filled my widowed day 
 
 With peace and all my nights with dreams of joy. 
 But now his brow is fevered unto death ; 
 
 He knows me not, nor even speaks my name ; 
 His sunken eyes, his hot and bated breath, 
 
 Burn through my soul with fierce and torturous flame. 
 And he must die ! must die ! My boy ! my boy ! 
 
 Why hast thou thus delayed? This fatal morn 
 Robs me of my last dream of earthly joy 
 
 And plants in this old withered heart a thorn 
 Whose ranklings hand of death alone can end. 
 
 Come, death ; thou art a dear and wished for friend/ 
 
 "A low funereal sound rose to my ear, 
 
 And high along the mountain's sloping side 
 I saw four sable forms, bearing a bier, 
 
 White decked as ever lily in its pride, 
 Toward the wooing silence of a wood ; 
 
 Whereat, descending slowly, far behind 
 I followed till the moving pageant stood 
 
 Beneath the boughs, low whispering to the wind, 
 Of century-gnarled oaks festooned with moss, 
 
 That hung like drooping banners o'er the dead.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 81 
 
 Nearer, anon, I drew beneath a cross 
 
 Crumbling with waste of time and overspread 
 With lichens and the tendriled parasite, 
 
 Where those four sable forms their trust did place 
 Upon the fresh brown earth, breathing no rite, 
 
 But mute did turn and down the mount retrace 
 With measured march their steps, leaving to me 
 
 The silence of the place and that white hearse, 
 Unhonored and unsepulchered. 
 
 " I see 
 E'en now that ghostly sight, not ghostly then, 
 
 But soothing like a dream my inmost soul. 
 Ay, did I dream? The wild flower's modest sheen 
 
 Varied the green of many a mound and knoll 
 That hid the sacred dust. The trailing vines, 
 
 Jasmine and cypress, round each towering bole 
 Wrought flowery capitals surpassing those 
 
 Of old that guarded Corinth's proudest shrines ; 
 Moreover, on my sense perfume of rose 
 
 And breath of all rare blooms exotic stole ; 
 While music faint, far off" and undefined, 
 
 Yet sweet as voice of love, was on the air ; 
 Two doves, winging that freedom unconfined, 
 
 Staid in their flight and perched above the hearse, 
 Their plumage shamed beside the whiteness there. 
 
 Ne'er seemed the tomb so calm, so void of fears, 
 So much to be desired as seemed it then ; 
 
 I longed, e'en prayed, to die and lie beside 
 That spotless guest of death. Madness of men, 
 6
 
 82 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Desire for other state, o'erbore the pride 
 Of school and skeptic faith. 
 
 " Long time I stood, 
 While reasons that my reason knew not of 
 
 Wrought in the dark arena of my mood, 
 Veering a season toward belief; to scoff 
 
 My doubts forgot; and then a time it seemed 
 To have my wish of death was granted me ; 
 
 But all things ran as ever when I dreamed, 
 I could not die, yet was I not left free 
 
 To choose my former slate of life. 
 
 "Fate moved; 
 I lifted from the face of that still dead 
 
 The white veil's folds. Well-nigh that rashness proved 
 My end; the face was fair as ever shed 
 
 Love luster on the world; who had not loved 
 In life had had no soul for beauty's self! 
 
 A sight was heaven, yet, in a moment, hell 
 It flung through all the empire of my soul. 
 
 Trembled the solid mount with earthquake swell; 
 The air grew hot as at the middle pole; 
 
 The pendent moss became all living flame 
 And every idle leaf became a devil's tongue, 
 
 Hissing with fiendish glee a childish name 
 Of innocence, unspoken since my life was young. 
 
 I had no power to speak nor strength to fly 
 More than the chiseled stones that told the dead; 
 
 A thousand years it seemed were passing by,
 
 RUPERT WISE! A POETIC ROMANCE. 83 
 
 What time I stood wrapped in that blazon dread, 
 
 But strength returned, and then I fled, but vain 
 Was flight ; those hissing tongues pursued me still, 
 
 Cursing, I know not why, with nameless pain. 
 Parted the earthquake's mumbling lips ; the hill 
 
 Yawned to its everlasting base ; I leaped 
 Into its jaws with smell of fire scath 
 
 On my robes, like they to Zoar fled, when swept 
 Jehovah Admah's vale with fiery wrath. 
 
 I heard the riven rocks close o'er my head ; 
 Still hurtling down, through voiceless depths I fell, 
 Happy to hide me in the deepest hell ; 
 
 But in that central world's mid-air I woke ; 
 The clammy death-sweat on my forehead stood 
 And spent my pulse. 
 
 "What madness have I spoke? 
 Adjure me that I be but flesh and blood ! "
 
 CANTO FIFTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 QEVEN times, less one, the sun had passed below 
 ^ The leaden west, hard on the mystic point 
 Where cross the circles in the equal flow 
 
 Of day and night. Seven times the sheeny glint 
 
 Of Luna's sickle, mowing without stint 
 The star-beams, filled the fields of upper blue, 
 
 While some who saw at eve its blood-red tint, 
 Deemed it the scythe a viewless chariot drew, 
 Fate driven the while its path of ruin to pursue. 
 
 Wild terror swept the city then ; the air 
 
 Moonlit, and vap'rous from the river's breath, 
 
 Quivered with sighs and accents of despair. 
 As though he stood in shape, that monster death, 
 And cried each soul forthwith should fall beneath 
 
 His dreaded hand , the people trembled all, 
 
 For hour by hour there gained a whispered breath 
 
 That for six days within the city's wall 
 
 The plague had wrought hoAV dire the stroke that soon 
 must fall! 
 
 The populace surged madly to and fro, 
 
 Their pallid faces 'neath the wavering light 
 (84)
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 85 
 
 Rivaled the white foam on the murky flow 
 Of great Missouri, swollen from the height 
 Of far Montana's mountains, snow bedight. 
 
 Some filled the night with muttered cursings, loud 
 Blaspheming that omninc Name whose might 
 
 Staid not the plague ; and some were speechless cowed, 
 
 But the many feared and prayed, putting trust ia God. 
 
 II. 
 
 "What means this madness?" cried a swarthy wight 
 Fresh from the labors of the forge, " a sight 
 
 To make one think of those wild tumults seen 
 
 When Federal cannon knit their flames between 
 These hills and yonder stars. To what intent, 
 Good friend, is all this hurry, whither bent 
 
 This surging crowd?" he asked, addressing one, 
 
 A toiler like himself, who, still as stone, 
 With deep reflective purpose stood apart 
 From that mad human tide. 
 
 " Why, man, what art 
 
 Is this you boast," was held in stern reply ; 
 "Wouldst mock a public fear, or thus decry 
 
 The deep concern men feel for those they love, 
 
 Or are your ears so dull as to approve 
 No sound like that which fills the air? ' Tis known 
 The fever cowers in the lower town ; 
 
 A hundred cases came to light since eight ; 
 Nor can there be a doubt that all unknown
 
 86 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Amid those slums and haunts of vice the fate 
 Of quite as many more is sealed." 
 
 "Alas! 
 I had not dreamed such evil state obtained ; 
 
 'Tis but this moment I essayed to pass 
 From toil to rest; yet have you well complained 
 At speech that seemed somewhat to lightness turned. 
 
 How entered in that plague, whose name so late 
 "Was made the butt of learned jest and feigned 
 
 Therein hobgoblin dread ? Well done, to wait 
 The fatal hour before they raise a cry ! 
 
 Where are our wise, the keepers of our health, 
 Who thus have slept with death and furies nigh, 
 
 Feasting their pride and jesting, while by stealth 
 This hellish minion took and held the gate? 
 
 What does the city do?" 
 
 " You greatly wrong 
 Our public men, and more especial those 
 
 Who watch the city's health ; for oft and long 
 They counseled care within. Our outer foes 
 
 They fought at odds that none may fairly rate. 
 Thus comes this pi'esent ill: 'tis shortly learned 
 
 An upward boat put off its sickened mate, 
 And from that spark the deadly flame has burned. 
 
 What can the city do ? Each separate case 
 Will make its twenty in a fortnight more. 
 
 What shall we do, 'twere better asked, to place
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 87 
 
 Our lives in safety ? what is there in store 
 
 For those mad souls who think to stand and face 
 The baleful thing? 'tis but to feed the flame; 
 
 The more that fly the fewer fate will slay. 
 One only course our better thoughts can claim ; 
 
 "We must be gone, and that without delay. 
 To-morrow's dawn in this grim seat of death 
 
 Shall find me not. I wait no prophecy 
 Of knowing ones ; but ere the poisonous breath 
 
 Of night steal, thief-like, through my cottage door 
 With wife and little ones I shall away." 
 
 " I share your mind, and shall not question more, 
 Save that I dare to bide the coming day." 
 
 Thus passed the eve of that eventful night. 
 
 Meanwhile the town's physicians, watchful, wise, 
 And quick to hear the call, sprang to the fight 
 
 Like soldiers on the field when foes surprise. 
 In council brief they tarry while, as wont, 
 
 Their senior speaks: "No matter e'er hath called 
 Us forth so grave as this we now confront ; 
 
 No darker shadow o'er our homes hath palled; 
 Not when we felt erewhile Jhe iron brunt 
 Of savage war seemed hope menaced so much. 
 
 I read our doom as though 'twere writ in lines 
 Of fire on yonder wall, the fatal touch . 
 
 Is on the air; but courage that repines 
 Unworthy is of noble trust. To say 
 
 "What shall be done to light the coming curse
 
 88 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Is ours; to meet the plague and, if we may, 
 
 His doings circumscribe and break his brazen force. 
 My mind is quickly to this point advanced : 
 
 That we at once the people recommend, 
 At least such as be to it circumstanced, 
 
 That straightly they do fly, and thus defend 
 The city's present and its future good; 
 And lest the order be misunderstood, 
 
 And since the case is urgent, brooking not delay, 
 I would that mounted heralds, swift and fleet, 
 
 Should scour the city ere^the break of day, 
 And cry this pressing word from street to street." 
 
 Thus closed the leader, when was heard once more 
 The mild Acadian voice of Jean Pasteur : 
 
 " To me it seems of wisdom's better part 
 That we should lend ourselves to duty's deeds 
 
 With partial care, nor all should court the dart, 
 Whilst few can meet what cause the present pleads. 
 
 As for myself, being exempt from dread 
 By dint of passing through a former scourge, 
 
 I offer here to lead or to be led 
 
 Without delay into the monster's lair 
 To give him stubborn battle and to purge, 
 
 If Heaven shall please, our city of his doings there." 
 
 Like captain, grown impatient with debate, 
 While alien feet profane his native land, 
 
 The student Wise arose from where he sate 
 
 With peers, and thus prorogued the learned band :
 
 RUPERT WISE', A POETIC ROMANCE. 89 
 
 "A prudent course bespeaks itself to all ; 
 
 'Tis honor moves to pluck the flower of war, 
 "To walk unflinching to the martyr's fall; 
 
 And yet the future's good requires we bar 
 Our more insane desires till greater cause 
 
 Shall call us singly to the utmost strife. 
 In furtherance of a larger end, a pause, 
 
 A husbanding of strength is wise, for life 
 By life is saved. Let of our number those 
 Who know this yellow scourge their skill oppose. 
 1 go, who follows let him follow close." 
 
 As when in ocean's dark and middle waste 
 
 There runs along a vessel's crowded ways 
 The dread olarum cry of fire, till haste 
 
 Makes thought, in that extreme of danger's maze, 
 Forgot its wiser self and madly leap 
 
 For life into the friendless ocean's arms, 
 So in that hour, with haste and hurrying step, 
 
 Moved by the first dread sound of death alarms, 
 Thousands poured forth into the fields and wood 
 
 Beyond the fated town, the vaulted sky 
 Their only roof, their only couch the sod 
 
 Meaning with earliest light of dawn to fly 
 For refuge to the mountains' crystal air. 
 
 The evening meal, untasted, kept the board, 
 Guestless and cheerless, while the feeble glow 
 Of unsnuffed tapers turned the temple home 
 
 Into the semblance of a tomb new stored
 
 90 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 "With lifeless clay. Silence was there, and gloom 
 
 "Walked through the unshut doors, sat at the board, 
 And spread his dusky couch in every room. 
 
 Now turn we from the smitten town awhile 
 
 To follow those its children fled in haste, 
 Happy to find in self-imposed exile, 
 
 'Mid the wild primeval and the waste 
 Of mountain wolds, a refuge from the plague. 
 
 The risen sun pours floods of amber light 
 Along the mist, baptizing cliff and crag 
 
 "With filtered beams, and, where the vales invite, 
 "Wasting a lavish warmth ; weird fingers sweep 
 
 The strawy crowns of immemorial pines, 
 And through the darkling hills the myriad armies weep 
 
 The everlasting dirge of time. Long lines 
 Of weary exiles move to these wild strains 
 
 Along the narrow passes of the hills, 
 And thankful hearts lift up a psalm that gains 
 
 "Upon that deep, sad voice of pines, and fills 
 The waste, like Israel's song by Egypt's sea, 
 
 Till thousands swell the anthem's loud amen 
 To lower notes of angel minstrelsy. 
 
 As springs the leopard from some flaggy glen 
 
 In Indie jungle to the hunter's path, 
 So from their coverts armed peasant bands 
 
 Bound forth and bar the way with signs of wrath, 
 Their long and murd'rous rifles held in hands 
 
 That knew a cunning half of savagery.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 91 
 
 Awhile the startled exiles wondering stood, 
 
 Banning their wistful eyes between the sky 
 And that gray rock and hoary wood 
 
 Whence came a rustic voice with these demands : 
 " Buck, fleeing lepers, reptiles, instantly 
 
 .Return, nor dare one further pace to come ! 
 Back with your fevered bodies and your poisoned rags ! 
 
 This side that rock you die ! Go, make your home 
 In yonder lordlcss wild, or back where drags 
 
 Your nursling plague his length through slimy streets! 
 This, madmen, be our home, this mountain air 
 
 Is pure ; these pines distill life's healing sweets, 
 And taint them you shall not; doubt me and dare, 
 
 Then shall you see how men become a law 
 Unto themselves, and how defend their own. 
 
 Our weapons you despise? If I should draw 
 This silver bead against yon hill-top brown, 
 
 Then woe the antlered roebuck browsing there; 
 The soaring vulture and the screaming kite 
 Essay in vain to mock with heavenward flight ; 
 
 The leaden echoes climb the yielding air, 
 And bring the treach'rous thief to humblest plight." 
 
 A shudder swept the list'ning throng, as when 
 
 On mild October eves at set of sun 
 A sudden breath of winter touches men 
 
 With icy chill ; all felt that wrath to shun, 
 And fain had turned, but rugged steeps arose 
 
 On either side and hundreds pressed behind.
 
 92 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Some pleaded in the name of right, and chose 
 
 Strong speech, but moved no whit the rustic mind. 
 
 A priest, who led the remnant of his flock 
 
 From threatened death,now forward moved and spoke 
 The leader crouching still upon his rock 
 
 And glaring down with eyes that seemed to smoke 
 In wrath. Thus railed the priest, with steadfast look : 
 " Then must we quickly perish ! Do your work ; 
 
 Our lives are little worth at best. 'Tis well, 
 Perhaps, they ended thus ; we sought to reach 
 
 These heights, as pilgrims seek a shrine. 'Tis well, 
 Since hope is false, we died ! Yet is your heart 
 
 .But stone to hold such stern inhuman speech ! 
 Say, in your home dwells there man's better part, 
 
 A wife, and children, meant of God to teach 
 All nobleness of pity and desire 
 
 For others' good ? Then view these helpless ones 
 That cry for bread. Know you no passion higher 
 
 Than selfish wish, nor honor that atones 
 For kindness costing aught ? The cooling draught, 
 
 Ministered in love, to life's deep river turns 
 In that fair clime of future good. Fate's shaft 
 
 Is swift; its length the taper quickly burns ; 
 Our whit'ning bones will turn your evil craft 
 
 To bitter use ; so shall these infants' cries 
 Mingle some day with those your own shall make. 
 
 Remember how the Lord in judgment wise 
 Brought evil for his smitten people's sake 
 Upon the lands of old, because they said,
 
 1WPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 93 
 
 ' Ye shall not pass.' His hand, may chance, hath led 
 
 Our feet to these your everlasting hills 
 That you might succor with strong charity, 
 
 And hide our little flocks from preying ills. 
 Yet make wo but the pilgrims' rightful plea, 
 
 A peaceful passage through this public way, 
 To rest awhile beneath these spreading trees, 
 
 To slake our thirst from yonder spray, 
 And, if the wish your better motives please, 
 
 We pray the outcasts' mete of staying bread; 
 If laid upon that rock you hold with care, 
 
 You may depart ; to-morrow morn instead 
 A heap of gold shall greet your eyes, or since 
 
 You fear a poisoned gift, our sacred word 
 Shall be your bond for such munificence, 
 
 Till hope shall rift the clouds that late have lowered." 
 
 Short parley held the leader with his clan, 
 
 And then returned with rifle's front reversed, 
 Looking more kind and more resembling man ; 
 
 Full stern his speech, though calmer than at first : 
 " Mark well," he cried ; " this will we do, nor less 
 
 Nor more: bread shall you find hereon, nor ask 
 We gold or bond our kindness to redress ; 
 
 This fountain and these shades for comfort task 
 For one short hour, and then with haste pass on ; 
 These hands of ours will see our bidding done." 
 
 The peasant left to bring the praycd-for bread, 
 The way-worn exiles one by one arrived,
 
 94 BUPEBT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 A motley band. Proud dames and they who led 
 
 The festive throngs of honor, when to give 
 Delight the queens of fashion strove, must need 
 
 On equal footing with the humblest live 
 The season of their pilgrimage. The screed 
 
 Of family, recked of much when fortune smiles, 
 In shadow of the tomb none boast or read. 
 The priest beholding one new come with speed, 
 
 Thus greeted him: "I trust, good friend, the whiles 
 You fly, you hope. When quitted you the town?" 
 
 "At noon three days ago, and with hot haste 
 Both night and day have lashed the hackneys on ; 
 
 Now will I rest, here pitch my tents and taste 
 The sweets of sleep ; here lay a burden down 
 
 That has since that dread night one week ago 
 Weighed on me sore. The babes are ill, and worn 
 The mother with her vigils and suspense." 
 
 "Alas ! it grieves me to advance your woe, 
 But here we may not dream of rest, but hence 
 
 Must go in one short hour. Our presence here 
 Has roused the native clowns to war ; our breath 
 
 They seem to fear will spread infection dire ; 
 
 That ledge of shaly rock that flanks the brook 
 Is fortified with rustics armed for death, 
 
 If we essay to pass j but this they took, 
 That by an hour's space we rest and slake 
 
 Our thirst; while on their guarded rock they lay 
 A dole of bread, which, they retired, we take 
 
 And then with hurried steps pursue our way."
 
 UUl'ERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 9o 
 
 '"Alas ! 'tis death before and death behind ! 
 Better to perish in our homes and find 
 A Christian grave than fall among these wilds 
 Of want and inhumanity. Death builds 
 His wall on every hand; accursed, like Cain, 
 "We rove, and men will aye our suits disdain." 
 
 Much pitying him, the holy man replied once more : 
 
 " Be not so much cast down, my son, I pray ; 
 The valleys rich are scarce one day before ; 
 
 These reached we shall find plenty, and withal 
 Full kindly hearts and many an open door ; 
 
 There may we safely dwell till heaven let fall 
 Its boon of frost, and end our evil day. 
 
 But tell me, friend, since you the latest left, 
 How fared thereto the wretched town? what pace 
 
 Had made the plague where most his pathway cleft, 
 "Where spared he most, where left his deadliest trace ? " 
 
 "A faithful tale would beggar human speech ; 
 
 The dead are everywhere ; from morn to noon, 
 From noon till eve, from eve till middle night, 
 
 The silent palls go unattended on, 
 Nor voice of prayer, nor sound of sacred rite ; 
 
 Even love, that ever gentle ministrant, 
 Is robbed of power to keep its holiest trust. 
 
 The stalwart man, the helpless innocent, 
 Alike are victims made, that lesson teach 
 
 Old as the tomb, scarce hid in parent dust. 
 The marts are still j the streets, once thronged, are 
 hushed,
 
 96 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Save for the tread of flying messengers, 
 Who, oft o'ertook themselves, fall senseless, flushed 
 
 To sudden death by fever's quenchless fires. 
 Unwatched, unblessed, the poor and friendless die ; 
 
 Their putrid corses lade the deadly air 
 With newer germs to spread contagion round ; 
 
 Beside the son the father falls ; from sheer despair 
 The mother by them both. The priest is found 
 
 Dead by the altar, or the sacred place 
 Becomes the chamber of his closing hours. 
 
 The kindly simple minister of grace 
 Within the humblest cot that knows his round 
 
 Is smit, and yields anon his mortal powers. 
 The fearless son of science, set to heal his kind, 
 
 Unequal to these cruel arts of death, 
 Not only fails for others' ills a cure to find, 
 
 But falls himself, slain by his patient's poisoned breath. 
 While thus the stealthy work goes hourly on, 
 
 The swollen river lifts a deep and dirge-like moan." 
 
 " Sad tidings hast thou multiplied this day ! 
 
 (God stay the plague, else should no flesh remain !) 
 'Tis well the shadow only haunts our way ; 
 
 Christ measures woe in love ; the deeper pain 
 Is hid through shortness of our mortal sight. 
 
 We may not know our loss till milder days 
 Break on our path and touch of autumn smite, 
 
 Through calms of hope, the dire amaze 
 That wrecks our sky. Yet runs my thoughts on one 
 To whom clave hope, so nobly held and done
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 97 
 
 The task he took, the first to brave the dread ; 
 1 mean the stripling Wise, who elders led 
 To battle with their fate, and fell straightway 
 Stricken with fever ; some believed that day 
 Would end it. Know you, lies he with the dead ? 
 For much in prayer his name I breathe, between 
 A doubt and hope ripe honors may he know ! " 
 
 " I wist not ; yet, when as to leave the town 
 I made, this tale fell on my ears anon, 
 Not all unvouched : Three days he lay as dead, 
 When came a fair, frail girl, who well, 'tis said, 
 Has loved him from her tender years ; and wise, 
 As well, it seemed, from those first auguries 
 Of youthful days, so fair his form and face, 
 So rare his gifts of mind and early grace ; 
 But ere their time for plighting bridal vows, 
 Through force of false and curious lore that bows 
 Assent to despot sense and fair device 
 Of learned doubt, he wandered far astray 
 From truth. Led by his father's evil star, 
 With boon companions of the bowl he sank 
 Deep in the shadows of a thralling vice, 
 Which blighted his and that young life, so near 
 A part of his. She, faithful still, but frank 
 With fear, withdrew upon her bridal day 
 The circlet-sealed hand ; with promise made, 
 If future days should shed unclouded light 
 Upon his path, then would she yield him trust 
 Of wifely love. Late had she sought to write
 
 98 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 New hope upon her life, and in the shade 
 
 Of hills that guard her mother's native vale 
 
 Had hid her burning heart. Therefrom the wail 
 
 Of suffering called her to her father's home, 
 
 "Where, shortly learning of her lover's state, 
 
 She came, and by his bedside faithful sate, 
 
 And with such care as wife or mother would, 
 
 Kept watch ; but he, that took nor rest nor food, 
 
 Haved in delirium wild, calling one name, 
 
 And that her own, as ne'er her love to claim 
 
 (So went his rage), or see her face again. 
 
 Wildly he talked of how by giant main 
 
 They had been torn apart in early years, 
 
 And she detained in some far gloom, with tears, 
 
 Entreaties, prayers, regarded not, and how 
 
 He needs must go to seek her and must show 
 
 His love in worthy deeds and abstinence, 
 
 And quickly would have risen, going hence, 
 
 But that his nurses held him firmly down ; 
 
 But on the fourth day, being left alone 
 
 With only her, he rose and fled away, 
 
 So swiftly fled that none might mark or stay 
 
 His fleeing form. They mourn him dead, though none 
 
 Dream where or how. 
 
 " That fair young creature soon 
 Was seized with fever equal his, and lies 
 Or when I left lay in death agonies. 
 I know no more, save that her name all breathe 
 In prayer, and hold her love as conquering death ;
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 99 
 
 And when the wrestling few who serve the sick 
 Would to each other courage speak, or prick 
 To some unselfish deed or task of martyr mien, 
 They but pronounce the name of Madeline." 
 
 As with a single voice, the multitude 
 
 Lifted a lamentation, like' the cries 
 
 Of those who left Solyma's palaces 
 
 To waste in the Judean solitude, 
 
 Touched by Jehovah's wrath, while they in tears 
 
 And bondage sore fulfilled their captive years : 
 
 " How sits she desolate, who once beside 
 
 The monarch wave was peerless, like a bride, 
 
 Receiving gifts from him whose watery arms 
 
 Encircle her, as lover's clasp the charms 
 
 Of her new wed. Heaven's blight is on thee shed, 
 
 Thy songs are hushed, thy mirth and joy are fled." 
 
 "Ah, miserere! " moaned the robeless priest; 
 "Ah, miserere!" sighed each burning breast; 
 "Ah, miserere!" sounded toward the East; 
 "Ah, miserere! " echoed from the West.
 
 GARTO SIXTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 /TtOKENS of nature's wrath fire, hail, and storm, 
 j. The lightning's brand lit from the pit of hell, 
 The cyclone's awful breath swept all the form 
 
 Of mount and hill, as fierce and loud they fell 
 From heaven's black-vaulted roof. Swell after swell 
 
 The torrents rolled along, and filled the vales 
 With foam - flecked meres. "Woe ! woe ! to those who 
 dwell 
 
 Beside the swift-waved streams ! Woe to the sails 
 
 On seas high lifted by the equinoctial gales ! 
 
 The storm was overpassed, and came a calm, 
 
 An autumn calm, to nature and to man ; 
 Transfusion soft of odorous scents and balm 
 
 To fit her beauty, faded now and wan, 
 For silent slumber in the grave by span 
 
 Of winter's chill and uncongenial days. 
 A slow and measured throb of music ran 
 
 Along the pulsing air, as when one plays 
 
 To sounds of dropping nuts and leaves the iv'ry keys. 
 
 Far in the dim and silent autumn woods, 
 
 Through paths with spiteful brambles overgrown, 
 And deep and long untrodden wilds, where broods 
 
 aotn
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 101 
 
 The night-hawk's mate and plaintive wail and moan 
 Of whippoorwill and owl disturb the noon 
 
 So deep the gloom beneath those tangled boughs 
 Wandered, with starless wish and mind o'erthrown, 
 
 The student Wise, his darkly knitted brows 
 
 And trembling frame bespeaking pain and broken 
 vows. 
 
 II. 
 
 " Dreams, dreams, a mocking frenzy murders thought, 
 
 And reason's throne supplants With pallid fear ; 
 The downy plumes of light impending air 
 
 With mountain heaviness compel me here ; 
 A giant's brazen arm were futile fare 
 
 Against these links a thralling fate hath wrought. 
 Bides there indeed a twofold essence here? 
 
 Or am I but a part of all I see 
 Insensate brother of the rock, a sphere 
 
 Of action filling higher, yet less free, 
 Than yonder clambering vine ? To caprice wrought, 
 
 To end of folly and the base desire 
 Of some dread spirit reigning in this wild ? 
 
 And art thou, Solitude, perfidious sire 
 Of all my woes, and hast thou hence beguiled 
 
 My wandering steps, veiling an evil plot, 
 To bind me to the rock of cold disdain ? 
 
 Fulfill that wish ; thou canst not nobler crown 
 Nor ampler wealth confer. The Titan's chain 
 
 My heritage, I ask no more renown, 
 Nor sighs my soul for pleasures sweeter got.
 
 102 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 " Somewhat there is, in truth, that men call life, 
 A spirit essence, flung from unknown heights 
 
 Through depths and darkness into fateful strife 
 And conflict with unequal force, that smites 
 
 With fierce, disloyal hand its own defense ; 
 That stays to shame prepense its own delights, 
 
 And buys despair with mind's immortal recompense. 
 
 " Is this with me that being's primal morn, 
 Cast from the womb of silence at her will, 
 
 Or have I palsied lain while tireless years 
 
 Have run their course, yet,nathless, suffering still? 
 
 There seems a past, a past of doubts and fears, 
 But of its changes, seasons, naught is borne, 
 
 Save that I lived and something lived beside, 
 Or else I saw myself move through the light 
 
 And knew communion, while a less'ning tide 
 Of passions, bosom born, returned delight, 
 As on yon lakelet's face the mountain glories burn." 
 
 Thus moved the student's wavering mind, the while 
 He sat exhausted on a mossy pile 
 Beside a sylvan lake fed by two brooks 
 That wore their channels into eddied nooks ; 
 One sent from distant fenland's grassy pride, 
 The other murmurous from the mountain's side ; 
 Which, when the errant breezes ceased their call. 
 
 Intoned the harmony of falling leaves. 
 These heard he : as familiar voices fall 
 
 Upon the ear and reach the heart that grieves
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 103 
 
 Its memories dead, so fell the liquid sound 
 
 And quickened feelings that for years had swound. 
 
 As in its purple morn the soul rose up, 
 
 And drank again from childhood's dregless cup, 
 
 Dreamed over dreams that blessed the sinless hoy, 
 
 And cried aloud the frenzy of its joy : 
 
 " Hail, woodland melodies, preludes of hope, 
 How swells my heart once more to hold in view 
 
 That goodly sight, the mansion of my sire ; 
 The whitening fields, the meadow's crown of dew, 
 
 The haunted hills, aglow with sunset's fire 
 
 Alack, the shame ! my life's unfruitful scope ; 
 Alack, the evil fruits that folly bore ! 
 
 But I must suffer, since 'tis so decreed, 
 And since 'tis being's nobler ends that wait 
 
 The issue of my suffering state, and plead 
 Supernal wish and conquering trust create, 
 
 I lowly bow, the scepter kiss, the King adore.' 
 
 A shadow, other than the mountain's, fell 
 Athwart the surface of the lake ; the dell 
 Re-echoed other than the streamlet's voice, 
 And in that far secluded spot the noise 
 Of human footsteps caught the student's ear. 
 When furtively he glanced and saw him near 
 A hermit strangely clad, with shaven head, 
 Who at the sight of Wise had quickly fled, 
 But that he rose, signaled desire, and cried : 
 
 " Stay, brother if that word conveys the thought 
 That forms my wish kindred, or being's shade,
 
 104 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 .Return, abide, and be companion of my care ; 
 Here is my rest ; my vows henceforth are paid 
 Beside this gray and ancient rock. Come, share 
 My thoughts, and cast with me thy lonely lot." 
 
 Hereat the hermit staid, and thus replied: 
 
 " Mortal thou art and kindred to my sense ; 
 'Tis twenty years since mortal face I dared, 
 Yet will I turn ; thy frail, emaciate form, 
 Thy sunken eyes, thy voice by fast impaired, 
 Forbid my fears and hate of man disarm. 
 Speak, if I may some' boon of good dispense." 
 
 Wise. " 'Tis not the body, but the mind that cries 
 For food, for surcease from its heavy weight. 
 
 Sit thou beside me here, and enterprise 
 An arduous task." 
 
 Hermit. " But first, I pray, relate 
 
 Why driven so far from human haunts ? why 
 
 In communion as with morbid thoughts and fears ? 
 Surely it is not oft thy wont to fly 
 
 So far ; nor seems it me thy mind appears 
 In wonted force, for thine is fair estate." 
 
 Wise. " Truly I must be more than what I seem, 
 But thought has lost the golden key that turned 
 
 The bars of fate, that faint soever gleam 
 
 Of peace might visit one self-loathed and spurned ; 
 
 But what I feel or know perchance, I dream 
 What matter? felt or dreamed, 'tis easy learned."
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 105 
 
 Hermit. " Mine ears are thine ; so long since human voice 
 Their sense approved, and now with hearty choice 
 
 Wise. "Ah, there bethink me ! patience, rest awhile ! 
 Whence are we, hermit ? more than wont of man 
 Thou seemest wise. "Whence ? whither ? whose at last ? 
 When, like the summer winds or gust 
 Of winter, sinks our sensuous breath, 
 Hushed in the deep and mystic silences 
 Of those far voids from whence alike they rose ; 
 The winds sleep in their sea-girt caves again, 
 Dirgeless and unlamented by the waves 
 Whose tawny, sun-tried cheeks they wantoned o'er, 
 Until they crimsoned softly here and there 
 With sunset hues, or blanched beneath the glow 
 Of silver stars. But is there naught that lives 
 Remembered of the winds' wide errant course ? 
 Of sylvan wilds or trellised garden bowers ? 
 Of rattling fleets of reefed merchant sails ? 
 Of dalliance at soft eve or luteful sounds 
 At early morn ? of lovers in their trysting-place ; 
 Or merry childhood on the village green ; 
 Or manhood everywhere, in peace, in war? " 
 
 Hermit. "Nay, life is not in memory with the winds, 
 Nor echoes through their slumb'rous cavern homes ; 
 Subtler its essence than the ether wave, 
 Fleeter than fancy, rises to a higher rest, 
 To sleep, to wait, to wander forth no more, 
 Until the end, removed from earthly wisdom
 
 106 EUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 In the boundless reaches of the soul's hereafter, 
 When, all things restored like to its like, 
 And god-like to itself eternity its firm 
 And changeless order shall begin." 
 
 Wise. " Where are those dim ethereal spaces, 
 Where the fitful breath and fiery thought of man 
 Repose, abiding that eventful hour? Science 
 Cannot discern their pillared fastnesses 
 Nor tell their vaulted dome, nor yet 
 Hath hinted that they be. Winging a swifter flight 
 Than condor of the Andes through his realm 
 Above the waste of Chimborazian snows, 
 Thought goes upward through the blinding maze 
 Of planets, suns, and nebulce, whose fiery haze 
 Unrolled, in fragments, from the everlasting scroll 
 Held in the great right hand of God, 
 When chaos kept the formless deeps below. 
 Orb after orb pales in its lengthening track, 
 While others dimly blaze and wheel before, 
 And some, girt round with many moons, 
 And others flaming suns themselves compelling; 
 And, in their turn, compelled by other suns 
 As satellites, and each a different sheen, 
 Swift on ecliptic marches, centric and concentric, 
 Making a centuried day of rainbow light. 
 But, staying not, the vision plunges headlong 
 Into sunless, starless wastes, black with the pall 
 Of night, primeval night, only to gain. 
 When myriad million leagues are measured through,.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 107 
 
 A sight of white-flecked skies in deeper wilds 
 
 Monotony of wide creation's awful self ! 
 
 "Where, then, bold wanderer of the night 
 
 And pathless fields of star-flecked gloom, 
 
 Where is thy lost brotherhood, where the place, 
 
 The far Valhalla, of their long retreat ? 
 
 And where the hostage of the dust 
 
 That once compelled their stay with sweet restraints?" 
 
 Hermit. " That which thou seest is but the tessled pave 
 And arched door-way of our Father's house; 
 Hath not the Power that binds each planet 
 To its sun, and these to nature's ancient heart, 
 Hath not he scope to build him otherwhere 
 And otherwise, beyond our sight, a spacious rest ? " 
 
 Wise. "A handful of ground and molten sand, 
 Shaped into kinship with the visual sense, 
 Stole wondrous secrets from the voiceless night, 
 Turned doubt to faith and faith to doubt, 
 And made our lives seem less and nature more ; 
 And what erewhile appeared a creamy stretch 
 Of white coast lines, along which spent 
 The furtherest waves of nature's starry sea, 
 Before it broke and fled, and in its place 
 Rolled still a fiery tide of orbed light ; 
 But spectra of those furthest discs 
 Tell but of kindred elements, nor hint 
 Save of such forms as mundane wisdom knows : 
 The crystal dust we grind beneath our feet
 
 108 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Is like in kind the hissing lava streams 
 
 That course the hearts of mightiest suns ; 
 
 And not the tiniest sphere of evening dew, 
 
 Or minim of the ether se*a, but sisters 
 
 Those vast firmaments, attenuate, void, 
 
 Infolding solar fires. What then ? 
 
 Shall spirit quit the ponderous forms 
 
 And gross restraints of matter here, 
 
 But to resume them otherwhere ? or cast 
 
 One mold, and take its flight but to be clogged, 
 
 Though nobler wise, with cumbrous life again ? " 
 
 Hermit. " Matter is but mind's accident; the dust 
 Hath been full many thousand times alive 
 With different sense and pulse. They who, 
 Following the divine decree, lord o'er the earth, 
 If phalanxed like an army on its march, 
 Would reach well-nigh the ecliptic's blazing belt; 
 While those who have gone forth since time began, 
 If marshaled thus, would overlap Arcturus 
 And the stretch of wild Centauri's realm. 
 The foremost moving thus, perchance, might sight 
 The gates of that fair city in the wide beyond. 
 If each had borne his death-devoted clay, 
 Then had there been a waste and wreck of earth. 
 Knowest thou matter? hath yet a human eye, 
 With aid of burnished glass, beheld an atom ? 
 In clusters seen, yet not in essence known ; 
 Spirit thou seest not nor matter yet : 
 There resteth mystery for the wise."
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 109 
 
 Wise. " Hermit, thou talkest as a god might talk ; 
 Thy words are wise and fair; I could well think 
 We walked in old Palermo by the sea, 
 Or sat by Athen's walls in those old days 
 When spake Aristo's son his deathless words. 
 Go on ; though weak, I hear with joy." 
 
 Hermit. " Nay, lade thy mind not now with such high 
 theme, 
 
 Nor bid me, man unlearned and recluse, prate 
 Of things removed from human sight and dream : 
 
 Turn for a time to thoughts of humbler state ; 
 A season, when thy wonted strength returns, 
 
 We will such lofty things attempt. Now waits 
 Within my cot a frugal meal, and burns 
 
 A fagot fire upon the humble hearth ; 
 A couch is there of silken grass, and spread 
 
 With fabric of the mountain cougar's swarth. 
 There thou shalt rest thy frame and, breaking bread, 
 
 Remain till strengthened limbs may bear thee hence ; 
 Or, seeming good, a longer season stay, 
 
 And taste the freedom of the wild and fence 
 The heart from earthly care, or make it aye ; 
 
 And he who faileth first shall be to him 
 Who thrives a care to lay him in the dust 
 
 And shed a tear, chanting a lowly hymn 
 Above his grave. 
 
 " Thy grief and ail, I trow, 
 Are of the heart : ah ! there are songs within
 
 110 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 The compass of these wilds and winds that blow, 
 Bringing a solace to the heart that sin 
 
 The raven torturer, sin has sorely torn. 
 Amid these sylvan shades, as in the vale 
 
 'Twixt Tigris and the Gihon's wave, at morn, 
 At eve, God walks ; and when the leaves do fail, 
 
 As now, and gorgeous carpets clothe the hill 
 And woven arras of the sunlight drops 
 
 Around the woods, then choiring spirits fill 
 The leafless groves and, in the hallowed stops 
 
 Of organ winds, glide softly through the light." 
 
 With troubled, yearning heart and upward gaze, 
 Like sailors through the misty morn or night, 
 
 Searching for beacon o'er the harbor place, 
 The student through his darkly clouded mind 
 
 Strove for the light of that fair-limned peace ; 
 
 But ever backward turned, made thrice more blind 
 By what he felt ; till that faint memories 
 
 Of what his unshod feet had hither moved, 
 
 Broke on his brain, when with weak voice he cried : 
 
 " O dweller in the waste, wise art thou proved 
 
 And happy in thy lot ! Since thou didst hide 
 First in this lonely wild, say hast thou seen 
 
 A maiden bound or wailing 'neath the pines, 
 With tresses like the chestnut dawn and sheen 
 
 Of lily crocus on her cheek ? O shines 
 The sun and comes again the dewy eve, 
 
 And I no trace of my dear love descry!
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. Ill 
 
 May be, I vainly hope or, wandering, leave 
 
 The truer path ; then tell me, has thine eye, 
 In lowly vale where bending willows weave 
 
 A woof of green before the quiv'ring sky, 
 Beheld a bleeding heart, pierced with a thorn, 
 
 And ruddier than its kind? That is my love's ; 
 There she has died, and Dryad sprites have borne 
 
 Her to their sisterhood, 'mid beechen groves 
 And aspens whispering low ; and near it saw'st 
 
 Thou but a broken stone, like chrysolite 
 Wrenched from the parent mass by glacier's frost 
 
 And worn beneath its icy heel ? O sight 
 For mortal eye ! that stone is my hard heart, 
 
 Its blessing that it lies beside her own. 
 "When shall this life's dark prison walls dispart 
 
 And let me forth to death, to life ? Atone ? 
 For what? by what? for this foul deed of mine, 
 
 Whereby I slew two hearts ? Methinks I hear, 
 As from a far-off day and from a shrine 
 
 Hard by a murm'rous fount, one sound that mocked 
 And mocks me still : 'Atone ! the blood ! the blood ! ' 
 
 Ah me ! it seems the sable nurse that rocked 
 My dameless infant years chanted the same 
 
 So long ago ! 
 
 " O, hermit, is it true ? 
 Is this that mount ? Ay, babbler, tell thy name, 
 
 And let the curse descend. Too late for you ! " 
 
 The hermit answered not, seeing his thought 
 Wandered in mental night, and that he seemed
 
 112 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Distressed with hunger and a thirst that wrought, 
 Its desert dryness on his bloodless lips, 
 
 Parching the feeble words, and so he deemed 
 It better to repair at once with this, 
 
 His charge, into the cot, that distant seemed 
 Hung like an eagle's aerie in the slips 
 
 Of weathered rocks the mountain's wasting heart. 
 
 So he the student lift, nor moved amiss 
 
 A muscle in the act, and with the art 
 And strength of mountaineer bore him aloft, 
 
 And laid him on his couch, and, brewing tea 
 And toasting barley bread, grown in the croft 
 
 About the cot, he had the joy to see 
 His guest partake, look up, and calmly smile ; 
 
 Then, settling on the mossy couch, fall soon 
 Into a slumber gentle, soft. Meanwhile, 
 
 The hermit watched and wondered of this boon, 
 Not all delight, yet not displeasing quite, 
 
 Which fortune charged him with. The sense 
 Of loneliness so long had made its night 
 
 "Within that this became his recompense, 
 That all the world of waste and rock, of wood 
 And stream and cloud, yielded him brotherhood. 
 
 And who was he, that hermit of the waste 
 
 Who twenty years had shunned the face of man, 
 
 And talked with winds and clouds, and lightly chased 
 The elfin sprites of fancy through the wan 
 
 Of autumn twilight, and had built a shrine 
 Beneath the nightly stars to worship God ?
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 113 
 
 Who heard him walking, in the eve, and shine 
 Of morning suns, through goodly vales ; who trod 
 
 Himself the ways of prophet, sage and great, 
 Of ancient days, abiding thus in nature's sight? 
 
 What blight destroyed his early flower ? what fate 
 Impelled him hence, a loveless, friendless wight ? 
 
 A melancholy, like the mist that time 
 
 Spreads o'er a marish glen and lifteth not, 
 The child of some swift youthful crime, 
 
 Through sore remorse, had made him choose this lot i 
 That crime, his name and all that told 
 
 His past a mystery, like himself. He spent 
 In simple toils and musings manifold 
 
 On nature's goodly frame the days' content 
 At first through fear of man, at last through choice, 
 
 And so he dwelt, and older grew and wise 
 In nature's lore and thoughts of God, whose voice 
 He heard in three great books nature, himself, 
 
 And that which came by fire. Then what surprise 
 That, dwelling thus so near the heart, the self, 
 
 Of nature, he should catch her words, and turn 
 Them into grateful songs? for oft beneath 
 
 The star-bedizened vault he walked, with yearn 
 Of holy passion in his soul and wreath 
 
 Of starlight round his head, chanting low, 
 Sweet anthems epics of the wood and strains 
 
 According with the harping pines below. 
 
 Thus, when the student slept, and with her trains 
 Still night was passing through the cloudless sky,
 
 114 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Touched with a kindred sorrow for the youth, 
 
 He wandered forth, deeming the Healer nigh, 
 And to the mountain pine murmured his ruth : 
 
 1 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 So like the shade of a grim old god 
 Uprising against the starlit blue, 
 
 And art thou a god, 
 
 And I but a clod ? 
 Thou weepest much, and I weep too, 
 
 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 2 O dark -browed pine ! 
 
 1 must weep tears, and tears that are hot 
 Hot from a heart that ever hath fears. 
 
 Ah, my tears are hot! 
 
 But tears thou hast not ; 
 Aye, weeping, thou never hadst tears, 
 
 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 3 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 Thou hast a faith a faith of thine own 
 Or else thou hadst quit the mountain rock, 
 
 In storms that have blown 
 
 With a wild winter moan, 
 Else hadst thou reeled with the thunder s shock, 
 
 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 4 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 And thou hast a hope ; thy somber shade 
 The lightning shall kiss with lover's thrill,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 115 
 
 Nor ever that shade 
 Know the woodman's blade ; 
 Thine are the years of a century still, 
 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 5 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 I hear thee oft in the deeper night, 
 Sobbing aloud in a dismal strain, 
 
 As never I might 
 
 In that deeper night, 
 Sobbing with all but a human pain, 
 
 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 6 O dark-browed pine! 
 
 Is it all because thou hast no tears 
 
 That thou wail'st so with an endless plaint ? 
 
 Then half of thy years 
 
 For the gift of tears, 
 Though thy years were the years of a saint, 
 
 dark-browed pine ! 
 
 7 O dark-browed pine ! 
 
 This night, as never thou weptest yet, 
 A wandering soul in the valley dim, 
 
 Though his sun be set, 
 
 And the night-dews wet 
 The fleeing sprite weep aloud for him, 
 
 O dark-browed pine !
 
 CANTO SEVENTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 \ TOW on the mountain stood the white-robed Morn, 
 
 } ^ And waved a beamy scepter, while was borne 
 
 Far through the waking vales heraldic notes, 
 
 And signs of her approaching car. As floats 
 
 The eagle upward, slowly round and round, 
 
 The mist went upward toward the blue profound 
 
 Of star-deserted heaven. The pale, sweet moon, 
 
 Like hunter's horn at height of sultry noon 
 
 Suspended by the stream, hung in the blue 
 
 Below the birch-trees' arching boughs that grew 
 
 Along the mountain's western slope ; a calm, 
 
 A deep, soul-soothing hush, as when a psalm, 
 
 By early worshipers devoutly sung, 
 
 Dies from a great cathedral and among 
 
 Its many pillared aisles broods voiceless prayer, 
 
 Hushed all the mount and all the upper air. 
 
 II. 
 
 While thus the virgin day began her course 
 Through cloudless sky and nature's calm, perforce 
 Of nature's sweet restoring law, awoke 
 The student to the light that once more broke 
 (116)
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 117 
 
 Upon his soul's unclouded sky. The shade 
 Was gone; the fever's trace, the bane that made 
 Of thought an aspic's bite, were gone, and lo ! 
 The soul beheld itself and knew its woe 
 Unshadowed by a dream ; and quickly read 
 A hasting doom, and heard not far the tread 
 Of baffled death, stealing, like tigress on the prey 
 Chance struck by hunter's dart and fallen in the way. 
 Moveless he lay, while trembling sunbeams kissed 
 His bloodless lips, sweet emblems they of love, 
 Eternal, mystic light, that leaping from above 
 Struggled to force his soul with mercy's ray 
 And kiss its darkest stains of guilt away. 
 
 Seated beside the youth, the hermit saw 
 His mind reclaim its throne, and felt the awe 
 Of fast approaching death. In kindly tone 
 He asked that dying wish be said or shown, 
 When in a clear though slowly failing voice 
 The answer came : " Hermit, I much rejoice 
 That thus my end draws nigh ; kind fate reserves, 
 I trow, some good that lucid hour is mine 
 In which to die ; and yet how much deserves 
 My soul a darker end ; but heaven or fate 
 Or else, however named, is kind. I wait 
 To know the utmost of the truth divine 
 Or darkness of the night that mortals dread. 
 But hear my tale, and then, if thou hast read
 
 118 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 In nature's goodly lore or elsewhere found 
 A solace or a cure, ere that dim bound 
 Of death I uass, speak to my soul a hope. 
 
 "What Summer's frugal care nad gathered up 
 Autumn with lavish hand was strawing wide, 
 And gloried in the waste, till wasteful pride 
 Had wrecked and left her sad November drear, 
 The mystic twilight of the fading year ; 
 The season night so says the chronicleer 
 An infant's wail broke on the stilly hour ; 
 A life my life with its dark-fated dower, 
 Woke to the light, while hers who gave me birth 
 Went outward toward its rest equal its worth 
 I fondly trow, yet lost that hope hath been, 
 Left aye to die in starless night of sin ; 
 Brief on me beamed a father's face within 
 A spacious house, ancestral home of wealth, 
 With lordly grounds, oak-girt, where love and health 
 Might wedded dwell, and bring forth fresh delight 
 With every changing hour. Fair to the sight 
 The grassy lawns and breezy groves alive 
 With warbling birds and bees that to their hive 
 Bore honied treasures all the day. Shame fills 
 
 Mine eyes with tears ! for then my soul was free ; 
 No cygnet's down was whiter. From the hills 
 
 That rose, like islands, in the ether sea, 
 Minerva-like, a streamlet burst ; pure white 
 Its waters, sparkling in the liquid light,
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 119 
 
 Yet not more pure than those white thoughts that erst 
 
 Upon my spirit's forming vision burst. 
 
 I heard the thunders walking through the hills ; 
 
 I saw the panting clouds chased by the wind, 
 And saw the lightning's burning blade that stills 
 
 The heart, even as the hunter's bleeds the hind, 
 Slash through its shaggy sides, until it bled 
 A torrent like the sea ; and then that thread 
 Of limpid water grew into a tide 
 
 Of turbid blackness, groaning as it passed. 
 The judgment's thunders shapes of wrath with stride 
 
 To shake the mountain-pillared world, have traced 
 My soul ; the fiery brand hath parted quick 
 Joint, marrow, and the secret life, and thick 
 Hath rained a scorching dew pollution's shower 
 That choked the limpid wish to this my fatal hour. 
 
 " But backward let me turn a summer day, 
 A rare June day, or had been such, dare say, 
 
 Death walked within the lordly house ; my sire 
 Obeyed, and hence strong men bore to the grave 
 
 All kindred clay of mine, save one not nigher 
 Than fourth in blood. A thoughtless whisper gave 
 
 My ears that day a truth not understood, 
 
 Alas ! too deeply since, for through his blood 
 Ancestral came my father's fate a curse 
 Of appetite, that fed, grew ever worse 
 From sire to son and bore him to his doom 
 In middle life. Short while within my home, 
 Now doubly waste and haunted with the gloom
 
 120 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Of long distressed, I tarried, choosing me 
 (Such course the law permitting by decree) 
 To dwell my youth with him my nearest kin, 
 And so I journeyed toward the west, and in 
 A home no whit less proud in boast or name 
 Than that I knew before began to claim 
 An equal hope of life. My early woe 
 Was soon dispelled, for in the ample show 
 Of love my childless kinsman made I grew 
 To feel a higher joy than e'er I knew 
 In years before, and else a well-spring burst 
 Within my life ; a fount of peace that thirst 
 Of unfed wish assuaged, for hard against 
 My kinsman's lordly lands another fenced 
 With equal pride and equal cheer dispensed. 
 
 " So fell a time in those first days, when through 
 Adventurous thought, chasing delight where grew 
 The hedge-rose and the brown thrush made its nest, 
 I chanced to hear, in childhood's fairy jest, 
 A little rippling laughter and a song 
 
 That gurgled softly, leaping as from tongue 
 Of bird or elfin creature of the field. 
 I stood in transports, tilt my sight revealed 
 
 The sweetest wonder of my dreams : a maid, 
 A tiny, elfin creature of the field, 
 
 Our neighbor's eight-year-old, had strayed 
 Into the sunlight and the open waste 
 And, like the summer warbler, with a taste
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 121 
 
 As dainty as herself, was mocking there 
 The songs and laughter of the birds. O air 
 Of summers gone ! O dreams of perished bliss ! 
 O hopes deferred ! O love's first balmy kiss 1 
 Return, return again ! 
 
 " Life grew apace, 
 
 And hope went upward, like the lark, to face 
 The mighty sun and revel in his fires. 
 What happy days went by ! and with desires 
 And benedictions deep as life could hold 
 Grew that sweet maid, and she was mine. The fold 
 Of month on month and year on year, until 
 Our lives did one fair book of pleasure fill, 
 Made only more our souls each other seek, 
 And mine was lost in hers and felt to speak 
 Her purer thoughts ; yet, as the tendriled vine 
 Leans on the oak, hers seemed to lean on mine. 
 As some lost deer in lonely forest wild 
 Drinks from the placid brook, and stands beguiled 
 
 "With semblance of himself upon the wave, 
 So drank I from the light of her deep eyes 
 
 And saw such stainless vision as they gave, 
 And knew my nobler self in semblance rise 
 
 And float their placid fullness through. 
 
 " To dwell 
 In that aureate glow, with her my sun, 
 
 My virgin hope, far from the raging hell 
 That woke my curse and fired my blood too soon
 
 122 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 And scourged me down my fated path, had wrought 
 My crown and made my bliss ; but kindly thought 
 My kinsman moved to plan a fair career, 
 An end whereby a goodly fame should rear 
 My fortunes high ; and so I made to seek 
 
 In learning's halls of wisdom's gifts a share, 
 And hence should go at lapse of one short week. 
 
 " 'Twas on an eve in that soft season when 
 
 The bearded barley, ripening, bows its head 
 To sweep of sportive winds ; the broad sun then, 
 
 Creeping along the silence crimson red, 
 Had dipped its edge behind the emerald sea 
 
 Of forest glades beyond the river's bed, 
 I walked with Madeline along the lee 
 Of that brown waste of waving corn, and free 
 And light our hearts as softest zephyrs' breath 
 That stirs the fringed myrtle in the groves 
 Faun held and sacred to the restful gods. 
 The roving quails puttered in every heath 
 And bluebirds in the locusts told their loves 
 
 Or danced along the daisy-tufted clods. 
 Above us bent the patient, dewy heaven, 
 Like tender mother in her pride ; two stars 
 
 Anon, like mother eyes, looked on us twain ; 
 Her hand was in my own, and we had striven 
 To pierce the deep, sweet mystery that bars 
 
 The future from the now ; with yearn and strain 
 Of hope her lustrous eyes had sought the way 
 Adown which walked the ghost of fading day.
 
 BUPEET WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 123 
 
 "Vermilion splendors burst a moment forth 
 And half the evening's vastness penciled o'er, 
 Hiding the light of those twin stars in fires 
 Of mightier glow. Omen of goodly worth 
 
 "We read in such response to love's desires ; 
 And holy thoughts leaped to my lips and bore 
 Their transports through my soul, till speech was dumb. 
 Save in one mighty word, breathed till the air 
 "Was tremulous with passion's sacred sound. 
 A quick, sharp cry from Madeline made numb 
 My senses for a time ; I could but stare, 
 Seeing her fly like doe before the hound, 
 Till, casting sight along the shadowy ground, 
 I saw a serpent of prodigious size 
 With maddened hiss and fiery, darting eyes 
 Glide from the rye and pass between us twain. 
 With fearful thought and pang of inner pain, 
 I forward sprang and caught her to my breast 
 And stilled her fluttering heart with lover's zest; 
 Yet liked I not the shade that held her brow, 
 As some fore-fruit of ill, nor forth did go 
 With morrow's dawn, when that for four long years 
 I took my leave. 
 
 " That morning marks the line 
 'Between what I had been and what I am. 
 Ah, could the sailor know the maelstrom stirs 
 
 The sea within his path, he durst not quit 
 The land-locked harbor for the wave ; so mine 
 Had proved a happier fate, a nobler fame,
 
 124 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 To walk in that idyllic dream and sit 
 
 In that manorial shade, knowing no blame. 
 
 "An ancient classic seat beyond the sea 
 
 Received me to its grim and ample walls, 
 Where busted pride and living fame purvey 
 
 All noble thought, till wisdom's portion palls 
 Through goodly store and school-man's lavish care ; 
 
 Yet aught, though all I failed to heed the cause, 
 Weighed on me that the form bore not its share 
 
 Of vital truth. Tomes, cycles, barren laws 
 
 And endless reckonings, doubts, perchances, flaws 
 And stresses of the mind, filled not the soul 
 
 That early read the volumes of the field 
 And measured by the sunshine and the roll 
 
 Of boundless floods the problems of the world ; 
 
 That knew but love as tutor, nor to yield 
 Had ever thought a tittle of its dream. 
 
 Into a semi-Arctic silence hurled, 
 As from a luteful land of tropic gleam, 
 
 I seemed to yield, and wrought in mines 
 For gold and gems and deemed me wise to hold 
 The tender sense in awe of that more bold, 
 
 Which delved unfed, save on the husks and rinds 
 That strewed the desert paths of Christless lore. 
 But pleasure oped her gates and spread her store 
 
 E'en in the desert world, and youth to youth, 
 In friendship bound, held up the fatal pledge ; 
 
 Convivial laughter and the bowl put truth, 
 If truth, indeed, engaged, aside till edge
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE'. 125 
 
 AVus off the finer sense, and blunt and dull 
 The nobler wish. Eestraint was not, nor voice, 
 
 Nor Orphic string the frenzied thirst to lull 
 And drown the sirens' song there was but choice 
 
 To leap and die, seeing no Ithic purpose bound. 
 
 " I felt a demon rousing in my blood; 
 
 A fiery hell was kindled in my brain, 
 And loud from out the silence woke a sound, 
 
 A sound of doom, but all too late ; the chain, 
 The heavy gyves were forged and sealed ; I stood 
 
 A slave, as all my sires had been, and vain 
 The voice ; for pleasure laid her balmy hand 
 Upon my brow and far my native land, 
 
 And all dear things it held, drifted from sight. 
 At length I woke in helpless pain and knew, 
 
 God ! I knew my dungeon and the blight 
 Of manhood's hopes, and love and mem'ry threw 
 
 Their torturing sweetness o'er the troubled brain ; 
 The serpent hissing from the rye, the face 
 
 1 left with sadness wreathed, slew me with pain 
 Of mad despair. 
 
 " I rose at midnight's hour, 
 With oath to live, and fled with frantic pace 
 
 Through olden lands and cities boasting dower 
 Of unrecorded pride ; beside all seas, 
 
 Through holy haunts and temples of the gods 
 Whose very names are lost, with listless gaze 
 
 And longing after what I could not say,
 
 126 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 I wandered by the space that Phoebus plods 
 Three times around his orb-encircled way. 
 
 "Rome's red palaces, Arcadia's misty hills, 
 
 Old Gaza in the desert's heart, the waves 
 That lap the Ormuz coast, where morning fills 
 
 Her wasted urn, have heard my sighs, and graves 
 Of swarthy kings in Ind and Aiden's groves 
 
 Have wooed me for a time to think of Brahm 
 And happy rest, where Soma's river proves 
 
 The solace of all mortal ills. The calm 
 Of Ida's wood, the mount of Thessaly, 
 
 Beguiled me from my bondage for a time ; 
 Ay, I have laid me down where old rhymes say 
 
 The Titan, doomed to expiate his crime, 
 Three thousand years in chains and torture lay. 
 
 Caucasus, on thy rocky sides I sate 
 And watched the green light of the meteors play 
 
 Upon the streams that feed the Euxine's wave ; 
 To Joppa turned and through the valley gate, 
 
 Esdraelon, passed where Kidron's waters lave 
 The mount of sacred name ; the wailing-place 
 
 Of Judah by the ruined walls I pressed, 
 And from Golgotha's dark retreat did trace 
 
 The wrinkled hills to Olivet but rest, 
 The golden boon of soul, found not, alas ! 
 A pilgrim to all shrines, a worshiper 
 At none, I turned me toward my home to face 
 My fate and beg the love and hand of her
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 127 
 
 I dared not claim through any worthy faith, 
 
 Yet deemed that stay, with toil and student's lore, 
 
 The last that held me hope 
 
 " Hermit, what saith 
 
 The feeble pulse ? The fitful dream is o'er, 
 The time is short ; it boots thee not to know 
 
 The rest, to hold a withered spray of life 
 In thy strong hands. I die, but quickly go, 
 Ere thou hast laid me in a grave below 
 
 Your mountain pine, and seek, if still in life, 
 
 This sad-browed maid, this second soul of mine." 
 Then from his hand he drew a golden band, 
 
 Studded with one rich stone, and held it forth. 
 " Take this ; she will recall and understand 
 
 The message that it bears, and deem it worth 
 All riches of Golconda's store the last 
 
 Of all her gifts, when that she dare not give, 
 Through deep-wrought fear, herself into my arms, 
 
 And held me to return, when hope should live 
 In equal purpose with my wish. It charms 
 
 That hope from death, and, like the Levite's gems, 
 Burns strangely bright, since heaven no more condenfns. 
 
 " Nine leagues to westward, by the south, unless 
 My judgment errs, the city lies, war-scarred 
 
 And wasted now by plague. There Madeline, 
 An angel to the poor (whose wilderness 
 Is lighter for her face), by mercy starred, 
 
 Waits with the sick and she self-same maid
 
 128 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Of whom I spake. 'To her, if thou shalt find, 
 Say that the spoiler's hand at last was staid ; 
 
 At evening time the morning's glory shined, 
 And that I died with faith in Him alone 
 
 Who sees the sparrows fall ; my soul resigned 
 To Him who died. If that sweet blood atone, 
 
 My snared and trembling soul shall rest in peace. 
 
 " Lo, now is life ! a vision sweetly dawns 
 
 Like morning through the dome of forest-trees 
 Of that old story told by thralldom's tongue 
 
 In those fair days before my shame, which frees 
 The soul while yet it serves ; a tale that wrung 
 
 Compassion from the grave and senseless stones ; 
 But by what law it works these late results, 
 
 And strengthens every noble wish to live, 
 I know not, but 'tis so. I feel the pulse 
 
 Of ampler thought and warmer hope relieve 
 The dull, insipid course that reason owns. 
 
 How should a slave know this and not my sire, 
 Gifted with mind to shame a golden age ? 
 
 How reached my soul aphelion of desire 
 To read faith's mystery-lighted page?" 
 
 The lids dropped on the sunken eyes ; the breast 
 Was still, yet moved, anon, the pallid lips. 
 
 "At even time," they faintly said, " light rest ! 
 At even time, at even time ! " As slips 
 
 A star behind the gloom of midnight clouds, 
 The spirit seemed to slip into the realm
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 129 
 
 Of shades, leaving the hermit in his moods, 
 Recking of spirit worlds, as in a dream. 
 
 All day he toiled, till eve, to make a grave, 
 
 And when the stars shone brightly forth above, 
 Xot turning toward the death-kept couch, and save 
 
 To break his day-long fast, staid not through love 
 Of him now dead and her who loved too well. 
 
 So all night long by Bear and Dipper's aid 
 He journeyed westward by the south. Through fell 
 
 And gorge, by farm and lonely cot, he made 
 His swerveless way. The watch-dog's midnight bark-,. 
 
 The owlet's hoot or snort of startled hind, 
 
 Were all the sounds he heard, save that the wind 
 With thin and bated voice breathed through the dark 
 
 Roofed pines and died in soughings far away. 
 At length there came a sound of passing waves, 
 
 Of distant waters moaning on their way ; 
 
 Then o'er the forest broke the gloaming day, 
 And soon the city's spires against the sky 
 
 Rose dark and tall, and in the misty light 
 He saw he walked a lovely garden. High 
 
 The white-stemmed poplars rose, and left and right 
 Were fragrant flowers, green vines ; and marble shapes 
 
 Cold white as winter's wing, thereby he knew 
 His feet were once more with the dreamless dead. 
 New sepultures, with clods still damp and red, 
 
 Unmarked, undecked, by fives, by tens, and scores, 
 Opposed each marble shape. Cold, dripping dew, 
 
 The tears that mourning darkness kindly pours
 
 130 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 From starry eyes upon the smitten earth, 
 Gemmed every leaf, as though she knew 
 
 Man's special woe and wept with deeper grief. 
 Weary the hermit sat him down, and drew 
 
 His hermit cloak about his form and read 
 The names upon the neai-est stones. Dim through 
 
 The vine-foiled windows 'twixt the myrtle shade 
 And wide magnolia-boughs, the river's glint 
 
 Rose to his sight. A drawing back, a dread 
 To face his fellows, e'en to the point 
 
 Of wavering faith, opposed his promise made. 
 
 The mist-dispelling sun now waking, drew 
 
 His chariot's golden wheel above the flood 
 And scattered amber light, that on the dew 
 
 Wrought rainbow beauty through the waking wood, 
 Where glory called to glory. Solemn sounds 
 
 Of distant bells disturbed the hermit's ears 
 And woke from out his memory's still profounds 
 
 Deep thoughts that sweetened hope in other years. 
 He rose and moved with quick, impatient pace 
 Along the bordered path, fixing his gaze 
 
 Upon the distant tower whence came those peals 
 That pleased and gloomed his soul at once. Kot wide 
 
 He wandered from his seat, with fears and ills 
 Of soul forgotten, when he saw beside 
 
 The path, deep in the drooping willow's shade, 
 And hidden half by lowly daffodils 
 
 And autumn-penciled grass, a grave new made,
 
 RUPEKT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 131 
 
 O'er which but once had brooded sable night : 
 
 A broken lily at its head, a spray 
 Of cypress by its side, spoke of the blight 
 
 That closed untimely some young spirit's day. 
 A sudden pallor swept the hermit's face, 
 
 And consternation checked his cheerful mien 
 What if the rude white cross that marked the place 
 
 Fulfilled his fears with tale of Madeline ? 
 
 Soon had his eyes the doubtful story read ; 
 
 But now the monkish sexton, like a ghost, 
 Glided from out the shade with silent tread 
 
 And stood within the hermit's sight. As lost 
 To reason, each gazed on the other's face, 
 
 Moveless and speechless for a time. At last 
 The hermit spake, full anxious to displace 
 
 The burden from his mind : " O ancient man, 
 I come from far with tidings for a maid 
 
 Of one whose life is fled ; but fate outran, 
 I deem, my steps. Fear tells me here is laid 
 
 That Madeline whom all the city blessed ; 
 If so it prove, thou need'st not know the rest." 
 
 " I wist not if she live this morn, yet know 
 She lies not here, nor had been laid, at eve, 
 
 In any grave ; for with the dying glow 
 Of yester sun, word came that she did live, 
 
 And if her strength endured till dawn again, 
 
 She would survive ; but yon loud death-bell's tones, 
 
 That woke me from disturbed sleep, sustain
 
 132 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC 
 
 The doubt I held, for scarce its lips with moans 
 So deep had knolled another's journey hence." 
 
 "It fits me not, O sire," the hermit cried, 
 
 " To walk through peopled streets again, and since 
 It more than seems she liveth not, should pride 
 
 Of literal faith impel me to attaint 
 A vow so long observed ? Take this," and forth 
 
 He drew the student's ring, " take this ; acquaint 
 The maid, if still in life, of this my tale. 
 
 The place is thrice three leagues to east, hy north ; 
 A ragged hill that stands above the vale 
 
 Where westward turns the tide of dark Yazoo; 
 A hermit's cot beside a runlet's wave ; 
 
 A lonely pine, piercing th' eternal blue, 
 That weeps above her lover's unfilled grave, 
 
 "Will hold for many a mile the traveler's view." 
 
 This said, the hermit slowly turned and strode 
 With steady pace adown the silent wood.
 
 GANTO EIGHTH. 
 
 i. 
 
 t I AIL I living Christ, whoso soul hath borne the weight 
 | * The mountain weight, of all our human guilt ; 
 Whose voice was poured through dark-leaved Olivet 
 
 In one wild prayer for strength to die ; who spilt 
 Thy princely blood rblood without taint of guilt 
 
 Long lineaged blood and older than the sun, 
 Or any star, or angel pulse that hilt 
 
 Of wrathful sword had warmed ere was begun 
 
 O 
 
 That crystal wonder eon-told to wide renown. 
 
 First bloom of past eternity ! thy love 
 
 Still fruits and blossoms in the vernal glow 
 
 Of these our fateful years. The forms that move 
 In legioncd myriads, shadow} 7 , slow, 
 
 Into the death-marged realms of silence, go 
 
 Heeded of love alive forevermore. 
 
 While hanging in the shades of that last woe 
 
 Wrought in Golgotha's place, thy soul's eye bore, 
 
 Clear imaged, all from, face and heart to burning core. 
 
 Eisen, alive ! all hail ! mild as the light 
 
 Of the young day that treads o'er violets, 
 Earliest blown of forms that earth bedight ; 
 
 (133)
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Yet awful as the thunder-flame that jets 
 From heaven's storm-parted lips when wrath begets 
 
 A judgment speech ! I clothe me in that first, 
 Lifted from winter death, like violets, 
 
 But from that last, when like a sword it thirst, 
 Hide me, gray cross hide me from that last lightning; 
 burst ! 
 
 Loud speaks a voice whose sacred accents say, 
 
 Or seem : " lowly taught, thou canst not see 
 What wonders crowd thy path, by night, by day ; 
 
 How near unnumbered hosts encompass thee, 
 "What throbbing chords thou daily treadest on 
 
 That wake in discord or in harmony ; 
 Thy searching sight meets here its horizon, 
 
 But yon blue heights thy newborn thoughts shall 
 
 tread, 
 "With suns for stepping-stones, till glory crown thy head ! " 
 
 II. 
 The day's red orb dropped thi'ough the quivering haze 
 
 That wrapped the marge of Yazoo's cypress glades, 
 While long slant splendors wrought their golden maze 
 
 From mount to stream, and bridged the abyss of shades 
 Adown which fell the white-robed thistle mote, 
 
 Blown from the copses of the hills. Echo 
 Woke all her genii from their caves and caught 
 
 The rising harmonies, and far below 
 And high above the listening crags, each fraught 
 
 With elfin changes, threw them note by note.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 135 
 
 With crown of sweat about his brow, and feet 
 
 Grown sore and weary in the day-long toil, 
 Into his wild the hermit made retreat ; 
 
 Slowly he climbed the shadowy slope, and, while 
 In one wide curtain from the orbless sky 
 
 The silver twilight hung, passed o'er the stile 
 And to his cot. 
 
 Is knowledge what we deem, 
 Or what our skeptic souls would give it name ? 
 
 Is there no over-soul to tell us when we dream, 
 If dream we true or false? There bides to claim 
 
 Our feal to law, and smites if heeded not, 
 Conscience, so called for lack of better word ; 
 
 But consciousness is ampler, unbegot, 
 Begetting every child of sense and thought ; 
 
 May not it, then, some time, somehow, have heard 
 Unlawful things, laying a feeble ear 
 
 Against the walls of God's great secret house ? 
 One law is regnant, binding far and near 
 
 The parts of this wide whole, the universe, 
 Into a kinship of desires that rouse 
 
 A universal thought, and so its course 
 Must sometimes glow with unspent thoughts of God 
 
 While through the lowliest heart it burns. 
 
 A calm 
 Foreboding of delight, while yet he trod 
 
 The pillared woods, grew in the hermit's mind ; 
 The eager air seemed laden with the balm 
 
 And spices of a rifled tomb, and, swift and kind,
 
 136 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Disparted souls seemed moving toward their rest. 
 
 A pulse of angel pinions rustling nigh, 
 Of angel breathings low, his soul confessed 
 
 As to the cot he passed ; yet mortal eye, 
 Since at the lonely tomb of Bethany 
 
 The Son of Mary stood, was never smote 
 With wonder like the hermit's owned. Lo ! there 
 
 The death couch stood, but all unwrought 
 The tale it lately told. Smoothed down with care, 
 
 The rustic robes were o'er the grass mat spread ; 
 The water cruise stood emptied of its draught ; 
 
 The chair on which the garments of the dead 
 At eve before had lain now owned to naught 
 
 Save the torn scarf that girt his loins at death. 
 A foot-print on the wind-dashed fallow pressed, 
 
 And followed in the sand and sumac heath 
 That balked the runlet's course, told how his guest, 
 
 Reviving, passed into the waste again ; 
 And so the hermit moved him to and fro 
 
 Between the cot and unfilled grave, still fain 
 To find a clew to something less than marvel's awe. 
 
 Meantime into a sylvan space, a lawn 
 
 Of nature planned, above which burned the flame 
 Of autumn leaves, at point five leagues removed 
 
 From the smit city, slowly moving, came 
 The low wheels of a diligence. The hands 
 
 That reined the lagging jades trembled with age, 
 A gray-haired Ethiop's prince of mangrove lands
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 137 
 
 On the dark coast ; proved in long bondage, 
 Now free, but held by stronger bond as hers 
 
 Who sate, pale-faced and weary, in the coach : 
 In like he served through all her maiden years 
 
 The mother till a bride, then bound, in such 
 Till death ; therefrom the daughter, faithful still. 
 Now halting, from the clear wave of a rill 
 
 He raised a full cup to the pale lips' touch 
 And stood, with head made bare, waiting his lady's will. 
 
 Drink, pale-lipped Madeline, the heaven-pledged cup! 
 
 God brewed it in the summer cloud and stored 
 Deep in the summer caves, whence unto hope 
 
 A full libation naiads' hands have poured 
 From lily urns its coolness forth ; no dregs 
 
 Are in its depths, for lo ! is passed for aye 
 Thy bitter cup. No more thy spirit begs 
 
 In vain a joyous boon. Drink to the day 
 Of happy love the day that was that is! 
 Two wonders in the earth beneath are seen, 
 
 Transcending all a soul that keeps its bliss 
 Through stainless faith and one that finds again 
 
 Its bliss through purifying love. Drink deep, 
 O stainless maid ; drink to the purified, 
 
 The chastened one, whose shining feet now keep 
 Glad movement, hasting swiftly to thy side ; 
 
 He lives whose soul is brother unto thine ! 
 The fallen leaves betray his coming steps ; 
 
 The leaves above, with accents half divine, 
 Repeat his name. " He lives ; he comes ; he leaps,"
 
 138 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 They cry. Eeceive thine exile into rest. 
 A sudden start ; a maiden's fitful cry ; 
 
 Eyes turned to eyes, and pale lips unto pale lips pressed. 
 Too long the care, too great the ecstasy 
 Of hope revived swoon, gentle heart, not die ! 
 
 'Tis well, 'tis well ; thyself shalt wake to rest ! 
 
 Like the slow tide of tropic streams deep steeped 
 
 In the warm odors of the falling molds 
 Of thousand drooping boughs, eve onward crept, 
 
 Balm sweetened, toward the west. The primrose folds- 
 Its waxen leaves to ope again when dies 
 
 The regal sun in twilight's holy shade. 
 So oped the folded lids of love-blessed eyes 
 
 That might not drink its brightness wonder rayed. 
 
 " Back from the dead," the white lips breathed, when first 
 
 They caught the vital air, " back from the dead 
 Thou art returned to me. What power has burst 
 
 Thy double bond, for free my soul doth read 
 Thou art alive and free, thrice free ? " They spake 
 
 Glad-voiced,when he, the youth, speechless till then, 
 Replied : " Yea, back from more than dead ; awake 
 
 To more than life to light, to liberty 
 Of those high thoughts we early proved ; made such 
 
 Through knowledge of that Christ by whom I stand, 
 And shall through future days, till magic touch 
 
 Of the arch-seraphim Ithuriel's wand 
 Shall lift me to the height of his tall form.
 
 RUPERT WISE! A POETIC ROMANCE. 139 
 
 Thou hast done well that thou didst come. Our feet 
 Are not misled, I deem, if faith conform 
 
 To His fair will who did our faith beget, 
 And yet so late I read that will ; the peace 
 
 Therefrom so new, perchance I do construe 
 Somewhat above that it may bind or please ; 
 
 Howbeit, hence it led me on, and true 
 I find my hope that thou art still in life, 
 
 And that the old-time warmth abides within 
 The twilight circle of thine eyes. Joy rife, 
 
 A thousand passion fires within me burn 
 And visions of the sunny years to be ; 
 
 But summer waits till winter's soul expires, 
 So to a tale of wand'rings list and learn 
 
 Whence rose my sin-scathed soul to light and lease 
 Of nobler walk. 
 
 " How long, or by what chance 
 I wandered in the hoary wild, ere ease 
 
 Of pain, or thought's clear vision broke the trance 
 Of mind, I may not say ; all misty is 
 
 From day thy tender eyes looked on me ill 
 Till yester dawn. 'Twas then I knew surprise, 
 
 And fear o'ertook my soul. I woke with still 
 A thought that thou wert nigh ; but other eyes 
 
 Regarded me : a hermit to his cot 
 Had borne me, and with brother's tenderness 
 
 Had watched my malady, that seemed begot 
 Of death, and death seemed close and hard to press 
 
 The bated life, until he deemed I died
 
 140 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 And laid his finger tips upon my lids 
 
 In office kind. Deep peace was multiplied 
 That hour within ; for all that morn, as hides 
 
 The feathered waif when storms are loud, my soul 
 Had hid in prayer ; and voices of the days 
 
 We love, blown from the aspen-shaded knoll 
 Held by the brown-roofed chapel, where to praise 
 
 And worship oft our childish feet were led, 
 Came memory sweet upon my ear. I knew 
 
 I lived, or deemed it so, yet for the dead 
 Was marked, and pulse and sentient life withdrew 
 
 And hid them in the inner heart. 
 
 " Slow paced, 
 The hermit passed into the day, then reigned 
 
 A tomb-like silence ; thence no more I traced 
 The course of sense : a vision's light obtained 
 
 Assent and clothed, like woven flame, my brain. 
 Dreams have I known, in sleep, that led afar 
 
 Through changes of the hidden world and pain 
 Or joy sustained, but never such fair star 
 
 Of trance or fancy led my sight. To rise 
 I seemed, leaving my grosser part still prone 
 
 Upon the hermit's couch, yet everywise 
 Perfect the part that stood and passed alone 
 Into a coast-land fringed with orange-groves, 
 And goodly fair to look upon ; a glow 
 Of ebbing day, like that which now expires, 
 Lent holy silence to the hour. 3Iy steps
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 141 
 
 Bent slowly downward to the sea that lapped 
 
 "With summer drowsiness the pebbly beach. 
 
 I strained my eyes and heart to read a sign, 
 
 A token of the over-soul that walks 
 
 Through summer seas or breathes imperial strength 
 
 Eeclining midst the mountain shades. One sail 
 
 Whose pennant pointed toward the Isthmic coast, 
 
 Through dark Campcachy's darker waste, was all 
 
 The blue veil's misty folds allowed my sight ; 
 
 Glowed not the light of eld that floated down 
 
 The zodiacal paths into my soul, 
 
 When in my own thy hand was pressed, now cold, 
 
 I thought, beneath the upland's thymy sod. 
 
 Thereat I hated life and feared the death 
 
 I could not die. Through unfrequented ways 
 
 I turned and climbed a wooded steep, hard by 
 
 A soft-voiced stream that dropped, full-waved and clear, 
 
 Into the deep Nirvana of the bay. 
 
 Great oaks, moss-grown and century gnarled, rose high, 
 
 And clasped in rugged arms, as lovers might 
 
 Their circlet-plighted maids, magnolia-trees, 
 
 Decked in the white wealth of their bridal pride. 
 
 I had not thought since time began that foot, 
 
 Save mine, had pressed that virgin mold ; an air 
 
 Of the divine was there ; a censer smell 
 
 Of woodland sacrifice and worship filled 
 
 The balmy lapses of the tangled shade ; 
 
 In the wood's deep heart, half hid by drooping vines 
 
 Pendant from one dark-fronded ash that stood
 
 142 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 Taller than all his kind, I came upon 
 
 A lonely mound and sate me down in thought. 
 
 " Darkness was near full and still descending night 
 
 Her pall spread over heaven, till, like a soul 
 
 Let loose from clay, the moon leaped on the sea 
 
 And poured its light through all the woven gloom 
 
 Of vines and odorous boughs that shut me in. 
 
 Clothed in the moonlight's splendor, one came forth 
 
 From out the vine-screened depths, and, standing near, 
 
 Made low obeisance and began to speak : 
 
 ' Fair greetings, son ! long have I waited here 
 
 The coming of thy steps.' With this I looked 
 
 More closely on his form. His flowing hair, 
 
 White as the frost on Sitkan hills, fell full 
 
 Upon his shoulders bare, athwart which hung 
 
 A silken badge, with tinsel emblems set. 
 
 His swarthy face was crossed by many a line 
 
 That age, not care, had wrought. 
 
 "After a pause, 
 
 And stretching forth his hand, he thus went on : 
 1 My words are dark ; but know I am the last 
 Of a long line of priestly men who stood 
 Within the shrines of that Atlantic Isle 
 Long perished, but renowned in all the earth. 
 All wisdom of all times, Indie, Egyptic, 
 Iranic and the roots of the fair tree 
 Etruscan grown, concentered in that school 
 Of wisest fellowship, and sense of things
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 143 
 
 That, like the leaf, lie folded in the years 
 
 Of dark futurity. At night the last 
 
 Of all her history, wherein to rise no more 
 
 The fair isle sank into the hungry seas 
 
 A remnant of the holy house embarked 
 
 And, heaven led, pitched on these shores and built 
 
 Great mounds and many a sinuous temple wall, 
 
 In ruins long I, the latest and alone, 
 
 Have sat me here a hundred circling years, 
 
 Poring the rolls of Ayar-manco-topa, 
 
 Sage of mighty soul. Therein 'tis writ 
 
 That he who keeps the holy line alone 
 
 Shall bide him in this vine-embowered place 
 
 And forth conduct whoever sits him first 
 
 Upon this grassy bosk if so he will 
 
 Unto an isle far in the summer sea, 
 
 Where leaps to kiss of living light the spray 
 
 Of the clear Fount of Youth, whereof who drinks 
 
 Forgets his present pain and evermore 
 
 Shall know his early dreams, and strength 
 
 Wherewith to compass hope. And thou art first. 
 
 " Instant,"! cried, with wildness in my voice 
 
 ' Lead forth, O holy man, to that fair isle ! 
 
 Surely the gods are wise and kind, and fate 
 
 Forgets its evil end ! I follow thee 
 
 To that new hope, as one of blindness smit 
 
 Follows the guiding hand through dangerous paths.' 
 
 Few steps brought to the stream's green banks our feet ;
 
 144 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 And there, fast moored, beneath a rock that dripped 
 With tinkling water drops, a white-winged boat, 
 Made ready for the wave. Quickly embarked, 
 The moorings loosed, we pointed toward the deep. 
 The land-breeze fed the trembling sails, and soon 
 The keel leaped to the white arms of the surf, 
 And sang a listless song of oce soft note. 
 The breeze rose to a gale a gale from skies 
 Of cloudless blue, o'erflecked with isles of fire. 
 Behind the rattling sails and groaning spars 
 The prophet sate to helm the bark and sang, 
 Or chanted loud, a hymn of ancient lore. 
 All wisdom of all times pulsed through its words, 
 And hope of future days not earth's, I ween. 
 Much more he sang, but this mine ears retained : 
 
 SONG. 
 
 1 " ' Man clings to time ! the ebbing tide sweeps out, 
 
 Leaving a beach of trodden sands behind, 
 Fringed with a range of hoary shades that flout 
 
 Funereal banners in the sobbing wind ; 
 And ghostly shapes walk in the dim inane, 
 
 Dumb with the draught of Lethe's slumb'rous wave, 
 Or lade the denser gloom with rueful plain, 
 
 "While dull Oblivion smiles to hear them rave. 
 
 2 " ' Beyond that strip of coast-line trodden bare, 
 
 Beyond the long gray swell of tossing gloom, 
 Cinctured with fading sunlight here and there, 
 Few know the secrets of that realm of doom ;
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 145 
 
 Few souls have pierced beyond its middle wild, 
 Still fewer heard the pulsing ocean beat 
 
 In languid measures on the rocks up-piled, 
 Its other shore, bereft of light and heat. 
 
 3 " ' Some, passing thence, returned with thrilling tale 
 
 Of what opposed their sight the journey on, 
 Of marble wonders fallen low, with trail 
 
 Of ruin everywhere ; of beauty gone 
 From palaces and courts of mighty kings. 
 
 Where fell the splendor of a thousand years 
 Now falls the night of waste, and ivy clings 
 
 To shrines once boasting royal worshipers. 
 
 4 " ' We cling to life ! the ebbing tide sweeps out ; 
 
 A leaden sky infolds the foaming deep ; 
 Faint Occidental flushes dance about 
 
 The far horizon, where the billows keep 
 Their wavering line opposed against its blue ; 
 
 A zodiacal gloam sifts through the haze 
 And timeward falls, with weird and wasted hue ; 
 
 Dies on the strand or on the distant maze. 
 
 5 " ' These be the tokens of a sunken sun 
 
 And of the fading day, whose orbed rays, 
 Paling from narrower skies, have but begun 
 
 To weave the woofed splendors of the days 
 Immortal named. Yet still we cling to life, 
 
 And cast the anchor, moved by doubt's alarm 
 To hear the ocean break in fitful strife 
 
 Or see the night-racks fly before the storm ! 
 10
 
 146 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 6 " l Dank are the landward shades and wet with dew 
 
 The feathery fronds, outlined against the mist, 
 Whose leaden zone gains surely on the view. 
 
 Launch forth into the deep, though fears resist! 
 The Happy Isles and Lotus Coasts are hid 
 
 Far in the watery wastes. Launch forth to peace ! 
 The sun-dyed clouds foretype thy joy and bid 
 
 As Argonauts to seek the Golden Fleece ! ' 
 
 "The bark swept on before the sleepless wind 
 , And slipped, at morn, into a waste .of reefs 
 Green with the coral palm and ivies twined 
 
 About the tropic beach ; tall reeds and sheafs 
 Of lush green grass whispered above the sea. 
 
 Fair-plumaged birds battled with burnished wings 
 The warm-breathed gale, and all things glad and free 
 
 Told of a summer in whose fullness springs 
 All rapture of delight that, passing into song, 
 
 To thralldom charms the list'ning soul. The day 
 Had faded half and, falling deep among 
 
 The lessening banks, the winds had died away ; 
 But in a current of the sea the boat 
 
 Was drifting toward a mist-veiled coast with hue 
 Of purpling light beyond. As bubbles float 
 
 Upon the stream, we floated on and drew 
 
 Our course hard on a rocky cove and threw 
 The anchor by the shore. The sinking sun 
 
 Stretched forth his beamy hands and held the mist 
 High o'er the Happy Isle, when brightly shone
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 147 
 
 Its nameless beauty on our sight. I kissed 
 The mossy rocks and left my feeble lips 
 
 Buried a moment in the cooling dew, 
 
 When lo ! a sound of gurgling water drew 
 My fancy toward the inner isle. My heai't 
 
 Beat like a hunted stag's ; hope burned anew 
 In every breath : waters of youth that part 
 
 The soul from all its evil fears flowed near. 
 Led by the priest, soon to the welling wave 
 
 I came and stood, feasting desire. Light clear, 
 And deep as heaven's blue well, it seemed and gave 
 
 Eeflected wonders from its depths. I stooped 
 To drink, but ere my lips had touched the wave 
 
 It shrank and died, and moistless sand instead 
 Filled the deep cave. I rose, and all the isle 
 
 Was changed into a waste of sand that spread 
 From shore to shore ; nor sign of life the while, 
 
 Nor sound of living thing, save the dark priest, 
 
 And he, a shadow grown, faded to mist 
 And passed, like all my hopes, away. A voice 
 
 Came with the last faint trace of shade that told 
 The outline of his form : ' Hollow the noise 
 
 Of human pride and wisdom late or old ; 
 Death is the tree and death must be the fruit.' 
 
 " Prone to the earth I fell and laid in dust 
 The lips deceived and cried, 'Above the brute 
 
 No whit is man; nobler in form, with trust 
 
 In higher things, but both go downward to the earth.'
 
 148 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 
 
 The heart within me died, and seemed to blend 
 
 With parent clay, resolved to primal birth; 
 But since, in death or kind relief, must end 
 
 Our bitterest woe, I waited, hoping naught, 
 When one with burning finger smote my cheek ; 
 
 Whereat I rose, and lo! a change was wrought 
 In all the isle, that seemed no isle, nor bleak 
 
 And waste, but a most sacred land and strewed, 
 Toward every wind of heaven, with wonders wide ; 
 
 Its vales and terraced hills, of old, to tread 
 And the swift toil of thousands woke with pride 
 
 Of fruitful years ; but *now no mortal fares, 
 Or shall fare, through forever. The wild palm 
 
 In leagues of vacancy hails the soft airs 
 That breathe a scent of terebinth and balm 
 
 Over the dust of many a ruined pile 
 That swells from the smooth stretch of goodly plains, 
 
 Or keeps the stately shape and dim profile 
 Of ancient grandeur, slowly wrought in reigns 
 
 Of peaceful kings. There was nor voice nor sound 
 What time I stood with fate contending there, 
 
 But pain was grown to stark despair and bound 
 With rueless chains. 
 
 " Lo ! where with aimless stare 
 
 I gazed, a mount sloped upward toward the skies 
 Against which stood a cross, and round it played 
 
 A mystic light, fanned to a glow by sighs 
 That angels breathed sighs of desire, not made 
 
 Of grief.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 149 
 
 " Down from the mount a Form moved slow, 
 Until it stood and looked upon my face ; 
 
 Benignly calm it gazed and spake in low 
 And measured tones : 'Arise, thou fallen soul ; grace 
 
 Bids thee rise. Thy will has died, but lives; I 
 Who speak, the living Christ, shall make thee stand. 
 
 I am thy strength unto eternity.' 
 
 " I seemed to quaff a cup held in a hand 
 
 To me invisible : a cup I knew 
 I could but know the truth that kings and seers 
 
 And mighty ones of old had quaffed. The dew 
 Distilled in Paradise and sweetened airs 
 
 Blown from its hills across the lily marge 
 Of life's clear wave had not more grateful proved 
 
 To my faint soul. What owned I then ? Deep, large, 
 And calm as ether's sea, heaven's fullness moved 
 
 Upon my sense, and moved with every draught. 
 O holy cup ! O very grail ! I drank 
 
 And, drinking, felt within me power and craft 
 Of evil motions die. Not then a blank, 
 
 As I had prayed a time before, my life 
 Of darker thoughts and appetite, but force 
 
 And argument sustaining trust : a strife 
 With doubt, and ever so to be. 
 
 " What course 
 The spirit's currents ran was changed. The note 
 
 Discordant in our harmony of love 
 Was drowned in faith's full-measured song. I wote
 
 150 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC BOXAXCE. 
 
 That man is spirit more than flesh : I strove, 
 Therefore, no more, and mind o'er flesh was staid. 
 
 I knew the kingly words of Him whose hands, 
 Once pierced, sustained the universe. He laid 
 
 On me (O awful joy !) those kingly hands, 
 And all His soul passed into mine. I made 
 
 Thereat to rise, spurning the desert's sands, 
 But woke that moment in the hermit's cot ; 
 
 And all is well! Ah ! do we sit this hour 
 In Paradise? and is thy face unwrought 
 
 Of earthly hue, and angel's made, that power 
 Of beauty soul-consuming it reveals ? 
 
 Afar in joyless paths I vainly sought 
 To find what this good hour my bosom fills : 
 
 I wake from trance of morbid fear to thought 
 Of those fair days wherein our wedded souls 
 
 Shall walk to triumph of their early dream, 
 
 And lo ! our token : fades the twilight's bolder gleam, 
 But in his own clear light the Star of Evening rolls ! " 
 
 I/ENVOI. 
 
 The fortnight of my tale is done ; I seal 
 This Book of Life and, sealing, steal 
 Into that silence whence I came. He cares 
 "Who smote these strings vibrant to many airs, 
 He cares but little for the fleeting praise 
 That lives on transient lips. He sought to raise 
 A beacon by a storm-swept coast. If there 
 Some sin-tossed soul shall see and fare 
 To hope and God, he is repaid.
 
 RUPERT WISE: A POETIC ROMANCE. 151 
 
 My ears 
 
 .Approve a sound of myriad feet ; the years 
 That are to be reverberate with song 
 And paean shout of conquering hosts that throng 
 The fields of strife and, thronging, turn the tide 
 Toward victory's perfect day. Faith, Hope abide, 
 And Love ; and, led by Him, the living Form, 
 I send this arrow at the Python worm. 
 
 THE END.
 
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