Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice
Slept, clasp'd in his embrace.-O, storm of death!
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night:
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still
Guiding its irresistible career

In thy devastating omnipotence,

Art King of this frail world, from the red field
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,
A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
His Brother Death.

A rare and regal prey

He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
Glutted with which, thou mayest repose, and men
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

Did he resign his high and holy soul

To images of the majestic past,

That paused within his passive being now,

That minister'd on sunlight, ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frameNo sense, no motion, no divinity

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
The breath of heaven did wander-a bright stream
Once fed with many-voiced waves—a dream
Of youth, which night and time have quench'd for

ever,

Still, dark, and dry, and unremember'd now.

O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
Which, wheresoe'er it fell. made the earth gleam
With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,
Profuse of poisons, would conceal the chalice
Which but one living man has drain'd, who now,
Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels
No proud exemption in the blighting curse
He bears, over the world wanders for ever,
Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream
Of dark magician in his vision'd cave,
Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand
Shakes in its last decay, were the true law
Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk
Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone
Reclined his languid head; his limbs did rest,
Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
Of that obscurest chasm;-and thus he lay,
Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair,
The torturers, slept: no mortal pain or fear
Marr'd his repose, the influxes of sense,
And his own being unalloy'd by pain,
Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there
At peace, and faintly smiling:-his last sight
Was the great moon, which o'er the western line
Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seem'd
To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills
It rests, and still as the divided frame
Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,
That ever beat in mystic sympathy

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:
And when two lessening points of light alone
Gleam'd through the darkness, the alternate gasp
Of his faint respiration scarce did stir
The stagnate night-till the minutest ray
Was quench'd, the pulse yet linger'd in his heart.
It paused-it flutter'd. But when heaven remain'd
Utterly black, the murky shades involved
An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.
Even as a vapor fed with golden beams

The child of grace and genius. Heartless things
Are done and said i' the world, and many worms
And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth
From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,
In vesper low or joyous orison,

Lifts still its solemn voice:-but thou art fled-
Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes
Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee
Been purest ministers, who are, alas!
Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips
So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes
That image sleep in death, upon that form
Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear
Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues
Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,
Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone
In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
Let not high verse, mourning the memory
Of that which is no more, or painting's woe,
Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery
Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,
And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain
To weep a loss that turns their light to shade.
It is a woe too "deep for tears," when all
Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,
Whose light adorn'd the world around it, leaves
Those who remain behind, nor sobs nor groans,
The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;
But pale despair and cold tranquillity,
Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,
Birth and the grave, that are not as they were

395

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE story of ROSALIND and HELEN, is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favorable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it.

COME hither, my sweet Rosalind.
"Tis long since thou and I have met,
And yet methinks it were unkind
Those moments to forget.
Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying
To the hues of yon fair heaven.
Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
And be as thou wert wont to be
Ere we were disunited?

None doth behold us now: the power
That led us forth at this lone hour
Will be but ill requited

If thou depart in scorn: oh! come,
And talk of our abandon'd home.
Remember, this is Italy,

And we are exiles. Talk with me
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
Barren and dark although they be,
Were dearer than these chestnut woods;
Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream:
Which that we have abandon'd now,
Weighs on the heart like that remorse
Which alter'd friendship leaves. I seek
No more our youthful intercourse.
That cannot be! Rosalind, speak,

Speak to me. Leave me not.-When morn did

come,

When evening fell upon our common home,
When for one hour we parted,-do not frown;
I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken
But turn to me. Oh! by this cherish'd token,
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown
Turn, as 't were but the memory of me,
And not my scorned self who pray'd to thee

ROSALIND.

Is it a dream, or do I see

And hear frail Helen? I would flee
Thy tainting touch; but former years
Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
And my o'erburthen'd memory
Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.

I share thy crime. I cannot choose
But weep for thee: mine own strange grief
But seldom stoops to such relief;

Nor ever did I love thee less,

Though mourning o'er thy wickedness
Even with a sister's woe. I knew
What to the evil world is due,
And therefore sternly did refuse
To link me with the infamy
Of one so lost as Helen. Now
Bewilder'd by my dire despair,
Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
Shouldst love me still, thou only!-There,
Let us sit on that gray stone,
Till our mournful talk be done.

HELEN.

Alas! not there; I cannot bear
The murmur of this lake to hear.
A sound from thee, Rosalind dear,
Which never yet I heard elsewhere
But in our native land, recurs,

Even here where now we meet. It stirs
Too much of suffocating sorrow!

In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood
Is a stone seat, a solitude

Less like our own. The ghost of peace
Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
If thy kind feelings should not cease,
We may sit here.

In silence then they took the way
Beneath the forest's solitude.
It was a vast and antique wood,
Through which they took their way;
And the gray shades of evening
O'er that green wilderness did fling
Still deeper solitude.

Pursuing still the path that wound
The vast and knotted trees around

Through which slow shades were wandering,
To a deep lawny dell they came,
To a stone seat beside a spring,

O'er which the column'd wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man's early race once knelt beneath
The overhanging deity.

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
In the light of his own loveliness;
And the birds that in the fountain dip
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
Above and round him wheel and hover.
The fitful wind is heard to stir
One solitary leaf on high;
The chirping of the grasshopper
Fills every pause. There is emotion
In all that dwells at noontide here:
Then, through the intricate wild wood,
A maze of life and light and motion
Is woven. But there is stillness now;
Gloom, and the trance of Nature now:
The snake is in his cave asleep;
The birds are on the branches dreaming:
Only the shadows creep;

Only the glow-worm is gleaming;

Only the owls and the nightingales
Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
And gray shades gather in the woods:
And the owls have all fled far away
In a merrier glen to hoot and play,
For the moon is veil'd and sleeping now.
The accustom'd nightingale still broods
On her accustom'd bough,

But she is mute; for her false mate
Has fled and left her desolate.

This silent spot tradition old

Had peopled with the spectral dead.
For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold
And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
That a hellish shape at midnight led
The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
And sate on the seat beside him there,
Till a naked child came wandering by,
When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
A fearful tale! The truth was worse:
For here a sister and a brother
Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
Meeting in this fair solitude:
For beneath yon very sky,
Had they resign'd to one another
Body and soul. The multitude,
Tracking them to the secret wood,
Tore limb from limb their innocent child,
And stabb'd and trampled on its mother;
But the youth, for God's most holy grace,
A priest saved to burn in the market-place.

Duly at evening Helen came

To this lone silent spot,

From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow So much sympathy to borrow

As soothed her own dark lot.

Duly each evening from her home,

With her fair child would Helen come

To sit upon that antique seat,
While the hues of day were pale;

And the bright boy beside her feet
Now lay, lifting at intervals
His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse calls
Following. He was a gentle boy
And in all gentle sports took joy;
Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
With a small feather for a sail,

His fancy on that spring would float,
If some invisible breeze might stir
Its marble calm: and Helen smiled
Through tears of awe on the gay child,
To think that a boy as fair as he,
In years which never more may be,
By that same fount, in that same wood,
The like sweet fancies had pursued;
And that a mother, lost like her,
Had mournfully sate watching him.
Then all the scene was wont to swim
Through the mist of a burning tear.

For many months had Helen known This scene; and now she thither turn'd

Her footsteps, not alone.

The friend whose falsehood she had mourn'd,
Sate with her on that seat of stone.
Silent they sate; for evening,
And the power its glimpses bring
Had, with one awful shadow, quell'd
The passion of their grief. They sate
With linked hands, for unrepell'd
Had Helen taken Rosalind's.

Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair,
Which is twined in the sultry summer air
Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,
Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
And the sound of her heart that ever beat,
As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;
And from her laboring bosom now,
Like the bursting of a prison'd flame,
The voice of a long-pent sorrow came.

ROSALIND.

I saw the dark earth fall upon
The coffin; and I saw the stone
Laid over him whom this cold breast
Had pillow'd to his nightly rest!
Thou knowest not, thou canst not know
My agony. Oh! I could not weep:
The sources whence such blessings flow
Were not to be approach'd by me!
But I could smile, and I could sleep,
Though with a self-accusing heart.
In morning's light, in evening's gloom,

I watch'd, and would not thence depart,-
My husband's unlamented tomb.
My children knew their sire was gone,
But when I told them, "he is dead,"
They laugh'd aloud in frantic glee,

They clapp'd their hands and leap'd about,
Answering each other's ecstasy
With many a prank and merry shout.
But I sate silent and alone,

Wrapp'd in the mock of mourning weed.

They laugh'd, for he was dead; but I
Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
And with a heart which would deny
The secret joy it could not quell,
Low muttering o'er his lothed name;
Till from that self-contention came
Remorse where sin was none; a hell
Which in pure spirits should not dwell.

I'll tell the truth. He was a man
Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
Yet full of guile: his pale eyes ran
With tears, which each some falsehood told,
And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
Would give the lie to his flushing cheek:
He was a coward to the strong;
He was a tyrant to the weak,

On whom his vengeance he would wreak :
For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,
From many a stranger's eye would dart,

And on his memory cling, and follow
His soul to its home so cold and hollow
He was a tyrant to the weak,
And we were such, alas the day!
Oft, when my little ones at play,
Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
Or if they listen'd to some tale

Of travellers, or of fairy-land,

When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
Flash'd on their faces,-if they heard

Or thought they heard upon the stair
His footstep, the suspended word
Died on my lips: we all grew pale;
The babe at my bosom was hush'd with fear,
If it thought it heard its father near;
And my two wild boys would near my knee
Cling, cow'd and cowering fearfully.

I'll tell the truth: I loved another.
His name in my ear was ever ringing,
His form to my brain was ever clinging;
Yet if some stranger breathed that name,

My lips turn'd white, and my heart beat fast:

My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame My days were dim in the shadow cast,

By the memory of the same!

Day and night, day and night,

He was my breath and life and light,

For three short years, which soon were past
On the fourth, my gentle mother
Led me to the shrine, to be

His sworn bride eternally.

And now we stood on the altar-stair,

When my father came from a distant land,
And with a loud and fearful cry,
Rush'd between us suddenly.

I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,

I saw his lean and lifted hand,

And heard his words,-and live! O God!
Wherefore do I live?" Hold, hold!"
He cried," I tell thee 'tis her brother!
Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
Of yon church-yard rests in her shroud so cold
I am now weak, and pale, and old :
We were once dear to one another,
I and that corpse! Thou art our child!"
Then with a laugh both long and wild
The youth upon the pavement fell:
They found him dead! All look'd on me.
The spasms of my despair to see;
But I was calm. I went away;
I was clammy-cold like clay!
I did not weep-I did not speak;
But day by day, week after week,
I walk'd about like a corpse alive!
Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
This heart is stone-it did not break.

My father lived a little while,

But all might see that he was dying, He smiled with such a woful smile! When he was in the church-yard lying Among the worms, he grew quite poor, So that no one would give us bread. My mother look'd at me, and said

Faint words of cheer, which only meant
That she could die and be content;
So I went forth from the same church-door
To another husband's bed.

And this was he who died at last,

When weeks and months and years had past,
Through which I firmly did fulfil
My duties, a devoted wife,

With the stern step of vanquish'd will,
Walking beneath the night of life,
Whose hours extinguish'd, like slow rain
Falling for ever, pain by pain,

The very hope of death's dear rest;
Which, since the heart within my breast
Of natural life was dispossest,

Its strange sustainer there had been.

When flowers were dead, and grass was green
Upon my mother's grave,-that mother
Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make
My wan eyes glitter for her sake,
Was my vow'd task, the single care
Which once gave life to my despair,-
When she was a thing that did not stir,
And the crawling worms were cradling her
To a sleep more deep and so more sweet
Than a baby's rock'd on its nurse's knee,
I lived; a living pulse then beat
Beneath my heart that awaken'd me.
What was this pulse so warm and free?
Alas! I knew it could not be

My own dull blood: 'twas like a thought
Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
Under my bosom and in my brain,

And crept with the blood through every vein;
And hour by hour, day after day,
The wonder could not charm away,
But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain,
Until I knew it was a child,
And then I wept. For long, long years
These frozen eyes had shed no tears:
But now-'t was the season fair and mild
When April has wept itself to May:
I sate through the sweet sunny day
By my window bower'd round with leaves,
And down my cheeks the quick tears ran
Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,
When warm spring showers are passing o'er:
O Helen, none can ever tell

The joy it was to weep once more!

I wept to think how hard it were
To kill my babe, and take from it
The sense of light, and the warm air,
And my own fond and tender care,
And love and smiles; ere I knew yet
That these for it might, as for me,
Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet
To feed it from my faded breast,
Or mark my own heart's restless beat
Rock it to its untroubled rest,

And watch the growing soul beneath
Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
Half interrupted by calm sighs,

And search the depth of its fair eyes
For long departed memories!
And so I lived till that sweet load
Was lighten'd. Darkly forward flow'd
The stream of years, and on it bore
Two shapes of gladness to my sight;
Two other babes, delightful more
In my lost soul's abandon'd night,
Than their own country ships may be
Sailing towards wreck'd mariners,
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
For each, as it came, brought soothing tears
And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
Sucking the sullen milk away

About my frozen heart, did play,
And wean'd it, oh how painfully!-
As they themselves were wean'd each one
From that sweet food,-even from the thirst
Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
Strange inmate of a living breast!
Which all that I had undergone
Of grief and shame, since she, who first
The gates of that dark refuge closed,
Came to my sight, and almost burst
The seal of that Lethean spring;
But these fair shadows interposed:
For all delights are shadows now!
And from my brain to my dull brow
The heavy tears gather and flow:
I cannot speak-Oh let me weep!

The tears which fell from her wan eyes Glimmer'd among the moonlight dew; Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs Their echoes in the darkness threw. When she grew calm, she thus did keep The tenor of her tale :

He died,

I know not how. He was not old,
If age be number'd by its years;
But he was bow'd and bent with fears,
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak,
And his strait lip and bloated cheek
Were warp'd in spasms by hollow sneers.
And selfish cares with barren plow,
Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed
Upon the withering life within,
Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
Whether his ill were death or sin
None knew, until he died indeed,

And then men own'd they were the same.

Seven days within my chamber lay
That corse, and my babes made holiday:
At last, I told them what is death:
The eldest, with a kind of shame,
Came to my knees with silent breath,
And sate awe-stricken at my feet,
And soon the others left their play,
And sate there too. It is unmeet
To shed on the brief flower of youth
The withering knowledge of the grave,
From me remorse then wrung that truth