Of such seclusion know we naught;
Yet surely woman here
Grows shrouded from all common thought,
More delicate and dear.
And love, thus made a thing apart,
Must seem the more divine,
When the sweet temple of the heart
Is a thrice-veiled shrine.
AGAIN I am beside the lake,
The lonely lake, which used to be
The wide world of the beating heart,
When I was, love, with thee.
I see the quiet evening lights
Amid the distant mountains shine;
I hear the music of a lute;
It used to come from thine.
How can another sing the song,
The sweet sad song that was thine own?
It is alike, yet not the same;
It has not caught thy tone.
Ah, never other lip may catch
The sweetness round thine own that clung;
To me there is a tone unheard,
There is a chord unstrung.
Thou loveliest lake, I sought thy shores,
That dreams from other days might cast
The presence elsewhere sought in vain,
The presence of the past.
I find the folly of the search,
Thou bringest but half the past again;
My pleasure calling faintly back
Too vividly my pain.
Too real the memories that haunt
The purple shadows round thy brink-
I only asked of thee to dream,
I did not ask to think.
False beauty haunting still my heart,
Though long since from that heart removed;
These waves but tell me how thou wert
Too well and vainly loved.
Fair lake, it is all vain to seek
The influence of thy lonely shore-
I ask of thee for hope and love-
They come to me no more.
AND there is silence in that lonely hall,
Save where the waters of the fountains fall,
And the wind s distant murmuring, which takes
Sweet messages from every bud it wakes..
'Tis more than midnight; all the lamps are gone,
Their fragrant oils exhausted,-all but one,
A little silver lamp beside a scroll,
Where a young maiden leant, and poured her soul,
In those last words, the bitter and the brief :
How can they say confiding is relief?
Light are the woes that to the eyelids spring,
Subdued and softened by the tears they bring;
But there are some too long, too well concealed,
Too deeply felt,-that are but once revealed:
Like the withdrawing of the mortal dart,
And then the life-blood follows from the heart;
Sorrow, before unspoken by a sigh,
But which, once spoken, only hath to die.
Young, very young, the lady was, who now
Bowed on her slender hand her weary brow:
Not beautiful, save when the eager thought
In the soft eyes a sudden beauty wrought:
Not beautiful, save when the cheek's warm blush
Grew eloquent with momentary flush
Of feeling, that made beauty, not to last,
And scarcely caught, so quickly is it past.
-Alas! she knew it well; too early throw
'Mid a cold world, the unloved and the lone,
With no near kindred ties on whom could dwell
Love that so sought to be beloved as well,
Too sensitive for flattery, and too kind
To bear the loneliness by fate assigned,
Her life had been a struggle; long she strove
To fix on things inanimate her love;
On pity, kindness, music, gentle lore,
All that romance could yield of fairy store.
In vain! she loved :-she loved, and from that hour
Gone were the quiet loves of bird or flower;
The unread book dropped listless on her knee,
The untouched lute hung on the bending tree,
Whose unwreathed boughs no more a pleasant shade
For the lone dreamings of her twilight made.
-Well might she love him: every eye was turned
On that young knight, and bright cheeks brighter
Save one, that grew the paler for his sake:
Alas! for her, whose heart but beat to break;
Who knew too well, not hers the lip or eye
For which the youthful lover swears to die.
How deep, how merciless, the love repressed,
That robs the silent midnight of its rest;
That sees in gathered crowds but one alone;
That hears in mingled footsteps only one;
That turns the poet's page, to only find
Some mournful image for itself designed;
That seeks in music but the plaining tone
Which secret sorrow whispers in its own!
Alas for the young heart, when love is there,
Its comrade and its confidant, despair!
How often leant in some unnoticed spot,
Her very being by the throng forgot,
Shrunk back to shun the glad lamp's mocking ray,
Passed many a dark and weary hour away,
Watching the young, the beautiful, the bright,
Seeming more lovely in that lonely light;
And as each fair face glided through the dance,
Stealing at some near mirror one swift glance,
Then, starting at the contrast, seek her room,
To weep, at least, in solitude and gloom!
And he, her stately idol, he, with eye
Dark as the eagle's in a summer sky,
And darker curls, amid whose raven shade
The very wild wind amorously delayed,
With that bright smile, which makes all others dim,
So proud, so sweet,-what part had she in him?
And yet she loved him: who may say, be still,
To the fond heart that beats not at our will?
"Twas too much wretchedness :-the convent cell,
There might the maiden with her misery dwell.
And that, to-morrow was her chosen doom:
There might her hopes, her feelings find a tomb.
Her feelings!-no-pray, struggle, weep, condemn-
Her feelings, there was but one grave for them.
'Twas her last night, and she had looked her last,
And she must live henceforward in the past.
She lingered in the hall,—he had been there;
Her pale lips grew yet paler with the prayer
That only asked his happiness. She took
A blank leaf from an old emblazoned book,
Which told love's chronicles; a faint hope stole,-
A sweet light o'er the darkness of her soul-
Might she not leave remembrance, like the wreath
Whose dying flowers their scents on twilight breathe
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