A morn too glowing sets in storm at noon."
"Nay," answer'd Morvale, gently, "hast thou tried
That second youth, to which ev'n follies guide; Which to the wanderer Sense, when tired and spent, Proclaims the fount by which to fix the tent? The heart but rests when sense forbears to roam; We win back freshness when Love smiles on Home;— Home not to thee, O happy one! denied." } } "To me of all," the impatient listener cried, } "Thy words but probe the wounds I vainly hide; } That which I pine for, thou hast pictured now;— The hearth, the home, the altar, and the vow; The tranquil love, unintertwined with shame; The child's sweet kiss;—the Father's holy name; The link to lengthen a time-honour'd line;— These not for me, and yet these should be mine." "If," said the Indian, "counsel could avail, Or pity soothe, a friend invites thy tale."
"Alas!" sigh'd Arden, "nor confession's balm
Can heal, nor wisdom whisper back to calm.
Yet hear the tale—thou wilt esteem me less—
But Grief, the Egoist, yearneth to confess.
I tell of guilt—and guilt all men must own,
Who but avow the loves their youth has known.
Preach as we will, in this wrong world of ours,
Man's fate and woman's are contending powers;
Each strives to dupe the other in the game—
Guilt to the victor—to the vanquish'd shame!"
He paused, and noting how austerely gloom'd
His friend's dark visage, blush'd, and thus resumed.
"Nay, I approve not of the code I find,
Not less the wrong to which the world is kind.
But, to be frank, how oft with praise we scan
Men's actions only when they deal with man;
Lo, gallant Lovelace, free from every art
That stains the honour or defiles the heart—
With men;—but how, if woman the pursuit? What lies degrade him, and what frauds pollute; Yet still to Lovelace either sex is mild, And new Clarissas only sigh—'How wild!'"
"Enough," said Morvale; "I perforce believe:
Strong Adam owns no equal in his Eve;
But worse the bondage in your bland disguise;
Europe destroys—kind Asia only buys!
If dull the Harem, yet its roof protects,
And Power, when sated, still its slave respects.
With you, ev'n pity fades away with love—
No gilded cage gives refuge to the dove;
Worse than the sin the curse it leaves behind:
Here the crush'd heart, or there the poison'd mind—
Your streets a charnel or a market made,
For the lorn hunger, or the loathsome trade.
Pardon—Pass on!"
"Behold, the Preface done,"
Arden resumed, "now opens Chapter One!"
III. LORD ARDEN'S TALE.
"Rear'd in a court, a man while yet a boy,
Hermes said 'Rise,' and Venus sigh'd 'Enjoy;'
My earlier dreams, like tints in rainbows given,
Caught from the Muse, glow'd but in clasping heaven;
The bird-like instinct of a sphere afar
Pined for the air, and chafed against the bar.
But can to Guelphs Augustan tastes belong?
Or Georgium Sidus look benign on song? My short-lived Muse the ungenial climate tried, Breathed some faint warbles, caught a cold, and died! Wise kinsmen whisper'd 'Hush! forewarn'd in time; The feet that rise are not the feet of Rhyme; Your cards are good, but all is in the lead, Play out the heart, and you are lost indeed: Leave verse, my boy, to unaspiring men— The eagle's pinion never sheds a pen!'
"So fled the Muse! What left the Muse behind?
The aimless fancy and the restless mind;
The eyes, still won by whatsoe'er was bright,
But lost the star's to prize the diamond's light.
Man, like the child, accepts the bauble boon.
And clasps the coral where he ask'd the moon.
Forbid the pomp and royalty of heaven—
To the born Poet still the earth is given;
Duped by each glare in which Corruption seems
To give the glory imaged on his dreams:
Thus, what had been the thirst for deathless fame,
Grew the fierce hunger for the Moment's name;
Ambition placed its hard desires in Power,
And saw no Jove but in the Golden Shower.
No miser I—no niggard of the store—
The end Olympus, but the means the ore:
I look'd below—there Lazarus crawl'd disdain'd;
I look'd aloft—there, who but Dives reign'd?
He who would make the steeps of power his home,
Must mask the Titan till he rules the Gnome.
If I insist on this, my soul's disease,
Excuse for fault thy practised sight foresees:
It makes the moral of my tale, in truth,
And boyhood sow'd the poison of my youth.
"Meanwhile men praised, and women smiled;—the wing,
Bow'd from the height, still bask'd beneath the spring.
Pass by the Paphian follies of that day—
When true love comes, it is to close our May.
Well, ere my boyish holiday was o'er,
The grim god came, and mirth was mine no more:
A well-born pauper, I seem'd doom'd to live
By what great men to well-born paupers give:
I had an uncle high in power and state,
Who ruled three kingdoms' and one nephew's fate.
This uncle loved, as English thanes will all,
An autumn's respite in his rural hall;
In slaughtering game, relax'd his rigid breast;
And so—behold me martyr'd to his guest!
IV.
"Wandering, one day, in discontented mood
By a clear brook—through grassy solitude,
Leading the dance of light waves chanting low—
A little world of sunshine seem'd to grow
Out from the landscape—as with sudden spring
From bosk and brake—leapt the stream glittering.
Lo, the meek home, its porch with roses twined,
Green sward before, a sacred tower behind;
On the green sward the year's last flowers were gay,
And the last glory of the golden day
Paused on the spire, that, shining, soar'd to cleave
Those clouds, the loveliest, that precede the eve.
"Along the bank, beneath the bowering