'If thou wilt,
Tell all;—dishonour not alone in guilt!
Men's eyes dishonour in the fallen see;—
Speak, and dishonour thou inflict'st on me:
The debt, the want, the beggary, and the shame—
The pauper branded on the noble's name!
Speak and inflict—I still can spurn—the doom;
Unveil the altar to prepare the tomb!
I, who already in my grasp behold,
Bright from Hesperian fields, the fruit of gold,
By which alone the glorious prize we gain,
Foil'd of the goal will die upon the plain.
I own two brides, both dear alike, and see
In one Ambition—in the other Thee:
Destroy thy rival, and to her destroy'd
Succeeds despair to make the world a void.'
Then, with stern frankness to that shrinking ear,
I told my hopes—in her my only fear;
Told, with a cheek no humbling blushes dyed,
How met the sire—how unavow'd the bride!
'Thus have I wrong'd—this cruel silence mine;
And now be truth, and truth is vengeance, thine!'
I ceased to speak; lo, she had ceased to weep;
Her white lips writhed, as Suffering in its sleep;
And o'er the frame a tremulous shudder went,
As every life-stream to the source was sent:
The very sense seem'd absent from the look,
And with the Heart, its temple, Reason shook!
So there was silence; such a silence broods
In winter nights, o'er frost-bound solitudes,
Darkness, and ice, and stillness all in one—
The silence without life, the withering without sun.
But o'er that silence, as at night's full noon,
Through breathless cloud, shimmers the sudden moon;
A sad but heavenly smile a moment stirr'd,
And heralded the martyr's patient word:
'Fear not; pursue thy way to fortune, fame;
I will not soil thy glory with my shame.
Betray! avenge!—For ever, until thou
Proclaim the bond and ratify the vow,
Closed in this heart, as lamps within the tomb,
Shall waste the light, that lives amidst the gloom—
That lives, for oh! the day shall come at length, Though late, though slow—(give hope, for hope is strength!)— When, from a father's breast no more exiled, The wife may ask forgiveness for the child?'"
VIII.
"And so you parted?" with a moisten'd eye,
Said Morvale;—"nay, man, spare me the reply;
Too much the Eve has moved me——"
"Not to feel
That for the serpent which thy looks reveal,"
Said Arden, sadly smiling; "yet in truth,
See how the grey world grafts its age on youth;
See how we learn to prize the bullion Vice,
Coin'd in all shapes, yet still but Avarice;
The stamp may vary—you the coin may call
'Ambition,' 'Power,' 'Success,'—but Gold is all.
Mine is the memoir of a selfish age:
Turn every leaf—slight difference in the page;
Through each, the same fierce struggle to secure
Earth's one great end—distinction from the Poor;
All our true wealth, like alchemists of old,
Fused in the furnace—for a grain of gold.
IX.
"Well then, we parted—to make brief the tale,
I take my orders, and my leave, set sail;
For weeks, for months, fond letters, long nor few,
Keep hope alive with love for ever new:
If she had suffer'd, she betray'd it not;
All save one sweetness—'that we loved' forgot.
She never named her father;—once indeed
The name was writ, but blurr'd;—it was decreed That she should fill the martyr-measure—hide Not the dart only, but the bleeding side, And, wholly generous in the offering made, Veil even sorrow, lest it should upbraid.
"At length one letter came—the last; more blest In faith, in love, false hope, than all the rest; But at the close some hastier lines appear, Tremblingly writ, and stain'd with many a tear, In which, less said than timorously implied (The maid still blushing through the secret bride), I heard her heart through that far distance beat: The hour Eve's happiest daughter dreads to meet— The hour of Nature's agony was nigh— Husband and father, false one, where was I?
"Slow day on slow day, unrevealing, crept,
And still its ice the freezing silence kept:
Fear seized my soul, I could no longer brook
The voiceless darkness which the daylight took.
I feign'd excuse for absence;—left the shore:
Fair blow the winds;—behold her home once more!
"Her home! a desert! Still, though rank and wild,
On the rank grass the heedless floweret smiled;
Still by the porch you heard the ungrateful bee;
Still brawl'd the brooklet's unremembering glee;
But they—the souls of the sweet pastoral ground?
Green o'er the father rose the sullen mound!
Amidst his poor he slept; his end was known— Life's record rounded with the funeral stone: But she?—but Mary?—but my child?—what dews Fall on their graves?—what herbs which heaven renews Pall their pure clay?—Oh! were it mine at least To weep, belovèd, where your relics rest!— Bear with me, Morvale—pity if you can— These thoughts unman me—no, they prove me man!" "Man of the cities," with a mutter'd scorn, Groan'd the stern Nomad from the lands of Morn— "Man of the sleek, far-looking prudence, which Beggars life's May, life's Autumn to enrich; Which, the deed doing, halts not in its course, But, the deed done, finds comfort in remorse. Man, in whom sentiment, the bloodless shade Of noble passion, alternates with trade— Hard in his error—feeble in his tears, And huckstering love, yet prattling of the spheres!" So mused the sombre savage, till the pale And self-gnaw'd worldling nerved him to his tale:— "The hireling watch'd the bed where Mary lay, In stranger arms my first-born saw the day. Below—unseen his travail, all unknown His war with Nature, sate the sire alone: He had not thrust the one he still believed, If silent, sinless, or in sin deceived— He had not thrust her from a father's door; So Shame came in, and cower'd upon