air, in which sunk slow the sun;The dusky trees, the sultry flakes of green;
The haunts where Fashion yawns away the spleen;—
Vista on vista widens to reveal
Ease on the wing, and Labour at the wheel!
The friends grew silent in that common roar,
The Real around them, the Ideal o'er;
So the peculiar life of each, the unseen
Core of our being—what we are, have been—
The spirit of our memory and our soul
Sink from the sight, when merged amidst the whole;
Yet atom atom never can absorb,
Each drop moves rounded in its separate orb.
PART THE THIRD.
I.
Lord Arden's tale robb'd Morvale's couch of sleep,
The star still trembled on the troubled deep,
O'er the waste ocean gleam'd its chilling glance,
To make more dark the desolate expanse.
This contrast of a fate, but vex'd by gales
Faint with too full a balm from Rhodian Vales;[O] This light of life all squander'd upon one Round whom hearts moved, as planets round a sun, Mocks the lone doom his barren years endure, As wasted treasure but insults the poor. Back on his soul no faithful echoes cast Those tones which make the music of the past. No memories hallow, and no dreams restore Love's lute, far heard from Youth's Hesperian shore;— The flowers that Arden trampled on the sod, Still left the odour where the step had trod; Those flowers, so wasted!—had for him but smiled One bud—its breath had perfumed all the wild! He own'd the moral of the reveller's life, So Christian warriors own the sin of strife— But, oh! how few can lift the soul above Earth's twin-born rulers—Fame and Woman's Love!
Just in that time, of all most drear, upon
Fate's barren hill-tops, gleam'd the coming sun;
From nature's face the veil of night withdrawn,
Earth smiled, and Heaven was open'd in the dawn!
How chanced this change?—how chances all below?
What sways the life the moment doth bestow:
An impulse, instinct, look, touch, word, or sigh—
Unlocks the Hades, or reveals the sky.
II.
'Twas eve; Calantha had resumed again
The wonted life, recaptured to its chain;
In the calm chamber, Morvale sat, and eyed
Lucy's lithe shape, that seem'd on air to glide;
Eyed with complacent, not impassion'd, gaze;
So Age looks on, where some fair Childhood plays:
Far as soars Childhood from dim Age's scope,
Beauty to him who links it not with hope!
"Sing me, sweet Lucy," said Calantha, "sing
Our favourite song—'The Maiden and the King.' Brother, thou lov'st not music, or, at least, But some wild war-song that recalls the East. Who loves not music, still may pause to hark Nature's free gladness hymning in the lark: As sings the bird sings Lucy! all her art A voice in which you listen to a heart."
A blush of fear, a coy reluctant "nay"
Avail her not—thus ran the simple lay:—
THE MAIDEN AND THE KING.
I.
"And far as sweep the seas below,
My sails are on the deep;
And far as yonder eagles go,
My flag on every keep.
"Why o'er the rebel world within
Extendeth not the chart?
No sail can reach—no arms can win
The kingdom of a heart!"
So sigh'd the king—the linden near;
A listener heard the sigh,
And thus the heart he did not hear,
Breathed back the soft reply:—
II.
"And far as sweep the seas below,
His sails are on the deep;
And far as yonder eagles go,
His flag on every keep;
"Love, thou art not a king alone, Both slave and king thou art! Who seeks to sway, must stoop to own The kingdom of a heart!"
So sigh'd the Maid, the linden near,
Beneath the lonely sky;
Oh, lonely not!—for angels hear The humblest human sigh!
III.
His ships are vanish'd from the main,
His banners from the keep;
The carnage triumphs on the plain;
The tempest on the deep.
"The purple and the crown are mine"—
An Outlaw sigh'd—"no more;
But still as greenly grows the vine
Around the cottage door!
"Rest for the weary pilgrim, Maid,
And water from the spring!"
Before the humble cottage pray'd
The Man that was a King.
Oh, was the threshold that he cross'd
