With gliding feet, the Father steals away.Grief bends alone above the lonely clay;
But over grief and death th' Eternal Eye
Shines down—and Hope lives ever in the sky.
PART THE FOURTH.
I.
To Joy's brisk ear there's music in the throng;
Glorious the life of cities to the strong!
What myriad charms, all differing, smile for all
The hardier Masks in the Great Carnival!
Amidst the vast disguise, some sign betrays
To each the appointed pleasure in the maze;
Ambition, pleasure, love, applause, and gold,
Allure the young, and baby[S] yet the old. For here, the old, if nerves and stubborn will Defy Experience, linger, youthful still, Haunt the same rounds of idlesse, or of toil That lure the freshest footsteps to the soil, Still sway the Fashion or control the State, Gay at the ball, or fierce at the debate. It is not youth, it is the zest of life } Surviving youth—in age itself as rife, } That fits the Babel and enjoys the strife; } But not for you our world's bright tumults are, Soft natures, born beneath the Hesperus star— To us, the storm is but the native breath; To you, the quickening of the gale is death; Leave Strife to battle with its changeful clime, And seek the peace which saves the weak, in time! Not Man's but Nature's world be yours!—The shade Where, all unseen, the cushat's nest is made, Less lone to you than pomps which but bestow The tinkling cymbal and the painted show.
The lights of revel flash from Arden's halls;
There, throng the shapes that troop where Comus calls;
But not Sabrina more apart and lone
From the loud joy, on her pure coral throne,
Than thou, sad maiden!—round the holy tide
Swell the gay notes, the airy dancers glide;
But o'er the shadowy grot the waters roll,
And shut the revel from the unconscious soul!
What rank has noblest, manhood's grace most fair,
Bend low to her now hail'd as Arden's heir?
If rumour doubts the birthright to his name,
The father's wealth redeems the mother's shame;
And kindly thoughts o'er lordly pride prevail,
"The Earl's best lands are not in the entail!"
How Arden loved his child!—how spoke that love
Of those dead worlds the light herb waves above;
Layer upon layer—those strata of the past,
Those gone creations buried in the last!
Their bloom, their life, their glory past away,
Speak in this relic of a vanish'd day.
There, in that guileless face, revived anew
The visions glistening through life's morning dew,
Fair Hope, pure Honour, undefilëd Truth—
The young shape stood before him as his youth![T] And in this love his chastisement was found— The thorns he had planted, here enclosed him round; He, whom to see had been to love—in vain Here loved; that heart no answer gave again— It lived upon the past—it dwelt afar, This new-found bond from what it loved the bar. Her conscience chid, yet, while it chid, her thought Still the cold past, to freeze the present, brought; How love the sire round whom such shadows throng, The mother's death-bed and the lover's wrong? The dazzling gifts, which had through life beguiled All other souls, are powerless with his child. Vain the melodious tongue, and vain the mind, Sparkling and free as wavelets in the wind; The roseate wreath the handmaid Graces twine Round sternest hearts—soft infant, breaks on thine; Child, candid, simple, frank, to her allied, Far more, the nature sever'd from her side, With its fresh instincts and wild verdure, fann'd By fragrant winds, from haunted Fable-land; Than all the garden graces which betray By the bough's riches the worn tree's decay. What charms the ear of Childhood?—not the page Of that romance which wins the sober sage; Not the dark truths, like warning ghosts, which pass Along the pilgrim path of Rasselas; Not wit's wrought crystal which, so coldly clear, Reflects, in Zadig, learning's icy sneer; Unreasoning, wondering, stronger far the thrall Of Aimée's cave,[U] or young Aladdin's hall; And so the childhood of the heart will find } Charms in the poem of a child-like mind, } To which the vision of the world is blind! } Ev'n as the savage, 'midst the desert's gloom, Sees, hid from us, the golden fruitage bloom, And, where the arid silence wraps us all, Lists the soft lapse of the glad waterfall!
So Lucy loved not Arden!—vainly yearn
His moisten'd eyes;—Can softness be so stern?
That soul how gentle! but that smile how cold!
A marble shape the parent arms enfold!
No hurrying footstep bounds his own to meet,
No joyous smiles with morning's welcome greet,
Not him that heart—so bless'd with love—can bless, }
Lost the pure Eden of a child's caress; }
He saw—he felt, and suffer'd powerless! }
Remorse seized on him;—his gay spirit quail'd;
The cloud crept on—it gather'd, it prevail'd.
The spectre of the past—the martyr bride,
Sat at his board, and glided by his side;
Sigh'd, "With the dead, Love the Consoler dies,"
And spoke his sentence in his child's cold eyes!
And now a strange and strong desire was born, }
With the young instinct of life's credulous morn, }
In that long sceptic-breast, so world-corrupt and worn. }
From the rank soil in which grim London shrouds
Her dead—the green halls of the ghastly crowds—
To bear his Mary's dust; the dust to lay
By the clear rill, beside her father's clay,
