XXII.

By those, that deepest feel, is ill exprest The indistinctness of the suffering breast; Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one, 1810 Which seeks from all the refuge found in none; No words suffice the secret soul to show, For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe. On Conrad's stricken soul Exhaustion prest, And Stupor almost lulled it into rest; So feeble now--his mother's softness crept To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept: It was the very weakness of his brain, Which thus confessed without relieving pain. None saw his trickling tears--perchance, if seen, 1820 That useless flood of grief had never been: Nor long they flowed--he dried them to depart, In helpless--hopeless--brokenness of heart: The Sun goes forth, but Conrad's day is dim: And the night cometh--ne'er to pass from him.[io] There is no darkness like the cloud of mind, On Grief's vain eye--the blindest of the blind! Which may not--dare not see--but turns aside To blackest shade--nor will endure a guide!

XXIII.[237]

His heart was formed for softness--warped to wrong, 1830 Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long; Each feeling pure--as falls the dropping dew Within the grot--like that had hardened too; Less clear, perchance, its earthly trials passed, But sunk, and chilled, and petrified at last.[238] Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock; If such his heart, so shattered it the shock. There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow, Though dark the shade--it sheltered--saved till now. The thunder came--that bolt hath blasted both, 1840 The Granite's firmness, and the Lily's growth: The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell; And of its cold protector, blacken round But shivered fragments on the barren ground!