III.

'Tis night,--a night by fits now foul, now fair, As speed the cloud-wracks through the gusty air: At times the wild blast dies--and high and far, Through chasms of cloud, looks down the solemn star-- Or the majestic moon;--so watchfires mark Some sleeping War dim-tented in the dark; Or so, through antique Chaos and the storm Of Matter, whirl'd and writhing into form, Pale angels peer'd!

Anon, from brief repose The winds leap forth, the cloven deeps reclose; Mass upon mass, the hurtling vapours driven, As one huge blackness walls the earth from heaven!-- In one of these brief lulls--you see, serene, The village church spire 'mid its mounds of green, The scattered roof-tops of the hamlet round, And the swoll'n rill that girds the holy ground.

A plank that rock'd above the rushing wave, The dizzy pathway to a wanderer gave; There, as he paused, from the lone churchyard, slow Emerged a form the wanderer's eyes should know! It gains the opposing margent of the stream, Full on the face shines calm the crescent beam; It halts upon the bridge! Now, Indian, learn If in thy soul the heathen yet can yearn! Swift runs the wave, the instinct and the hour, The lonely night, when evil thoughts have power, The foe before thee, and no things that live To witness vengeance--Canst thou still forgive? Scarce seen by each the face of each--when, deep O'er the lost moon, the cloud's loud surges sweep; Yea, as a sea devours the fated bark, Vanish'd the heaven, and closed the abyss of dark! You heard the roaring of the mighty blast, The groaning trees uprooted as it pass'd The wrath and madness of the starless rill, Swell'd by each torrent rushing from the hill. The slight plank creaks--high mount the waves and high, Hark! with the tempest's shrieks the human cry! Upon the bridge but _one_ man now!--below, The night of waters and the drowning foe! The Indian heard the death-cry and the fall; Still o'er the wild scene hung the funeral pall! What eye can pierce the darkness of the wave? } What hand guide rescue through the roaring grave? } Not for such craven questions pause the brave! } Again the moon!--again the churchyard's green, Spire, hamlet, mead, and rill distinct are seen; But on the bridge _no_ form, no life! The beam Shoots wan and broken on the tortured stream; Vague, indistinct, what yonder moveth o'er The troubled tide, and struggles to the shore? Hark, where the sere bough of the tossing tree Snaps in the grasp of some strong agony, And the dull plunge, and stifled cry betray Where the grim water-fiend reclasps his prey!

Still shines the moon--still halts the panting storm, It moves again--the shadow shapes to form, Lo! where yon bank shelves gradual, and the ray Silvers the reed, it cleaves its vigorous way!-- Saved from the deep, but happier far to save, The foeman wrests the foeman from the grave! Still shines the moon--still halts the storm!--above His sons, looks down divine the Father-Love! Upon the Indian's breast droops Arden's head, Its marble beauty rigid as the dead. What skill so fondly tends the soul's eclipse, Chafes the stiff limb, and breathes in breathless lips? Wooes back the flickering life, and when, once more, The ebbing blood the wan cheek mantles o'er; When stirs the pulse, when opes the glazing eye, What voice of joy finds listeners in the sky? "Bless thee, my God!--this mercy thine!--he lives: Look in my heart, forgive, for it forgives!"

Then, while yet clear the heaven, he flies--he gains The nearest roof--prompt aid his prayer obtains; Well known the noble stranger's mien--they bear To the rude home, and ply the zealous care; Life with the dawn comes sure, if faint and slow, And all night long the foeman watch'd the foe!

Day dawns on earth, still darkness wraps the mind; Sleep pass'd, the waking is a veil more blind: The soul, scared roughly from its mansion, glides O'er mazy wastes through which the meteor guides.

The startled menial, who, alone of all The hireling pomp that swarms in Arden's hall, Attends his lord,--dismay'd lest one so high, A rural Galen should permit to die, Departs in haste to seek the subtler skill Which from the College takes the right to kill; And summon Lucy to the solemn room To watch the father's life,--fast by the mother's tomb. Meanwhile such facile arts as nature yields, Draughts from the spring and simples from the fields, Learn'd in his savage youth, the Indian plies; The fever slakes, the cloudy darkness flies; O'er the vex'd vision steals the lulling rest, And Arden wakes to sense on Morvale's breast!

On Morvale's breast!--and through the noiseless door A fearful footfall creeps, and lo! once more Thou look'st, pale daughter, on thy father's foe! Not with the lurid eye and menaced blow; Not as when last, between the murtherous blade And the proud victim, gleam'd the guardian maid-- Thy post is his!--that breast the prop supplies That thine should yield;--as thine so watch those eyes, Wistful and moist, that waning life above; Recal the Heathen's hate!--behold the Christian's love!

The learned leech proclaims the danger o'er; When life is safe, can Fate then harm no more?

The danger past for Arden, but for you Who watch the couch, what danger threats anew? How meet in pious duty and fond care, In hours when through the eye the heart is bare? How join in those soft sympathies, and yet The earlier link, the tenderer bond forget? How can the soul the magnet-charm withstand, When chance brings look to look, and hand to hand! No, Indian, no--if yet the power divine Above the laws of our low world be thine; If yet the Honour which thy later creed Softens, not quells, revere the injured dead, Fly, ere the full heart cries, "I love thee still"-- And find thy guardian in the angel--WILL! That power was his!

Along the landscape lay The hazy rime of winter's dawning day: Snake-like the curving mists betray'd the rill, The last star gleam'd upon the Eastern hill, Still slept beneath the leafless trees the herd; Still mute the sharp note of the sunless bird; No sound, no life; as to some hearth, bereft By death, of welcome, since his wanderings left, Comes back the traveller;--so to earth, forlorn Returns the ungreeted melancholy Morn.

Forth from the threshold stole the Indian!--far Spread the dim land beneath the waning star. Alas! how wide the world his heart will find Who leaves one spot--the heart's true home, behind! He paused--one upward look upon the gloom Of the closed casement, the love-hallow'd room, Where yet, perchance, while happier Suffering slept Its mournful vigil tender Duty kept; One prayer! What mercy taught us prayer?--as dews On drooping herbs--as sleep tired life renews, As dreams that lead, and lap our griefs in Heaven, To souls through Prayer, dew, sleep, and dream, are given! So bow'd, not broken, and with manly will, Onwards he strode, slow up the labouring hill!

If Lucy mourn'd his absence, not before Her sire's dim eyes the face of grief she wore; Haply her woman heart divined the spell Of her own power, by flight proclaim'd too well; And not in hours like these may self control The generous empire of a noble soul: Lo, her first thought, first duty--the soft reign Of Woman--patience by the bed of pain! As mute the father, yet to him made clear The cause of flight untold to Lucy's ear; Thus ran the lines that met, at morn, his eyes:-- "Farewell! my place a daughter now supplies!-- Thou hast pass'd the gates of Death, and bright once more Smile round thy steps the sunlight and the shore. Farewell; and if a soul, where hatred's gall Melts into pardon that embalmeth all, Can with forgiveness bless thee;--from remorse Can pluck the stone which interrupts the course Of thought to God;--and bid the waters rest Calm in Heaven's smile,--poor fellow-man, be blest! I, that can aid no more, now need an aid Against myself; by mine own thoughts dismay'd: I dare not face thy child--I may not dare To commune with my heart--thy child is there! I hear a voice that whispers hope, and start In shame, to shun the tempter and depart. How vile the pardon that I yield would seem, If shaped and colour'd from the egoist's dream; A barter'd compromise with thoughts that take The path of conscience but for passion's sake-- If with the pardon I could say--'The Tomb Devours the Past, so let the Moment bloom, And see Calantha's brother reconciled, Kneel to Calantha's lover, for his child!' It may not be; sad sophists were our vain Desires, if Right were not a code so plain; In good or ill leave casusits on the shelf, 'He never errs who sacrifices self!'"

Great Natures, Arden, thy strange lot to know And lose!--twin souls thy mistress and thy foe! How flash'd they, high and starry, through the dull World's reeking air--earnest and beautiful! Erring perchance, and yet divinely blind, Such hero errors purify our kind! One noble fault that springs from SELF'S disdain May oft more grace in Angel eyes obtain, Than a whole life, without a seeming flaw, Which served but Heaven, because of Earth in awe, Which in each act has loss or profit weigh'd, And kept with Virtue the accounts of Trade! He too was born, lost Idler, to be great, The sins that dwarf'd, he had a soul to hate. Ambition, Ease, Example had beguiled, And our base world in fawning had defiled; Yet still, contrasting all he _did_, he _dream'd_; And through the Wordling's life the Poet gleam'd. His eye not blind to Virtue; to his ear Still spoke the music of the banish'd sphere; Still in his thought the Ideal, though obscured, Shamed the rank meteor which his sense allured. Wreck if he was, the ruin yet betray'd The shatter'd fane for gods departed made; And still, through weeds neglected and o'erthrown, The blurr'd inscription show'd the altar-stone. So scorn'd he not, as folly or as pride, The lofty code which made the Indian's guide; But from that hour a subtle change came o'er The thoughts he veil'd, the outward mien he wore; A mournful, weary gloom, a pall'd distaste Of all the joys so warmly once embraced. His eye no more _looks onward_. but its gaze Rests where Remorse a life misspent surveys: What costly treasures strew that waste behind; What whirlwinds daunt the soul that sows the wind! By the dark shape of what he _is_, serene Stands the bright ghost of what he might have been: Here the vast loss, and there the worthless gain-- Vice scorn'd, yet woo'd, and Virtue loved in vain.

'Tis said, the Nightingale, who hears the thrill Of some rich lute, made vocal by sweet skill, To match the music strains its wild essay, Feels its inferior art, and envying, pines away: So, waked at last, and scarcely now confest, Pined the still Poet in the Worldling's breast! So with the Harmony of Good, compared Its lesser self--so languish'd and despair'd.

Awhile, from land to land he idly roved, And join'd life's movement with a heart unmoved. No more loud cities ring with Arden's name, Applaud his faults, and call his fashion "Fame!" Disgust with all things robes him as he goes, In that pale virtue, Vice, when weary, knows. Yet his, at least, one rescue from the past; His, one sweet comfort--Lucy's love at last! That bed of pain o'er which she had watch'd and wept-- That grave, where Love forgot its wrongs and slept-- That touching sorrow and that still remorse Unlock'd her heart, and gave the stream its course. From her own grief, by griefs more dark beguiled, Rose the consoling Angel in the Child! Yet still the calm disease, whose mute decay No leech arrests, crept gradual round its prey. Death came, came gently, on his daughter's breast, Murm'ring, "Remember where this dust should rest." They bear the last Lord of that haughty race Where winds the wave round Mary's dwelling-place; And side by side (oh, be it in the sky As in the earth!)--the long-divided lie!

Doth life's last act one wrong at least repair-- His nameless child to wealth at least the heir? So Arden's will decreed--so sign'd the hand; So ran the text--not so Law rules the land: "I do bequeath unto my _child_,"[Y]--that word Alone on strangers has the wealth conferr'd. O'erjoy'd Law's heirs the legal blunder read, And Justice cancels Nature from the deed. O moral world! deal sternly if thou wilt With the warm weakness as the wily guilt, But spare the harmless! Wherefore shall the child Be from the pale which shelters Crime exiled? Why heap such barriers round the sole redress Which sin can give to sinless wretchedness? Why must the veriest stranger thrust aside Our flesh--our blood, because a name's denied? Give all thou hast to whomsoe'er thou please, Foe, alien, knave, as whim so Law decrees; But if thy heart speaks, if thy conscience cries-- "I give my child"--the law thy voice belies; Chicanery balks all effort that atones, And Justice robs the wretch that Nature owns!

So abject, so despoil'd, so penniless, Stood thy love-born in the world's wilderness, O Lord of lands and towers, and princely sway! O Dust, from whom with breath has pass'd away The humblest privilege the beggar finds In rags that wrap his infant from the winds!

In the poor hamlet where her grandsire died, Where sleeps her mother by the magnate's side, The orphan found a home. Her story known, Men's hearts allow the right men's laws disown. Though lost the birthright, and denied the name, Her pastor-grandsire's virtues shield from shame; Pity seeks kind pretext to pour its balms, And yields light toils that saves the pride from alms. A soft respect the orphan's steps attends, And the sharp thorn at least the rose defends. So flows o'ershadow'd, but not darksome by, Her life's lone stream--the banks admit the sky Day's quiet taskwork o'er, when Ev'ning grey Lists the last carol on the quivering spray, When lengthening shades reflect the distant hill, And the near spire, upon the lulled rill; Her sole delight with pensive step to glide Along the path that winds the wave beside, A moment pausing on the bridge, to mark Perchance the moonlight vista through the dark: Or watch the eddy where the wavelets play Round the chafed stone that checks their happy way, Then onward stealing, vanish from the view, Where the star shimmers on the solemn yew, As shade from earth and starlight from the sky Meet--and repose on Death's calm mystery.

Moons pass'd--Behold the blossom on the spray! Hark to the linnet!--On the world is May! Green earth below and azure skies above; May calling life to joy, and youth to love; While Age, charm'd back to rosy hours awhile, Hears the lost vow, and sees the vanish'd smile. And does not May, lone Child, revive in thee, Blossom and bud and mystic melody; Does not the heart, like earth, imbibe the ray? Does not the year's recal thy life's sweet May? When like an altar to some happy bride, Shone all creation by the loved one's side? Yes, Exile, yes--_that_ Empire is thine own, Rove where thou wilt, awaits thee still thy throne! Lo, where the paling cheek, the unconscious sigh, The slower footstep, and the heavier eye, Betray the burthen of sweet thoughts and mute, The slight tree bows beneath the golden fruit!

'Tis eve. The orphan gains the holy ground, } And listening halts;--the boughs that circle round } Vex'd by no wind, yet rustle with a sound, } As if that gentle form had scared some lone Unwonted step more timid than its own! All still once more; perchance some daunted bird, That loves the night, the murmuring leaves had stirr'd? She nears the tomb--amaze!--what hand unknown Has placed those pious flowers upon the stone? Why beats her heart? why hath the electric mind, Whose act, whose hand, whose presence there, divined? Why dreading, yearning, turn those eyes to meet The adored, the lost?--Behold him at her feet! His, those dark eyes that seek her own through tears, His hand that clasps, and his the voice she hears, Broken and faltering--"Is the trial past? Here, by the dead, art thou made mine at last? Far--in far lands I heard thy tale!--And thou Orphan and lone!--no bar between us now! No Arden now calls up the wrong'd and lost; Lo, in this grave appeased the upbraiding ghost! Orphan, I am thy father now!--Bereft Of all beside,--this heart at least is left. Forgive, forgive--Oh, canst thou yet bestow One thought on him, to whom thou art all below? Who could desert but to remember more? Canst thou the Heaven, the exile lost, restore? Canst thou----"

The orphan bow'd her angel head; Breath blent with breath--her soul her silence said; Eye unto eye, and heart to heart reveal'd;-- And lip on lip the eternal nuptials seal'd!

The Moon breaks forth--one silver stream of light Glides from its fount in heaven along the night-- Flows in still splendour through the funeral gloom Of yews,--and widens as it clasps the tomb-- Through the calm glory hosts as calm above Look on the grave--and by the grave is LOVE!

[S] "At best it _babies_ us."--YOUNG.

[T] "For, oh! he stood before me as my youth."--COLERIDGE'S _Wallenstein_.

[U] The beautiful story of Aimee--the delight of all children--is in the collection entitled "The Temple of the Fairies."

[V] According to the exploded hypothesis of Voltaire, that the Gipsies are a Syrian tribe, the remains of the long scattered fraternity of Isis.

[W] Whoever is well acquainted with the heathen learning must often have been deeply impressed with the mournful character of the mythological Elysium. Even the few admitted to the groves of asphodel, unpurified by death, retain the passions and pine with the griefs of life; they envy the mortal whom the poet brings to their moody immortality; and, amidst the disdained repose, sigh for the struggle and the storm.

[X] Not only were the lofty and cheering notions of the soul, that were cherished by the more illustrious philosophers of Greece, confined to a few, but even the grosser and dimmer belief in a future state, which the vulgar mythology implied, was not entertained by the multitude. Plato remarked that few, even in his day, had faith in the immortality of the soul; and indeed the Hades of the ancients was not for the Many. Amongst those condemned we find few criminals, except the old Titans, and such as imitated them in the one crime--blasphemy to the fabled gods: and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the poets and the heroes, the oligarchy of earth.

[Y] If a man wishes to leave a portion to his natural child, his lawyer will tell him to name the child as if it were a stranger to his blood. If he says, "I leave to John Tompson, of Baker-street, L10,000," John Tompson may probably get the legacy; if he says, "I leave to my son, John Tompson, of Baker-street, L10,000," and the said John Tompson _is_ his son (_a natural one_), it is a hundred to one if John Tompson ever touches a penny! Up springs the Inhuman Law, with its multiform obstacles, quibbles, and objections--proof of identity--evidence of birth!--Many and many a natural child has thus been robbed and swindled out of his sole claim upon redress--his sole chance of subsistence. In most civilised countries a father is permitted to own the offspring, whom, unless he do so, he has wronged at its very birth--whom, if he do not so, he wrongs irremedially; with us the error is denied reparation, and the innocence is sentenced to outlawry. Our laws, with relation to illegitimate children, are more than unjust--they are inhuman.

CONSTANCE; OR, THE PORTRAIT.

PART THE FIRST.