University of Virginia Library

Not to the o'ershadowing Heavens of Majesty,
That rush in glory on the uplifted eye—
That strain the labouring sense, and sternly mock
The unequal mind with keen and mastering shock—
That drown the soul in floods of paly light,
And depths of gorgeous darkness—more than bright:
Not to the midnight Heavens—not to the array
Of worlds by dizzying myriads they display,
Now do I turn my long, mine earnest gaze:
Imagination dies within their blaze!
Fancy shrinks back—bewildered and aghast,
Before the outshining wonders there amassed—
But springs to unimaginable life,
In this dread City's silence—since all strife
Seems now forborne; and deep thereon is laid,
Oh, what a load of stillness and of shade!
Ye stars! that do exulting shine and stream,
Till in one mass of glory mixed ye seem,
While each its tributary lustre brings—
Like the regalia of the King of kings!
Ye are, indeed, resplendent and august;
Lauded and honoured ye should be—and must.
Ye are, indeed, like heaven's own envoys sent
For homage, terror, and astonishment.
But 't is to different speculations now
I turn, with throbbing heart and thoughtful brow,—
To thee, great City!—now with clouds o'ercast;
Or if I view thee as a temple vast
Of the mute dead, and of the breathless past;
Or as the home of living myriads—fraught
With all the excess of feeling and of thought,
Oh, what a source of contemplations deep
For memory long in her rich scrolls to keep,—
Oh, what a grand and overpowering theme
For lingering thought and shadowy-lengthening dream,
Thou art, and must be!—wake my spirit, wake!
Earth's selfishness and sordor from thee shake—
Resign the fardels of life's crushing care—
A prouder freight—a loftier burthen bear!
Rise, like a dream of worlds, Past Ages, rise,
Wring forth response from midnight's air and skies;
Float on the winds, till every altered tone
Shall seem the voice of generations gone;
Dwell in my heart, and on my thought descend—
Mix with my soul—with mine existence blend!
Shine forth, ye beings of the past, shine forth,
In all your ancient might and primal worth—
Come, breathing strength along the silence, come,
While massed in undistinguishable gloom
Frowns dimly forth each high o'erarching dome,
And glimmers faint each lessening, lengthening spire,
As through the midnight, shooting high and higher!
Look round you! whosoe'er ye be, that tread
This wide realm of the living and the dead!
Temple and tower majestically old,
Though lacking the ivy's thousand-tendrilled fold,
Surround you here.—Look on yon sacred pile,
Within whose pompous shade of arch and aisle,
They whom the world gone-by hath worshipped, sleep,
Feel ye not Time's dread wing all the earth o'ersweep—
Kings, Conquerors, Bards, Priests, Legislators, there
One common yoke with common sufferance bear.
And if, with magic spell and wizard might,
These could be summoned from the depths of night,
Which would the heart most passionately crave
To rescue from that thraldom of the grave?
Oh, were it mine to arouse and to invoke,
To set free from that dire and tyrannous yoke—
Ye Conquerors, resting from your splendid toils
(Whose hands incarnadined, reaped Victory's spoils)
Ye wielders of war's thunder, forced to keep
The unbroken sabbath of the tomb's long sleep,
Not ye would I compel, not ye would call
From columned shrine and dim sepulchral hall!
Not ye would I adjure to appear, to arise
Forth from your proud cathedraled sanctuaries,
Pale shadowy majesties!—Oh, ye who have been
The wonders and the terrors of earth's scene,
How changed is now each once monarchic mien!
Ye kingly phantoms—back unto your rest!
The imperial stole and the emblazoned crest,
The jewelled sceptre and the mace of state,
The insignia of past power, can but create
A fund of sad reflections—hence! away—
Ghastly grows night, o'erta'en with new dismay;
Ghastly would grow the golden laughing day,
Were ye, with sumptuous mockeries girt, to evade
Your dungeon's bounds, and its bright noon to o'ershade.
Hence with that dreariest shroud, the ermined robe,
The cape and tire—the signet and the globe,
Emblems of empire—Oh, how worse than vain,
When joined with the ensigns of death's hideous reign!
Hence! for ye must not to my soul reply—
Little recked ye of human destiny,
Of all its varying tides, and changeful sky;
Back to your realmless privacies of gloom,
The escutcheoned coffin, and the sculptured tomb.
Genius! do thou in robes of light appear,
Thou immaterial sun of this dim sphere;
Do thou, while cancelled cycles with thee wake,
And from oblivion's coil of fetters break,
Do thou make answer to my passionate quest,
And in thy might of eloquence attest
The shrouded marvels and the secrets dread,
That seem to slumber with the unconscious dead.
Deliver thou, oh oracle divine,
Judgments too bright to escape from earthly shrine;
For earthly shrine thou claim'st not, but the cope
Of the outstretched heavens,—thou shalt fulfil my hope!
Thou shalt give forth a thousand strong replies,
Thou godlike native of the eternal skies!
Thou, thou shalt render full response and deep,
And whirlwind-like, the listening soul o'ersweep;
Thou shalt set forth, in thy victorious might,
As if with tongues of flame and thoughts of light,
All that the mind should most to know desire,
Breathing along it—in a storm of fire—
Those glorious Truths for whose free draughts I yearn—
Those myriad mysteries that I pant to learn,—
Time—Time himself, with sovereign mastery taming,
Through the uncommunicativeness proclaiming,
Of old long-unremembered years! betrayed
To rigorous silence and unpitying shade,
Thou shalt set forth!—hearkening my soul's appeal,
Thou shalt uplift from buried years the seal;
And thou shalt melt away the heavy frost,
That weighs upon earth's banished ones, and lost,
In thy triumphant sway, thy conquering power
Thus, even in the stern strength of this dread hour,
O'er the uncommunicativeness prevailing,
Of centuries of obstruction and of failing!
Arise thou!—not an unembodied dream—
Not in shapes varying as the rainbow's gleam—
Not in phantasmal, strange abstractions shown—
No visionary guest, unnamed, unknown!
No! seize a nobler incarnation, wake
In loftier guise—in bright assumption take
Features familiar to our thoughts and minds,
Though vanished like the clouds before the winds.
Genius! rise thou in panoply of might,
Sweeping the veil of mysteries from the night;
Unchanged—untransubstantialized, arise,
As long since to contemporaneous eyes
Thou didst appear, in glorious forms enshrined;
Forms to the dust—the dust of death consigned!
Unchanged—untransubstantialized, awaken
Even in those forms, unshadowed and unshaken;
Accord them to a moment's worship, yet
Their sun of soul is overcast, not set.
They could not die! forefend the impious doubt,
All worlds of thought within—all heavens without;
They could not die—our guides, our spirit-friends,
With all existence, their existence blends;
Survivors of themselves, they have maintained,
And shall maintain, their rule—and as they reigned
Of old, shall reign and rule for evermore.
Their Metropolitan throne in the deep core
Of the human heart established! fixed to endure
While love is strong, or sacred wisdom pure;
Their Capitolian seat, built on firm ground
Of passionate sympathies, that know no bound.
Untouched—untransubstantialized, discover,
By thee informed, those who once shadowed over
The astonished nations with their thoughts, too deep,
Not like a storm-eclipse awhile, to o'ersweep
Earth and her empires, and too utterly bright
Not to o'erpower at length the outlustred light
With their excess of glory; while Truth's form—
The rainbow of bleak Error's lowering storm—
Was slow revealed (not as on darkness traced,
A host of worlds break forth where stretched a waste),
But shadowed forth upon the astounding blaze
Of their clear, constellated thought's full rays;
So shall their dreams develope—spread—aspire
To firmaments of lightning and of fire;—
Those thoughts shall breathe through the stupendous soul
Of Nature, quickening all the unbounded whole,
Till they o'er-canopy the ancient skies,
And veil with their most mighty spiritualities
Ev'n the great stars—that shall remit to shine,
Ere they shall in secession dim decline.
And be they honoured, those Transcendant Ones,
Who in old times had risen to earthly thrones,
Till, by apotheosis, raised above,
Ruling mankind through reverence and through love—
With mountains bewn for their assigned abodes,
An earth-controlling commonwealth of Gods!
Rise ye unto my soul, calm, still and vast,
Ye crownēd spirits of the vanished past,
Each in the lineaments arrayed ye wore
In your proud days—your golden days of yore;
Each one reflected in clear hues of life
(Yet with no vestige of its cares or strife),
Like some fair image, which no winds make break,
O'erthwarting the pale crystal of a lake,
Bosomed in breathless woods, far inland placed,
By mountainous amphitheatre embraced,
And canopied by stillest skies;—even thus,
Ye crowned spirits, pure and luminous,
Shall ye be mirrored in my inmost thought,
To utter calm, and perfect quiet wrought.
Rise ye unto my soul then, Genius! rise—
Re-animate those hallowed forms—till vies
With radiant noon intense the entranced night,
Round those freed slumberers trembling into light!
Not those alone, whose honoured reliques lie
In this proud city's Abbey-sanctuary,
But all whose scattered ashes well might claim
A separate monument of towering fame,
And yet whose embers raise the lowliest mound,
The neighbouring air—the common greensward ground
To something far more precious and divine
Than columned fane or jewel-fretted shrine—
In wondrous Shakspeare's long-evanished frame,
Shakspeare!—illustrious, universal name!
In Chaucer, Spencer, and each laurelled sage,
That rose the enlightener of his raptured age;
In sightless Milton's venerable mould;
In Locke and Verulam—sublimely bold;
In world-compelling Newton's aspect old,
Genius, appear!—and that last name might well
Break blank Annihilation's deadliest spell!
Newton!—the etherial harmonies he crowned
With full perfection, should that name resound—
Newton! whose mind august, supreme, immense,
The astounding fiat of Omnipotence
(That fiat which bade countless systems be,
And blazing worlds o'erflow—the Infinity!)—
Ratified in the sight of all mankind!
Whose all-transpiercing, all-constraining mind,
Ruled by eternal Truth's unfaltering sway,
Rent through Creation its victorious way,
And midst the abstrusest deeps of mystery cruised—
Nor erred, nor foundered, nor shrunk back confused.
That mind, which in the mastery of its might,
Like the pervading element of light,
Streamed through a thousand thousand worlds, nor knew
To be bewildered—nor to miss the clue,
The precious compass of high faith! (which still
Beaconed thee on)—thou, whose triumphant skill
So rescued the everlasting worlds from wrong.
That mind—keen, fervent, fresh, serene, and strong—
Which tired the incomprehensible at last,
And saw upon the unrolled and levelled past
The shadow of the approaching future fall,
Which measured, fathomed, scanned, and vanquished all!
And that which seemed the impracticable, tamed
To its high will—then was at once proclaimed
Thy Triumph and the Universe—oh thou!
To whom great Nature did herself avow—
Like a dread prophetess—awakened, fired,
By thee aroused—electrified—inspired;—
Thou breathedst through her vast and hollow shrine,
Till each response rose more and more divine;
Thy thoughts were epochs—mightiest Potentate!—
A crisis in the governance of fate
Each grand conception of thy genius grew!
In thy mind's universe the old systems knew,
(Glorying in undimmed pomp), their pride of place—
As in the outstretched immensities of space,
Their actions, revolutions, laws, forms, schemes,
Were mirrored in the depths of thy vast dreams!
The majesty of many sovereignties
Girt thee—by Heaven ordained to monarchize,
And not below,—but in the eternal skies;
Thou Conqueror and crowned King of Thought, who yet—
Midst the vain din of earth, the toil, the fret,
Didst reverentially, devoutly move
(As thy great soul were capable of love,
Humility, and child-like faith alone)
From world to world, as 't were from throne to throne,
In boundless power and utter lowliness,
In patient hope and zeal's unblamed excess,
Shaking on its unveiled foundations, even
As though to assay its strength, the empyreal heaven!
Creation's circumnavigator—borne
By sails o' the lightning! with the breath of morn
Filled gloriously! and in a self-launched bark,
Lonely and convoyless as the olden Ark,
Still strenuously absolving thy dread round,
With calm persistance nought could e'er confound;
Though lingering with circuitous delay,
To track each planet's orbit on thy way,
Unwearied, didst thou the arduous whole achieve,
Nor sought auxiliar aid, nor asked reprieve;
Those labyrinthine lengthenings of thy course
Following, fulfilling, with unlessened force—
Beginning, ending with creation's Source!—
But surely thou stood'st awfully apart
From the mixed beatings of the popular heart;
Thy constellated forehead was upreared,
High midst the august sublimities insphered
In yon starred firmament; thy stately march
Was through the heavens, thy grand triumphal arch!—
Haply, beneath the very stones I tread,
Amidst the nameless, undistinguished dead,
Those mouldering lie, that better far could teach
The o'erwhelming mysteries—science ne'er shall reach;
Haply, those rest, that better could impart
The knowledge deep—the science of the heart,
That knew its complicated workings best,
And all the arcana of the human breast!
The passionate secrets of its joy and woe,
Which they must learn to feel who seek to known,
And yet, which those who most intensely feel,
Are ever last to expound and to reveal;
And could they rise from their sepulchral cell,
This hour would suit such apparition well.
No echoes now the fanes of worship fill—
The hollow-sounding pavements now are still,
That rang with multitudinous steps erewhile;
Hushed as the vaults below, sleep nave and aisle—
While Death, embosomed in the depths of night,
There slumbers calm, as cherubs lapped in light,
Nor heeds the horrific work that must proceed
Where he abides—nor shall he ever heed!
Ye deep, and dread, and sunless catacombs,
Imagination pierces your black glooms,
Ye cities of the dead!—the impassive dead!—
By shuddering fancy tremulously led,
I wander midst your chill, forsaken halls,
Where not a weed invests the crumbling walls,
And muse midst your great commonwealth of graves,
Far underneath life's ever rolling waves.
There, in that silent empire of the dust,
Lie all comprised—all things we love and trust;
All that we scorn, and all we most revere;
All we abhor, desire, seek, shun, or fear.
There Valour lies—crushed down, subdued and tame;
And Sorrow, melted to a lovely name,
Knowledge, with its dread sovereignties and vast,
Its appanage of future and of past,
Reconciled in the ruin of the grave,
And slumbering side by side in that drear cave!
Fame, with its burning crown, and haughty power,
That stalks o'er earth—the idol of an hour,
Beauty, with th' exquisite glory of its bloom,
Alas! how dimmed, how altered in the tomb!
Imagination through the Unmeasured streaming,
With all her boundless worlds of shadowy dreaming;
And Love—deep love!—that seems to breathe and burn
From the chill precincts of its funeral urn,
With starry immortality endowed,
Even in the icy foldings of its shroud.
Love! no, thou art not to the dust consigned,
Most mighty spirit! thou'st but in bliss rejoined
Thy kindred elements, and brightly risen
From the dull boundaries of thy clayey prison.
Honour to thee, thou strong and gracious Night!
Honour to thee, in thy prevailing might,
Thou sanctifier—thou beautifier—all
Consents to thy most glorifying thrall!
'Tis thine with reverential love to enfold,
And, oh! to adorn the ruined fanes of old;
'Tis thine, in thy calm watchfulness to spread
A mantle of deep beauty o'er the dead—
The mighty or the lowly—all who trod,
A thousand years ago, earth's vernal sod,
And all who yesterday were summoned hence;
(Oh, let us hope, fenced round with innocence!)
The sovereign masters of the sovereign mind—
Those who left past and present far behind,
And met the future on its shadowy flight,
Piercing its dimness with prophetic sight;—
And they who humbly lived, and meekly died,
Unwarped by selfishness—unchilled by pride,
Passing through each probationary stage,
Upborne by faith—from youth to wintry age:
They, whom love watched with keen and jealous care,
Tempering for them life's too inclement air,
Beguiling mortal hours of their dull weight,
And strengthening them to meet each turn of fate
With still submission, calm and high;—and they,
Who trod a bleak and uncompanioned way,
Who vainly loved—and felt they lived in vain—
Fond martyrs of a deeply-bosomed pain.
Lo, fancy cites them from their chill retreats,
Robed in the sackcloth of their winding-sheets!
Dim, pale, and beautiful, from their charnel-grounds
Theyrise, with their faint smiles and staunchless wounds.
Their staunchless wounds! have they not passed away?
Are they not from that pressure of dismay,
Which crushed them to the dust, now utterly freed?
Their staunchless wounds!—oh, they have ceased to bleed;
And soothed are now, and lulled into repose,
What were on earth immedicable woes.
And those enthusiast spirits—finely fraught,
As if with fire from heaven—intensely wrought
And exquisitely strung, till every sense
Was in itself a fervid soul intense,
And life a passion and a dream became,
Restless as is some fierce wind-shaken flame?
Even they—those restless ones!—are now at rest,
With Peace, unalterable peace, their guest.
The stars in bright battalia have come forth,
Wakening the heart to dreams of purer worth
Than in Day's hurrying season had possessed
That heart, then feverish with a vain unrest;
But now, 't is charmed from such disquietude,
And o'er bright visions undisturbed doth brood,
While beautiful as a fresh, unfolding rose,
The tablet of its new emotions grows—
Leaf after leaf enkindling,—shades by shades,
The picture of its new enchantments spreads—
And into harmony divine constrained,
Too sweet to be resisted or sustained
Depths within depths, of full and fairy dreams,
(A confluence rich of many mingling streams!)
O'erflow its stillness, while a quick delight
Seems even to seize the impassive soul of Night.
And in the adoring hush of this deep hour,
What feeling rules with most prevailing power!
Angel of life! Affection! thou, even thou
Dost win us to thy silvery yoke to bow,
And like the silent-brooding mother-dove,
O'ershadowest us with wings of haunting love.
Affection—with thy strange, sweet mysteries,
That mount like exhalations toward the skies,
Their place of refuge sure, yet not afar,—
Not to the uttermost realms of sun and star—
Not to the unrecked-of wonders, deep enshrined
In lone recesses of the human mind—
Not to the unborn—not to the enshrouded dead—
Not to the midnight shadows round me spread;
Nor to the past, nor to the future years,
Need I these questioning eyes—bedimmed with tears,
Turn, to behold thy hopes and battling fears,
Thy exultations, tremors, agonies,
Thy loveliness—in every shape and guise.
Affection, no! bright spirit! thou'rt now and here
Around me and within me—ever near;
Thine ardent dreams and hopes—thy griefs—thy joys
Are ceaseless, all-pervading! time destroys
All else! but thee he may not crush nor quench,
Nor from thy roots of strong endurance wrench;
Elastic, from his footsteps thou upspringest—
His trampling footsteps—and triumphant wingest
Thy flight through the universal heart of man,
As since creation's wondrous scheme began
Thou still hast done; and thy pure reign is now,
And yet for evermore—unconquered thou,
That universal heart thy boundless home!
In life thy world—in death thy temple-tomb;
Thy rich, thine ever unimpoverished mine,
Thy sheltering ark, and cloistered, curtained shrine:
Genius, may pale upon his towering throne,
His kingliest vassals lost, his votaries flown;
Mind's awful sceptre untransmitted fall,
Its dynasty of crownēd spirits, all
Chambered in dust supine—with none reprieved,
To achieve (as they of old in might achieved),
Miracles of transcendance; none to assert
Its empiry august, with triumphs girt;
Passion, betrothed to Change from birth, may droop,
Misled by many a meteor of false Hope;
Grandeur succumb, midst its chief trophies—Power,
May veer and vacillate from hour to hour;
Fame, turn to ashes—Knowledge, lapse and wane—
And Wisdom sink, the vainest of the vain!
Time shall remit not his chill hand to impose
On all—till his own reign at length shall close:—
But thou, Affection! without pause or change
In this wild world, the fearful and the strange,
Shalt hold thy way—thy high and heavenwards way,
Asserting thine uncompromising sway.
No moment shall be meted out on earth,
That shall not hail thy ever-lovely birth;
No season shall arrive—no dawning hour,
That shall not bless thy deeds of gentle power;
From heart to heart thou still shalt leap and bound;
The soul's most secret gulfs shall freely sound,
And sow them with thy priceless pearls most pure,
Which shall, unstained, immaculate endure
The harvest-growth of the great spirit deep,
Which heaven shall ripen, angel hands shall reap.
And now, even now, while Silence quells the air
And sky with stillness, 't is a weight to bear—
Silence, that even midst shadowy streets is broken
But by a dreamy hum—a murmuring token
Of the most mighty life—whose deep heart beats
For aye, in those o'er-populated streets;
And now, ev'n now, thy loftiest sway is known—
Thy might, thy strength, unutterably shown;
Thy will obeyed—thine influence confessed,
Where all seems gathered unto breathless rest.
A thousand thousand hearts at this still hour
Keep trembling vigils—vassals of thy power:
Haply o'er some loved slumberer's brief repose,
Stretched on the couch of suffering and of woes,
One doth in speechless anguish fondly bend;
While o'er the image of some parted friend,
Another, sad and solitary leans,
And weeps for by-gone hours and vanished scenes.
But 't were in vain to attempt thy steps to trace
Through every change of circumstance and place—
Too boundless is thy reign, too vast thy scope,
Thy ways too complex; thou still rulest in hope,
In joy,—in fear, in anguish, or despair:
Ev'n on the Grave's chill threshold—mightiest there!
Yet mighty always—mightiest every where!
Affection! where is thy most favoured spot?
Ah, where on earth the site thou hauntest not?
The mother's heart should seem thy throne of thrones,
Built upon nature's strong foundation-stones;
But firm is thy inexorable claim,
And pure thine ever-heavenwards-pointing flame
Within all virtuous bosoms; thine it is
To unlock for them the richest founts of bliss,
And ah! the heaviest springs of sorrow too—
Yet not for them alone; since thou can'st woo
The harshest natures to thy sweet constraint,
Though dark with many a brand, and many a taint;
Thou girdlest all with thy enduring ties,
Round all thou weav'st thy circling charities;
Through all the boundless family of mankind
Do thy electric currents deeply wind
Their imperceptible and noiseless way,
Though undiscoverably hid from day—
Through all the unlimited family of man
Thy quickening influences flow—as ran
Around the shores of man's young Paradise
The four bright rivers—coloured with the skies,
The four bright rivers, clasping it about,
All Heaven within—all Deity without!
Though much be lost—abolished—darkly reft,
Thou—thou to soothe each mortal ill art left;
Though much be changed, be crushed, still thou art spared,
Living, and breathing Life, fresh, unimpaired,
And guarding still thy altars, undecayed,
Thy household Gods unbroken, and displayed
Where'er a meditative eye can turn
Unostentatiously, by hearth or urn—
Beneath the o'er-shadowing roof-tree's leafy gloom,
That whispering waves o'er some sweet cabin-home,
Or loftier shelter of fair trellised shades,
Aspiring domes, and sculptured colonnades—
Oh, come! with holiest inspiration fraught,
And breathe thy soul through my enkindling thought—
Affection, come!—with all thy mystic train;
Heart-melting Pleasure—spirit-grinding Pain,—
Hope—Fear—that oft fantastically strike
As twins, even undistinguishably like.
Sorrow! the beautiful and wondrous dream,
That makes all things her very shadow seem,
That moulds all nature to her fatal will,
With melancholy art and painful skill,
And walks the earth, and walks the starry skies,
Led by the dying light of her own eyes—
The light of staunchless tears—though worlds conspire
To bathe her track in floods of living fire,
Though all Creation's loveliest works should meet
In vain luxuriance spread beneath her feet,
Beyond all else of beautiful appears
To her—that shadow—darkening through those tears!
Affection, with thy long retinue—come,
And make my heart thy altar and thy home!

And yet 't is vain—hopeless it is, and vain,
To seek the wandering thoughts to fix, to enchain
To aught, midst this august, stupendous mass
Of marvels,—they from theme to theme will pass,
Swift as cloud-shadows o'er some streamlet's glass.
And thou! rejoicing, splendid river—thou,
Whose breast a thousand keels triumphant plough,
Thou dost now win them for awhile to dwell
On thee, exulting in thy foamless swell!
Majestic stream! how nobly in their pride
The tall, swift vessels o'er thy surface glide—
Do they not bring thee tributary spoils
From fruitful continents, from spice-fraught isles,
From gorgeous strands with Heavens of purple crowned—
From palmy coasts, luxuriant and renowned;
Bright coasts, whose dust is treasure—and whose caves
Are roofed with glistering gems,—whose very waves
Flow over sparkling beds of precious ore,
Paving with pomp of pearl and gold the shore,
Rich as some Genii-king's fair fabled store;
Well mays't thou go rejoicing—thou sublime
And most majestic stream! image of Time,
On-sweeping in disdainful revelry
To thy great bourne, the everlasting sea—
As he to death, with all his hurrying waves,
Which flow above a treacherous shoal of graves.
And yet not so,—'t is false—I do thee wrong,
Not in disdainful revelry along
Dost thou go triumphing; but calm and still—
Thou dost thy missioned ministry fulfil,
In stateliest graciousness—and gentlest power,
Smooth as fair rills, that haunt some sylvan bower;
While more than empire reigns along thy shores,
And more than affluence down thy current pours,
And more than grandeur meets thee on thy way
With Kingly state thy towery banks to array:
How beautiful thou art now! bedecked and lit
By starry gleams—while o'er thy surface flit
Myriads of crispy-wreathed smiles that break
Where'er the night-breeze fitfully doth wake;
That sparkling start to life, and sparkling die,
How brilliantly, how lustrous-dazzlingly!
Father of waters, roll, and bear with thee
The likeness of most glorious Liberty!
Not such as lives along the unruly ocean
In savage revelry of fiere commotion,
Heightening the stormy triumph of those waves,
Too often hollowed into treacherous graves—
Too often deepening to destruction's chasms,
Convulsed with thunder-fits and whirlwind-spasms;
But in the fulness of a perfect peace,
Too perfect for accession or decrease;
Most fitly imaged! such as lives and glows
In the eternal heaven's sublime repose;
In the sweet freedom of the liberal air,
When nought but light and sunny balm is there;
And in the stillness of a deep, pure flood,
Fulfilling in unbroken quietude
Its chartered, measured, and appointed course,
With calm persistance and apportioned force—
Father of waters, roll! and bear with thee
The likeness of most lovely Liberty!
Father of waters, roll! thine aspect sheds
A glory o'er the scene that round thee spreads,
The heavens—magnificently dread, or bright,
Or in the pomp of noon or lull of night,
Make thee their mirror; and 't is well to see
Those imaged Heavens in stainless purity
Shining amidst the city's dim repose,
Or clamorous conflicts that ne'er seem to close,
As though to exorcise all its sins and woes;
Smiling midst its mad chaos of fierce toil,
Where life's great deep would seem to overboil,
And earth's predominance to rise o'er all
That should win man to a sublimer thrall,
Where jarring interests crowd, and throng, and press,
Constraining all with adamantine stress!
'T is well to see heaven's glorious aspect there,
Ev'n in the heart of turmoil and of care,
Mingling upon the water's beauteous breast
With glimpse of palaced streets, in massive rest
Composed; of structures of a thousand years,
And those of yesterday, their last compeers;
Of fretted spires, that as they lessening rise,
Glance like retorted lightnings to the skies,
To which they point with never-ceasing aim,
As though man's wandering fancy to reclaim
To their fair land of promise, blue and bright,
Stretching away to realms of living light,—
'T is well to see Heaven's awful reflex there,
Softened and mellowed through the silvery air!
While shine its glimmering rays—its bright cloud-isles,
Like gleams and glimpsings of its angels' smiles!
A borrowed lustre all the scenery wears,
And vested in enchanted guise appears;
An overflow of beauty from the skies
Seems pouring down on our bewildered eyes—
Those skies that glorify the gladdened earth,
Morn, eve, and night, with quick successive birth;
Of changeful splendours, prodigal of joy,
Lavish of brilliant wealth, without alloy—
Their superfluity of loveliness
Lending—o'erburthened with its rich excess—
To earth, in luxury of munificence!
Yet as I gaze, one painful throb intense
Through my recoiling sense doth quivering dart,
Chilling the trembling pulses of my heart.
Alas! beneath thy bright and breezeless wave
That doth so gloryingly the proud banks lave,
How many victims of despair are laid!
Not in the folding funeral-shroud arrayed—
Not in the monumental mound composed—
Not where the hallowed gates of death are closed
'Gainst the light stranger-footsteps! Yet they sleep
Well in their watery bed—the calm and deep!
And oh! whate'er the gloom spread darkling there,
The intruder's desecrating step can ne'er
Break in upon their last, their long repose,
The silence of their cares and maddening woes!—
But hence! vain, melancholy thoughts, away!
I will not bend me to your saddening sway—
Let nobler feelings warm the awakening breast,
To loftier themes be every thought addressed.
How can I gaze on thine exulting tide
Without an ecstasy of kindling pride,
River of England! how can I survey
The thronging wonders that attend thy way—
Though mantled now in night's prevailing shade,
To fancy's eye still faithfully displayed!
Thy forests of tall masts that bristling rise,
Like serried lances pointed 'gainst the skies;
The rich and royal argosies that sweep,
Proudly o'er thee, as o'er the unfathomed deep,
Without a transport of resistless joy,
Too deep, too exquisite—too pure to cloy.
We look on thee, our country's stream of streams!
Till half her glories rush upon our dreams,
And in thyself most beautiful thou art,
Thou bright, triumphal road—blue liquid mart;
No scantling stream before our eyes doth glide,
Meandering slow, where thou roll'st by, in pride,
Thou sweepest along—a stream of strength and state,
Past London's towers—the greatest of the great:
Might not the sea-volcanoes, vast and dread,
The sea-volcanoes of our navies, spread
Their blazoned glories to the sunshine here,
And their broad-streamer'd masts triumphant rear!
Winged citadels of the armaments of war,
Which bear the Imperial Island's mandates far,
And brunt the storms—though rocked on treacherous floods,
Like the wedged phalanx of their native woods,
The quellers of the billowy revelry,
The dreadless wrestlers with the eternal sea!
The trident-sceptre by their mistress swayed,
By them defended, is by all obeyed.
Lo! how they sweep, midst rampant seas along,
Glorying, triumphant, jubilant and strong—
Like giant steeds of battle in their pride:
And who are they that govern and that guide?
Who but the island-born—the Kings at Sea,
The armipotent, the fearless and the free—
England's unconquered Ocean-chivalry!

Oh! from such visions of the haughty main,
Calm Thames,—'t is sweet to turn to thee again!
Thy rival-rivers through an hundred lands,
Though they may roll to rich and dazzling strands,
And on their waves all imaged splendours bear,
Shall yield to thee—thou great beyond compare!
Not for th' amazing wealth that is thy dower,
That loads the ships that o'er thy surface tower
With freights of sumless value, though they hold
A monarch's revenues in gems and gold;
Not for the might of arms, the pomp of arts,
That to thy name so proud a charm imparts;
But that fair Freedom sits enthroned beside
The mazy windings of thy rushing tide—
Thy banks are altars, and thy currents flow,
Murmuring victorious pæans as they go,
Till every wave of thine might seem to be
A bright libation, poured to Liberty!
How royally thy Crown of scattered Domes
Thou wearest amidst old Midnight's purple glooms,
Those purple glooms that round thee float and cling,
Like the dyed robes of some great earthly king—
How royally thou flashest back each gleam
That quivers o'er thy calm, broad, placid stream—
How royally the Royal city's pride
Of tower and turret, glassest in thy tide,
So softly shadowed forth, and pictured there,
They look like immortality—so fair!—

And shall thy waves,—thy proudly-freighted waves
Ere flow or stagnate, mid a waste of graves,
Whilst far from thy forsaken banks shall rise
Empires—dominions—principalities,
New to the astonished earth, constrained to obey
The recent sceptre of their rising sway?
Shall thy broad zone, forlornly glittering, bind
Ruins and fragments hoar? thy waters wind
Midst shadowy desolations, wreck-strewn plains—
Oblivion's blank and loneliest domains?

London! most glorious London! thou that art
Earth's diadem—the universe's heart;
London! thou city of cities—feared, renowned,
A mighty nation midst the awed nations round—
Thou great emporium of the attracted world,
Thy banners of old victories now are furled;
But thy proud flags of perilous enterprise
Still flush the wave and flout the kindling skies;
Through undiscovered seas and trackless lands,
Thy missioned envoys bear thy high commands.

What future destinies for thee remain—
What limits are affixed to thy wide reign?
The inarticulate prophesyings low
Of the quick heart speak little, — can that know?
No glance can fathom, and no thought divine
What mixed futurities shall yet be thine!
But this is sure; that thou one day must fall,
Girt with bleak Desolation's heavy thrall—
One only city shall such doom defy,
The Eternal City of the eternal sky!
The New Jerusalem, throned high and far,
Beyond the blazing realms of globe and star,
Builded of jasper and of chrysolite—
The Heaven of Heavens its element and site!
Around whose walls the immortal river runs,
Lit by a thousand and ten thousand suns!
That city only shall unmoved remain,
Eternity shall try its strength in vain!
For thee—thou shalt decline, shalt surely fail,
Thou must behold thy westering star grow pale;
Thou, O Imperial City! may'st not last
For ever!—hark! a voice warns from the past!

Ere this, hath Ruin marked thee for her prey,
Withering the bulwarks of thy strength away;
Ere this Destruction her fierce scourge upreared,
And midst thy monuments of pride careered—
Her minister, that element of wrath
That leaves but smouldering deserts in its path.
Lo! how it laid thine old foundations bare,
Missioned to strike, and impotent to spare!
Thy mighty arsenals, that might in awe
Have held a world, so could not bid withdraw,
That fierce Invader, who made all his prize—
Thy treasuries heaped with princely merchandize,
Thy piles of stateliest masonry—thy fanes,
Made holier still by Time's recording stains—
Till the upheaving and o'erwhelming flood
Coloured the shuddering skies and stars with blood,
While tower and temple—shaft and dome and spire,
But brought fresh fuel for that funeral pyre,
That Heaven-assaulting Pyramid of Fire!
Ere this—hath dread Annihilation cowered
Where thy old hallowed fanes, far heavenwards towered,
As though they would be voiceless Intercessors
For the denounced ones, the comdemned transgressors,
The anguish-stricken multitudes beneath,
Who wrestled vainly with the torturing death.
Black plague and pestilence within thy walls
Abode; and stalked throughout thy darkened Halls,
Thou crowned-one of earth's Kingliest Capitals,
In formless horror—scattering o'er their path
Dire drops from th' unsealed vessels of Heaven's wrath
(Till like one vasty charnel-house became
That mighty city—mighty but in name!
One open Golgotha, it seemed to spread,
Ghastly and horrent with the plague-struck dead!)
Have not these things had power to scare, to warn?
Should they but reap forgetfulness or scorn?
Still darest thou place in pillared strength thy trust,
Thy pillared strength that crumbled into dust?—
Where reigns the world's proud mistress, awful Rome?
Go, ask of splintered shaft, and fractured dome—
A world herself—crushed down into a tomb!
How doth towered Tadmor hold her ancient reign?
How her majestic sovereignty retain?
The desert of the deserts! she concedes
Her pomp to scorpion-broods and battening weeds;
Her strength to every fitful gust that raves,
Midst her dismantled wilderness of graves,
While still she sinks, supine, from day to day,
In gorgeous dreariment of slow decay!
There is an Eye, a dread unsleeping Eye,
That scans at once thy veiled futurity—
Thy present and thy past; to whose deep glance,
Though every ebb and flow of circumstance
Through all revolving seasons (like a fold
Stretched in the shepherd's sight) thou spread'st unrolled—
An eye which watches thee through varying fate,
Through each and all, and every change of state—
Whether the shadowy web of mourning falls
In pomp of gloom o'er thy stupendous walls,
And the deep booming of the funeral bell
Startles the neighbouring air with ominous knell;
Or the bright blaze of lamps by myriads meets
The Stars, midway from thy Imperial streets,
One glad illumination Earth and Sky
Composing,—while thy shouts are, Victory!—
The thunder of thine acclamations sent,
Like earth-born tempests to the firmament!
Still that dread Eye regards thee, still surveys
Through noon's strong glare or midnight's curtaining haze;
Then be thou holy, midst thy pomp and pride,
If thou in steadfast greatness would'st abide,
If thou would'st scatheless brunt time's strenuous shock,
And fix thy firm foundations on a rock!
An age of ages haply then may crown
Thy front but with accession of renown!
Oh! be thou holy—midst thy strength and might,
So may refulgent day and solemn night
With alternation of rich blessings move
Round thee—anointing thee with dews of Love!
Be holy thou! Inviolate and pure,
So may'st thou reign! so flourish, and endure!—
Holy as thou might'st seem at this still time,
Wrapped in a calm unearthly and sublime,
Sleeping in thine own mighty shadow, cast
Around thee—like a dim veil of the Past;
Dusky and dense—a curtain huge and deep,
Drawn o'er the solemn stillness of thy sleep,
Like the great World itself—the unbounded World,
Whose shadow streams immeasurably unfurled,
In billowy folds of darkness towards the stars,
Like some dread banner of Hierarchic wars,
Vasty and massive—glorified and emblazed
By flashing meteors on its surface raised;
Yet not of war the ensign, but of peace
It floats—deep shadow! when vain conflicts cease,
And slumbrous Night's all-reconciling reign
Brings a brief armistice for grief and pain,
Oh! be thou holy! may thy hearths and homes
Be sanctified with love—thy regal domes,
Worthy of kingly conclaves, hallowed be
To loftiest schemes of glorious polity,
To high magnanimous counsels, firm and pure,
The popular weal to exalt and to secure!
Religion, at thy towering Altars stand
To inspire, to upraise, to invoke, and to command—
Peace, with her multitudinous blessings, dwell
Within thy proud walls inaccessible!
(For Victory, though awhile supine, awaits
An untasked handmaid at thy trophied gates),
Shrined in thy heart of hearts, for ever be
Truth, Wisdom, Justice, Reverence, Liberty;
These from thy murmuring depths shall mingling rise,
A pyramid-palladium to the Skies!
A Consecration and a strong Defence—
Appeal from Earth to Heaven's Omnipotence!
Oh, be thou holy! if thou would'st be great,
Or in the palmy pomp of sceptred state,
Or in the ordeal of an adverse fate:
Be holy—so shalt thou be still revered,
Even when no more obeyed—no longer feared:
Be holy! so shalt thou stand forth sublime,
Lowered, or in height of pride, to all succeeding Time!

Am I forgiven? Yet say those words again,
Banishing every trace of every fear,
Bringing back Hope with all its laughing train,
Hope—that each brief estrangement makes more dear.

Ever-o'erpoweringly within my heart,
Thy blessed forbearance shall remembered dwell,
Causing full many a tear of love to start;
Full many a sigh of o'erwrought bliss to swell!

Repeat those cherished accents, that restored
Hope and existence to my suffering spirit;
Happier, to owe my happiness,—Adored!
To thy sweet mercy, than to mine own merit!

Yet, dear one of my heart! sole treasure there—
Thou kind and true, beyond all power to express,
Proud should I now become, might I but dare
Measure my merit by my happiness!

Make not offending almost sweet to me,
By such rich reconcilement, full and deep;
Draw not repentance near to ecstasy,
By all the Love I waken when I weep.

The shadows are now thy dwelling,
Thine element is the night—
Thou all of earth excelling,
Most beautiful,—O most bright!

Thy beauty is of the past!
Thy gladdening smile hath flown,
Thy voice is in silence' waste,
Lost, lost is every tone!

The crown of thy glory is crushed;
But thy chain, oh, thy chain it is riven!
Thy soul hath through darkness rushed,
But hath it not rushed to heaven?

Oh! is't with rejoicing or regret,
That we now should think of thee?
Rejoicing, if we can earth forget;
But if Heaven—oh, misery!

And hast thou wept for me? O joy and grief;
I know not which is deepest—which is chief—
'T is happiness! and yet I scarce can bear
That thus in my keen sorrows thou should'st share—
'T is sadness! yet 't would wring my very heart
Were that most sweet dejection to depart!
And hast thou wept for me? O grief and joy;
Joy—with what costly, exquisite alloy!
Grief—with what honeyed sweetening in her cup,
Tempting the heart to drink its rich draughts up!
It is a sorrowful, yet strong delight,
Mastering the spirit with its gentle might;
It is a tender and serene regret,
Such as my heart could wish not to forget.

And hast thou wept for me? O joy and grief—
I know not which is strongest, which is chief!
Those passionate, and O! most precious tears,
The interpreters of Love's warm hopes and fears:
How do they seem along my heart to melt
(That heart which such chill loneliness hath felt)
How freshly through my softened soul they flow,
And reconcile to much of pain and woe.

Mine had flowed feelingly and fast as well,
For they were stirred within their secret cell!
But thine—those passionate and precious tears—
Pure as the light that streams from heaven's fair spheres,
Too soon, Beloved and Loving that thou art,
Rose into Hope's own rainbows round my heart!

This Love—this deep, this mighty Love,
That makes my heart in music move,
To thee a dream, a trance may seem,
To me it makes all else a dream!

And those who love not—Dreamers all,
Round whom Indifference weaves her pall,
Her chilling pall, her darkening shroud,
That wraps all nature in a cloud!

And oh! that smile, which doth exert
No magic o'er thy moveless heart—
It may seem nothing unto thee,
'T is more than all I wish to me!

This Love; this deep, this mighty Love,
Which makes my heart such transports prove—
To thee an empty dream may seem,
To me it makes all else a dream!

“Ladye, Ladye, why sitt'st thou in silence and lone
In thy bower by the rose and the jasmine o'ergrown,
While the hunter's horn rings from the hills of the deer,
Oh! why dost thou sit in thy loneliness here?

“Ladye, Ladye, how lik'st thou this weary life;
This strange tissue of pleasure and pain and strife—
Ladye, bright Ladye! I pray thee to say,
Or art thou mournful—or art thou gay?

“Or haply art thou nor gloomy nor glad,
Nor merry of mood, nor sullen nor sad;
Or haply is't neither yea nor nay,
Ladye, sweet Ladye! I urge thee to say?

“Oh! I once had a dark-eyed daughter dear,
And her heart was broken without a tear;
She drank a deep cup of bitterness,
And died in her spring-time of loveliness.

“In silence she suffered, in silence she sighed—
In silence she sickened, in silence she died:
Doth grief untold on thy heart's core prey,
Bright Ladye, sweet Ladye! I urge thee to say?”

Quoth she—“I am neither merry nor sad,
Nor over-gloomy nor over-glad;
Nor joyous, nor sorrowful—sullen nor gay,
Nor mournful nor mirthful, by night or by day.

“My heart is contented, my mind is at rest—
And blow the wind east, or blow the wind west;
Come April-showers, or Midsummer's-ray,”
Quoth she,—“I have never more to say!

“Had thy dark-eyed daughter been more like me,
She had broken her heart for no vain phantasie;
With peace and with prayers, she had gone to her grave—
Farewell, old Sir Knight, and Our Ladye thee save!

“'T is seldom I smile, but 't is seldom I weep—
Fare thee well, ancient knight, and Our Ladye thee keep!
I pray thee to pardon my mind's wayward mood,
And I pray thee to leave me to—Solitude.”

“Yet a moment, I pray—yet a little while stay!
I am old—I am grey—thou should'st not say me nay;
Fain, fain would I question thee, Ladye, awhile—
Now thanks for that gracious and softening smile!

“Tell me, lov'st thou not banquet and state festival,
The fair-tapestried chamber, and banner-hung hall?
The pomp and the pageantry—splendour and light—
The queenly array, and mixed throngs, proud and bright?

“And dost thou not love the gay chase, when the morn
Gives her glad echoes out to the hunter's shrill horn,
And the wild-boughs crash loud to the stag's antlered head,
As he springs from his covert, all panting with dread—

“Or dost thou love better the champaign's wide scene,
When the falconers are there, in their vestments of green;
And thine own tassel-gentle is placed on that wrist,
Whose blue veins e'en an Emperor were proud to have kissed!

“Or say, is thy choice for the masque's gorgeous show,
Where the splendid procession moves stately and slow;
For the mummeries' devices, all mystic and strange,
Their fictitious display, and fantastical change;

“Or doth thy bright eye grow more gloriously bright,
Where spear strikes with spear, and knight challenges knight;
Where the plumed crest that glittered the loftiest there,
Is bowed to the dust in thy presence most fair?

“Where a knot that hath fastened thy hair's precious coils,
Should be deemed worthiest meed for the combatants' toils;
Where a smile from thine eye, that ne'er knew how to frown,
Should outweigh chain and charger and Victor's fair crown?”

“Sir Knight! 't is a grand, glorious sight to behold,
Their long glittering lances, their pennons of gold—
Their scutcheons and collars, their scarfs broidered fair—
And their surcoats of ermine, and blazonries rare—

“And Sir Knight! 'tis more glorious, far grander 'tis still
To behold them put forth all their strength and their skill,
When the trumpet brays loud, and their steeds rush in might,
In the foam of their pride, to the shock of the fight:

“A crowned King hath borne Conqueror's crown in my name,
And challenged the world for my beauty's poor fame—
And full many a Chatillon, many a Lord,
Hath worshipped and wooed me with spear and with sword!

“Heard ye not of the tournament, fair and renowned,
Lately held on this spot—on your hoof-trodden ground?
Heard ye not how the famed chiefs thronged in from afar,
All arrayed in the fierce-gleaming harness of war?

“There on high, and apart, was my canopied seat,
While challenged and challenger bowed at my feet;
There more than one Prince set this proud lance in rest,
And more than one Prince watched my beck and behest.”

“Then must thou be the famed Ladye Ermengarde,”
Cried the ancient Knight—“theme of minstrel and bard;
Whose beauty 's enshrined in Provencal love-lay,
Whose smile is a bright spell, of limitless sway!

“Whose name through the courts of the wide world hath rung,
Through the courts of a world hath been sounded and sung—
Theme of many a roundelay, tale, and romance,
Through all countries, but chief thro' thine own sunny France.

“Gramercy—bright Maid! that at last I have seen
The world's chosen mistress, and Beauty's crown'd queen—
Gramercy!—and glad is the old Knight to hear
That thy heart is not hung 'twixt a smile and a tear:

“Though the one be a warm, rosy meteor of light,
Still the other doth haunt it, with chill and with blight—
May thy brow ne'er be darkened, thy cheek ne'er grow pale—
Gramercy, bright Maid! for the sight and the tale.”

“Sir Knight,” straight the courteous young maiden replied,
“I have told not my tale through vain-glory or pride;
But with deference meet, to thine age from my youth,
I have told thee (perchance but too freely) the truth.”

“May each saint in the calendar bless thee now,
Oh! queen of the rose-cheek and bright sunny brow—
May each saint in the calendar guard thee and keep,
May'st thou ne'er be unqueen'd, by Time's traceries stamp'd deep!

“I was mighty once, who am now a bruised reed;
Farewell crested helmet, and fierce warrior steed—
Farewell to the battle, the tournay and tilt,
No more must my hand grasp the sword's bossy hilt.

“But behold ye!—the Ladye of Ladyes most bright
Turns not frowning away from the gray ancient Knight;
Though no more in the lists, and no more in the field,
Conquering arms in fair Beauty's behalf can he wield!

“Alas! I am a Knight of an ancient age,
No more must I send the blithe little foot-page,
With token and trophy to Ladye's hush'd bower—
With token and trophy, with jewel or flower.”

“Now may heaven thee save, thou good knight and true,
Thou hadst thus at my hands but thy right and thy due;
And the crimson of shame should flush deep on my cheek,
Could I spurn thee discourteously—fear not to speak.

“The crown of hoar hairs is a dread, solemn crown,
Before which youthful heads should in homage bow down—
What more may it be thy good pleasure to ask?
To give faithful response, shall be Ermengarde's task.”

“Oh! then tell me, thou gracious and gentle one, tell,
Why dost thou apart in this loneliness dwell;
Dost thou mourn not the chase—nor the falconry's sport,
Nor the pomp and the state of the fair royal court—

“Dost thou sigh not for bright scenes of pleasaunce and pride?
Oh! thou that should'st be a young monarch's crowned bride,
Dost thou wish not to be midst the proud and the gay
In thy life's rosy season—its fresh flowery May?

“Dost thou grieve not, away from the glad festal board,
Where the minstrel's voice chimes with the harp's ringing chord—
Where each Knight in the blood-red wine mantling up high,
Doth pledge his heart's Sovereign, with smile and with sigh?

“Hath the saraband's mazes no charms in thy sight—
Can the mummeries quaint, yield thy soul no delight?
Nor the murmur of flatteries, the whispers of love,
Bid thy bosom one tremor of ecstasy prove?

“Oh! but surely thou lovest the masque and the mime,
The trump's sounding challenge, the Troubadour's rhyme?”
“Sir Knight,” with a smile, then responded the maid,
“I grieve not for the sun when I rest in the shade;

“In the festival's glare, in the banquet's glad hour,
I mourn not for the calm of my dim latticed bower;
In the shelter and gloom of that bower's still repose,
I regret not the festival's splendours and shows—

“I hear not now the young Troubadour's tale;
But sweet, oh most sweet! is the nightingale's wail—
No armoured gallant now boasts my behest,
But my follower is Peace, and Contentment my guest!

“No silver-belled merlin now takes its stand
On the broidered glove that encloseth my hand;
But a thousand wild-birds hurry by to their nests,
With their bright wings of glory and rich starry crests—

“I have left columned chamber, and bartizann'd tower,
For the hush and the dusk of my rose-trellised, bower;
I might like them in sooth, well enough were I there,
As it is—oh! I find the green woodlands more fair.

“There are times when I mix with the festal crowd,
And deem not its music of joyaunce too loud;
There are times when the copse and the grey twilight-hill
Seem not to my fancy too lonely—too still.”

“Oh Ladye!” the Knight of an ancient age said,
All courteously bending his silver-hair'd head;
“Oh Ladye! I ween by the peace thou dost prove,
That thou never hast bowed to the wild rule of Love?”

“Thou art wrong, thou art wrong—oh! how sorely thou art wrong!
But no parlaunce of that—the words freeze on my tongue:
As the cold, careless Ladye, still let me be known,
Though alas! I have loved (who has not?) one alone!

“But 't is done—it is past—'t is forgotten and o'er;
He thinks not of me, and I love him no more—
'T will be long ere another shall reign in a heart
Where a false tongued traitor had portion and part.

“Now farewell, Sir Knight,—from the chase of the deer,
Soon my sire shall return to the banquet's cheer;
But midst hunter and wassailer, chieftain and bard,
He will grieve if he misses his own Ermengarde!”