Life and Phantasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Seven years gone, and we together
Ramble as before, old Ned!
Not a brown curl on your head
Soil'd with touch of time or weather.
Yet no wonder if you fear'd,
With that broad chest and bushy beard,
Lucy might scarce remember you.
My letters, had they painted true
The child grown woman?

Here's our way.
Autumn in its last decay;
The hills have misty solitude
And silence; dead leaves drop in the wood;
And free across the Park we stray,
Where only the too-much freedom baulks.
These half-obliterated walks,
The tangling grass, the shrubberies choked
With briars, the runnel which has soak'd
Its lawn-foot to a marsh, between
The treacherous tufts of brighter green,
The garden, plann'd with costly care,
Now wilder'd as a maniac's hair,
The blinded mansion's constant gloom,
Winter and summer, night and day,
Save when the stealthy hours let fall
A sunbeam, or more pallid ray,
Creeping across the floor and wall
From solitary room to room,
To pry and vanish, like the rest,
Weary of a useless quest,
The sombre face of hill and grove,
The very clouds which seem to move
Sadly, be it swift or slow,—
How unlike this you scarcely know,
Was “Bridegroom's Park” seven years ago.

Human Spirits, line by line,
Have left hereon their visible trace;
As may, methinks, to Eye Divine,
Human history and each one's share
Be closely written everywhere
Over the solid planet's face.
A sour old Witch,—a surly Youth,
Her grandson,—three great dogs, uncouth
To strangers (I'm on terms with all),
Are household now. Sometimes, at fall
Of dusk, a Shape is said to move
Amid the drear entangled grove,
Or seems lamentingly to stand
Beside a pool that's close at hand.
Rare are the human steps that pass
On mossy walk or tufted grass.

Let's force the brushwood barrier,
No path remaining. Here's a chair!
Once a cool delightful seat,
Now the warty toad's retreat,
Cushion'd with fungus, sprouting rank,
Smear'd with the lazy gluey dank.
No doubt the Ghost sits often there—
A Female Shadow with wide eyes
And dripping garments. This way lies
The pool, the little pleasure-lake,
Which cost a pretty sum to make;
Stoop for this bough, and see it now
A dismal solitary slough,
Scummy, weedy, ragged, rotten,
Shut in jail, forsook, forgotten.

Most of the story you have heard:
The bower of bliss at length prepared
To the last blossom, line of gilding,
(Never such a dainty building)
One day, Bride and Bridegroom came;
The hills at dusk with merry flame

Crowning their welcome: they had June,
Grand weather—and a honeymoon!
Came, to go away too soon,
And never come again.

The Bride
Was in her old home when she died,
On a winter's day in the time of snow,
(She never saw that year to an end),
And he has wander'd far and wide,
And look'd on many a distant hill,
But not on these he used to know
Round his park that wave and bend,
And people think he never will.

Who can probe a spirit's pain?
Who tell that man's loss, or gain?
How far he sinn'd, how far he loved,
How much by what befell was moved,
If there his real happiness
Began, or ended, who shall guess?
Trivial the biographic scroll
Save as a history of the soul,
Perhaps whose mightiest events
Are dumb and secret incidents.
A man's true life and history
Is like the bottom of the sea,
Where mountains and huge valleys hide
Below the wrinkles of the tide,
Under the peaceful mirror, under
Billowy foam and tempest-thunder.

Rude the flow'r-shrubs' overgrowth;
Dark frowns the clump of firs beyond;
At twilight one might well be loth
To linger here alone, and find
The story vivid in one's mind.
A Young Girl, gently bred and fair,
A widow's daughter, whom the Heir
Met somewhere westward on a time,

Came down to this secluded pond,
That's now a mat of weeds and slime,
One summer-day seven years ago,
Sunshine above and flowers below.
Neglect had driven her to despair.
And, poor thing, in her frenzied mood
Bursting upon their solitude,
She drown'd herself, before the face
Of Bride and Bridegroom. Here's the place.

Now mark—that very summer day
You, Ned, and I look'd down this way,
And saw the girl herself—yes, we!
Skirting the coppice—that was She.

Imagine (this at least is known)
The frantic creature's plunge; the Bride
Swooning by her husband's side;
And him, alone, and not alone,
Turning aghast from each to each,
Shouting for help, but none in reach.
He sees the drowning woman sink,
Twice—thrice—then, headlong from the brink,
He drags her to the grass—too late.
There by his servants was he found,
Bewilder'd by the stroke of fate;
With two pale figures on the ground,
One in the chill of watery death,
One with long-drawn painful breath
Reviving. Sudden was the blow,
Dreadful and deep the change. We'll go
And find the house.

Suspicion pries
From wrinkled mouth and peering eyes,
You old deaf Dame! but friends are we.
Else should I never grasp this key,
Or tread this broad and lonely stair,
Or let this unexpected glare
Of outdoor world insult the gloom

That lives in each forsaken room,
Through which the gammer daily creeps,
And all from dust and mildew keeps.
Few hands may slide this veil aside,
To show—a picture of the Bride.
Is she not gently dignified?
Her curving neck, how smooth and long;
Her eyes, that softly look you through,
To think of violets were to wrong
Their lucency of living blue.

The new hope of that fair young wife,
The sacred and mysterious life
Which counts as yet no separate hours,
Yielding to sorrow's hurtful powers,
Quench'd its faint gleam before a morn;
And when her breathless babe was born
Almost as still the mother lay,
Almost as dumb, day after day,
Till on the fifth she pass'd away;
And (far too soon) her marriage-bell
Must now begin to ring her knell.
Old man, and child, and village lass,
Who stood to see her wedding pass—
No further stoops the hoary head,
The merry maid is still unwed,
The child is yet a child, no more,
Watching her hearse go by their door.
Her bridal wreath one summer gave,
The next, a garland for her grave.

Close the shutter. Bright and sharp
The ray falls on those shrouded things,—
A grand piano and a harp,
Where no one ever plays or sings.

No, truly,—He will not forget.
But things go on; he's a young man yet;
His life has many a turn to take;

He may fell this wood, fill up the lake,
Throw down the house (so should not I),
Or sell it to you, Ned, if you'll buy;
Or, perhaps, come thoughtfully back some day,
With humble heart and head grown gray.
Homeward now, as quick as you will;
These afternoons are short and chill.
There's my haggart, under the hill;
Through evening's fog the cornstacks rise
Like domes of a little Arab city
Girt by its wall, with a bunch of trees
At a corner—palms, for aught one sees.
Sister Lucy is there alone;
The good old father and mother gone;
And I'm not married—more is the pity!
Seem I old bachelor in your eyes?
—Well, Ned, after dinner to-night,
When a ruddy hearth gives just the light
We used to think best, you'll spread your sail
And carry us far, without wave or gale!
And we'll talk of the old years, and the new,
Of what we have done, and mean to do.”