University of Virginia Library

III. THE ADOPTED CHILD.

Gisella, thou canst scarce recall the day
When from the huts we led thy feet away:—
Rough huts, that in an interspace of ground
Betwixt the road-way and the hedge were found
In close confiding neighbourhood, that told
Of birds thick nestled against winter's cold;
Of equal rights and brotherhood, that reign
'Mong those who common laws and bonds disdain;
Last of th' ancestral restlessness of bands,
Their light tents shifting oft o'er Arya's sands;
Thence free to range o'er Europe in the chase
Of that old half-forgot abiding place.
Thou wert the fairest of the youthful rout
That hid and sought their comrades in and out
Among the shaded nooks, whose paling fires
Just touch'd the darkening features of the sires;
The sires, the full-eyed maidens of the race,
Rich in their native heritage of grace.
How could they fly and let thee leave their sight,
Little Gisella, brightest of the bright?
Ah! happy day for us, but sad for them;
How could thy tribe thus fling aside their gem?
Was it the tyrant force of narrow laws
That left their steps no room for thought or pause,
And chased them e'en at midnight from the nest
Where that wild camp lay plunged in careless rest?
Or was it force or fraud that stay'd thee there,
When in the haze of morning's thicken'd air
Around a whitening circle's ashen heap
We saw thy crouching form kneel down and creep,
And stretch thy little hands in hope to gain
Some warmth that might appease the chilling rain.
Could we have pass'd and left thee to thy fate?
Thou wert too young, too fair, too desolate!
Too desolate for us to feel that we
Were working aught of fraud in claiming thee;
Too fair to leave thee to be toss'd and whirl'd
On the rude billows of a thoughtless world;
Too young to know the severance of race
That spoke in every line of thy wild face,
And on the broken utterance of thy tongue
Its pity-pleading Eastern accents hung.
—With what strange glee the children welcomed in
The little stranger, come of alien kin;
The diamond-eyed, the dark-hair'd, brought to share
The nursery of the golden-lock'd and fair!
Born free to range without restraint or fear,
Where'er the earth was green, or skies were clear;
Born Nature's nursling, uncontroll'd and wild,
Yet like themselves, in heart a very child;
A child, with more than childhood's broken speech,
A young disciple, whom the young might teach.
On went the years, the past seem'd all forgot,
And those who saw thee, bless'd thine alter'd lot;
Saved from barbarian life, the joys to share
Of those who breathe in civilizing air:
Beneath the shield of order'd laws to move,
Safe paths, fix'd customs, regulated love:
The staid observances of social life,
The studies that shape out the finish'd wife,
The task that morn by morn in order falls,
The life-experience, learnt in shops and calls,
The licensed fever of the Christmas ball,
The harp, the netting, and the landscape scrawl;
The church, where youth for fashion's sake are brought,
The water-frolic, with devotion sought;
And all things else, that nurse and fan the fair
To be the lovely greenhouse-flowers they are.
So be it, bright one! be it so! No sighs
Of fond remembrance in thy breathings rise;
Thou canst not wish that thou wert yet the child
That first we knew thee, strange, untaught, and wild,
The sweet field-flower in Nature's garden grown,
Claim'd by the dews and stars of heaven their own.
For thee that past is past, and dimly gleams
As far-off planets float in morning dreams;
By Nature's universal firm decree
Our past seems fated, though our present free;
Man may not shift in thought his life's old scene,
Or shape a course aught else than it has been.
Re-tread the years gone by, by memory's power;
Still day seems link'd to day, and hour to hour;
E'en from our birth the long enthralment springs,
And knits us to the fated chain of things.
Yet, fair Gisella, born to range unbound
By those firm links that o'er our lives are wound,
Sure oft unconscious feelings, self-repress'd,
When custom's weight hangs dully on thy breast,
When graceful courtesies but serve to hide
Rash scheming love, to lust too near allied;
Or when the seeming gloss refinement lends,
But gilds the native barrenness of friends,—
Must bear thee back to what thou wert before,
Breathe a soft sigh for days that dawn no more;
For unschool'd virtue, unapplauded truth,
Youth unestranged from age, and age from youth;
An equal poverty that all endured,
Alike to wandering and to toil inured:
Vice undisguised and fearless to proclaim
That man's old nature yet abides the same.
As gales of mountain air, though chill, yet free,
Such thoughts, Gisella, sure must breathe o'er thee,
Amid the currents of the perfumed breeze
That eddy round the languid halls of ease.
'Tis better that thou art with us, than there
Where first we found thee in thy young despair:—
I would not so mistrust our daily course
As to turn back the current to its source:
Yet sure unfetter'd justice, stern, though kind,
Holds out an even balance for mankind.
Why should we close our partial sight, and cry,
'Tis we alone that live in Nature's eye,
When in the open secret of her plan,
She measures out one even lot for man;
When 'midst the seeming ebb and flow of things
Her powers hold on the flight of tranquil wings,
Unite the sever'd links of mortal life,
Hush down the clamours of an idle strife,
And in the circlings of their course maintain
The noiseless tenour of her equal reign?