University of Virginia Library

But the Count, whom prosperous hours
Back to his ancestral towers
Bring, and to his widowed bowers,
How shall he, this lone man, bear
The approach and entrance there?
Lonely man! though at his side
Troops of friends and vassals ride;
Lonely man! though at his gate
Him ten thousand welcomes wait;
Heart unwelcomed home, although
Thousand voices skyward go;
Thousand voices fill the air,
But the one is lacking there.
How shall he endure to pace
Those long echoing halls, and trace
Each remembered happy place,
Haunted each with its own ghost
Of some ancient splendour lost,
Each with its own vision bright
Of some forfeited delight
Rising clear upon his sight?
How beside a cold hearth stand,
Quenched by his own reckless hand?
He has borne it, man forlorn!
Borne—for all things may be borne;
And he lives, nor freedom asks
From life's ordinary tasks,
Him though oft the crowded hall,
And the thronging festival,
With that dreariest sense oppress
Of a peopled wilderness;
Though the crowds that to and fro
On their busy errands go,
Ofttimes seem with all their tasks
But so many gibbering masks;
Though he oft must contemplate
The strange mockeries of fate,
Which with hand profuse had shed
Gifts so many on his head,
Which had lent him splendour, fame,
And a glory round his name,
Honour, due to him whose hand
Helped to free his native land,
Yet withdrew the single thing
Which to all a worth would bring.—

And the years give no relief,
Mellowing an austerer grief:
But a melancholy dim,
Darker and darker, fell on him.
Round him, when his state they knew,
Friends and faithful kinsmen drew
With consoling words and speech,
Which his heart's wound cannot reach:
Yet he strives not, when the morn
They will greet with hawk and horn;
Still he yields a sad consent,
Is with everything content,
Feast, or chase, or tournament.
‘Brother,’ so to him one day
Did his faithful kinsman say—
‘Oft a milk-white hind is seen
On that belt of tender green,
Skirting the dark forest vast
We so many times have past;
Seen it flieth, but with flight
As it would pursuit invite;
Though remaining unpursued
In that deep and haunted wood
To this hour;—with hound and horn
We will rouse to-morrow morn:
And methinks we shall not there
Fail to find some quarry rare,
That or other, which shall greet
Friends that here to-morrow meet.