Men's care-ambition, friendship, fame,
Love, hope, though hope was now despair-
Indue the colours of this change;
As from the all-surrounding air
The earth takes hues obscure and strange,
When storm and earthquake linger there.
And so, my friend, it then befell
To many, most to Lionel ;
Whose hope was like the life of youth
Within him, and, when dead, became
A spirit of unresting flame,
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And in the fourth, when he returned,
None knew him he was stricken deep
With some disease of mind, and turned
Into aught unlike Lionel.
On him-on whom, did he pause in sleep
Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
And, did he wake, a winged band
Of bright Persuasions, which had fed
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
Kept their swift pinions half outspread
To do on men his least command-
On him, whom once 'twas paradise
Even to behold, now misery lay.
In his own heart 'twas merciless :
To all things else none may express
Its innocence and tenderness.
'Twas said that he had refuge sought
In love from his unquiet thought
In distant lands, and been deceived
By some strange show; for there were found,
Blotted with tears (as those relieved
By their own words are wont to do),
These mournful verses on the ground,
By all who read them blotted too.
"How am I changed! My hopes were once like fire: I loved, and I believed that life was love.
How am I lost! On wings of swift desire
Among heaven's winds my spirit once did move.
I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
My liquid sleep. I woke, and did approve All Nature to my heart, and thought to make A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.
"I love, but I believe in love no more :
I feel desire, but hope not. Oh! from sleep Most vainly must my weary brain implore
Its long-lost flattery now.
I wake to weep,
And sit through the long day gnawing the core
Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep-
Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure--
To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.”
He dwelt beside me near the sea;
And oft in evening did we meet,
When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,—
And talked. Our talk was sad and sweet,
Till slowly from his mien there passed
The desolation which it spoke;
And smiles-as, when the lightning's blast
Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
The next Spring shows leaves pale and rare,
But like flowers delicate and fair,
On its rent boughs-again arrayed
His countenance in tender light.
His words grew subtle fire, which made
The air his hearers breathed delight:
His motions, like the winds, were free,
Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
Then fade away in circlets faint :
And winged Hope-on which upborne
His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
Like some bright spirit newly born
Floating amid the sunny skies-
Sprang forth from his rent heart anew,
Yet o'er his talk and looks and mien,
Tempering their loveliness too keen,
Past woe its shadow backward threw ;
Till, like an exhalation spread
From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
They did become infectious,-sweet
And subtle mists of sense and thought;
Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet,
Almost from our own looks, and aught
The wide world holds. And so his mind
Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear :
For ever now his health declined,
Like some frail bark which cannot bear
The impulse of an altered wind,
Though prosperous. And my heart grew full,
'Mid its new joy, of a new care:
For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are ;
And soon his deep and sunny hair,
In this alone less beautiful,
Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.
The blood in his translucent veins
Beat not like animal life, but love
Seemed now its sullen springs to move,
When life had failed, and all its pains;
And sudden sleep would seize him oft,
Like death, so calm,-but that a tear,
His pointed eyelashes between,
Would gather in the light serene
Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft
Beneath lay undulating there.
His breath was like inconstant flame,
As eagerly it went and came;
And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
Till, like an image in the lake
Which rains disturb, my tears would break
The shadow of that slumber deep.
Then he would bid me not to weep,
And say, with flattery false yet sweet,
That death and he could never meet,
If I would never part with him.
And so we loved, and did unite
All that in us was yet divided:
For when he said that many a rite,
By men to bind but once provided,
Could not be shared by him and me,
Or they would kill him in their glee-
I shuddered, and then laughing said:
"We will have rites our faith to bind ; But our church shall be the starry night, Our altar the grassy earth outspread,
And our priest the muttering wind."
'Twas sunset as I spoke. One star Had scarce burst forth, when from afar The ministers of misrule sent
Seized upon Lionel, and bore
His chained limbs to a dreary tower In the midst of a city vast and wide :For he, they said, from his mind had bent Against their gods keen blasphemy,
For which, though his soul must roasted be In hell's red lakes immortally,
Yet even on earth must he abide The vengeance of their slaves-a trial,
I think, men call it.
Are prayers and tears, which chase denial
From the fierce savage nursed in hate?
What the knit soul that pleading and pale Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late It painted with its own delight?
We were divided. As I could,
I stilled the tingling of my blood;
And followed him in their despite,
As a widow follows, pale and wild,
The murderers and corse of her only child.
And, when we came to the prison door,
And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
With prayers which rarely have been spurned,
And when men drove me forth, and I
Stared with blank frenzy on the sky, —
A farewell look of love he turned,
Half calming me; then gazed awhile,
As if through that black and massy pile,
And through the crowd around him there,
And through the dense and murky air,
And the thronged streets, he did espy
What poets know and prophesy;
And said, with voice that made them shiver,
And clung like music in my brain,
And which the mute walls spoke again,
Prolonging it with deepened strain—
"Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river
Whose waves they have tainted with death:
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells,
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks, in the surge of eternity."
I dwelt beside the prison gate;
And the strange crowd that out and in Passed (some, no doubt, with mine own fate) Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din, But the fever of care was louder within.
Soon, but too late, in penitence
Or fear, his foes released him thence.
I saw his thin and languid form,
As, leaning on the gaoler's arm—
Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while
To meet his mute and faded smile,
And hear his words of kind farewell
He tottered forth from his damp cell.
Many had never wept before
From whom fast tears then gushed and fell;
Many will relent no more
Who sobbed like infants then; ay, all
Who thronged the prison's stony hall,
The rulers or the slaves of law,
Felt with a new surprise and awe
That they were human, -till strong shame
Made them again become the same.
The prison bloodhounds, huge and grim,
From human looks the infection caught,
And fondly crouched and fawned on him.
And men have heard the prisoners say
Who in their rotting dungeons lay
That from that hour, throughout one day,
The fierce despair and hate which kept
Their trampled bosoms almost slept,
When, like twin vultures, they hung feeding
On each heart's wound, wide-torn and bleeding,—
Because their gaoler's rule, they thought,
Grew merciful, like a parent's sway.
I know not how, but we were free.
And Lionel sate alone with me,
As the carriage drove through the streets apace;
And we looked upon each other's face;
And the blood in our fingers intertwined
Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,
As the swift emotions went and came
Through the veins of each united frame.
So through the long long streets we passed
Of the million-peopled city vast;
Which is that desert where each one
Seeks his mate, yet is alone,
Beloved and sought and mourned of none;-
Until the clear blue sky was seen,
And the grassy meadows bright and green.
And then I sunk in his embrace,
Enclosing there a mighty space
Of love. And so we travelled on
By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,
And towns and villages and towers,
Day after day of happy hours.
It was the azure time of June,
When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,
And the warm and fitful breezes shake
The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar; And there were odours then to make
The very breath we did respire
A liquid element, whereon
Our spirits, like delighted things
That walk the air on subtle wings,
Floated and mingled far away,
'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.
And, when the evening star came forth
Above the curve of the new bent moon,
And light and sound ebbed from the earth,
Like the tide of the full and weary sea
To the depths of its own tranquillity,
Our natures to its own repose
Did the earth's breathless sleep attune.
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