Without the porch, one summer noon, In musing silence bending down, Who stands between thee and the sun? A cloud herself, the Wandering One! — A vacant sadness in the eyes, The mind a razed, defeatured scroll; And darkness, Eva, in thy soul! One ray extinguished with the dead : O'er earth and heaven then rushed the night! A wandering dream, a mindless form A Star hurled headlong from its height, Guideless its course, and quenched its light. Yet still the native instinct stirred The darkness of the breast She flies, as flies the wounded bird Unto the distant nest. O'er hill and waste, from land to land, Beside her Childhood's Home once more! XI. LIGHT AND DARKNESS. When earth is fair, and winds are still, So silent they the place so lone They seem like souls, when life is gone, And his to watch, as in the past Her soul had watched his soul. Alas! her darkness waits the last, The grave the only goal! It is not what the leech can cure An erring chord, a jarring madness: A calm so deep, it must endure – So deep, thou scarce canst call it sadness; A summer night, whose shadow falls On silent hearths in ruined halls. Yet, through the gloom, she seemed to feel His presence like a happier air, Close by his side she loved to steal, As if no ill could harm her there! And when her looks his own would seek, And silver-clear the waves that flow To shoreless deeps away! But heavenward from the faithful heart The onward waves their source desert, But Soul returns to Soul! THE FAIRY BRIDE. A TALE. * PART I. “AND how canst thou in tourneys shing His Mother spoke; and Elvar sighed The sigh alone confessed the truth; * As the subject of this tale is suggested by one of the Fabliaux, the author has represented Arthur and Guenever according to the view of their characters taken in those French Romances- which he hopes he need scarcely say is very different from that taken in his maturer Poem upon the adventures and ordeal of the DragonKing. Far, to the forest's stillest shade, Sir Elvar took his lonely way; Beneath an oak, whose gentle frown Dimmed noon's bright eyes, he laid him down; And watched a Fount that through the glade Sang, sparkling up to day. “As sunlight to the forest tree” 'T was thus his murmured musings ran "And as amidst the sunlight's glow, The freshness of the fountain's flow So (ah, they never mine may be !) – Are Gold and Love to Man.” And while he spoke, a gentle air Seemed stirring through the crystal tides; Till, clear and clearer, upward borne, The Elder Daylight knows! Born from the blue of those deep eyes, * "With hair that gilds the water as it glides." MARLOWE, Edw. II. As only haunts that tender race, With flower or fount, their dwelling-place — The darling of the earth and skies "Listen!" she said, and wave and land Sighed back her murmur, murmurously – "A love more true than minstrel sings, A wealth that mocks the pomp of kings, To him who wins the Fairy's hand A Fairy's dower shall be. "But not to those can we belong Whose sense the charms of earth allure? If human love hath yet been thine, Farewell, our laws forbid thee mine. The Children of the Star and Song, We may but bless the Pure!" "Dream-lovelier far than e'er, I ween, "Though never living shape hath brought Sweet love, that second life, to me, Yet over earth, and through the heaven, The thoughts that pined for love were driven : I see thee and I feel I sought Through Earth and Heaven for thee!" |