Whenever Leonard or his sire was named.

There is no man can love as woman loves,
With such a holy, pure, and patient fire,
Or Susan had gone mad. She pray'd, and wept,
And wept, and pray'd—but never look'd reproach
To him, for whose degenerate soul she pray'd—
And pray'd she might not scorn him, might not hate
The author of her being. Though no word-
No brief adieu had closed the failing eyes
Of her departing hope-for every port

And inlet to her home was closed, and none
Dared name her lover; yet firm faith survived,
The strong assurance of a vow enroll'd

In heaven, and her own wise innocence

Forbade suspicion of her Leonard's truth,
And bade her live, though sure a blessed thing
For her it were to die. What life was hers!
Hard-eyed rebuke, and wrath and ribald scorn,
Solicitation of a mother's tears,

And the perpetual siege of fancies fair
Reflected from old days of happiness,
With Babel dissonance her heart assailing,
Made misery many-faced-a hideous dream-
A monster multiform-a dizzy round
Of aye-revolving aspects-woeful all.
Sweet Susan ever was a lowly maid,

Unpractised in the arts of maiden scorn;

Yet she could teach 66

her sorrow to be proud,"

And walk the earth in virgin majesty,

As one who owed no homage to its rules,

No tribute to its faithless flattery.

She loved her silent, solitary woe,

And thought, poor soul! all nature sympathised

With her lone sorrow.

Every playful breeze

That dallied with the moonlight on the leaves,
Sung mournful solace to her wounded spirit,
As if it were indeed a mournful sound,
Mournfully kind. The gladsome nightingale,
That finds the day too short for half her bliss,
And warbles on, when all the tuneful grove
Is silent as the music of the spheres,
Sounded to her like wakeful melancholy
Dwelling on themes of old departed joy.
The nightingale grew dumb-the cuckoo fled-
And broad-eyed Summer glared on hill and plain-

And still no word.

Was Leonard dead, or flown

Before the swallow? Doth he dwell forlorn

As the last primrose in the shadowy glade,
That bloom'd too late, and must too soon decline?

The birds are silent, and the shallow brook
Is hardly heard beneath the dark, dark weight
Of over-roofing boughs! And is he gone-

Gone like the riotous waters of the rill,

That smoking, gleaming, whitening on their way,
Display'd an earth-born Iris to the sun,

And in their beauty and their pride exhaled?
Ah no! He lives, in sunless prison pent,
Watching the death-bed of his prison'd sire;
Who, on low pallet stretch'd, in noisome den,
Scarce wider than a captive lion's cage,
Breathes the mephitic and incarcerate fog
That morn not freshens nor still even cools:
His dosing slumbers broke with clank of chains,
And felons' curses, and the horrid mirth

Of reckless misery. Beside him sat

His once gay consort, squalid now, and lost
To self-respect, with grey dishevell❜d locks,
All loosely wrapt in rags of silk array.
Her aspect, channell❜d with impatient tears;
Now sullen mute, now loud in wordy woe,
Chiding the murmurs of her gasping spouse,
And the meek patience of her boy. 'Twas well
The poor old man heard little, nothing mark'd,
For drowsy death lay heavy at the gates
Of outward sense, and the beleaguer'd brain.
Refused its office. Long he lay, and seem'd
A moving, panting corse, without a mind,
By some foul necromancer's horrid charm
In life detain'd. No word to living soul
He spake, and though he sometimes mutter'd prayers,

His understanding pray'd not. Leonard pray'd— But silent as the voiceless intercourse

Of spirits bodiless-whose every thought

Is adoration. Not in Heaven unmark'd
The mute petition. Sudden as the gleam
Of heavenly visitation, a new light,
A glory settled on the pallid face

Of Leonard's sire. The dull unmeaning eye
Of dotage and disease, in rapture fixt,
Glow'd with a saintly fire. The imprison'd soul,
As rushing gladly to its dungeon doors,

Peer'd out, and look'd abroad-one moment-then
Ecstatic flew. "I am going to leave thee, boy-
I thought to leave thee in far other plight-
But that which is, must be. Unseemly 'twere
To see a dying father claim his son's
Forgiveness-else might I implore of thee
To spare thy foolish father's memory.
The world will deal ungently with my name,
But, Leonard, never let thy heart consent
To the blind, coward, malice of the crowd!
And if the prayer of thy father's spirit
Be heard in Paradise, my soul shall pray,
Even at the foot of the Almighty's throne,
For thy best welfare. Good it is that thou
Hast been afflicted in thy lusty youth,

So happier days shall close thine honour'd age

And, dear my child, I am in haste to Heaven;
My sin is pardon'd, and a mystic robe

Of woof celestial decks my better part.
But my poor limbs-far from the reverend dust
Of my dead ancestry-without a chaunt,
Hatchment, or hearse, or green memorial sprigs
Of shiver'd box-wood, and sweet rosemary,
Must soon be earth'd up in a vulgar grave.
The hireling shepherd of this wretched fold
Will hurry o'er his ill-paid task of prayer—
And I shall be forgot. But when the smile
Of Fortune shall repay thy honest toil,
Restore thy father's relics to the home
Of thy forefathers' bones. Thy mother-know
She is thy mother, and thy father's wife.
O God, receive my spirit!" Thus he spake—
Clasp'd his son's hand-and died without a groan.
Did Leonard weep? Oh, no; he knew too well
The selfish baseness of a private woe—
He shed no tear upon the barren grave,
But cast a long, sad, yearning look to Heaven,
And thought of Susan and his sainted sire.
There is a spell in patient filial love,

Can charm the deafest and the hardest heart,
And e'en relax the gripe of hungry law.

So the bleak mercy of a liberal age

Dismiss'd poor Leonard, and his mother, mark'd