And heeding nought of what men think or say,
Make his own heart his world upon the way!
Such was the better nature Morvale show'd.
Now view the contrast which the worse bestow'd.
Much had he read - yet all confused and mix'd,
No polar truth the wandering reason fix'd;
The fiery impulse and the kingly will,
If prompt to good, no judgment check'd from ill;
Quick in revenge, and passionately proud,
His brightest hour still' shone forth from a cloud,
And none conjecture on the next could form -
So play'd the sunbeam on the verge of storm.
Still young-not youthful - life had pass'd thro' all
Age sighs, and smiles, and trembles to recall.
From childhood fatherless and lone begun
His fiery race, beneath as fierce a sun,
Where all extremes of Love and Horror are,
Soft Camdeo's lotos bark, grim Moloch's gory car.
Where basks the noonday luminously calm,
O'er eldest grot and immemorial palm;
And in the grot, the Goddess of the Dead
And the couch'd strangler, list the wanderer's tread,
And where the palm leaves stir with breeze-like sigh,
Sports the fell serpent with his deathful eye.
Midst the exuberant life of that fierce zone,
Uncurb'd, self-will'd, to man had Morvale grown.
His sire (the offspring of an Indian maid
And English chief,) whose orient hues betrayed
The Varna Sankara* of the mix'd embrace,
Carved by his sword a charter from disgrace;
Assumed the father's name, the Christian's life,
And his sins cursed him with an English wife:
A haughty dame, whose discontented charms
That merchant, Hymen, bargained to his arms.
In war he fell: his wife
the bondage o'er,
Loathed the dark pledge the abhorrèd nuptials bore
Yet young, her face more genial wedlock won,
And one bright daughter made more loath'd the son.
Widowed anew, for London's native air,
And two tall footmen, sigh'd the jointured fair:
Wealth hers, why longer from its use exiled?
She fled the land and the abandoned child;
*The Sanscrit term, denoting the mixture or confusion of classes; applied to that large portion of the Indian population excluded from the four pure Castes.
Yet oft the first-born, 'midst the swarthier race,
Gazed round, and miss'd the fair unloving face.
In vain the coldness, nay, the hate had been,
Hate, by the eyes that love, is rarely seen.
Yet more he miss'd the playmate, sister-child,
With looks that ever on his own had smiled;
With rosy lips, caressing and carest;
Led by his hand and cradled on his breast:
But, as the cloud conceals and breaks in flame,
The gloom of youth the fire of man became.
Not his the dreams that studious life allows,
"Under the shade of melancholy boughs,"
Dreams that to lids the Muse anoints belong,
Rocking the Passions on soft waves of song:
No poet he; adventure, wandering, strife,
War and the chase, wrung poetry from life.
One day a man who call'd his father friend,
Told o'er his rupees and perceived his end.
He thought on Morvale, made his will, and died.
They sought and found the unsuspecting heir,
Crouch'd in the shade that near'd the tiger's lair,
His gun beside, the jungle round him,
Lawless and fierce as Hagar's wandering child:
To this fresh nature the sleek life deceast
Left the bright plunder of the ravaged East.
Which comes when Nature man deserts for Art:
His northern blood, his English name, create
Strife in the soul, till then resigned to fate;
The social world with blander falsehood graced,
Smiles on his hopes, and lures him from the waste.
Alas! the taint that sun-burnt brow bespeaks,
Divides the Half-Caste from the world he seeks:
In him proud Europe sees the Paria's birth,
And haughty Juno spurns his barren hearth.
Half heathen, and half savage, all estranged
Amidst his kind, the Ishmael roved unchanged
Small need to track his course from year to year
Till wearied passion paused in its career:
Travel, experience, lore of things and men,
Alas! we move but in the Hebrews' ring;
Our onward steps but back the landmarks bring,
Until some few at least escape the thrall,
And breathe the space beyond the flaming wall:
Feel the large freedom which in faith is given,
And plume the wings that shall possess the heaven.
He sought his mother. She, intent to shun,
Closed that last refuge on the homeless son,
Till Death approach'd, and Conscience, that sad star
Which heralds night, and plays but on the bar
Of the Eternal Gate, laid bare the crime,
And woke the soul upon the brink of time.
Haply if close, too closely, we would read
That sibyl page, the motive of the deed,
Remorse for him her life abandoned, weaves
Fear for the dearer one her death bereaves;
And penitent lines consign'd, with eager prayer,
The lorn Calantha to a brother's care.
Not till long moons had waned in distant skies,
O'er the last mandate wept the Indian's eyes;
* According to some Eastern commentators, the march of the Israelites in the Desert was in a charmed circle: every morning they set out on their journey, and every night found themselves on the same spot as that from which the journey had commenced.
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