[347] Founded on incidents related in an American work, “Sketches of Connecticut.”

THE INDIAN CITY.[348]

“What deep wounds ever closed without a sear?
The heart’s bleed longest, and but heal to wear
That which disfigures it.”   Childe Harold.

[348] From a tale in Forbes’s Oriental Memoirs.

I.

Royal in splendour went down the day
On the plain where an Indian city lay,
With its crown of domes o’er the forest high,
Red, as if fused in the burning sky;
And its deep groves pierced by the rays which made
A bright stream’s way through each long arcade,
Till the pillar’d vaults of the banian stood
Like torch-lit aisles midst the solemn wood;
And the plantain glitter’d with leaves of gold,
As a tree midst the genii gardens old,
And the cypress lifted a blazing spire,
And the stems of the cocoas were shafts of fire.
Many a white pagoda’s gleam
Slept lovely round upon lake and stream,
Broken alone by the lotus flowers,
As they caught the glow of the sun’s last hours,
Like rosy wine in their cups, and shed
Its glory forth on their crystal bed.
Many a graceful Hindoo maid,
With the water-vase from the palmy shade,
Came gliding light as the desert’s roe,
Down marble steps, to the tanks below;
And a cool sweet plashing was ever heard,
As the molten glass of the wave was stirr’d,
And a murmur, thrilling the scented air,
Told where the Bramin bow’d in prayer.
—There wander’d a noble Moslem boy
Through the scene of beauty in breathless joy;
He gazed where the stately city rose,
Like a pageant of clouds, in its red repose;
He turn’d where birds through the gorgeous gloom
Of the woods went glancing on starry plume;
He track’d the brink of the shining lake,
By the tall canes feather’d in tuft and brake;
Till the path he chose, in its mazes, wound
To the very heart of the holy ground.
And there lay the water, as if enshrined
In a rocky urn, from the sun and wind,
Bearing the hues of the grove on high,
Far down through its dark still purity.
The flood beyond, to the fiery west,
Spread out like a metal mirror’s breast;
But that lone bay, in its dimness deep,
Seem’d made for the swimmer’s joyous leap,
For the stag athirst from the noontide chase,
For all free things of the wild wood’s race.
Like a falcon’s glance on the wide blue sky,
Was the kindling flash of the boy’s glad eye;
Like a sea-bird’s flight to the foaming wave,
From the shadowy bank was the bound he gave;
Dashing the spray-drops, cold and white,
O’er the glossy leaves in its young delight,
And bowing his locks to the waters clear—
Alas! he dreamt not that fate was near.
His mother look’d from her tent the while,
O’er heaven and earth with a quiet smile:
She, on her way unto Mecca’s fane,
Had stay’d the march of her pilgrim train,
Calmly to linger a few brief hours
In the Bramin city’s glorious bowers;
For the pomp of the forest, the wave’s bright fall,
The red gold of sunset—she loved them all.

II.

The moon rose clear in the splendour given
To the deep-blue night of an Indian heaven;
The boy from the high-arch’d woods came back—
Oh! what had he met in his lonely track?
The serpent’s glance, through the long reeds bright?
The arrowy spring of the tiger’s might?
No! yet as one by a conflict worn,
With his graceful hair all soil’d and torn,
And a gloom on the lids of his darken’d eye,
And a gash on his bosom—he came to die!
He look’d for the face to his young heart sweet,
And found it, and sank at his mother’s feet.
“Speak to me! whence doth the swift blood run
What hath befallen thee, my child, my son?”
The mist of death on his brow lay pale,
But his voice just linger’d to breathe the tale,
Murmuring faintly of wrongs and scorn,
And wounds from the children of Brahma borne
This was the doom for a Moslem found
With a foot profane on their holy ground—
This was for sullying the pure waves, free
Unto them alone—’twas their god’s decree.
A change came o’er his wandering look—
The mother shriek’d not then nor shook:
Breathless she knelt in her son’s young blood,
Rending her mantle to stanch its flood;
But it rush’d like a river which none may stay,
Bearing a flower to the deep away.
That which our love to the earth would chain,
Fearfully striving with heaven in vain—
That which fades from us, while yet we hold,
Clasp’d to our bosoms, its mortal mould,
Was fleeting before her, afar and fast;
One moment—the soul from the face had pass’d!
Are there no words for that common woe?
Ask of the thousands its depth that know!
The boy had breathed, in his dreaming rest,
Like a low-voiced dove, on her gentle breast;
He had stood, when she sorrow’d, beside her knee,
Painfully stilling his quick heart’s glee;
He had kiss’d from her cheek the widow’s tears,
With the loving lip of his infant years:
He had smiled o’er her path like a bright spring day—
Now in his blood on the earth he lay!
Murder’d! Alas! and we love so well
In a world where anguish like this can dwell!
She bow’d down mutely o’er her dead—
They that stood round her watch’d in dread;
They watch’d—she knew not they were by—
Her soul sat veil’d in its agony.
On the silent lip she press’d no kiss—
Too stern was the grasp of her pangs for this:
She shed no tear, as her face bent low
O’er the shining hair of the lifeless brow;
She look’d but into the half-shut eye
With a gaze that found there no reply,
And, shrieking, mantled her head from sight,
And fell, struck down by her sorrow’s might.
And what deep change, what work of power,
Was wrought on her secret soul that hour?
How rose the lonely one? She rose
Like a prophetess from dark repose!
And proudly flung from her face the veil,
And shook the hair from her forehead pale,
And midst her wondering handmaids stood,
With the sudden glance of a dauntless mood—
Ay, lifting up to the midnight sky
A brow in its regal passion high,
With a close and rigid grasp she press’d
The blood-stain’d robe to her heaving breast,
And said—“Not yet, not yet I weep,
Not yet my spirit shall sink or sleep!
Not till yon city, in ruins rent,
Be piled for its victim’s monument.
Cover his dust! bear it on before!
It shall visit those temple gates once more.”
And away in the train of the dead she turn’d,
The strength of her step was the heart that burn’d;
And the Bramin groves in the starlight smiled,
As the mother pass’d with her slaughter’d child.

III.

Hark! a wild sound of the desert’s horn
Through the woods round the Indian city borne,
A peal of the cymbal and tambour afar—
War! ’tis the gathering of Moslem war!
The Bramin look’d from the leaguer’d towers—
He saw the wild archer amidst his bowers;
And the lake that flash’d through the plantain shade,
As the light of the lances along it play’d;
And the canes that shook as if winds were high,
When the fiery steed of the waste swept by;
And the camp as it lay like a billowy sea,
Wide round the sheltering banian-tree.
There stood one tent from the rest apart—
That was the place of a wounded heart.
Oh! deep is a wounded heart, and strong
A voice that cries against mighty wrong;
And full of death as a hot wind’s blight,
Doth the ire of a crush’d affection light.
Maimuna from realm to realm had pass’d,
And her tale had rung like a trumpet’s blast.
There had been words from her pale lips pour’d,
Each one a spell to unsheath the sword.
The Tartar had sprung from his steed to hear,
And the dark chief of Araby grasp’d his spear,
Till a chain of long lances begirt the wall,
And a vow was recorded that doom’d its fall.
Back with the dust of her son she came,
When her voice had kindled that lightning flame;
She came in the might of a queenly foe,
Banner, and javelin, and bended bow;
But a deeper power on her forehead sate—
There sought the warrior his star of fate:
Her eye’s wild flash through the tented line
Was hail’d as a spirit and a sign,
And the faintest tone from her lip was caught
As a sibyl’s breath of prophetic thought.
Vain, bitter glory!—the gift of grief,
That lights up vengeance to find relief,
Transient and faithless! It cannot fill
So the deep void of the heart, nor still
The yearning left by a broken tie,
That haunted fever of which we die!
Sickening she turn’d from her sad renown,
As a king in death might reject his crown.
Slowly the strength of the walls gave way—
She wither’d faster from day to day:
All the proud sounds of that banner’d plain,
To stay the flight of her soul were vain;
Like an eagle caged, it had striven, and worn
The frail dust, ne’er for such conflicts born,
Till the bars were rent, and the hour was come
For its fearful rushing through darkness home.
The bright sun set in his pomp and pride,
As on that eve when the fair boy died:
She gazed from her couch, and a softness fell
O’er her weary heart with the day’s farewell;
She spoke, and her voice, in its dying tone,
Had an echo of feelings that long seem’d flown.
She murmur’d a low sweet cradle-song,
Strange midst the din of a warrior throng—
A song of the time when her boy’s young cheek
Had glow’d on her breast in its slumber meek.
But something which breathed from that mournful strain
Sent a fitful gust o’er her soul again;
And starting, as if from a dream, she cried—
“Give him proud burial at my side!
There, by yon lake, where the palm-boughs wave,
When the temples are fallen, make there our grave.”
And the temples fell, though the spirit pass’d,
That stay’d not for victory’s voice at last;
When the day was won for the martyr dead,
For the broken heart and the bright blood shed.
Through the gates of the vanquish’d the Tartar steed
Bore in the avenger with foaming speed;
Free swept the flame through the idol fanes,
And the streams glow’d red, as from warrior veins;
And the sword of the Moslem, let loose to slay,
Like the panther leapt on its flying prey,
Till a city of ruin begirt the shade
Where the boy and his mother at rest were laid.
Palace and tower on that plain were left,
Like fallen trees by the lightning cleft;
The wild vine mantled the stately square,
The Rajah’s throne was the serpent’s lair,
And the jungle grass o’er the altar sprung—
This was the work of one deep heart wrung!

THE PEASANT GIRL OF THE RHONE.

——“There is but one place in the world—
Thither, where he lies buried!
...
There, there is all that still remains of him:
That single spot is the whole earth to me.”
Coleridge’s “Wallenstein.”
“Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert.”—Childe Harold.
There went a warrior’s funeral through the night,
A waving of tall plumes, a ruddy light
Of torches, fitfully and wildly thrown
From the high woods, along the sweeping Rhone,
Far down the waters. Heavily and dead,
Under the moaning trees, the home-hoof’s tread
In muffled sounds upon the greensward fell,
As chieftains pass’d; and solemnly the swell
Of the deep requiem, o’er the gleaming river
Borne with the gale, and with the leaves’ low shiver,
Floated and died. Proud mourners there, yet pale,
Wore man’s mute anguish sternly;—but of one,
Oh, who shall speak? What words his brow unveil?
A father following to the grave his son!—
That is no grief to picture! Sad and slow,
Through the wood-shadows, moved the knightly train,
With youth’s fair form upon the bier laid low—
Fair even when found amidst the bloody slain,
Stretch’d by its broken lance. They reach’d the lone
Baronial chapel, where the forest-gloom
Fell heaviest, for the massy boughs had grown
Into thick archways, as to vault the tomb.
Stately they trode the hollow-ringing aisle,
A strange deep echo shudder’d through the pile,
Till crested heads at last in silence bent
Round the De Coucis’ antique monument,
When dust to dust was given:—and Aymer slept
Beneath the drooping banners of his line,
Whose broider’d folds the Syrian wind had swept
Proudly and oft o’er fields of Palestine.
So the sad rite was closed. The sculptor gave
Trophies, ere long, to deck that lordly grave;
And the pale image of a youth, array’d
As warriors are for fight, but calmly laid
In slumber on his shield. Then all was done—
All still around the dead. His name was heard
Perchance when wine-cups flow’d, and hearts were stirr’d
By some old song, or tale of battle won
Told round the hearth. But in his father’s breast
Manhood’s high passions woke again, and press’d
On to their mark; and in his friend’s clear eye
There dwelt no shadow of a dream gone by;
And with the brethren of his fields, the feast
Was gay as when the voice whose sounds had ceased
Mingled with theirs. Even thus life’s rushing tide
Bears back affection from the grave’s dark side;
Alas! to think of this!—the heart’s void place
Fill’d up so soon!—so like a summer cloud,
All that we loved to pass and leave no trace!—
He lay forgotten in his early shroud.
Forgotten?—not of all! The sunny smile
Glancing in play o’er that proud lip erewhile,
And the dark locks, whose breezy waving threw
A gladness round, whene’er their shade withdrew
From the bright brow; and all the sweetness lying
Within that eagle eye’s jet radiance deep,
And all the music with that young voice dying,
Whose joyous echoes made the quick heart leap
As at a hunter’s bugle—these things lived
Still in one breast, whose silent love survived
The pomps of kindred sorrow. Day by day,
On Aymer’s tomb fresh flowers in garlands lay,
Through the dim fane soft summer odours breathing,
And all the pale sepulchral trophies wreathing,
And with a flush of deeper brilliance glowing
In the rich light, like molten rubies flowing
Through storied windows down. The violet there
Might speak of love—a secret love and lowly;
And the rose image all things fleet and fair;
And the faint passion-flower, the sad and holy,
Tell of diviner hopes. But whose light hand,
As for an altar, wove the radiant band?
Whose gentle nurture brought, from hidden dells,
That gem-like wealth of blossoms and sweet bells,
To blush through every season? Blight and chill
Might touch the changing woods; but duly still
For years those gorgeous coronals renew’d,
And brightly clasping marble spear and helm,
Even through mid-winter, fill’d the solitude
With a strange smile—a glow of summer’s realm.
Surely some fond and fervent heart was pouring
Its youth’s vain worship on the dust, adoring
In lone devotedness!
One spring morn rose,
And found, within that tomb’s proud shadow laid—
Oh! not as midst the vineyards, to repose
From the fierce noon—a dark-hair’d peasant maid.
Who could reveal her story? That still face
Had once been fair; for on the clear arch’d brow
And the curved lip there linger’d yet such grace
As sculpture gives its dreams; and long and low
The deep black lashes, o’er the half-shut eye—
For death was on its lids—fell mournfully.
But the cold cheek was sunk, the raven hair
Dimm’d, the slight form all wasted, as by care.
Whence came that early blight? Her kindred’s place
Was not amidst the high De Couci race;
Yet there her shrine had been! She grasp’d a wreath,
The tomb’s last garland!—This was love in death.

INDIAN WOMAN’S DEATH-SONG.

[An Indian woman, driven to despair by her husband’s desertion of her for another wife, entered a canoe with her children, and rowed it down the Mississippi towards a cataract. Her voice was heard from the shore singing a mournful death-song, until overpowered by the sound of the waters in which she perished. The tale is related in Long’s “Expedition to the Source of St Peter’s River.”]

“Non, je ne puis vivre avec un cœur brise. Il faut que je retrouve
la joie, et que je m’unisse aux esprits libres de l’air.”
“Bride of Messina.” Translated by Madame de Stael.
“Let not my child be a girl, for very sad is the life of a woman.”
“The Prairie.”
Down a broad river of the western wilds,
Piercing thick forest-glooms, a light canoe
Swept with the current: fearful was the speed
Of the frail bark, as by a tempest’s wing
Borne leaf-like on to where the mist of spray
Rose with the cataract’s thunder. Yet within,
Proudly, and dauntlessly, and all alone,
Save that a babe lay sleeping at her breast,
A woman stood! Upon her Indian brow
Sat a strange gladness, and her dark hair waved
As if triumphantly. She press’d her child,
In its bright slumber, to her beating heart,
And lifted her sweet voice, that rose awhile
Above the sound of waters, high and clear,
Wafting a wild proud strain—a song of death.
“Roll swiftly to the spirits’ land, thou mighty stream and free!
Father of ancient waters,[349] roll! and bear our lives with thee!
The weary bird that storms have toss’d would seek the sunshine’s calm,
And the deer that hath the arrow’s hurt flies to the woods of balm.
“Roll on!—my warrior’s eye hath look’d upon another’s face,
And mine hath faded from his soul, as fades a moonbeam’s trace:
My shadow comes not o’er his path, my whisper to his dream—
He flings away the broken reed. Roll swifter yet, thou stream!
“The voice that spoke of other days is hush’d within his breast,
But mine its lonely music haunts, and will not let me rest;
It sings a low and mournful song of gladness that is gone—
I cannot live without that light. Father of waves! roll on!
“Will he not miss the bounding step that met him from the chase?
The heart of love that made his home an ever-sunny place?
The hand that spread the hunter’s board, and deck’d his couch of yore?—
He will not! Roll, dark foaming stream, on to the better shore!
“Some blessed fount amidst the woods of that bright land must flow,
Whose waters from my soul may lave the memory of this woe;
Some gentle wind must whisper there, whose breath may waft away
The burden of the heavy night, the sadness of the day.
“And thou, my babe! though born, like me, for woman’s weary lot,
Smile!—to that wasting of the heart, my own! I leave thee not;
Too bright a thing art thou to pine in aching love away—
Thy mother bears thee far, young fawn! from sorrow and decay.
“She bears thee to the glorious bowers where none are heard to weep,
And where th’ unkind one hath no power again to trouble sleep;
And where the soul shall find its youth, as wakening from a dream:
One moment, and that realm is ours. On, on, dark-rolling stream!”

[349] “Father of waters,” the Indian name for the Mississippi.

JOAN OF ARC IN RHEIMS.

[“Jeanne d’Arc avait eu la joie de voir à Chalons quelques amis de son enfance. Une joie plus ineffable encore l’attendait à Rheims, au sein de son triomphe: Jacques d’Arc, son père, y se trouva, aussitôt que de troupes de Charles VII. y furent entrées; et comme les deux frères de notre héroine l’avaient accompagnée, elle se vit pour un instant au milieu de sa famille, dans les bras d’un père vertueux.”—Vie de Jeanne d’Arc.]

Thou hast a charmed cup, O Fame!
A draught that mantles high,
And seems to lift this earth-born frame
Above mortality:
Away! to me—a woman—bring
Sweet waters from affection’s spring!
That was a joyous day in Rheims of old,
When peal on peal of mighty music roll’d
Forth from her throng’d cathedral; while around,
A multitude, whose billows made no sound,
Chain’d to a hush of wonder, though elate
With victory, listen’d at their temple’s gate.
And what was done within? Within, the light,
Through the rich gloom of pictured windows flowing,
Tinged with soft awfulness a stately sight—
The chivalry of France their proud heads bowing
In martial vassalage! While midst that ring,
And shadow’d by ancestral tombs, a king
Received his birth-right’s crown. For this, the hymn
Swell’d out like rushing waters, and the day
With the sweet censer’s misty breath grew dim,
As through long aisles it floated o’er th’ array
Of arms and sweeping stoles. But who, alone
And unapproach’d, beside the altar-stone,
With the white banner forth like sunshine streaming,
And the gold helm through clouds of fragrance gleaming.
Silent and radiant stood? The helm was raised,
And the fair face reveal’d, that upward gazed,
Intensely worshipping—a still, clear face,
Youthful, but brightly solemn! Woman’s cheek
And brow were there, in deep devotion meek,
Yet glorified, with inspiration’s trace
On its pure paleness; while, enthroned above,
The pictured Virgin, with her smile of love,
Seem’d bending o’er her votaress. That slight form!
Was that the leader through the battle-storm?
Had the soft light in that adoring eye
Guided the warrior where the swords flash’d high?
’Twas so, even so!—and thou, the shepherd’s child,
Joanne, the lowly dreamer of the wild!
Never before, and never since that hour,
Hath woman, mantled with victorious power,
Stood forth as thou beside the shrine didst stand,
Holy amidst the knighthood of the land,
And, beautiful with joy and with renown,
Lift thy white banner o’er the olden crown,
Ransom’d for France by thee!
The rites are done.
Now let the dome with trumpet-notes be shaken,
And bid the echoes of the tomb awaken,
And come thou forth, that heaven’s rejoicing sun
May give thee welcome from thine own blue skies,
Daughter of victory! A triumphant strain,
A proud rich stream of warlike melodies,
Gush’d through the portals of the antique fane,
And forth she came. Then rose a nation’s sound:
Oh! what a power to bid the quick heart bound,
The wind bears onward with the stormy cheer
Man gives to glory on her high career!
Is there indeed such power?—far deeper dwells
In one kind household voice, to reach the cells
Whence happiness flows forth! The shouts that fill’d
The hollow heaven tempestuously, were still’d
One moment; and in that brief pause, the tone,
As of a breeze that o’er her home had blown,
Sank on the bright maid’s heart. “Joanne!”—Who spoke
Like those whose childhood with her childhood grew
Under one roof? “Joanne!”—that murmur broke
With sounds of weeping forth! She turn’d—she knew
Beside her, mark’d from all the thousands there,
In the calm beauty of his silver hair,
The stately shepherd; and the youth, whose joy,
From his dark eye flash’d proudly; and the boy,
The youngest born, that ever loved her best:—
“Father! and ye, my brothers!” On the breast
Of that gray sire she sank—and swiftly back,
Even in an instant, to their native track
Her free thoughts flow’d. She saw the pomp no more
The plumes, the banners: to her cabin-door,
And to the Fairy’s Fountain in the glade,[350]
Where her young sisters by her side had play’d,
And to her hamlet’s chapel, where it rose
Hallowing the forest unto deep repose,
Her spirit turn’d. The very wood-note, sung
In early spring-time by the bird, which dwelt
Where o’er her father’s roof the beech leaves hung,
Was in her heart; a music heard and felt,
Winning her back to nature. She unbound
The helm of many battles from her head,
And, with her bright locks bow’d to sweep the ground,
Lifting her voice up, wept for joy and said—
“Bless me, my father! bless me! and with thee,
To the still cabin and the beechen tree,
Let me return!”
Oh! never did thine eye
Through the green haunts of happy infancy
Wander again, Joanne! Too much of fame
Had shed its radiance on thy peasant name;
And bought alone by gifts beyond all price—
The trusting heart’s repose, the paradise
Of home, with all its loves—doth fate allow
The crown of glory unto woman’s brow.

[350] A beautiful fountain, near Domremi, believed to be haunted by fairies, and a favourite resort of Jeanne d’Arc in her childhood.

PAULINE.

To die for what we love! Oh! there is power
In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this:
It is to live without the vanish’d light
That strength is needed.
“Cosi trapassa al trapassar d’un Giorno
Della vita mortal il fiore e’l verde.”   Tasso.
Along the starlit Seine went music swelling,
Till the air thrill’d with its exulting mirth;
Proudly it floated, even as if no dwelling
For cares or stricken hearts were found on earth;
And a glad sound the measure lightly beat,
A happy chime of many dancing feet.
For in a palace of the land that night,
Lamps, and fresh roses, and green leaves were hung;
And from the painted walls, a stream of light
On flying forms beneath soft splendour flung;
But loveliest far amidst the revel’s pride
Was one—the lady from the Danube side.[351]
Pauline, the meekly bright! though now no more
Her clear eye flash’d with youth’s all-tameless glee,
Yet something holier than its dayspring wore,
There in soft rest lay beautiful to see;
A charm with graver, tenderer, sweetness fraught—
The blending of deep love and matron thought.
Through the gay throng she moved, serenely fair,
And such calm joy as fills a moonlight sky
Sat on her brow beneath its graceful hair,
As her young daughter in the dance went by,
With the fleet step of one that yet hath known
Smiles and kind voices in this world alone.
Lurk’d there no secret boding in her breast?
Did no faint whisper warn of evil nigh?
Such oft awake when most the heart seems blest
Midst the light laughter of festivity.
Whence come those tones? Alas! enough we know
To mingle fear with all triumphal show!
Who spoke of evil when young feet were flying
In fairy rings around the echoing hall?
Soft airs through braided locks in perfume sighing,
Glad pulses beating unto music’s call?
Silence!—the minstrels pause—and hark! a sound,
A strange quick rustling which their notes had drown’d!
And lo! a light upon the dancers breaking—
Not such their clear and silvery lamps had shed!
From the gay dream of revelry awaking,
One moment holds them still in breathless dread.
The wild fierce lustre grows: then bursts a cry—
Fire! through the hall and round it gathering—fly!
And forth they rush, as chased by sword and spear,
To the green coverts of the garden bowers—
A gorgeous masque of pageantry and fear,
Startling the birds and trampling down the flowers:
While from the dome behind, red sparkles driven
Pierce the dark stillness of the midnight heaven.
And where is she—Pauline? The hurrying throng
Have swept her onward, as a stormy blast
Might sweep some faint o’erwearied bird along—
Till now the threshold of that death is past,
And free she stands beneath the starry skies,
Calling her child—but no sweet voice replies.
“Bertha! where art thou? Speak! oh! speak, my own!”
Alas! unconscious of her pangs the while,
The gentle girl, in fear’s cold grasp alone,
Powerless had sunk within the blazing pile;
A young bright form, deck’d gloriously for death,
With flowers all shrinking from the flame’s fierce breath!
But oh! thy strength, deep love! There is no power
To stay the mother from that rolling grave,
Though fast on high the fiery volumes tower,
And forth like banners from each lattice wave:
Back, back she rushes through a host combined—
Mighty is anguish, with affection twined!
And what bold step may follow, midst the roar
Of the red billows, o’er their prey that rise?
None!—Courage there stood still—and never more
Did those fair forms emerge on human eyes!
Was one bright meeting theirs, one wild farewell?
And died they heart to heart?—Oh! who can tell?
Freshly and cloudlessly the morning broke
On that sad palace, midst its pleasure shades;
Its painted roofs had sunk—yet black with smoke
And lonely stood its marble colonnades:
But yester eve their shafts with wreaths were bound,
Now lay the scene one shrivell’d scroll around!
And bore the ruins no recording trace
Of all that woman’s heart had dared and done?
Yes! there were gems to mark its mortal place,
That forth from dust and ashes dimly shone!
Those had the mother, on her gentle breast,
Worn round her child’s fair image, there at rest.
And they were all!—the tender and the true
Left this alone her sacrifice to prove,
Hallowing the spot where mirth once lightly flew,
To deep lone chasten’d thoughts of grief and love.
Oh! we have need of patient faith below,
To clear away the mysteries of such woe!