Classic Poem

 T HEY were a gentle pair, whose love began
They knew not when—they knew not of a time
When they loved not. In the mere sentient life
Of unremember'd infancy, whose speech,
Like secret love's, is only smiles and tears,
The baby Leonard clapp'd his little hands,
Leapt in his nurse's arms, and crow'd aloud
When Susan was in sight, and utter'd sounds
Most strange and strangely sweet, that nothing meant
But merely joy, as in the green-wood tree
The merry merle awakes his thrilling song,
Soon as the cool breath of the vernal dawn
Stirs the light leaflets on the motionless boughs.
Mute as the shadow of a passing bird
On glassy lake, the gentle Susan lay,
Hush'd in her meek delight. A dimpled smile
Curl'd round her tiny, rosy mouth, and seem'd
To sink, as light, into her soft full eyes—
A quiet smile, that told of happiness
Her infant soul investing, as the bud
Infolds the petals of the nascent rose.

 Born in one week, and in one font baptized,
On the same festal day—they grew together,
And their first tottering steps were hand in hand,
While the two fathers, in half-earnest sport,
Betroth'd them to each other. Then 'twas sweet
For mother's ears, to hear them lisp and try
At the same words, each imitating each;
But Leonard was the babe of nimbler tongue,
And ‘Sister Susan’ was the first plain phrase
His utterance master'd—by that dear kind name
He call'd the maid, supplying so a place
Which Nature had left void. An only child
Of a proud mother and a high-born sire,
Full soon he learn'd to mount a palfrey small,
Of that dwarf race that prance unclaim'd and free
O'er the bleak pastures of the Shetland Isles.
And who may tell his glory or his pride
When Susan, by her mother's arms upheld,
Sat, glad though fearful, on the courser's rear,
While he, exulting in his dauntless skill,
Rein'd its short testy neck, and froward mouth,
Taming its wilful movement to the pace
That palfrey suits of wandering lady fair.
Bold were his looks, his speech was bold and shrill,
His smooth round cheeks glow'd with a ruddy brown,
And dark the curls that cluster'd o'er his head,
Knotty and close. In every pliant limb
A noble boy's ambitious manliness
Elastic sprung. Yet child more loving, fond,
Ne'er sought the refuge of a parent's side.
But Susan was not one of many words,
Nor loud of laughter; and she moved as soft
As modest Nymphs, in work of artist rare,
Seem moving ever. In her delicate eye
And damask cheek there dwelt a grace retired,
A prophecy of pensive womanhood.
And yet, in sooth, she was a happy child;
And, though the single treasure of her house,
She neither miss'd a brother's love, nor lack'd
The blest emotions of a sister's soul.
She thought no sister loved a brother more
Than she her brother Leonard—him who show'd
The strawberry lurking in the mossy shade,
The nest, in leafy thicket dark embower'd,
The squirrel's airy bound. No bliss he knew,
No toy had he—no pretty property—
No dog—no bird—no fit of childish wrath,
That was not hers. The wild and terrible tales
His garrulous old nurse o'ernight had told,
He duly in the morning told to her,
With comments manifold, and when seven years
Made him a student of learn'd Lilly's page,
With simple, earnest, kindly vanity,
He fill'd her wondering ear with all his lore
Of tense, and conjugation, noun, and verb;
Searching the word-book for all pretty names,
All dainty, doating, dear diminutives
Which the old Romans used to woo withal.

 So pass'd those happy seasons, when no law
Of jealous custom, no suspected harm
Bids fresh virginity beware of man;
And, like two sexless bees, from flower to flower,
They wander'd unreproved. But soon an age
Of fearful wishes found the spotless pair,
And Susan felt, unprompted, that the name
Of sister was not hers by right of kind.
Reserv'd she grew, and though she thought no ill,
She sigh'd in fear, and strove to frame her speech
To formal phrase of maiden courtesy.
Sore wonder'd Leonard at her mien constrain'd,
Her flitting blush, her intermitted words,
That seem'd unwelcome strangers to her lips,
And to her thought unknown. Why thus withdrawn
Her trembling hand, that wont in his to lie,
Still as the brooding warbler in her nest,
Close as the soft leaves of the rose unblown?—
Why shrinks she from his kiss, his watchful gaze,
With such a faint and half-reproachful smile—
Nor longer may permit her flowing hair
To seek the pillow of his breast? Ah! why
Is he no more her brother? But, ere long,
New passion budding in his vernal soul,
Fill'd him with joy to think no kindred tie,
No common blood forbade the current free
Of his warm wistful sighs.

The tale is old
Of “passionate first love” with all its dreams
Sleeping and waking—all its cherish'd pains,
Uneasy raptures, quarrels, fantasies,
Quaint wiles, and riddles read by lovers' eyes,
And bland deceptions meant not to deceive.
Though wooing well might seem a useless toil,
When Love, a goodly plant, in cradle sown,
Shot forth its leaves spontaneous to the warmth
Of genial youth, yet Leonard duly paid
The appointed duty of an amorous swain,
“With adorations and with fertile tears,”
And “loyal cantos of contemned love,”
As if in truth his Susan were a dame
Haughty and fierce, as Lady of Romance,
That must be woo'd with blows, and won with scars
And homicide. Sometimes a shepherd he,
And soft and silly as his fancied flock:
Anon an arm'd and errant Paladin,
He talk'd of forests dark, and deserts drear,
And foes defied, and giants huge o'erthrown,—
And all for Susan's sake. Young love is still,
Like Eastern sages, parabolical;
And bliss, unearn'd, scarce knows itself to be,
But by the contrast of imagined woe.
What more of patient suit and coy delay,
Or passion paid, or maiden pride required,
I pause not to relate; nor how, at last,
The seemly ceremonial courtship done,
With interchange of braided locks and rings,
And holy kiss, they seal'd their plighted troth,
In their glad parents' sight. Unskill'd am I
Such scenes to paint—to me, alas! unknown.
Unmeet historian of a golden time,
I cannot give the charm of life renew'd
To pleasures long forgot; for happy days,
Unvaried save by sun, or sunny shower,
Are bare of incident as dreamless sleep,
Or sweet existence of a flower unseen.
Suffice to say, that Leonard and his maid
Grew up to man's estate and womanhood.
Their pure affection, ripening with their years,
Like a bright angel's broad o'ershadowing wings,
Guarded their spirits, kept their inmost thoughts
All lovely, pure, and beautiful. Secure
In the assurance of an authorized pledge,
They, unrepining, brook'd their bliss deferr'd
By charge parental, till maturer years
Should fit them for the cares of wedded life.

 Alas! too wisely spake the poet wise—
“The course of true love never did run smooth,”
How clear soe'er the stream. Though like estate,
Congenial birth, affection tried and true,
Taste, tempers, studies, finely harmonized
By sympathy in dissimilitude—
Divided excellence, that sought and found
Its full perfection in the bond of love.
Decreed the union of the happy pair,
Whose mutual passion was obedience
To those beloved parents, who had wish'd
Their offspring blended in a common stock
Ere either babe was born; yet eyeless Fate
And human baseness wrought the righteous will
Of fate-controlling Heaven. The lovely maid
Was doom'd on earth to droop, a virgin flower,
Unsoil'd of earth, to bloom in Paradise.

 Accursed faction poisons e'en the fount
Of household amity. A man there came
Of dubious honour, and of race unknown,
Deep laden with the plunder'd wealth of Ind;
And he, forsooth, must shine a rising star
In Britain's senate, make and unmake laws
He learn'd but late to keep; beat down prerogative,
“And make bold power look pale”—a patriot he,
Profound economist, the people's friend,
And champion of reform. Now Leonard's sire
Was one of ancient lineage, and estate
For many generations handed down,
Without an acre added or impair'd—
He counted a long line of senators
Among his ancestry, and ill could brook
The lineal honours of his house usurp'd
By the ill-gotten purse of yesterday.
And now the day of license was at hand,
Britain's septennial Saturnalia,
When the soft palm of nice nobility,
Ungloved, solicits the Herculean gripe
Of hands with bestial slaughter newly stain'd;
When ladies stoop their coroneted brows,
And patriotic kisses deal to churls
A gipsy would refuse; and, reeling ripe,
Big Independence, reeking as he goes
Through the rank toll-booth, works his burly way
To hiccup perjury.—O Mountain Nymph!
—O Virgin Liberty! behold thy shrine,
And send a snow-blast from thy native hills,
Or thy fat offerings will all dissolve
And choke the world with incense.—Plutus now,
And roaring Bacchus, are thy ministers,
While swoln Corruption, like a toad, half-hid
Beneath the purple trappings of the throne,
Distends her bloated features with a laugh,
To hear the many take thy name in vain.

Unequal strife had Leonard's sire to wage—
Too proud to flatter, and too proud to yield
The palm to flatterers, he fondly deem'd
Hereditary gratitude—the name
Of his time-honour'd house—and all the links
That bind the present to the past, and make
Each moment sponsor for eternity,
Were barriers potent to resist the flood
Of pauper treason, back'd with traitorous gold.
Hark!—the loud war proclaim'd by drum and fife,
And labell'd banners, that affront the sky
With gaudy blazonry of factious hate,
Turning the innocent hues of flower and field
To party shibboleths. The clear blue sky
Frown'd on the crimson of the regal rose—
Nor spared the maiden blush. Fierce riot rung
In homely mansions, long devote to peace,
And mild, benignant mirth. From vale to vale
The uproar echoed through the spacious shire,
The clang o'erpowering of the madd'ning wheels
That glow'd incessant in the whirling fog
Of sleepy dust that courts the ground in vain.
The Sabbath bells alarm the slumbering dead
With irreligious peals; old Silence flies
From all her hallow'd haunts, and hides her head
In the brute dumbness of o'ergorged excess:—
Talk not of Hecatombs, imperial feasts,
Or antique feats of Roman gluttony;
For every alehouse is a temple now,
And flocks and herds but half suffice to stay
The popular maw.—Not sapient Egypt's god,
The lowing Apis, had escaped the knife,
Had slavish Egypt ever claim'd the right
Of unbought suffrage and election free.
Who dare deny—that beast, and fish, and fowl
Were made for man? Calves, sheep, and oxen, slain
In freedom's cause, by freemen are devour'd—
A feller fate attends the generous steed—
Outworn with toil, he gluts a freeman's cur.

 But Leonard—and the gentle Susan? Where
Walk they the while? Oft, when the rafter'd hall
Shook with the jovial laugh of loyalty,
Till each grim ancestor and grandam fair,
That on the smokey canvass smiled for aye,
In multiplied confusion roll'd around,
Would Leonard steal into the quiet air
Of pensive Night, Love's trusty confidante,
To meet his Susan on the silent hill,
And silent sit beneath the silent moon;
His hand laid lightly on his Susan's palm,
While thousand, thousand voices, heard afar,
Were soft as murmurs of the distant ocean—
Solemn and soft—and yet a weary sound
To her, who knew her parent's heart estranged
From him she long'd to call her second sire;
For Susan's father, reckless of her tears,
Of ancient neighbourhood, and deeds of love
Too natural to call for gratitude—
Blind to the pleadings of the meek, sad eyes
Of his child's mother, and his only child—
Had pledged his voice, and purse, and utmost power
To his friend's rival—whether borne away
By the loud torrent of the popular cry,
That universal voucher, for whose truth
No man can vouch—or vex'd by wounded pride
For prudent counsel by his friend refused,
Or by congenial baseness, and the bent
And instinct of an earthy, purblind spirit
That hated honour, as a darkling fiend
Detests the sun, to kindred baseness drawn—
My Muse, unversed in vileness, not reveals.

Fearful the perils that beset our youth,
But are there none that lie in wait for age?
Is not the sight, whose erring faith mistakes
An exhalation for a guiding star,
Better than total blindness? Good it were
To be a Persian, and adore the sun
At morn and eve—or deem the changeful moon
Imperial arbitress of fickle fate,
To hail the day-dawn as a visible God,
Or, trembling, think the terrible vast sea
A living Godhead in a wrathful mood,
Rather than dwell within the gaol of sense,
To see no God in all the beauteous world—
To feel no God in man.——

'Twas sad to mark
The passive Susan pace the public way;
Her meek, obedient head with weight oppress'd
Of gaudy colours, that but ill became
Her pale fair cheek—to hear her soft low voice
Reluctant task'd to warble scurril rhymes,
Set by some ale-bench Pindar to such tunes
As carmen whistle. Worse it was to find
The Nabob and his train of Bacchanals
Establish'd in her home; but worst to see
Her Leonard welcomed with such courtesy
As courtiers use to men they hate and fear.

In vain the eulogists of good old times
Upheld the good old cause. New wealth prevail'd
And Leonard's sire, the lavish contest past,
Found he had fell'd his ancient oaks in vain,
In vain had pawn'd his green, ancestral fields,
Bereft his son of just and lineal hopes,
Quench'd the grey vigour of his kindly age
With loyal draughts, and joyless nights of noise
In vain. Indignant he is doom'd to hear
The upstart's triumph clamouring at his doors—
And finds—the sole reward of thousands spent
For Church and King—the prudent world's contempt,
Unspotted honour, and a shatter'd frame,
A broken fortune, and a broken heart.

 Sad change for Leonard—to no gainful art
Or science bred, untaught to bow his way
Through servile crowds, to fix the flitting eye
Of selfish patronage, or cling secure
To the huge timbers of the rotting state
A battening barnacle, by sloth retain'd,
And nourish'd by decay. His wants, though few.
Were yet refined, and he had known the bliss
Of leisure, which is truest liberty.
And—cruel fate—the time is now fulfill'd,
The year, the month, the long expected day
Of expectation, which had look'd so fair
In the dim brightness of futurity—
The very day prefixed to shake the tower
Of the old ivied church with wedding peals,
When Susan should have trod the church-way path
A blushing bride. The weary week past o'er,
And Leonard, in the melancholy hall,
Sat listless, gazing on the naked walls,
And bare, cold floors—for greedy law had stripp'd
The antique mansion of its tapestry,
And Vandal officers had laid their hands
On musty relics of the olden time,
On smokey pedigrees, and antlers vast
Of stags, that fell ere the great Baron fought
At Agincourt; brown bills in rusty ranks,
Primeval guns, of formidable length,
With stubborn matchlocks—all immovable;
Fragments of centuries past, not worth a doit—
But precious ever, and twice precious now,
When all the glory, bounty, wealth, and power
Derived from dark imaginative days,
Was clean departed from the honour'd line—
Say rather, vanish'd from the realm of chance,
To be for aye a thought, a deathless truth,
A thing of monumental memory.

“'Tis a fair show; a goodly bridal-bower;
Yon grim officials too! attendance meet
To grace a marriage feast.” Thus Leonard spake,
And could have langh'd in downright agony;
But check'd his soul, and almost thought he bore
His grief most patiently; for sorrow seem'd
Reproachful to his father. Mute he sat,
Culling old saws and comfortable texts,
To cheer the old man's desolate heart, and still
Rejecting all; when lo! a message came,
An instant summons from his Susan's sire.
Like one lone wandering on a perilous moor,
That hears a voice in darkness, and proceeds,
In desperate haste, to meet or friend or foe,
Regardless whether—Leonard hurried forth
To meet his doom. A little gloomy hope,
Much like despair, was kindled in his eye,
And made his heart beat audible and hard.
The faint alarm had caught his father's view,
As silently he clasp'd his palsied hand;
The old man shook his head with such a smile
As had no comfort in't
With louring looks,
And a proud menial's scanted courtesy,
Was Leonard usher'd to the well-known room
Vocal so oft with Susan's melody,
And gladden'd with her smile. 'Tis double woe,
The woe that comes where joy was sweetest found.
There sat the parents of his wife betroth'd,
Dear as his own, in happier days, and call'd
By the same filial names. The mother meek,
With sad o'ercharged eyes that dare not weep,
Obey'd the mandate of her husband's hand,
And hastily, without a word, withdrew,
Casting on Leonard one mute pleading glance,
That said—‘Remember, he is Susan's father—
Though your's he will not be.’—Long pause ensued—
At length the stern man spake: “Young Sir,” said he,
“I have an irksome duty to perform,
But 'tis a duty that I owe my child.
Few words are best—my daughter is not for you—
My reasons need no tongue to plead for them—
Urge not my promise—you are not the youth
To whom my word was given—I pledged the girl
To the inheritor of my friend's estate,
Not to the heir of my foe's beggary.”
Big-hearted Leonard neither dropt a tear,
Nor spake reproachful word; more grieved to find
A soul so base in form so long revered,
Than for the signet set to his despair—
The coward murder of his dying hope,
And the sweet records of young innocent years
Transform'd to shame-envenom'd agony.
Yet long he linger'd at the gate, and raised
To Susan's chamber window a long look
Of resignation deep—a long farewell;
But she was nowhere to be seen; and yet,
He fondly dream'd—what will not lovers dream?—
He heard her sigh, and leant a listening ear
To hear her sigh once more.—Full well he knew,
Though nought distrusting Susan's simple faith.
His claim annull'd—his suit by her forbidden.
Not all the sophistry of love, though urged
With eloquence divine, and looks of warmth
To thaw the “chaste and consecrated snow”
On Dian's bosom, could induce the maid
To wave obedience, or make head against
The strong religion of her filial fear.
So, hopeless—purposeless, he loiter'd home,
If home it could be call'd—begarrison'd
With portly bailiffs, and by duns besieged,
Keen-eyed solicitors, and purple hosts,
And sallow usurers—miscreants, that grow fat,
On general ruin—bills mis-spelt, as long
As his old father's boasted pedigree.
Proud Leonard felt it shame, a burning shame,
To waste a sigh upon his personal grief
Amid the helpless downfall. Nought he told,
His father nought inquired, for all was known
Without the painful index of sad speech.
They talk'd of things long past—of better times,
And seem'd as they were merry. 'Twas the last,
The saddest night beneath the ancient roof—
The next beheld them inmates of a gaol—
And gaol-bird was the word that Susan heard,
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 “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 sympathized
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 beleaguered 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
With branded and convicted poverty,
From the ungenial refuge of a gaol
Into the genial air.

'Tis sweet to see
The day-dawn creeping gradual o'er the sky:
The silent sun at noon is bright and fair,
And the calm eve is lovely; but 'tis sad
To sink at eve on the dark dewy turf,
And feel that none in all the countless host
Of glimmering stars beholds one little spot,
One humble home of thine. The vast void sky,
In all its trackless leagues of azure light,
Has not one breath of comfort for the wretch
Whom houseless penury enfranchises,
A brother freeman of the midnight owl,
A sworn acquaintance of the howling winds
And flaggy-pinion'd rain. Now Leonard leaves
The prison gates;—but whither will he go?
Must he, the high-born, high-soul'd youth, implore
The stinted kindness of offended kin—
Crave pardon for the deadly sin of need;
And wrench from shame, not love, a pittance less
Than goes to feed the hounds? This he must do,
Or eat the bread of loathsome beggary;
For though he did not scorn the honest plough,
He knew not how to guide it. Rustic churls
Bemock'd his threadbare, pale gentility,
And would not grant him leave to toil for hire.
Oh, cruel fate!—his spirit stoop'd to beg
A shelter for his mother—'Twas refused.
No matter—There was kindness in the clouds,
And son and mother lay secure, beneath
The sylvan roof of charitable boughs.
The Lady, proudest of the proud, forgot
Her in-bred pride, and wept consoling tears,
And praying—pour'd a blessing on her child.

There is more mercy in the merciful God
Than e'er inhabited the pregnant eyes
Of men, who waste unprofitable tears
For all imaginable woes, and leave
The poor uncomforted, to wail their own.
There came a kinsman from a foreign land,
O'erfraught with wealth,—whose British heart, unspoil'd,
Had stood the siege of Oriental suns,
And the dire sap of all-transmuting gold—
A rich good man.—He blamed the tardy winds
Which would not let him free his old kind coz
From durance vile of helpless poverty;
But still the son survived—the widow'd wife
Still drew her woeful breath—and he had power
To call the orphan to a friendly home—
To bid the widow wear her comely weeds
Beside a plenteous and a smiling board.
Few days transpired, and Leonard was again
The heir of thousands—the undoubted lord
Of his paternal acres, all redeem'd.
The ancient pictures re-assumed their place
In the old smoky hall—the antique arms
In dusty state resumed their dusk repose.
The branching trophies, and the furry spoils
Of many an oft-related, endless chace,
Found their due station; while the worn-out steeds,
Repurchased, roam'd the venerable park,
From vilest drudgery freed. The hallow'd bones
Of the late lord, unearth'd, were laid in state
With old, ancestral, lordly rottenness;
And if the pride of earth be known in Heav'n,
Earth's noblest pride—then Leonard's Angel sire
Look'd down exultant on his marble tomb,
And blest his only child.
And shall no drop
Of all this blessing comfort Susan's soul?
Right sorry now, I ween, her sordid sire
For his o'er prudent haste, and breach of faith:—
He saw his daughter's beauty marr'd with tears;
Her soul benumb'd with dull continuous woe,
And a strange wildness in her sad, soft eye,
That rather told of visionary gleams,
And silent commerce with the viewless world,
Than aught which man may love. If e'er she spake,
Her voice was hollow as the moaning wind,
An echo of despair. Yet she would sing
Throughout the long hours of the frosty night:
It would have wrung your very heart to hear her—
She sang so like a ghost. “Will the proud youth,”
Thus, measuring other natures by his own,
Her father thought—“Will Leonard love her still?
Will the large-acred heir, whom late I spurn'd,
Accept my child—when all her bloom is fled—
Her eye no longer bright—and her sweet wits
By sorrow crazed? I did him grievous wrong—
And will he sue me for my wither'd rose,
And give the glory of his ancient name—
The lusty verdure of his years, and all
His hopes on earth, to a poor moonstruck maid,
The daughter of his father's enemy?”
Base, slanderous fears! For Leonard's love was strong
Beyond the might of mutability.
No rash impatience of the youthful blood,
No sudden liking of enamour'd sense,
His vow had prompted—and no change of hue,
Nor loss of lively cheer, the work of woe,
Could shake his truth. I need not say—how soon
His suit renew'd—nor with what faint excuse
By Susan's sire admitted.—Oh, blind haste!—
Of unadvised bliss—that came so late,
And wrought its tyrannous effect so soon—
For sorrow had become the element,
The pulse, the sustenance of Susan's soul,
And sudden joy smote like the fire of Heaven,
That, while it brightens, slays. A hectic flush,
Death's crimson banner, cross'd her marble cheek—
And it was pale again.—The strife was past—
She lies, a virgin corse, in Leonard's arms.—

 He saw her shrouded relics laid to rest
In his ancestral sepulchre. That done,
He was a wanderer long in foreign lands:
But when the greenness of his agony
Was sere with age, the hoary man return'd;
And after some few years in virtue spent,
He died.—His bones repose in Susan's grave;
And he is with her, in the land where love,
Immortal and unstain'd, is all in all.