At eight of night he fell, and sadly lay
Till three of morning on the following day,
When peasants came and put him on a wain,
And drove him to Voghera in his pain.
To Alessandria thence the railway bore;
In Alessandria then two months and more
He lay in hospital; to lop the limb
The Italian doctor who attended him
Was much disposed, but high above the knee-
For life an utter cripple he would be.
Then came the typhoid fever, and the lack
Of food. And sick and hungering, on his back,
With French, Italians, Austrians, as he lay,
Arrived the tidings of Magenta's day,
And Milan entered in the burning June,
And Solferino's issue following soon.
Alas, the glorious wars! and shortly he
To Genoa, for the advantage of the sea,
And to Savona, suffering still, was sent,
And joined his now returning regiment.
Good were the Austrian soldiers, but the feel
They did not well encounter of cold steel,
Nor in the bayonet fence of man with man
Maintained their ground, but yielded, turned,
and ran.
Les armes blanches and the rifled gun
Had fought the battles, and the victories won.
The glorious wars! but he, the doubtful chance
Of soldier's glory. quitting and advance,
His wounded limb less injured than he feared,
Was dealing now in timber, it appeared,
Oak-timber finding for some mires of lead
Worked by an English company, he said.
This youth, perhaps, was twenty-three years
old:
Simply and well his history he told.
They wished to hear about myself as well; I told them, but it was not much to tell, At the Mont Dore, of which the guide-book talks,
I'd taken, not the waters, but the walks; Friends I had met, who on their southward way Had gone before-I followed them to-day.
They wondered greatly at this wondrous thing:
Les Anglais are forever on the wing.
The conducteur said, everybody knew
We were descended of the wandering Jew.
I could not say, had always heard before
The Wandering Jew had been a bachelor;
Some said a conducteur. "Mon Dieu," said he,
"Mais il avait diablement d'esprit,
Et vous de même, Monsieur," and on we rolled,
And woods and vales and fuller streams behold.
About the time when peasant people sup,
We dropped the peasant, took a curé up,
In hat and bands and soutane all to fit;
He next the conducteur was put to sit,
I in the corner gained the senior place.
And lifted soon his voice for all to hear;
A baritone he had both strong and clear;
In fragments first of music made essay,
And tried his pipes, and modest felt his way.
Le verre en main la mort vous trouvera,
It was, or A vous dirai-je, Maman,
And then, A toi, ma belle, à toi toujours,
Till, of his organ's quality secure,
Trifling no more, but boldly, like a man,
He filled his chest and gallantly began.
THOUGH I have seemed, against my wiser will, Your victim, O ye tender foibles, still,
Once now for all, though half my heart be
Adieu, sweet faults, adieu, ye gay amours.
Sad if it be, yet true it is to say,
I've fifty years, and 't is too late a day:
My limbs are shrinking, and my hair turns
gray.
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!
Once in your school (what good, alas ! is once?)
I took my lessons and was not the dunce-
O what a pretty girl was then Juliette!
Don't you suppose that I remember yet,
Though thirty years divide me from the day,
When she and I first looked each other's way?
But now, mid-winter to be matched with
May!
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!
You lovely Marguerite! I shut my eyes,
And do my very utmost to be wise,
Yet see you still, and hear though closed my
And think I'm young in spite of all my years.
Shall I forget you if I go away?
To leave is painful, but absurd to stay;
I've fifty dreadful reasons to obey.
Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!
The priest beside the lusty conducteur
Under his beaver sat, and looked demure;
Faintly he smiled, the company to please,
And folded held his hands above his knees.
Then à propos of nothing, had we heard,
He asked, about a thing that had occurred
At the Mont Dore a little time ago,
A wondrous cure? and when we answered, No,
About a little girl he told a tale,
Who, when her medicines were of no avail,
Was by the Doctor ordered to Mont Dore,
But nothing gained, and only suffered more;
This little child had in her simple way
Unto the Blessed Virgin learned to pray,
And as it happened, to an image there,
Brown was his hair, but closely shaved his face. By the roadside one day she made her prayer,
To lift his eyelids did he think it sin?
I saw a pair of soft brown eyes within.
Older he was, but looked like twenty-two,
Fresh from the cases, to the country new.
This conducteur, the curé at his side,
At once a twinkle in his eyes I spied:
He begged to hear about the pretty pair
Whom he supposed he had been marrying there;
The deed he hoped was comfortably done.
Monsieur l'Évêque he called him in his fuu,
And of Our Lady, who can hear on high,
Begged for her parents' sake she might not die :
Our Lady of Grace, whose attribute is love,
Beheld this child, and listened from above.
Her parents noticed, from that very day
Her malady began to pass away,
And but a fortnight after, as they tell,
They took her home rejoicing, sound and well.
Things come, he said, to show us, every hour,
We are surrounded by superior power.
Little we notice, but if once we see,
The seed of faith will grow into a tree.
The conducteur he wisely shook his head; Strange things do happen in our time, he said; If the bon Dieu but please, no doubt, indeed, When things are desperate, yet they will succeed.
Ask the postilion here, and he can tell
Who cured his horse and what of it befell.
Then the postilion in his smock of blue
His pipe into his mouth's far corner drew,
And told about a farrier and a horse.
But his Auvergnat grew from bad to worse;
His rank Arvernian patois was so strong,
With what he said I could not go along;
And what befell, or how it came to pass,
And if it were a horse or if an ass,
The sequence of his phrase I could not keep,
And in the middle fairly sank to sleep.
When I awoke, I heard a stream below,
And on each bank saw houses in a row:
Corrèze the stream, the houses Tulle, they
said;
Alighted here, and thankful went to bed.
"But how," said one, "about the Pyrenees? In Hamlet give us Hamlet, if you please. Your friend declares you said you met with there
A peasant beauty beauteous past compare,
Who fed her cows the mountain-peaks between,
And asked if at Velletri you had been:
And was Velletri larger than was Rome?
Her soldier-brother went away from home
Two years ago-to Rome it was he went,
And to Velletri was this summer sent.
He twenty-three, and she was sweet seventeen,
And fed her cows the mountain-peaks between ;
Lightly along a rocky path she led,
And from a grange she brought you milk and bread;
In summer here she lived, and with the snow
Drove in October to the field below;
And where you lived, she asked, and oh! they say,
That with the English we shall fight some day. Loveliest of peasant-girls that e'er was seen, Feeding her cows the mountain-peaks between." "Tis true," I said, "although to tell was mean: My Pyrenean verses will you hear,
Though not about that peasant-girl, I fear?"
"Begin," they said, "the sweet bucolic song; Though it to other maids and other cows belong."
QUICK, painter, quick, the moment seize
Amid the snowy Pyrenees;
More evanescent than the snow
The pictures come, are seen, and go:
Quick, quick, currente calamo.
I do not ask the tints that fill
The gate of day 'twixt hill and hill,
I ask not for the hues that fleet
Above the distant peaks; my feet
Are on a poplar-bordered road,
Where, with a saddle and a load,
A donkey, old and ashen-gray,
Reluctant works his dusty way.
Before him, still with might and main
Pulling his rope, the rustic rein,
A girl: before both him and me
Frequent she turns and lets me see,
Unconscious lets me scan and trace
The sunny darkness of her face,
And outlines full of Southern grace.
Following, I notice, yet and yet,
Her olive skin, dark eyes, deep set
And black, and blacker e'en than jet
The escaping hair that scantly showed,
Since o'er it in the country mode,
For winter warmth and summer shade,
The lap of scarlet cloth is laid.
And then back falling from the head
A crimson kerchief overspread
Her jacket blue, thence passing down
A skirt of darkest yellow brown,
Coarse stuff, allowing to the view
The smooth limb to the woolen shoe.
But who here's some one following too-
A priest, and reading at his book!
Read on, O priest, and do not look!
Consider-she is but a child-
Yet might your fancy be beguiled—
Read on, O priest, and pass and go!
But see, succeeding in a row,
Two, three, and four, a motley train,
Musicians wandering back to Spain;
With fiddle and with tambourine,
A man with women following seen;
What dresses, ribbon-ends, and flowers!
And, sight to wonder at for hours,
The man-to Philip has he sat ?
With butterfly-like velvet hat,
One dame his big bassoon conveys,
On one his gentle arm he lays;
They stop and look, and something say,
And to "España" ask the way.
But while I speak and point them on,
Alas! my dearer friends are gone;
The dark-eyed maiden and the ass
Have had the time bridge to pass.
Vainly beyond it far descried;
Adieu: and peace with you abide,
Gray donkey and your beauteous guide.
The pictures come, the pictures go,
Quick, quick, currente calamo.
They praised the rhyme, but still would per
The eclogue of the mountain-peaks to hear:
Eclogue that never was; and then awhile
Of France, and Frenchmen, and our native
isle,
They talked. Preinsular above the rest,
My friend his ardent politics expressed;
France was behind us all; he saw in France
Worst retrogression, and the least advance;
Her revolutions had but thrown her back,
Powerful just now, but wholly off the track;
They in religion were, as I had seen,
About where we in Chaucer's time had been.
In Chaucer's time! and yet their Wickliffe
where ?
Something they'd kept, the worst part, of Voltaire.
Strong for Old England was New England too,
The clergyman was neutral in his view;
And I, for France, with more than I could do,
Though sound, my thesis did not long maintain.
The contemplation of the nightly main,
The vaulted heavens above, and under these
The black ship working through the dusky seas,
Deserting, to our narrow berths we crept,
Sound slumbering there, the watch while others
kept.
And go, they said, get well, and work again.
Just at this juncture of their married life,
Her mother, sickening, begged to have his wife.
They let their house, and with the children she
Went to her mother, he beyond the sea.
Far to the South his orders were to go;
A watering-place whose name we need not know,
For climate and for change of scene was best :
There he was bid, laborious task to rest.
A dismal thing in foreign lands to roam
To one accustomed to an English home;
Disinal yet more, in health if feeble grown,
To live a boarder, helpless and alone,
In foreign town; and worse yet worse is made,
If 't is a town of pleasure and parade.
Dispiriting the public walks and seats,
The alien faces that the alien meets,
The caterer for amusement in the streets,
Accosting still whom he must still refuse,
Drearily every day this old routine renews.
Yet here this alien prospered; change of air
Or change of scene did more than tenderest
Three weeks were scarce completed, to his home
He wrote to say he thought he now could come,
His usual work was sure he could resume,
And something said about the place's gloom,
And how he loathed idling his time away.
O, but they wrote, his wife and all, to say
He must not think of it! 't was quite too quick;
Let was their house, her mother still was sick,
Three months were given, and three he ought to
For his and hers and for his children's sake.
He wrote again, 't was weariness to wait,
This doing nothing was a thing to hate;
He'd cast his nine laborious years away,
And was as fresh as on his wedding day;
Yielded at last, supposed he must obey.
And now, his health repaired, his spirits grown
Less feeble, less he cared to live alone.
The table d'hôte less tedious than before.
'T was easier now to walk the crowded shore,
His ancient silence sometimes he would break,
And the mute Englishman was heard to speak.
His youthful color, soon his youthful air,
With whom good looks entitle to good name,
Came back; among the busy idlers there,
For his good looks he gained a sort of fame;
People would watch him as he went and came.
Explain the tragic mystery who can,
Something there is, we know not what in man,
With all established happiness at strife,
And bent on revolution in his life.
Explain the plan of Providence who dare,
And tell us wherefore in this world there are
Beings, who seem for this alone to live,
Temptation to another soul to give.
A beauteous woman at the table d'hôte,
To try this English heart, at least to note
This English countenance, conceived the whim.
She sat exactly opposite to him.
How every day on him she bent her eyes;
Ere long he noticed, with vague surprise,
Soft and inquiring now they looked, and then,
Wholly withdrawn, unnoticed came again;
His shrank aside; and yet there came a day,
Alas! they did not wholly turn away,
So beautiful her beauty was, so strange,
And to his Northern feeling such a change;
Her throat and neck Junonian in their grace,
The blood just mantled in her Southern face.
Dark hair, dark eyes, and all the arts she had
With which some dreadful power adorns the
bad,
Bad women in their youth, and young was she,
Twenty perhaps, at the utmost twenty-three,
And timid seemed, and innocent of ill,
Her feelings went and came without her will;
He oscillated to and fro, he took
High courage oft, temptation from him shook,
Compelled himself to virtuous thoughts and The kisses which she gave he could not brook;
The days went by and found him in the snare;
But soon a letter, full of tenderest care,
Came from his wife; the little daughter too,
In a large hand-the exercise was new-
To her papa her love and kisses sent.
Into his very heart and soul it went;
Forth on the high and dusty road he sought
Some issue for the vortex of his thought,
Returned, packed up the things, and ere the day
Descended was a hundred miles away.
There are, I know of course, who lightly treat
Such slips; we stumble, we regain our feet;
What can we do, they say, but hasten on,
And disregard it as a thing that's gone?
Many there are, who in a case like this
Would calm reseek their sweet, domestic bliss,
Accept unshamed the wifely tender kiss,
And lift their little children on their knees,
And take their kisses too; with hearts at ease
Will read the household prayers-to church
And sacrament-nor care if people know.
Such men, so minded, do exist, God knows,
And God be thanked, this was not one of those.
Late in the night, at a provincial town
In France a passing traveller was put down;
Haggard he looked, his hair was turning gray,
His hair, his clothes were much in disarray.
In a bedchamber here one day he stayed,
Wrote letters, posted them, his reckoning paid,
And went! 'T was Edward rushing from his fall.
Here to his wife he wrote and told her all;
Forgiveness-yes, perhaps she might forgive:
For her and for the children he must live
At any rate; but their old home to share
As yet was something that he could not bear;
She with her mother still her home should make,
A lodging near the office he should take,
And once a quarter he would bring his pay,
And he would see her on the quarter-day;
But her alone-e'en this would dreadful be;
The children 't was not possible to see.
Back to the office at this early day
To see him come, old-looking thus and gray,
His comrades wondered-wondered, too, to see
How dire a passion for his work had he,
How in a garret too he lived alone,
So cold a husband, cold a father grown.
In a green line beside her mother's home,
Where in old days they had been used to roam,
His wife had met him on the appointed day,
Fell on his neck, said all that love could say,
And wept; he put the loving arms away.
At dusk they met, for so was his desire;
She felt his cheeks and forehead all on fire;
Once in her face he gave a side-long look,
Said, but for them he wished that he were dead,
And put the money in her hand, and fled.
Sometimes, in easy and familiar tone,
Of sins resembling more or less his own
He heard his comrades in the office speak,
And felt the color tingling in his cheek.
Lightly they spoke as of a thing of naught,
He of their judgment ne'er so much as thought.
I know not, in his solitary pains,
Whether he seemed to feel as in his veins
The moral mischief circulating still,
Racked with the torture of the double will,
And like some frontier land where armies wage
The mighty wars, engage and yet engage,
All through the summer in the fierce campaign,
March, countermarch, gain, lose, and yet regain,
With battle reeks the desolated plain,
So felt his nature yielded to the strife
Of the contending good and ill of life.
But a whole year this penance he endured;
Nor even then would think that he wascured.
Once in the quarter, in the country lane
He met his wife and paid his quarter's gain:
To bring the children she besought in vain.
He has a life small happiness that gives,
Who friendless in a London lodging lives,
Dines in a dingy chop-house, and returns
To a lone room, while all within him yearns
For sympathy, and his whole nature burns
With a fierce thirst for some one-is there
none?-
To expend his human tenderness upon.
Unhappy he who in such temper meets,
Sister in pain, the unhappy of the streets.
So blank and hard and stony is the way
To walk, I wonder not men go astray.
Edward, whom still a sense that never slept
On the strict path undeviating kept,
One winter evening found himself pursued
Amid the dusky thronging multitude.
Quickly he walked, but strangely swift was she,
And pertinacious, and would make him see.
He saw at last, and, recognizing slow,
Discovered in this hapless thing of woe
The occasion of his shame twelve wretched
months ago.
She gayly laughed, she cried and sought his hand
And spoke sweet phrases of her native land.
Exiled, she said, her lovely home had left,
Not to forsake a friend of all but her bereft,
Exiled, she cried, for liberty, for love,
She was; still limpid eyes she turned above.
So beauteous once, and now such misery in,
Pity had all but softened him to sin.
But while she talked, and wildly laughed and
And plucked the hand which sadly he denied,
A stranger came and swept her from his side.
He watched them in the gas-lit darkness go,
And a voice said within him, "Even so,
So 'midst the gloomy mansions where they dwell,
The lost souls walk the flaming streets of hell."
The lamps appeared to fling a baleful glare,
A brazen heat was heavy in the air,
And it was hell, and he some unblest wanderer | The child recovered slowly, slowly too
For a long hour he stayed the streets to roam; Late gathering sense, he gained his garret home, There found a telegram that bade him come Straight to the country, where his daughter, still
His darling child, lay dangerously ill.
The doctor would he bring? Away he went
And found the doctor; to the office sent
A letter, asking leave, and went again,
And, with a wild confusion in his brain,
Joining the doctor, caught the latest train.
The train swift whirled them from the
light
Into the shadows of the natural night.
'T was silent starry midnight on the down,
Silent and chill, when they, straight come from
town,
Leaving the station, walked a mile to gain
The lonely house amid the hills, where Jane,
Her mother, and her children, should be found.
Waked by their entrance out of sleep un-
sound,
The child not yet her altered father knew;
Yet talked of her papa in her delirium too.
Danger there was, yet hope there was; and he
To attend the crisis and the changes see
And take the steps at hand should surely be.
Said Jane, the following day, "Edward, you
know,
Over and over I have told you so,
As in a better world I seek to live,
As I desire forgiveness, I forgive.
Forgiveness does not feel the word to say:
As I believe in One who takes away
Our sin, and gives us righteousness instead,
You to this sin I do believe are dead.
'T was I, you know, who let you leave your home,
And bade you stay when you so wished to
My fault was that-I've told you so before,
And vainly told, but now 't is something more.
Say, is it right without a single friend,
Without advice, to leave me to attend
Children and mother both? Indeed, I've
thought
Through want of you the child her fever caught.
Chances of mischief come with every hour:
It is not in a single woman's power
Alone, and ever haunted more or less
With anxious thoughts of you and your distress,
'Tis not indeed, I'm sure of it, in me,
All things with perfect judgment to foresee.
This weight has grown too heavy to endure,
And you, I tell you now, and I am sure,
Neglect your duty both to God and man,
Persisting thus in your unnatural plan.
This feeling you must conquer, for you can.
And after all, you know, we are but dust,
What are we, in ourselves that we should
trust?"
He scarcely answered her; but he obtained
A longer leave, and quietly remained;
Slowly the child recovered, long was ill,
Long delicate, and he must watch her still;
To give up seeing her he could not bear;
To leave her less attended did not dare.
Recovered he, and more familiar drew
Home's happy breath-and, apprehension o'er,
Their former life he yielded to restore,
And to his mournful garret went no more.
MIDNIGHT was dim and hazy overhead
When the tale ended and we turned to bed.
Midnight was in the cabin still and dead,
Our fellow-passengers were all in bed;
We followed them and nothing further spoke.
Out of the sweetest of my sleep I woke
At two; I felt we stopped; amid a dream
Of England, knew the letting off of steam,
And rose. 'T was fog, and were we off Cape
The Captain would be certain of his place.
Wild in white vapor flew away the force,
And self-arrested was the eager course
That had not ceased before. But shortly now
Cape Race was made to starboard on the bow.
The paddles plied. I slept. The following
night,
In the mid-seas we saw a quay and light,
And peeped through mist into an unseen town,
And on scarce seeming land set one companion
down,
And went. With morning and a shining sun
Under the high New Brunswick coast we run,
And visible discern to every eye
Rocks, pines, and little ports, and passing by
The boats and coasting craft. When sunk the
Early now sunk, the Northern streamers bright
Floated and flashed the cliffs and clouds behind;
With phosphorus the billows all were lined.
We sat, and little spoke. The following day
Bore us expectant into Boston Bay.
With dome and steeple on the yellow skies,
Upon the left we watched with curious eyes
The Puritan great Mother-City rise;
Among the islets winding in and round,
The great ship moved to her, appointed ground.
We bade adieu, shook hands and went on
shore:
I and my friend have seen our friends no more.
COME back again, my olden heart!—
Ah, fickle spirit and untrue,
I bade the only guide depart
Whose faithfulness I surely knew:
I said, my heart is all too soft;
He who would climb and soar aloft,
Must needs keep ever at his side
The tonic of a wholesome pride.
Come back again, my olden heart!—
Alas! I called not then for thee;
I called for Courage, and apart
From Pride if Courage could not be,
Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find
In thee a power to lift the mind
This low and grovelling joy above-
'T is but the proud can truly love.
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