For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar : who have fixed below and find this earth enough for woc, Lose in that one their all-perchance a mite But who in patienceparts with all delight? Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern
Mask hearts where grief hath little left to learn;
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit who wear them most.
XXII.
By those, that deepest feel, is ill exprest
The indistinctness of the suffering breast;
Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one,
Which seeks from all the refuge found in none;
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.
On Conrad's stricken soul exhaustion prest,
And stupor almost lulled it into rest;
So feeble now- - his mother's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept :
It was the very weakness of his brain,
Which thus confessed without relieving pain.
None saw his trickling tears parchance,
if seen
That useless flood of grief had never been:
Nor long they flowed - he dried them to depart,
In helpless hopeless brokenness of heart":
The sun goes forth - but Conrad's day is dim;
And the night cometh - ne'er to pass from him.
There is no darkness like the cloud of mind,
On Grief's vain eye
the blindest of the blind!
Which may not I dare not see
His heart was formed for softness
Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long;
Each feeling pure -as falls the dropping dew
Within the grot; like that had hardened too;
Less clear, perchance, its earthly trials passed,
But sunk, and chilled, and petrified at last.
Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock :
If such his heart, so shattered it the shock.
There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow,
Though dark the shade- it sheltered saved till now.
The thunder came that bolt hath blasted both,
The granite's firmness, and the lily's growth:
The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell
Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell,
And of its cold protector, blacken round
But shivered fragments on the barren ground!
XXIV.
'Tis morn- to venture on his lonely hour
Few dare; though now Anselmo sought his tower.
He was not there
nor seen along the shore;
Ere night, alarmed, their isle is traversed o'er :
Another morn— another bids them seek,
And shout his name till echo waxeth weak;
Mount grotto cavern- - valley searched in vain,
They find on shore a sea-boat's broken chain :
Their hope revives - they follow o'er the main.
'Tis idle all- -moons roll on moons away,
And Conrad comes not came not since that day :
Nor trace, nor tidings of his doom declare
Where lives his grief, or perished his despair!
Long mourned his band whom none could mourn beside;
And fair the monument they gave his bride :
For him they raise not the recording stone
Ilis death yet dubious, deeds too widely known;
He left a Corsair's name to other times,
Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.
The Serfs are glad through Lara's wide domain,
And Slavery half forgets her feudal chain;
He, their unhoped, but unforgotten lord,
The long self-exiled chieftain is restored :
There be bright faces in the busy hall;
Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall;
Far chequering o'er the pictured window, plays
The unwonted faggots' hospitable blaze;
And gay retainers gather round the hearth,
With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.
The chief of Lara is returned again :
And why had Lara crossed the bounding main?
Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself; - that heritage of woe;
That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest! -
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men.
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace
His youth through all the mazes of its race;
Short was the course his restlessness had run,
But long enough to leave him half undone.
And Lara left in youth his father-land;
But from the hour he waved his parting hand
Each trace waxed fainter of his course, till all
Had nearly ceased his memory to recall-
His sire was dust, his vassals could declare;
'Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there;
Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew
Cold in the many, anxious in the few.
His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name,
His portrait darkens in its fading frame,
Another chief consoled his destined bride,
The young forgot him, and the old had died;
"Yet doth he live! » exclaims the impatient heir,
And sighs for sables which he must not wear,
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace
The Laras' last and longest dwelling place;
But one is absent from the mouldering file,
That now were welcome in that Gothic pile,
He comes at last in sudden loneliness,
And whence they know not, why they need not guess;
They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er,
Not that he came, but came not long before:
No train is his beyond a single page,
Of foreign aspect, and of tender age.
Years had rolled on, and fast they speed away
To those that wander as to those that stay;
But lack of tidings from another clime
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time.
They see, they recognise, yet almost deem
The present dubious, or the past a dream.
He lives, nor yet is past his manhood's prime,
Though seared by toil, and something touched by time;
His faults, whate'er they were, if scarce forgot,
Might be untaught him by his varied lot;
Nor good nor ill of late were known, his name
Might yet uphold his patrimonial fame :
His soul in youth was haughty, but his sins
No more than pleasure from the stripling wins;
And such, if not yet hardened in their course,
Might be redeemed, nor ask a long remorse.
And they indeed were changed-'tis quickly seen
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