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Thus he fulfilled the dearest trust

That human-kind with Heaven can share;

Thus could forget the tenderest ties
That win our kindred sympathies ;
And her he gave-that peerless one-
To hide the beauty of her youth,
Pent in the cell of grief uncouth,
Early to fade, unseen, unknown:
But he, her loved one, who would dare
For her to meet all deaths, all pain

That ruthless power could e'er ordain,
Hath rescued her to life again.

Again to her the light is fair,

Yea, more than light! She doth awake

To days more bright than e'er the sun could make.

Oh! the great joys of earth and air

For that unfriended, homeless pair.
To him alone she lives-her home

Is in his dwelling, and her Heaven
In the green waste where he doth roam,
From all the haunts of mankind driven.

What, though the world's poor wealth be reft,

Though fame-even fame he must forego,

Nought grieveth he while love is left;

Love singly makes him wholly blest,

That only Heaven that mortals know.
She who is all his thought below,

Brightens to him that rugged nest,

Amid the oaken shades above,

And theirs is the full life of youth and love;
Youth in its fairest hopes, and freshest hues ;
Passion so rapt that, in to-day it views

A bliss it deems the morrow cannot lose.

Strange that so glad a dream should e'er have birth, In human hearts,-'mid mockeries of this Earth!

*

The joyous toil of the chase is o'er,

And that hunter wends to his hidden home.

On the highwood bent, he hears the roar

Of the water that speeds in its path of foam; And welcome to him is that lulling sound,

Though it never soothed his cradled-sleep,

Though his birth-place was not in that mountain ground,

Nor his youth had sported, from steep to steep, In that most dear and lonely wild,

Where he hath grown a desert-child.

Not half so winning to his eye

Could even the first-loved valley be,

Afar in fruitful Sicily,

Where his first years went smiling by,

As those rough scenes that passion's power Hath charmed in its most witching hour. Thereby, the far uplifted peaks,

The ancient snows, the rocky side

Of the rent mountain gaping wide,
Whence many a snaky torrent breaks,
The sloping woodlands dark and wide
Are ever strangely beautified.

His eyes have there an Eden found,
As he homeward crosses the tangled ground
Of the high solitudes, where no sound
Through all the girdling forest round
Tells him that yon wide plains below
Are still the realms of guilt and woe.
O'er those tall pines the latest beam
Glows with a more than golden gleam,
Waking in the beholder's breast

The rapture of most living rest,

And never pilgrim reached the shrine

He toiled through weary moons to gain,

With such a sense of joy divine,

So free an outbreak from all pain,

As fills Arnaldo, while he sees

That lustre through the opening trees,
While forth he issues from the shade

Which evening hath already made
Throughout the pine-woods thick and vast,
Where twilight brings its earliest gloom,
Where longest the night-shadows last,
And the full day can never come.
The warblers wild are met to sing,
Where, age by age, in hours like this
Their race hath uttered half its bliss.
From branch to branch their carols ring;
From forest to forest those sweet throats
Prolong the ancient sylvan notes,

And tireless all their lays are blending,
As the glad strife should ne'er have ending.
Though there the nightingale dwelleth not,
More witching to Arnaldo seems

The music of that lonely spot,

Than aught that won his earlier dreams

In green Mazzara's olive groves,
That most the midnight-songstress loves.

Blithe as the bird of wildest flight,

.When first it soars in cloudless light,

Is he, whose looks become more bright,
Whose heart with joy's excess is beating,
As now above the headlong stream

He views that hut, in the evening beam,
Whither his noon-tide thoughts were fleeting.
But where is the tone of the wonted lute,-
The voice, a thousand-told more sweet,
That mingling made its sounds replete
With all of music, when to greet

That wanderer came the breath of love?
Why is thy song of welcome mute,
Thou dweller with the turtle-dove?

Lorenza, wilt thou not appear,

Thy lover's darkening sight to cheer?-
Down from the bough Arnaldo now
Lights on the smooth green sward below;

But his heart sinks like a weight of lead,

As he rushes into that silent shed;

Madly glance his eyes around,

As he utters that name, and no answering sound

Heals the benumbing agony

That like an ice-blast harrows him

Heart-deep at once. What doth he see?

A scroll, but his straining sight grows dim,

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