A TRUE STORY.

A cottage in a peaceful vale; A jasmine round the door; A hill to shelter from the gale; A silver brook before. Oh, sweet the jasmine's buds of snow, In mornings soft with May; Oh, silver-clear the waves that flow, Reflecting heaven, away! A sweeter bloom to Eva's youth Rejoicing Nature gave; And heaven was mirror'd in her truth More clear than on the wave. Oft to that lone sequester'd place My boyish steps would roam, There was a look in Eva's face That seem'd a smile of home. And oft I paused to hear at noon A voice that sang for glee; Or mark the white neck glancing down,— The book upon the knee.—

Who stands between thee and the sun?— A cloud himself,—the Wandering One! A vacant wonder in the eyes,— The mind, a blank, unwritten scroll;— The light was in the laughing skies, And darkness in the Idiot's soul. He touch'd the book upon her knee— He look'd into her gentle face— "Thou dost not tremble, maid, to see Poor Arthur by thy dwelling-place. I know not why, but where I pass The aged turn away; And if my shadow vex the grass, The children cease from play. My only playmates are the wind, The blossom on the bough! "Why are thy looks so soft and kind? Thou dost not tremble—thou!" Though none were by, she trembled not— Too meek to wound, too good to fear him; And, as he linger'd on the spot, She hid the tears that gush'd to hear him.—

"O Maiden!"—thus the sire begun— "O Maiden, do not scorn my prayer: I have a hapless idiot son, To all my wealth the only heir; And day by day, in shine or rain, He wanders forth, to gaze again Upon those eyes, whose looks of kindness Still haunt him in his world of blindness; A sunless world!—all arts to yield Light to the mind from childhood seal'd Have been explored in vain. Few are his joys on earth;—above, For every ill a cure is given— God grant me life to cheer with love The wanderer's guileless path to Heaven." He paused—his heart was full—"And now, What brings the suppliant father here? Yes, few the joys that life bestows On him whose life is but repose— One night, from year to year;— Yet not so dark, O maid, if thou Couldst let his shadow catch thy light, Couldst to his lip that smile allow Which comes but at thy sight; Couldst—(for the smile is still so rare, And oh, so innocent the joy!) His presence, though it pain thee, bear, Nor fear the harmless idiot boy!" Then Eva's father, from her brow Parted the golden locks, descending To veil the sweet face, downwards bending:— And, pointing to the swimming eyes, The dew-drops glist'ning on the cheek, "Mourner!" the happier father cries, "These tears her answer speak!" Oh, sweet the jasmine's buds of snow, In mornings soft with May; Oh, silver-clear the waves that flow In summer skies away;— But sweeter looks of kindness seem O'er human trouble bow'd, And gentle hearts reflect the beam Less truly than the cloud.

Of wonders on the land and deeps She spoke, and glories in the sky— The Eternal life the Father keeps, For those who learn from Him to die. So simply did the maiden speak— So simply and so earnestly, You saw the light begin to break, And Soul the Heaven to see; You saw how slowly, day by day, The darksome waters caught the ray Confused and broken—come and gone— The beams as yet uncertain are, But still the billows murmur on, And struggle for the star.

There came to Eva's maiden home A Stranger from a sunnier clime; The lore that Hellas taught to Rome, The wealth that Wisdom works from Time, Which ever, in its ebb and flow, Heaves to the seeker on the shore The waifs of glorious wrecks below, The argosies of yore;— Each gem that in that dark profound The Past,—the Student's soul can find; Shone from his thought, and sparkled round The Enchanted Palace of the Mind. In man's best years, his form was fair, Broad brow with hyacinth locks of hair; A port, though stately, not severe; An eye that could the heart control; A voice whose music to the ear, Became a memory to the soul. It seem'd as Nature's hand had done Her most to mould her kingly son; But oft beneath the sunlit Nile The grim destroyer waits its prey, And dark, below that fatal smile, The lurking demon lay. How trustful in the leafy June, She roved with him the lonely vale; How trustful by the tender moon, She blushed to hear a tenderer tale. O happy Earth! the dawn revives, Day after day, each drooping flower— Time to the heart once only gives The joyous Morning Hour. "To him—oh, wilt thou pledge thy youth, For whom the world's false bloom is o'er? My heart shall haven in thy truth, And tempt the faithless wave no more. In my far land, a sun more bright Sheds rose-hues o'er a tideless sea; But cold the wave, and dull the light, Without the sunshine found in thee. Say, wilt thou come, the Stranger's bride, To that bright land and tideless sea? There is no sun but by thy side— My life's whole sunshine smiles in thee!" Her hand lay trembling on his arm, Averted glow'd the happy face; A softer hue, a mightier charm, Grew mellowing o'er the hour—the place; Along the breathing woodlands moved A PRESENCE dream-like and divine— How sweet to love and be beloved, To lean upon a heart that's thine! Silence was o'er the earth and sky— By silence Love is answer'd best— Her answer was the downcast eye, The rose-cheek pillow'd on his breast. What rustles through the moonlit brake? What sudden spectre meets their gaze? What face, the hues of life forsake, Gleams ghost-like in the ghostly rays? You might have heard his heart that beat, So heaving rose its heavy swell— No more the Idiot—at her feet, The Dark One, roused to reason, fell. Loosed the last link that thrall'd the thought, The lightning broke upon the blind— The jealous love the cure had wrought, The Heart in waking woke the Mind.

To and fro the bells are swinging, Cheerily, clearly, to and fro; Gaily go the young girls, bringing Flowers the fairest June may know. Maiden, flowers that bloom'd and perish'd Strew'd thy path the bridal day; May the Hope thy soul has cherish'd, Bloom when these are pass'd away! The Father's parting prayer is said, The daughter's parting kiss is given; The tears a happy bride may shed, Like dews ascend to heaven; And leave the earth from which they rise, But balmier airs, and rosier dyes.

Years fly; beneath the yew-tree shade Thy father's holy dust is laid; The brook glides on, the jasmine blows; But where art thou, the wandering wife, And what the bliss, and what the woes, Glass'd in the mirror-sleep of life? For whether life may laugh or weep, Death the true waking—life the sleep. None know! afar, unheard, unseen— The present heeds not what has been; This herded world together press'd, Can miss no straggler from the rest— Not so! Nay, all one heart may find, Where Memory lives, a saint enshrined— Some altar-hearth, in which our shade The Household-god of Thought is made, And each slight relic hoarded yet With faith more solemn than regret. Who tenants thy forsaken cot— Who tends thy childhood's favourite flowers— Who wakes, from every haunted spot, The Ghosts of buried Hours? 'Tis He whose sense was doom'd to borrow From thee the Vision and the Sorrow— To whom the Reason's golden ray, In storms that rent the heart was given; The peal that burst the clouds away Left clear the face of heaven! And wealth was his, and gentle birth, A form in fair proportions cast; But lonely still he walk'd the earth— The Hermit of the Past. It was not love—that dream was o'er! No stormy grief, no wild emotion; For oft, what once was love of yore, The memory soothes into devotion! He bought the cot:—The garden flowers— The haunts his Eva's steps had trod, Books—thought—beguiled the lonely hours, That flow'd in peaceful waves to God.

She sits, a Statue of Despair, In that far land, by that bright sea; She sits, a Statue of Despair, Whose smile an Angel seem'd to be— An angel that could never die, Its home the heaven of that blue eye! The smile is gone for ever there— She sits, the Statue of Despair! She knows it all—the hideous tale— The wrong, the perjury, and the shame;— Before the bride had left her vale, Another bore the nuptial name; Another lives to claim the hand Whose clasp, in thrilling, had defiled: Another lives, O God, to brand The Bastard's curse upon her child! Another!—through all space she saw The face that mock'd th' unwedded mother's! In every voice she heard the Law, That cried, "Thou hast usurp'd another's!" And who the horror first had told?— From his false lips in scorn it came— "Thy charms grow dim, my love grows cold; My sails are spread—Farewell." Rigid in voiceless marble there— Come, sculptor, come—behold Despair! The infant woke from feverish rest— Its smiles she sees, its voice she hears— The marble melted from the breast, And all the Mother gush'd in tears.

To and fro the bells are swinging, Heavily heaving to and fro; Sadly go the mourners, bringing Dust to join the dust below. Through the church-aisle, lighted dim, Chanted knells the ghostly hymn, Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favillâ! Mother! flowers that bloom'd and perish'd, Strew'd thy path the bridal day; Now the bud thy grief has cherish'd, With the rest has pass'd away! Leaf that fadeth—bud that bloometh, Mingled there, must wait the day When the seed the grave entombeth Bursts to glory from the clay. Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favillâ! Happy are the old that die, With the sins of life repented; Happier he whose parting sigh Breaks a heart, from sin prevented! Let the earth thine infant cover From the cares the living know; Happier than the guilty lover— Memory is at rest below! Memory, like a fiend, shall follow, Night and day, the steps of Crime; Hark! the church-bell, dull and hollow, Shakes another sand from time! Through the church-aisle, lighted dim, Chanted knells the ghostly hymn; Hear it, False One, where thou fliest, Shriek to hear it when thou diest— Dies iræ, dies illa, Solvet sæclum in favillâ!

The cottage in the peaceful vale, The jasmine round the door, The hill still shelters from the gale, The brook still glides before. Without the porch, one summer noon, The Hermit-dweller see! In musing silence bending down, The book upon his knee. Who stands between thee and the sun?— A cloud herself,—the Wand'ring One!— A vacant sadness in the eyes, The mind a razed, defeatured scroll; The light is in the laughing skies, And darkness, Eva, in thy soul! The beacon shaken in the storm, Had struggled still to gleam above The last sad wreck of human love, Upon the dying child to shed One ray—extinguish'd with the dead: O'er earth and heaven then rush'd the night! A wandering dream, a mindless form— A Star hurl'd headlong from its height, Guideless its course, and quench'd its light. Yet still the native instinct stirr'd The darkness of the breast— She flies, as flies the wounded bird Unto the distant nest. O'er hill and waste, from land to land, Her heart the faithful instinct bore; And there, behold the Wanderer stand Beside her Childhood's Home once more!

When earth is fair, and winds are still, When sunset gilds the western hill, Oft by the porch, with jasmine sweet, Or by the brook, with noiseless feet, Two silent forms are seen; So silent they—the place so lone— They seem like souls when life is gone, That haunt where life has been: And his to watch, as in the past Her soul had watch'd his soul. Alas! her darkness waits the last, The grave the only goal! It is not what the leech can cure— An erring chord, a jarring madness: A calm so deep, it must endure— So deep, thou scarce canst call it sadness; A summer night, whose shadow falls On silent hearths in ruin'd halls. Yet, through the gloom, she seem'd to feel His presence like a happier air, Close by his side she loved to steal, As if no ill could harm her there! And when her looks his own would seek, Some memory seem'd to wake the sigh, Strive for kind words she could not speak, And bless him in the tearful eye. O sweet the jasmine's buds of snow, In mornings soft with May, And silver-clear the waves that flow To shoreless deeps away; But heavenward from the faithful heart A sweeter incense stole;— The onward waves their source desert, But Soul returns to Soul!