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THE LADY OF LA GARAYE.
PART III.
- NEVER again! When first that sentence fell
- From lips so loth the bitter truth to tell,
- Death seemed the balance of its burdening care,
- The only end of such a strange despair.
- To live deformed; enfeebled; still to sigh
- Through changeless days that o’er the heart go by
- Colourless,—formless,—melting as they go
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- Into a dull and unrecorded woe,—
- Why strive for gladness in such dreary shade?
- Why seek to feel less cheerless, less afraid?
- What recks a little more or less of gloom,
- When a continual darkness is our doom?
- But custom, which, to unused eyes that dwell
- Long in the blankness of a prison cell,
- At length shows glimmerings through some ruined hole,—
- Trains to endurance the imprisoned soul;
- And teaching how with deepest gloom to cope,
- Bids patience light her lamp, when sets the sun of hope.
- And e’en like one who sinks to brief repose
- Cumbered with mournfulness from many woes;
- Who, restless dreaming, full of horror sleeps,
- And with a worse than waking anguish weeps,
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- Till in his dream some precipice appear
- Which he must face, however great his fear:
- Who stepping on those rocks, then feels them break
- Beneath him,—and, with shrieks, leaps up awake;
- And seeing but the grey unwelcome morn,
- And feeling but the usual sense forlorn,
- Of loss and dull remembrance of known grief,
- Melts into tears that partly bring relief,
- Because, though misery holds him, yet his dreams
- More dreadful were than all around him seems:—
- So, in the life grown real of loss and woe,
- She woke to crippled days; which, sad and slow
- And infinitely weary as they were,
- At first, appeared less hard than fancy deemed, to bear.
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- But as those days rolled on, of grinding pain,
- Of wild untamed regrets, and yearnings vain,
- Sad Gertrude grew to weep with restless tears
- For all the vanished joys of blighted years.
- And most she mourned with feverish piteous pining,
- When o’er the land the summer sun was shining;
- And all the volumes and the missals rare,
- Which Claud had gathered with a tender care,
- Seemed nothing to the book of nature, spread
- Around her helpless feet and weary head.
- Oh! woodland paths she ne’er again may see,
- Oh! tossing branches of the forest tree,
- Oh! loveliest banks in all the land of France,
- Glassing your shadows in the silvery Rance;
- Oh! river with your swift yet quiet tide,
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- Specked with white sails that seem in dreams to glide;
- Oh! ruddy orchards, basking on the hills,
- Whose plenteous fruit the thirsty flagon fills;
- And oh! ye winds, which, free and unconfined,
- No sickness poisons, and no heart can bind,—
- Restore her to enjoyment of the earth!
- Echo again her songs of careless mirth,
- Those little Breton songs so wildly sweet,
- Fragments of music strange and incomplete,
- Her small red mouth went warbling by the way
- Through the glad roamings of her active day.
- It may not be! Blighted are summer hours!
- The bee goes booming through the plats of flowers,
- The butterfly its tiny mate pursues
- With rapid fluttering of its painted hues,
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- The thin‐winged gnats their transient time employ
- Reeling through sunbeams in a dance of joy,
- The small field‐mouse with wide transparent ears
- Comes softly forth, and softly disappears,
- The dragon‐fly hangs glittering on the reed,
- The spider swings across his filmy thread,
- And gleaming fishes, darting to and fro,
- Make restless silver in the pools below.
- All these poor lives—these lives of small account,
- Feel the ethereal thrill within them mount;
- But the great human life,—the life Divine,—
- Rests in dull torture, heavy and supine,
- And the bird’s song, by Garaye’s walls of stone,
- Crosses, within, the irrepressible moan!
- The slow salt tears, half weakness and half grief,
- That sting the eyes before they bring relief,
- And which with weary lids she strives in vain
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- To prison back upon her aching brain,
- Fall down the lady’s cheek,—her heart is breaking:
- A mournful sleep is hers; a hopeless waking;
- And oft, in spite of Claud’s beloved rebuke,
- When first the awful wish her spirit shook,—
- She dreams of DEATH,—and of that quiet shore
- In the far world where eyes shall weep no more,
- And where the soundless feet of angels pass,
- With floating lightness o’er the sea of glass.
- Nor is she sole in gloom. Claud too hath lost
- His power to soothe her,—all his thoughts are tost
- As in a storm of sadness: shall he speak
- To her, who lies so faint, and lone, and weak,
- Of pleasant walks and rides? or yet describe
- The merry sayings of that careless tribe
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- Of friends and boon companions now unseen,—
- Or the wild beauty of the forest green,—
- Or daring feats and hair‐breadth ’scapes, which they
- Who are not crippled, think a thing for play?
- He dare not:—oft without apparent cause
- He checks his speaking with a faltering pause;
- Oft when she bids him, with a mournful smile,
- By stories such as these the hour beguile,
- And he obeys—only because she bids—
- He sees the large tears welling ’neath the lids.
- Or if a moment’s gaiety return
- To his young heart that scarce can yet unlearn
- Its habits of delight in all things round,
- And he grows eager on some subject found
- In their discourse, linked with the outward world,
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- Till with a pleasant smile his lip is curled,—
- Even with her love she smites him back to pain!
- Upon his hand her tears and kisses rain;
- And with a suffocated voice she cries,
- “O Claud!—the old bright days!”
- And then he sighs,
- And with a wistful heart makes new endeavour
- To cheer or to amuse;—and so for ever,
- Till in his brain the grief he tries to cheat,
- A dreary mill‐wheel circling seems to beat,
- And drive out other thoughts—all thoughts but one:
- That he and she are both alike undone,—
- That better were their mutual fate, if when
- That leap was taken in the fatal glen,
- Both had been found, released from pain and dread,
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- In the rough waters of the torrent’s bed,
- And greeted pitying eyes, with calm smiles of the Dead!
- A spell is on the efforts each would make,
- With willing spirit, for the other’s sake:
- Through some new path of thought he fain would move,—
- And she her languid hours would fain employ,—
- But bitter grows the sweetness of their love,—
- And a lament lies under all their joy.
- She, watches Claud,—bending above the page;
- Thinks him grown pale, and wearying with his care;
- And with a sigh his promise would engage
- For happy exercise and summer air:
- He, watches her, as sorrowful she lies,
- And thinks she dreams of woman’s hope denied;
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- Of the soft gladness of a young child’s eyes,
- And pattering footsteps on the terrace wide,—
- Where sunshine sleeps, as in a home for light,
- And glittering peacocks make a rainbow show,—
- But which seems sad, because that terrace bright
- Must evermore remain as lone as now.
- And either tries to hide the thoughts that wring
- Their secret hearts; and both essay to bring
- Some happy topic, some yet lingering dream,
- Which they with cheerful words shall make their theme;
- But fail,—and in their wistful eyes confess
- All their words never own of hopelessness.
- Was then DESPAIR the end of all this woe?
- Far off the angel voices answer, No!
- Devils despair, for they believe and tremble;
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- But man believes and hopes. Our griefs resemble
- Each other but in this. Grief comes from Heaven;
- Each thinks his own the bitterest trial given;
- Each wonders at the sorrows of his lot;
- His neighbour’s sufferings presently forgot,
- Though wide the difference which our eyes can see
- Not only in grief’s kind, but its degree.
- God grants to some, all joys for their possession,
- Nor loss, nor cross, the favoured mortal mourns;
- While some toil on, outside those bounds of blessing,
- Whose weary feet for ever tread on thorns.
- But over all our tears God’s rainbow bends;
- To all our cries a pitying ear He lends;
- Yea, to the feeble sound of man’s lament
- How often have His messengers been sent!
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- No barren glory circles round His throne,
- By mercy’s errands were His angels known;
- Where hearts were heavy, and where eyes were dim,
- There did the brightness radiate from Him;
- God’s pity,—clothed in an apparent form,—
- Starred with a polar light the human storm,
- Floated o’er tossing seas man’s sinking bark,
- And for all dangers built one sheltering ark.
- When a slave’s child lay dying, parched with thirst,
- Till o’er the arid waste a fountain burst,—
- When Abraham’s mournful hand upheld the knife
- To smite the silver cord of Isaac’s life,—
- When faithful Peter in his prison slept,—
- When lions to the feet of Daniel crept,—
- When the tried Three walked through the furnace glare,
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- Believing God was with them, even there,—
- When to Bethesda’s sunrise‐smitten wave
- Poor trembling cripples crawl’d their limbs to lave;—
- In all the various forms of human trial,
- Brimming that cup, filled from a bitter vial,
- Which even the suffering Christ with fainting cry
- Under God’s will had shudderingly past by:—
- To hunger, pain, and thirst, and human dread;
- Imprisonment; sharp sorrow for the dead;
- Deformed contraction; burdensome disease;
- Humbling and fleshly ill!—to all of these
- The shining messengers of comfort came,—
- God’s angels,—healing in God’s holy name.
- And when the crowning pity sent to earth
- The Man of Sorrows, in mysterious birth;
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- And the angelic tones with one accord
- Made loving chorus to proclaim the Lord;
- Was Isaac’s guardian there, and he who gave
- Hagar the sight of that cool gushing wave?
- Did the defender of the youthful Three,
- And Peter’s usher, join that psalmody?
- With him who at the dawn made healing sure,
- Troubling the waters with a freshening cure;
- And those, the elect, to whom the task was given
- To offer solace to the Son of Heaven,
- When,—mortal tremors by the Immortal felt,—
- Pale, ’neath the Syrian olives, Jesu knelt,
- Alone,—’midst sleeping followers warned in vain;
- Alone with God’s compassion, and His pain!
- Cease we to dream. Our thoughts are yet more dim
- Than children’s are, who put their trust in Him.
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- All that our wisdom knows, or ever can,
- Is this: that God hath pity upon man;
- And where His Spirit shines in Holy Writ,
- The great word COMFORTER comes after it.
