How imprudent! To some unfrequented lone inn,
And so late (for the night was about to begin)—
She, companionless there!-had she bidden that man?
A fear, vague, and formless, and horrible, ran

Through his heart.

XXIV.

At that moment he look'd up, and saw,

Riding fast through the forest, the Duc de Luvois,
Who waved his hand to him, and sped out of sight.
The day was descending. He felt 'twould be night
Ere that man reach'd Saint Saviour.

XXV.

He walk'd on, but not

Back toward Serchon: he walk'd on, but knew not in what

Direction, nor yet with what object, indeed,

He was walking; but still he walk'd on without heed.

XXVI.

The day had been sullen; but, towards his decline,
The sun sent a stream of wild light up the pine.
Darkly denting the red light reveal'd at its back,
The old ruin'd abbey rose roofless and black,

The spring that yet oozed through the moss-paven floor
Had suggested, no doubt, to the monks there, of yore,
The site of that refuge where, back to its God

How many a heart, now at rest 'neath the sod,
Had borne from the world all the same wild unrest
That now prey'd on his own!

XXVII.

By the thoughts in his breast

With varying impulse divided and torn,

He traversed the scant heath, and reach'd the forlorn

Autumn woodland, in which but a short while ago

He had seen the Duke rapidly enter; and so

He too enter'd. The light waned around him, and pass'd Into darkness. The wrathful, red Occident cast

One glare of vindictive inquiry behind,

As the last light of day from the high wood declined,
And the great forest sigh'd its farewell to the beam,
And far off on the stillness the voice of the stream
Fell faintly.

XXVIII.

O Nature, how fair is thy face,

And how light is thy heart, and how friendless thy grace!
Thou false mistress of man! thou dost sport with him lightly
In his hours of ease and enjoyment; and brightly
Dost thou smile to his smile; to his joys thou inclinest,
But his sorrows, thou knowest them not, nor divinest.
While he woos, thou art wanton; thou lettest him love thee;
But thou art not his friend, for his grief cannot move thee;
And at last, when he sickens and dies, what dost thou ?
All as gay are thy garments, as careless thy brow,
And thou laughest and toyest with any new comer,
Not a tear more for winter, a smile less for summer!
Hast thou never an anguish to heave the heart under
That fair breast of thine, O thou feminine wonder!
For all those-the young, and the fair, and the strong,
Who have loved thee, and lived with thee gaily and long,
And who now on thy bosom lie dead? and their deeds
And their days are forgotten! O hast thou no weeds.
And not one year of mourning, one out of the many
That deck thy new bridals for ever,-nor any
Regrets for thy lost loves, conceal'd from the new,

O thou widow of earth's generations? Go to!

If the sea and the night wind know aught of these things, They do not reveal it. We are not thy kings.

CANTO VI

I.

'THE huntsman has ridden too far on the chase, 'And eltrich, and eerie, and strange is the place! 'The castle betokens a date long gone by.

He crosses the courtyard with curious eye:

He wanders from chamber to chamber, and yet

From strangeness to strangeness his footsteps are set;

And the whole place grows wilder and wilder, and less 'Like aught seen before. Each in obsolete dress, 'Strange portraits regard him with looks of surprise, 'Strange forms from the arras start forth to his eyes;

Strange epigraphs, blazon'd, burn out of the wall:

The spell of a wizard is over it all.

In her chamber, enchanted, the Princess is sleeping The sleep which for centuries she has been keeping. 'If she smile in her sleep, it must be to some lover 'Whose lost golden locks the long grasses now cover:

'If she moan in her dream, it must be to deplore

Some grief which the world cares to hear of no more.

'But how fair is her forehead, how calm seems her cheek! 'And how sweet must that voice be, if once she would speak! 'He looks and he loves her; but knows he (not he!)

The clue to unravel this old mystery?

'And he stoops to those shut lips. The shapes on the wall, 'The mute men in armour around him, and all

'The weird figures frown, as though striving to say,
"Halt! invade not the Past, reckless child of To-day!
""And give not, O madman! the heart in thy breast
"To a phantom, the soul of whose sense is possess'd
"By an Age not thine own!"

'But unconscious is he,

'And he heeds not the warning, he cares not to see

And the vision is vanish'd from sight evermore! 'And the gray morning sees, as it drearily moves 'O'er a land long deserted, a madman that roves 'Through a ruin, and seeks to recapture a dream. 'Lost to life and its uses, withdrawn from the scheme 'Of man's waking existence, he wanders apart.'

And this is an old fairy-tale of the heart.

It is told in all lands, in a different tongue;

Told with tears by the old, heard with smiles by the young.

And the tale to each heart unto which it is known

Has a different sense. It has puzzled my own.

II.

Eugène de Luvois was a man who, in part

From strong physical health, and that vigour of heart
Which physical health gives, and partly, perchance,
From a generous vanity native to France,

With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry,
Pursued it, too hotly impatient to tarry
Or turn, till he took it. His trophies were trifles:
But trifler he was not. When rose-leaves it rifles,
No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind
Its pleasure pursues with impetuous mind.
Both Eugène de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been
Men of pleasure: but men's pleasant vices, which, seen
Floating faint, in the sunshine of Alfred's soft mood,

Seem'd amiable foibles, by Luvois pursued

With impetuous passion, seemed semi-Satanic.
Half-pleased you see brooks play with pebbles; in panic
You watch them whirl'd down by the torrent.

To the sacred political creed of his youth
The century which he was born to denied
All realisation. Its generous pride

To degenerate protest on all things was sunk;

Its principles, each to a prejudice shrunk.

In truth,

Down the path of a life that led nowhere he trod,

Where his whims were his guides, and his will was his god, And his pastime his purpose.

From boyhood possess'd

Of inherited wealth, he had learn'd to invest

Both his wealth and those passions wealth frees from the cage Which penury locks, in each vice of an age

All the virtues of which, by the creed he revered,

Were to him illegitimate.

Thus, he appear'd

To the world what the world chose to have him appear,—

The frivolous tyrant of Fashion, a mere

Reformer in coats, cards, and carriages! Still

'Twas this vigour of nature, and tension of will,

That found for the first time-perchance for the last-
In Lucile what they lacked yet to free from the Past,
Force, and faith, in the Future.

And so, in his mind,

To the anguish of losing the woman was join'd

The terror of missing his life's destination,
Which in her had its mystical representation.

III.

And truly, the thought of it, scaring him, pass'd

O'er his heart, while he now through the twilight rode fast.

As a shade from the wing of some great bird obscene