Shall I find the child's heart that I left there? or find
The lost youth I recall with its pure peace of mind?
Alas! who shall number the drops of the rain?
Or give to the dead leaves their greenness again?
Who shall seal up the caverns the earthquake hath rent?
Who shall bring forth the winds that within them are pent?
To a voice who shall render an image? or who

From the heats of the noontide shall gather the dew?
I have burn'd out within me the fuel of life.

Wherefore lingers the flame? Rest is sweet after strife.
I would sleep for a while. I am weary.

66

"My friend, I had meant in these lines to regather, and send To our old home, my life's scatter'd links. But 'tis vain! Each attempt seems to shatter the chaplet again; Only fit now for fingers like mine to run o'er, Who return, a recluse, to those cloisters of yore Whence too far I have wander'd.

"How many long years Does it seem to me now since the quick, scorching tears, While I wrote to you, splash'd out a girl's premature Moans of pain at what women in silence endure!

To your eyes, friend of mine, and to your eyes alone, That now long-faded page of my life hath been shown Which recorded my heart's birth, and death, as you know, Many years since,-how many!

"A few months ago

I seem'd reading it backward, that page! Why explain
Whence or how? The old dream of my life rose again.
The old superstition! the idol of old!

It is over. The leaf trodden down in the mould
Is not to the forest more lost than to me
That emotion. I bury it here by the sea

Which will bear me anon far away from the shore
Of a land which my footsteps will visit no more.
And a heart's requiescat I write on that grave.

Hark! the sight of the wind, and the sound of the wave,
Seem like voices of spirits that whisper me home!

I come, O you whispering voices, I come!

My friend, ask me nothing.

"Receive me alone

As a Santon receives to his dwelling of stone

In silence some pilgrim the midnight may bring:

It may be an angel that, weary of wing,

Hath paused in his flight from some city of doom,
Or only a wayfarer stray'd in the gloom.

This only I know: that in Europe at least

Lives the craft or the power that must master our East. Wherefore strive where the gods must themselves yield at

last?

Both they and their altars pass by with the Past.

The gods of the household Time thrusts from the shelf;

And I seem as unreal and weird to myself

As those idols of old.

"Other times, other men,

"So be it! yet again

Other men, other passions!

I turned to my birthplace, the birthplace of morn,
And the light of those lands where the great sun is born!
Spread your arms, O my friend! on your breast let me

feel

The repose which hath fled from my own.

PART II.

CANTO I.

"Your LUCILE.”

I.

HAIL, Muse! But each Muse by this time has, I know,
Been used up, and Apollo has bent his own bow
All too long; so I leave unassaulted the portal
Of Olympus, and only invoke here a mortal,

Hail, Murray!-not Lindley,-but Murray and Son.
Hail, omniscient, beneficient, great Two-in-One!
In Albemarle Street may thy temple long stand!
Long enlighten'd and led by thine erudite hand,
May each novice in science nomadic unravel
Statistical mazes of modernized travel!

May each inn-keeper knave long thy judgment revere,
And the postboys of Europe regard thee with fear;
While they feel, in the silence of baffled extortion,
That knowledge is power! Long, long, like that portion
Of the national soil which the Greek exile took
In his baggage wherever he went, may thy book
Cheer each poor British pilgrim, who trusts to thy wit
Not to pay through his nose just for following it!
May'st thou long, O instructor! preside o'er his way,
And teach him alike what to praise and to pay!
Thee, pursuing this pathway of song, once again
I invoke, lest, unskill'd, I should wander in vain.
To my call be propitious, nor, churlish, refuse
Thy great accents to lend to the lips of my Muse;
For I sing of the Naiads who dwell 'mid the stems
Of the green linden-trees by the waters of Ems.
Yes! thy spirit descends upon mine, O John Murray!
And I start-with thy book-for the Baths in a hurry.

II.

"At Coblentz a bridge of boats crosses the Rhine; And from thence the road, winding by Ehrenbreitstein, Passes over the frontier of Nassau,

("N. B.

No custom-house here since the Zollverein." See

Murray, paragraph 30.)

"The route, at each turn,

Here the lover of nature allows to discern,
In varying prospect a rich wooded dale:

The vine and acacia-tree mostly prevail

In the foliage observable here; and, moreover,
The soil is carbonic. The road, under cover

Of the grape-clad and mountainous upland that hems
Round this beautiful spot, brings the traveller to—

A Schnellpost from Frankfort arrives every day.
At the Kurhaus (the old Ducal mansion) you pay
Eight florins for lodgings. A Restaurateur

Is attach'd to the place; but most travellers prefer
(Including, indeed, many persons of note)

To dine at the usual-priced table d'hôte.

. EMS.

Through the town runs the Lahn, the steep green banks of which

Two rows of white picturesque houses enrich;
And between the high road and the river is laid
Out a sort of a garden, call'd' THE Promenade.'
Female visitors here, who may make up their mind
To ascend to the top of these mountains, will find
On the banks of the stream, saddled all the day long,
Troops of donkeys-sure-footed-proverbially strong;
And the traveller at Ems may remark, as he passes,
Here, as elsewhere, the women run after the asses.

III.

'Mid the world's weary denizens bound for these springs In the month when the merle on the maple-bough sings, Pursued to the place from dissimilar paths

By a similar sickness, there came to the baths

Four sufferers-each stricken deep through the heart,
Or the head, by the self-same invisible dart

Of the arrow that flieth unheard in the noon,

From the sickness that walketh unseen in the moon,
Through this great lazaretto of life, wherein each
Infects with his own sores the next within reach.
First of these were a young English husband and wife,
Grown weary ere half through the journey of life.
O Nature, say where, thou gray mother of earth,

Is the strength of thy youth? that thy womb brings to birth

Only old men to-day! On the winds, as of old,
Thy voice in its accent is joyous and bold;
Thy forests are green as of yore; and thine oceans
Yet move in the might of their ancient emotions:
But man-thy last birth and thy best-is no more
Life's free lord, that look'd up to the starlight of yore,
With the faith on the brow, and the fire in the eyes,
The firm foot on the earth, the high heart in the skies;
But a gray-headed infant, defrauded of youth,

Born too late or too early.

The lady, in truth,

Was young, fair, and gentle; and never was given
To more heavenly eyes the pure azure of heaven.
Never yet did the sun touch to ripples of gold
Tresses brighter than those which her soft hand unroll'd

From her noble and innocent brow, when she rose,
An Aurora, at dawn, from her balmy repose,
And into the mirror the bloom and the blush
Of her beauty broke, glowing; like light in a gush
From the sunrise in summer.

Love, roaming, shall meet
But rarely a nature more sound or more sweet-
Eyes brighter-brows whiter-a figure more fair—
Or lovelier lengths of more radiant hair-
Than thine, Lady Alfred! And here I aver
(May those that have seen thee declare if I err)
That not all the oysters in Britain contain
A pearl pure as thou art.

Let some one explain,-
Who may know more than I of the intimate life'
Of the pearl with the oyster,-why yet in his wife,
In despite of her beauty-and most when he felt
His soul to the sense of her loveliness melt-

Lord Alfred miss'd something he sought for: indeed,
The more that he miss'd it the greater the need;

Till it seem'd to himself he could willingly spare

All the charms that he found for the one charm not there.

IV.

For the blessings Life lends us, it strictly demands
The worth of their full usufruct at our hands.

And the value of all things exists, not indeed

In themselves, but man's use of them, feeding man's need.
Alfred Vargrave, in wedding with beauty and youth,
Had embraced both Ambition and Wealth. Yet in truth
Unfulfill'd the ambition, and sterile the wealth
(In a life paralyzed by a moral ill-health),

Had remain'd, while the beauty and youth, unredeem'd
From a vague disappointment at all things, but seem'd
Day by day to reproach him in silence for all
That lost youth in himself they had fail'd to recall.
No career had he follow'd, no object obtain'd

In the world by those worldly advantages gain'd

From nuptials beyond which once seem'd to appear,
Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career.

All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of

youth

With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth

Srasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!

V.

Fairy gold moss and leaves ! and the young Fairy Bride?
Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?
Say, O friend, if at evening thou ever hast watch'd
Some pale and impalpable vapor, detach'd
From the dim and disconsolate earth, rise and fall
O'er the light of a sweet serene star, until all
The chill'd splendor reluctantly waned in the deep
Of its own native heaven? Even so seem'd to creep
O'er that fair and ethereal face, day by day,

While the radiant vermeil, subsiding away,
Hid its light in the heart, the faint gradual veil

Of a sadness unconscious.

The lady grew pale

As silent her lord grew: and both, as they eyed
Each the other askance, turn'd, and secretly sigh'd.
Ah, wise friend, what avails all experience can give?
True, we know what life is-but, alas! do we live?
The grammar of life we have gotten by heart,

But life's self we have made a dead language—an art,
Not a voice. Could we speak it, but once, as 'twas spoken
When the silence of passion the first time was broken!
Cuvier knew the world better than Adam, no doubt:
But the last man, at best, was but learned about
What the first, without learning, enjoy'd. What art thou
To the man of to-day, O Leviathan, now?

A science. What wert thou to him that from ocean
First beheld thee appear? A surprise,-an emotion!
When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart,
When it thrills as it fills every animate part,

Where lurks it? how works it? . we scarcely detect it. But life goes: the heart dies: haste, O leech, and dissect it! This accursed æsthetical, ethical age

Hath so finger'd life's hornbook, so blurr'd every page, That the old glad romance, the gay chivalrous story With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,

We can trace

Is turn'd to a tedious instruction, not new
To the children that read it insipidly through.
We know too much of Love ere we love.
Nothing new, unexpected, or strange in his face
When we see it at last. "Tis the same little Cupid,
With the same dimpled cheek, and the smile almost stupid,
We have seen in our pictures, and stuck on our shelves,
And copied a hundred times over, ourselves,

And wherever we turn, and whatever we do,

Still, that horrible sense of the déja connu !

VI.

Perchance 'twas the fault of the life that they led;
Perchance 'twas the fault of the novels they read;
Perchance 'twas a fault in themselves; I am bound not
To say this I know-that these two creatures found not
In each other some sign they expected to find

Of a something unnamed in the heart or the mind;
And, missing it, each felt a right to complain
Of a sadness which each found no word to explain.
Whatever it was, the world noticed not it

In the light-hearted beauty, the light-hearted wit.
Still, as once with the actors in Greece, 'tis the case,
Each must speak to the crown with a mask on his face.
Praise follow'd Matilda wherever she went.

She was flatter'd. Can flattery purchase content?
Yes. While to its voice, for a moment, she listen'd,
The young cheek still bloom'd and the soft eyes still
glisten'd;