The old ruin'd abbey rose roofless and black, Had borne from the world all the same wild unrest 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 As the last light of day from the high wood declined, 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 ? Regrets for thy lost loves, conceal'd from the new, 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, 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! 6 '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 Today! "And give not, O madman! the heart in thy breast ""To a phantom, the soul of whose sense is possess'd 6 66 By an Age not thine own!" 'But unconscious is he, And he heeds not the warning, he cares not to see Aught but one form before him! 'Rash, wild words are o'er; 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, With the heart of a hunter, whatever the quarry, Or turn, till he took it. But trifler he was not. His trophies were trifles : No less than when oak-trees it ruins, the wind Both Eugène de Luvois and Lord Alfred had been To the sacred political creed of his youth To degenerate protest on all things was sunk; 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, I |