_Christabel. Part III._ Nine moons have waxed, and the tenth, in its wane, Sees Christabel struggle in unknown pain! ――For many moons was her eye less bright, For many moons was her vest more tight, And her cheek was pale, save when, with a start, The life blood came from the panting heart, And fluttering, o’er that thin fair face Past with a rapid nameless pace, And at moments a big tear filled the eye, And at moments a short and smothered sigh Swelled her breast with sudden strain, Breathed half in grief, and half in pain, For her’s are pangs, on the rack that wind The outward frame and the inward mind. ――And when at night she did visit the oak, She wore the Baron’s scarlet cloak, (That cloak which happy to hear and to tell Was lined with the fur of the leopard well,) And as she wandered down the dell None said ’twas the Lady Christabel.―― Some thought ’twas a weird and ugsome elf, Some deemed ’twas the old sick Baron himself, Who wandered beneath the snowy lift To count his beads in solemn shrift―― (For his shape below was wide to see All bloated with the hydropsie.) Oh! had her old father the secret known, He had stood as stark as the statue of stone That stands so silent, and white, and tall, At the upper end of his banquet hall! Am I asleep or am I awake? In very truth I oft mistake, As the stories of old come over my brain, And I build in spirit the mystic strain;―― Ah! would to the virgin that I were asleep! But I must wake, and I must weep! Sweet Christabel, it is not well That a lady, pure as the sunless snow That lies so soft on the mountain’s brow, That a maiden of sinless chastity In childbirth pangs should be doomed to die, Or live with a name of sorrow and shame, And hear the words of blemish and blame! ――For the world that smiles at the guilt of man, Places woman beneath its ban; Alas, that scandal thus should wreak Its vengeance on the warm and weak, That the arrows of the cold and dull Should wound the breast of the beautiful! Of the things that be did we know but half, Many, and many would weep, who laugh! Tears would darken many an eye, Or that deeper grief, (when its orb is dry, When it cannot dare the eye of day), O’er the clouded heart would sway, ’Till it crumbled like desert dust away! But here we meet with grief and grudge, And they who cannot know us, judge! Thus, souls on whom good angels smile, Are scoffed at in our world of guile―― Let this, Ladiè, thy comfort be; Man knows not us, good angels know The things that pass in the world below; And scarce, methinks, it seems unjust, That the world should view thee with mistrust, For who that saw that child of thine Pale Christabel, who could divine That its sire was the Ladie Geraldine.