Yes, face to face _once more_ array'd, Stood the Betrayer--the Betray'd! Oh, how through all those gloomy years, When Guilt revolves what Conscience fears, Had that wrong'd victim breathed the vow _That if but face to face_--And now, There, face to face with him he stood, By the great sea, on that wild steep; Around, the voiceless Solitude, Below, the funeral Deep! XII. They gazed--the Injurer's face grew pale-- Pale writhe the lips, the murmurs fail, And thrice he strives to speak--in vain! The sun looks blood-red on the main, The boat glides, waning less and less-- No Law lives in the wilderness, Except Revenge--man's first and last! Those wrongs--that wretch--could they forgive? All that could sweeten life was past; Yet, oh, how sweet to live! XIII. He gazed before, he glanced behind; There, o'er the steep rock seems to wind The devious, scarce-seen path, a snake In slime and sloth might, labouring, make. With a wild cry he springs;--he crawls; Crag upon crag he clears;--and falls Breathless and mute; and o'er him stands, Pale as himself, the chasing foe-- Mercy! what mean those clasped hands, Those lips that tremble so? XIV. "Thou hast cursed my life, my wealth despoil'd; My hearth "is cold, my name is soil'd; The wreck of what was Man, I stand 'Mid the lone sea and desert land! Well, I forgive thee all; but be A human voice and face to me! O stay--O stay--and let me yet One thing, that speaks man's language, know!-- The waste hath taught me to forget That earth once held a foe!" XV. O Heaven! methinks, from thy soft skies, Look'd tearful down the angel-eyes; Back to those walls to mark them go, Hand clasp'd in hand--the Foe and Foe! And when the sun sunk slowly there, Low knelt the prayerless man in prayer. He knelt, no more the lonely one; Within, secure, a comrade sleeps; That sun shall not go down upon A desert in the deeps. XVI. He knelt--the man who half till then Forgot his God in loathing men,-- He knelt, and pray'd that God to spare The Foe to grow the Brother there; And, reconciled by Love to Heaven, Forgiving--was he not forgiven? "Yes, man for man thou didst create; Man's wrongs, man's blessings can atone! To learn how Love can spring from Hate-- Go, Hate,--and live alone." THE LAY OF THE MINSTREL'S HEART. It was the time when Spring on Earth Gives Eden to the young; On Provence shone the Vesper star; Beneath fair Marguerite's lattice-bar The Minstrel, Aymer, sung-- "The year may take a second birth, But May is swift of wing; The Heart whose sunshine lives in thee One May from year to year shall see; Thy love, eternal spring!"