'If thou wilt, Tell all;--dishonour not alone in guilt! Men's eyes dishonour in the fallen see;-- Speak, and dishonour thou inflict'st on me: The debt, the want, the beggary, and the shame,-- The pauper branded on the noble's name! Speak and inflict--I still can spurn--the doom; Unveil the altar to prepare the tomb! I, who already in my grasp behold, Bright from Hesperian fields, the fruit of gold, By which alone the glorious prize we gain, Foil'd of the goal will die upon the plain. I own two brides, both dear alike, and see In one Ambition--in the other Thee: Destroy thy rival, and to her destroy'd Succeeds despair to make the world a void.' Then, with stern frankness to that shrinking ear, I told my hopes,--in her my only fear; Told, with a cheek no humbling blushes dyed, How met the sire--how unavow'd the bride! 'Thus have I wrong'd--this cruel silence mine; And now be truth, and truth is vengeance, thine!' I ceased to speak; lo, she had ceased to weep; Her white lips writhed, as Suffering in its sleep; And o'er the frame a tremulous shudder went, As every life-stream to the source was sent: The very sense seem'd absent from the look, And with the Heart, its temple, Reason shook! So there was silence; such a silence broods In winter nights, o'er frost-bound solitudes, Darkness, and ice, and stillness all in one,-- The silence without life, the withering without sun. But o'er that silence, as at night's full noon, Through breathless cloud, shimmers the sudden moon; A sad but heavenly smile a moment stirr'd, And heralded the martyr's patient word: 'Fear not; pursue thy way to fortune, fame; I will not soil thy glory with my shame. Betray! avenge!--For ever, until thou Proclaim the bond and ratify the vow, Closed in this heart, as lamps within the tomb, Shall waste the light, that lives amidst the gloom,-- That lives, for oh! the day _shall_ come at length, Though late, though slow,--(give hope, for hope is strength!)-- When, from a father's breast no more exiled, The wife may ask forgiveness for the child?'" VIII. "And so you parted?" with a moisten'd eye, Said Morvale;--"nay, man, spare me the reply; Too much the Eve has moved me----" "Not to feel That for the serpent which thy looks reveal," Said Arden, sadly smiling; "yet in truth, See how the grey world grafts its age on youth; See how we learn to prize the bullion Vice, Coin'd in all shapes, yet still but Avarice; The stamp may vary,--you the coin may call 'Ambition,' 'Power,' 'Success,'--but Gold is all. Mine is the memoir of a selfish age: Turn every leaf--slight difference in the page; Through each, the same fierce struggle to secure Earth's one great end--distinction from the Poor; All our true wealth, like alchemists of old, Fused in the furnace--for a grain of gold. IX.