"Well then, we parted,--to make brief the tale, I take my orders, and my leave, set sail; For weeks, for months, fond letters, long nor few, Keep hope alive with love for ever new: If she had suffer'd, she betray'd it not; All save one sweetness--'that we loved' forgot. She never named her father;--once indeed The name _was_ writ, but blurr'd;--it was decreed That she should fill the martyr-measure,--hide Not the dart only, but the bleeding side, And, wholly generous in the offering made, Veil even sorrow, lest it should upbraid. "At length one letter came--the _last_; more blest In faith, in love, false hope, than all the rest; But at the close some hastier lines appear, Tremblingly writ, and stain'd with many a tear, In which, less said than timorously implied (The maid still blushing through the secret bride), I heard her heart through that far distance beat: The hour Eve's happiest daughter dreads to meet,-- The hour of Nature's agony was nigh,-- Husband and father, false one, where was I? "Slow day on slow day, unrevealing, crept, And still its ice the freezing silence kept: Fear seized my soul, I could no longer brook The voiceless darkness which the daylight took. I feign'd excuse for absence;--left the shore: Fair blow the winds;--behold her home once more! "Her home! a desert! Still, though rank and wild, On the rank grass the heedless floweret smiled; Still by the porch you heard the ungrateful bee; Still brawl'd the brooklet's unremembering glee; But they--the souls of the sweet pastoral ground? Green o'er the father rose the sullen mound! Amidst his poor he slept; _his_ end was known,-- Life's record rounded with the funeral stone: But she?--but Mary?--but my child?--what dews Fall on _their_ graves?--what herbs which heaven renews Pall their pure clay?--Oh! were it mine at least To weep, beloved, where your relics rest!-- Bear with me, Morvale,--pity if you can-- These thoughts unman me--no, they prove me man!" "Man of the cities," with a mutter'd scorn, Groan'd the stern Nomad from the lands of Morn,-- "Man of the sleek, far-looking prudence, which Beggars life's May, life's Autumn to enrich; Which, the deed doing, halts not in its course, But, the deed done, finds comfort in remorse. Man, in whom sentiment, the bloodless shade Of noble passion, alternates with trade,-- Hard in his error--feeble in his tears, And huckstering love, yet prattling of the spheres!" So mused the sombre savage, till the pale And self-gnaw'd worldling nerved him to his tale:-- "The hireling watch'd the bed where Mary lay, In stranger arms my first-born saw the day. Below,--unseen _his_ travail, all unknown _His_ war with Nature, sate the sire alone: He had not thrust the one he still believed, If silent, sinless, or in sin deceived-- He had not thrust her from a father's door;