A moment Arden paused in mute surprise (How charm'd that outcast Beauty's blinded eyes?) Then, with the impulse of the human thought, Prompt to atonement for the evil wrought, "Hear her!" he said--"her words her father's heart Echoes.--Not so--nor ever, may ye part! Nobly, hast thou an elder right than mine Won to this treasure;--still its care be thine; Withhold thy pardon if thou wilt,--but take The holiest offering wrong to man can make!" Slowly the Indian lifts his joyless head, Pointing with slow hand to the present dead, And from slow lips comes heavily the breath: "Behold, between us evermore--is Death!" "Maiden, recal my tale;--thou clasp'st the hand Which shuts the Exile from the promised land; Can the dead victim's brother, undefiled, From him who slew the sister take the child!" With that, he bent him o'er the shuddering maid, On her fair looks a solemn hand he laid; Lifted eyes, tearless still--but dark with all The cloud, that not in _such_ soft dews can fall: "If to the Dead an offering still must be, All vengeance calls for be fulfill'd in me! I make myself the victim!--Thou dread Power Guiding to guilt the slow chastising hour, Far from the injurer's hearth by her made pure, Let this lone roof thy thunder-stroke allure!-- "Go hence--(nay, near me not!) behold!--the kind Oblivion closes round her darken'd mind; If, when she wake, it be awhile for grief, Soon dries the rain-drop on the April leaf!" He said, and vanish'd, with a noiseless tread, Within the folds which curtain'd round the dead! So, the stern Dervish of the East inters His sullen soul with Death in sepulchres! His new-found prize, while yet th' unconscious sense Sleeps in the mercy of the brief suspense, With gliding feet, the Father steals away. Grief bends alone above the lonely clay; But over grief and death th' Eternal Eye Shines down,--and Hope lives ever in the sky. [O] The perfumes from the island of Rhodes,--to which the roses that still bloom there gave the ancient name,--are wafted for miles over the surrounding seas. [P] The Psyche of Naples, the most intellectual and (so to speak) the most _Christian_ of all the dreams of beauty which Grecian art has embodied in the marble. [Q] Every one knows, through the version of Mrs. Tighe, the lovely allegory of Eros and Psyche, which Apuleius--the neglected original, to whom all later romance writers are unconsciously indebted--has bequeathed to the delight of poets and the recognition of Christians.