So Lucy loved not Arden!--vainly yearn His moisten'd eyes;--Can softness be so stern? That soul how gentle! but that smile how cold! A marble shape the parent arms enfold! No hurrying footstep bounds his own to meet, No joyous smiles with morning's welcome greet, Not him that heart--so bless'd with love--can bless, } Lost the pure Eden of a child's caress; } He saw--he felt, and suffer'd powerless! } Remorse seized on him;--his gay spirit quail'd; The cloud crept on,--it gather'd, it prevail'd. The spectre of the past--the martyr bride, Sat at his board, and glided by his side; Sigh'd, "With the dead, Love the Consoler dies," And spoke his sentence in his child's cold eyes! And now a strange and strong desire was born, } With the young instinct of life's credulous morn, } In that long sceptic-breast, so world-corrupt and worn. } From the rank soil in which grim London shrouds Her dead,--the green halls of the ghastly crowds-- To bear his Mary's dust; the dust to lay By the clear rill, beside her father's clay, Amidst those scenes which saw the rapture-strife And growth of passion--life's sweet storm of life, Consign the silent pulse, the mouldering heart, Deaf to the joy to meet--the woe to part; Rounding and binding there as into one Sad page, the tale of all beneath the sun; And there, before that grave--beneath the beam Of the lone stars, and by that starlit stream, To lead the pledge of the fresh morn of love, And while the pardoning skies seem'd soft above, Murmur, "For her sake, her, who, reconciled, Hears us in heaven, give me thy heart, my child!" But first--before his conscious soul could dare For the consoling balm to pour the prayer, _Alone_ the shadows of the past to brave, Alone to commune with the accusing grave, And shrive repentance of its haunting gloom Before Life's true Confessional--the Tomb;-- Such made his dream!--Oh! not in vain the creed Of old that knit atonement with the dead! The penitent offering, the lustrating tide, The wandering, haunted, hopeful homicide, Who sees the spot to which the furies urge, Where halt the hell-hounds, and where drops the scourge, And the appeased Manes pitying sigh-- "Thou hast atoned! once more enjoy the sky!" Such made the dream he rushes to fulfil!-- Round the new mound babbled the living rill; A name, the name that Arden's wife should bear, Sculptured the late and vain repentance there. O'er the same bridge which once to rapture led, Went the same steps their pathway to the dead: Night after night the same lone shadow gave A tremulous darkness to the hurrying wave; Lost,--and then, lengthening from the neighbouring yews, Dimm'd the wan shimmer of the moonlit dews, Then gain'd a grave;--and from the mound was thrown, Still as the shadow of yon funeral stone! II.