Page images
PDF
EPUB

ceive the attention of the young stranger. Fired by representations such as these, and racked with cureless jealousy, I returned to England in disguise, and found the report of my relation the theme of common conversation in the county. It was on the evening of a fine summer's day that I reached the hamlet of G, and with a trembling hand and palpitating heart knocked at my own door. The servant informed me that Matilda had walked towards the Abbey. I immediately took the same rout: the sun had set; and the grey tinting of evening had wrapt every object in uniform repose; the moon however was rising, and in a short time silvered parts of the ruin and its neighbouring trees. I placed myself in the shadow of one of the buttresses, and had not waited long ere Matilda-my beautiful Matilda, appeared, leaning on the arm of the stranger. You may conceive the extreme agitation of my soul at a spectacle like this; unhappily, revenge was, at the instant, the predominating emotion, and rushing forward with my sword, I called upon the villain, as I then thought him, to defend himself. Shocked by the suddenness of the attack, and the wild impetuosity of my manner, Matilda fell insensible on the earth, and only recovered recollection at the moment when my sword had pierced the bosom of the stranger, through whose guard I had broken in the first fury of the assault. With shrieks of agony and despair she sprang towards the murdered youth, and falling on his body, exclaimed, "My brother, my dear, dear brother!"

Had all nature fallen in dissolution around me, my astonishment and horror could not have been greater than what I felt from these words. The very marrow froze in my bones, and I stood fixed to the ground an image of despair and guilt. Meantime the life-blood of the unhappy Walsingham ebbed fast away, and he expired at my feet, and in the arms of his beloved sister, who, at this event, perhaps fortunately for us both, relapsed into a state of insensibility. My own emotions, on recovering from the stupor into which I had been thrown, were those I believe of frenzy; nor can I now dwell upon them with safety, nor without a partial direliction of intellect. Suffice it to say, that I had sufficient presence of mind left to apply for assistance at the nearest cottage, and that the hapless victims of my folly were at length conveyed to the habitation of Matilda. Another dreadful scene awaited her, the recognition of her husband as the murderer of her brother; this, through the attention of my friends, for I myself was incapable of acting with rationality, was for some time postponed; it came at length, however, through the agonies of my remorse and contrition, to her knowledge, and two months have scarce elapsed since I placed her by the side of her poor brother, who at the fatal moment of our encounter, had not been many months returned from the Indies, and was in person a perfect stranger to your friend. Beneath that marble slab they rest, my Courtenay, and ere this, I believe, and through the medium of my own lawless hand, I should have partaken of their grave, had not my beloved sister, my amiable and gentle Caroline, stepped in like an angel, between her brother and destruction.

"Singular as it may appear, the greatest satisfaction I now receive, is from frequent visits to the tomb of Matilda and her brother, there, over the relics of those I have injured, to implore the mercy of an of

fended Deity; such, however, are the agonies I suffer from the recollection of my crime, that even this resource would be denied me, were it not for the intervention of the powers of music; partial I have ever been to this enchanting art, and I am indebted to it for the mitigation and repression of feelings that would otherwise exhaust my shattered frame. You have witnessed the severe struggles of remorse which at times agitate this afflicted heart; you have likewise seen the soothing and salutary effects of harmony. My Caroline's voice and harp have thus repeatedly lulled to repose the fever of a wounded spirit, the workings nearly of despair. A state of mind friendly to devotion, and no longer at war with itself, is usually the effect of her sweet and pathetic strains; it is then I think myself forgiven; it is then I seem to hear the gentle accents of Matilda, in concert with the heavenly tones; they whisper of eternal peace, and sensations of unutterable pleasure steal through every nerve. "When such is the result, when peace and piety are the offspring of the act, you will not wonder at my visits to this melancholy ruin; soon as the shades of evening have spread their friendly covert, twice aweek we hasten hither from our cottage; a scene similar to what you have been a spectator of to-night, takes place, and we retire to rest in the little rooms, which we have rendered habitable in the dormitory. In the morning, very early, we quit the house of penitence and prayer; and such is the dread which the occasional glimmerings of lights, and the sounds of distant music have given birth to in the country, that none but our servant, who is faithful to the secret, dare approach near the place: we have consequently hitherto, save by yourself, remained undiscovered, and even unsuspected.

"Such, my friend, is the history of my crimes and sufferings, and such the causes of the phenomena you have beheld to-night, but see, Courtenay, my lovely Caroline, she to whom, under heaven, I am indebted for any portion of tranquillity I yet enjoy, is approaching to meet us. I can discern her by the whiteness of her robes gliding down yon distant aisle."

Caroline had become apprehensive for her brother, and had stolen from the dormitory with the view of checking a conversation which she was afraid would prove too affecting for his spirits. Edward beheld her, as she drew near, rather as a being from the regions of the blest, the messenger of peace and virtue, than as partaking of the frailties of humanity. If the beauties of her person had before interested him in her favour, her conduct toward the unhappy Clifford had given him the fullest conviction of the purity and goodness of her heart, of the strength and energy of her mind; and from this moment he determined, if possible, to secure an interest in a bosom so fraught with all that could exalt and decorate the lot of life.

He was now compelled, however, though greatly reluctant, to take leave of his friends for the night, and hasten to remove the extreme alarm into which his servants had been thrown by his unexpected detention. They had approached, as near as their fears would permit them, to the Abbey, for to enter its precincts was a deed they thought too daring for man, and had there exerted all their strength, though in vain, in repeatedly calling him by his name. It was therefore with a joy little short of madness they again beheld their master, who, as

soon as these symptoms of rapture had subsided, had great difficulty in repressing their curiosity, which was on full stretch for information from another world.

It may here, perhaps, be necessary to add, that time, and the soothing attentions of his beloved sister, restored at length to perfect peace, and to the almost certain hope of pardon from the Deity, the hitherto agitated mind of Clifford.I can also add, that time saw the union of Caroline and Edward, and that with them, at the hospitable mansion of the Courtenays, Clifford passed the remainder of his days.

[ocr errors]

THE LAMENT OF TASSO.

BY LORD BYRON.

I.

LONG years!-it tries the thrilling frame to bear,
And eagle spirit of a Child of Song—

Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;

Imputed madness, prisoned solitude,

And the mind's canker in its savage mood,

When the impatient thirst of light and air

Parches the heart! and the abhorred grate,

Marring the sun-beams with its hideous shade,

Works through the throbbing eye-ball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;

And bare, at once, captivity displayed

Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate
Which nothing through its bars admits, save day
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone

Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;

And I can banquet like a beast of

prey,

Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave
Which is my lair, and it may be my grave.
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall,

And freed the Holy Sepulchre from thrall;

And revelled among men and things divine,

And poured my spirit over Palestine,
In honour of the sacred war for Him,

The God who was on earth and is in Heaven;
For he hath strengthened me in heart and limb
That through this sufferance I might be forgiven.
I have employed my penance to record
How Salem's shrine was won, and how adored.

II.

But this is o'er-my pleasant task is done.-
My long sustaining friend of many years!
If I do blot thy final page with tears,

Know, that my sorrows have wrung from me none.
But thou, my young creation! my soul's child!
Which ever playing round me came and smiled,
And wooed me from myself with thy sweet sight:
Thou too art gone-and so is my delight:
And therefore do I weep and inly bleed,
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
Thou too art ended-what is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear,—and how ?
I know not that-but in the innate force

Of my own spirit shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,

Nor cause for such: they called me mad-and why?
Oh Leonora ! wilt not thou reply?

I was indeed delirious in my heart,

To lift my love so lofty as thou art;

But still my phrenzy was not of the mind;

I knew my fault, and feel my punishment

Not less because I suffer it unbent.

That thou wert beautiful, and I not blind,

Hath been the sin which shuts me from mankind;

But let them go, or torture as they will,

My heart can multiply thine image still;

Successful love may sate itself away,

The wretched are the faithful; 'tis their fate

To have all feeling save the one decay,

And every passion into one dilate,

As rapid rivers into ocean pour;

But ours is fathomless, and hath no shore.

III.

Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry
Of minds and bodies in captivity.

And hark! the lash, and the increasing howl,

And the half-inarticulate blasphemy!

There be some here, with worse than frenzy foul,

Some who do still goad on the o'er-laboured mind,

And dim the little light that's left behind

With needless torture, as their tyrant will

Is wound up to the lust of doing ill :

With these, and with their victims am I classed,

'Mid sounds and sights like these, long years have passed, 'Mid sights and sounds like these, my life may close. So let it be for then I shall repose.

IV.

I have been patient, let me be so yet;
I had forgotten half I would forget,

But it revives-Oh! would it were my lot!

To be forgetful as I am forgot

Feel I not wroth with those who bade me dwell.
In this vast lazar house of many woes?

Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind,
Nor words a language, nor ev'n men mankind;
Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows,
And each is tortured in his separate hell-
For we are crowded in our solitudes-
Many, but each divided by the wall,

Which echoes Madness in her babbling moods ;-
While all can hear, none heed his neighbour's call—
None! save that One, the veriest wretch of all,
Who was not made to be the mate of these,
Nor bound between distraction and disease.
Feel I not wroth with those who placed me here ?
Who have debased me in the minds of men,
Debarring me the usage of my own,
Blighting my life in best of its career,

Branding my thoughts as things to shun and fear?
Would not pay them back these pangs again,
And teach them inward sorrow's stifled groan?
The struggle to be calm, and cold distress,
Which undermines our Stoical success,
No! still too proud to be vindictive-I
Have pardoned princes' insults, and would die.
Yes, Sister of my Sovereign! for thy sake
I weed all bitterness from out my breast,
It hath no business where thou art a guest;
Thy brother hates-but I can not detest;
Thou pitiest not-but I can not forsake.

V.

Look on a love which knows not to despair,
But all unquenched is still my better part,
Dwelling deep in my shut and silent heart,
As dwells the gathered lightening in its cloud,
Encompassed with its dark and rolling shroud,
Till struck,-forth flies the all-etherial dart!
And thus at the collision of thy name
The vivid thought still flashes through my frame,
And for a moment all things as they were
Flit by me ;-they are gone-I am the same.
And yet my love without ambition grew;
I knew thy state, my station, and I knew
A princess was no love-mate for a bard;
I told it not, I breathed it not, it was
Sufficient to itself, its own reward;
And if my eyes revealed it, they alas!
Were punished by the silentness of thine,
And yet I did not venture to repine.
Thou wert to me a crystal girded shrine,

« PreviousContinue »