PARTI .

The grey waste of a silent solitude,
A lone vast plain, erewhile the breathing-place
Of a great city, whose departed life
Left it an echoless and desert void,
Dry, and adust with summer's fiery heat;
The cracked and arid pores of feverish earth
Opened to slake its thirst and weariness.

Twilight fell o'er the scene. The mingled lights,
Folded in mists and vapours palpable,
Gathered o'er that huge cauldron of dim smoke,
Looked like the formless shapes of ghosts half seen.
And now a dull low sound was audible,
The pulses of existing being heard,
Rising in its monotonous tones remote,
Like the far dirge of pine-trees on the heath,
Or Ocean heaving on a distant shore.

From daily tasks and iron-masters,
Whose name and being is Necessity;
From the dull moaning wheels of restless toil,
Wrought by the hands of hope and hopelessness;
From lifeless airs that lie along the streets
Like stagnant vapours; from blind walls that weigh
With an oppression on the weary eye;
From the repellency of voiceless squares,
From loneliness that fills the conscious heart,
Left in the shadow of forgetfulness
By friends fled, insect-like, to brighter skies;
From human caverns buried not in woods,
But city-hearths where God is owned, but felt not,
Forth silently the thoughtful Poet stole.

He trod companionless towards the haunts
Visited by free airs, or rather folds
Of surging mist, revealing from behind
Where suburbs massed in shapeless piles arose
Of darkness undefined. There, couched beneath,
With its huge formless limbs stretched in repose,
Hidden in vaporous shrouds, the city slept,
Or rather throbbed with breathing life suppressed;
Like the old Titan beneath Ætna chained,
The throes of his vast bosom restlessly
Heaving midst slumbrous fires.
The tidal life
That filled its broadways had ebbed forth, and left
Its strand denuded, and mart desolate.
The abounding crowds, that erewhile torrent-like
Had filled those solitudes, were silent all.
Vitalities receding from her heart
Had left it stilled: the traffic and the roar,
The passionate appeals that filled the space
With exultation, grief, and joy resolved
Into the stillness of the summer sea.

And he had wandered there, that lonely man,
To gaze upon the face and form forgot
Of semi-animate Nature, to renew
Fading remembrances of Orient days,
When with her inmost spirit he was one;
When by the heath, or shore, or cavern's side,
He was a portion of the life he loved,
Of vales, and mountains, and the eternal deep.
And now, among the trunks of sickly trees,
Touched ere their time with autumn's livid hues,
He slept upon the dry and withered grass.

The restless wheels of vehicles had ceased;
Deepening in twilight's veil, the sullen field
Stretched out obscure, where all was motionless.
Like a huge furnace stilled the city slept;
Along the suburbs with their ridgy sides,
And on the vague waste shadows of the plain,
The ghost of Nature silently reposed.
Grey evening was abroad, a presence felt;
Shadowed through murkiest folds, the sky looked down
Cheerlessly as the face of a changed friend
That greets us now no more.
That Stranger still
Slept unperturbed; it was the dead repose
Of an exhausted nature, the fatigue
Of a tired spirit sunk in apathy
Which is not slumber nor forgetfulness.
But, while in torpor buried, a dull sound,
Gathering from distance, grew upon his ear;
The tramp of horse approaching, till they were
Commingled with the senses, while they formed
The inward vision and the dream.
He saw
Steeds reined beside him, and their riders watched
Above; and while they gazed on him he heard
The champing of the curb, and hoofs that pawed
The sandy ground, until the dream became
Instinct with life.
Two figures paused, and gazed
Upon him silently. The one a grey
And thoughtful man; his open brow revealed,
The signet stamp of his ancestral race,
And marks of time. Erect and firm he sat;
Motionless as the animal he reined.
Earnestness, whose expression was its truth,
Looked from his countenance.
Within his eyes
Dwelt the regard that lightens up the face
Of age benign, dwelling on that it loves.
His daughter, in the flower of her youth,
Gazed on him from her palfrey as he slept;
The Hebe with the full and flowing hair,
And joyous eyes that from their azure laughed,
As if life were enchantment, and its wand
Held by a fairy's hand. She watched that form
Until the impress of its rest profound
Absorbed her, while she inwardly confessed
The sacredness of sleep. And thus she gazed
Silent as on a thing she reverenced;
For sleep has its religion standing in
The portals and the vestibule of death,
Investing life as with a veil, and folding
In its impervious depths the sleepless soul.

She saw him there as the unguarded one,
Alone and unprotected; he might be
Friendless in the great world wherein he breathed.
Fatigue was traced upon his cheek and brow;
A weariness withal, as if of life;
The pallor of a long endurance borne,
Mental or bodily, was graven on
The lines of Nature's own nobility.

And thus absorbed in him, each moment claimed
Duration of its own, until herself
Became the abstraction while she gazed. And then,
Startled, quick thought recoiled within itself
As from an intuition that in sleep
Those eyes perchance were watchful o'er her still,
Conscious of her regard, for still she felt
A fascination and a mystery
Beneath their veiled and hidden shadows dwelt.
The traits of suffering, manifest but subdued,
Imparted quietude, while slumber cast
A silent harmony o'er that stilled face,
Impassive as a marble monument.
The expression was of an abandonment
That as a claim asked trust and sympathy,
Whose home is woman's heart. Such impresses
Flashed through her spirit in those moments given
To contemplate that stilled and prostrate form.
And then the imaginative vision came;
Gleams of light flashed through vistas opening
On sunny spots of happiness, obscured
And undefined, yet of intensest joy;
And then faint music floated o'er that scene
Of distant and of dim reality,
Until she heard their murmurings fade away,
Buried in that deep heart from whence they rose.

He woke — and saw the vision of his dream
Bodied before him; then the well-weighed words
Of courtesy that from her father came,
Recalled the present; words within whose tones
Expression dwelt; the earnestness of truth
Forth flowing with the ease which is the grace
Of Nature.
" Sir, intrusion undesigned
Bears with it the indulgence that we claim.
We found you slumbering upon the ground;
My daughter read fatigue traced on your face;
We saw you were untended and alone;
Friendless you could not be, for your aspect
Creates friends; even such converts you have found
And formed within ourselves, best proof whereof
We wakened you from sleep.
Use us as friends;
Receive the truth we give, which is your own:
Before the Maker we are brethren all,
And, as a further pledge to you of faith,
I call a better pleader than myself."
He turned to her with the complacent gaze
Of the fond sire contemplating his child;
Then, in a voice where hesitation dwelt,
While the faint tint her cheek suffused, and showed
Unconscious perturbation, she replied:
" My father would have better told the words
I take from him of hospitality.
Behind that screen of trees his mansion stands;
Perhaps you will receive his welcome there,
Till health is given and nature is restored."

The courtesies of life are the fine veils
That hide its nakedness; the freshening grass,
Where from the granite rests the wearied eye;
Mirage, whose semblance mocks not, but is felt,
And the heart's thirst allayed. And those light words
Disused, melt into memories and modes
Forgot, until become a tongue unknown,
Or like remembered music; and now breathed
With an appealing utterance, and grace,
Vibrated through him, till when ceased, he seemed
To hear the music of that deep voice still.

In that high lady watching him he read
The daughter; lineage on her face was stamped.
The lineaments of her sire, of stronger lines,
In hers were moulded to the beautiful;
And in that form, bent o'er the saddlebow
Listening, he felt in the instinctive glance
Of his quick spirit, for he saw her not,
Less of the sympathy unconsciously
Revealing place superior, as of one
Inclining from a height, than the respect
And the ascendant of a silent power
He inwardly confessed.
He answered him,
The sire, with an eye of calm regard:
" I thank you; words have found no utterance
To confess thankfulness of heart, and mine
Is tempered with a feeling of regret.
From place and grade descended that I held,
The memories of such fine courtesies,
Familiar once, are lost, perchance forgot.
I am of those whose lives are bound to tasks,
Until the nerves of the fine spirit are strained,
The fabric worn with watching and with toil;
With daily conflict in those fields of strife
Where the unaided soul contends in vain;
Where heroism laurelled is uncrowned,
Unheard and unrecorded save by One;
Men whose great lives of effort are unknown,
Whose tale dies with them, tomb and monument,
In hearts for which they suffered; self-respect,
Honour, and duty with them walked through life,
Like crownless Angels following to their graves.

" Among these martyrs of necessity
I too have toiled, and thus the pulse of life
Is lowered, and the inward spirit worn
With sleepless aspirations, still repelled,
Ever returning, and the baffled hope
Deferred to sunless morrows that come not,
And still the thirst from mirage unallayed.
And thus, imprisoned in that human den,
I stole away from its oppressive breath,
And from the home I own, to drink the air
Tainted even here, till Nature overcame."

While thus, with the staid mien and voice of one
Whose words and action were forethought, the eyes
Of that grave man dwelt on him as he spoke
Benignly, but with the regard of him
Who would look through the veil of a reserve
He felt as still unraised:
" Yet one request,
If unpresuming, have you no retreat,
Beyond your city home?"

The Stranger paused —
In that quick moment rose the visioned past
On memory. There are hours of our lives
Ere thought is formed or purpose is evoked,
When lightning-like the inward spirit acts
On the unconscious being. Before his eye,
Each phase of life and changing scene arose,
The boyhood, the wild shore, the stormy hills,
The ancestral hall, forsaken and resigned,
The going forth, the exodus of grief,
The stifled anguish, and the tears suppressed
Of suffering woman; nor the hope nor faith
Wanting, those sister angels unevoked,
Ministrant on their earthly pilgrimage.
He, the last sapling from a regal trunk,
Cast forth upon the highways of the world;
His solitary chamber and his home
Buried within a stony wilderness;
A widow, and a woman in her grief,
Last of his race existing with him there.
These for a moment o'er him flashed, and passed;
Then spake the human weakness that would hide
Privation, and the o'erruling self-respect,
Whose boast is honourable poverty.
In low calm tones, accented from a heart
Bound to the truth, reluctant he replied: —
" The hall of our high race has passed from us;
I am the last of our ancestral line;
And now, beyond the lodging of the hour,
I have no home."
Responded earnestly
That elder man: " Therefore we claim from you
Acceptance of our hospitality;
That you will enter with us."
" For awhile
Pardon: an obligation for this night
Rests unfulfilled; that duty met, I here
Accept your welcome, at a later hour;
A sacred duty which, to you confessed,
And may I dare to add it, to herself,
Your other life who hears me, she would be
The last to gainsay. I appeal to her
For this grace, first and last, which I would crave!"

Then to that daughter suddenly he turned,
Confronting her, who, listening, forward bent,
Caught each deep accent. He had felt her eyes
Watch him, she conscious that he saw her there.
Each sought, yet shunned that meeting of the gaze;
Each drawn towards, and yet repellent still.
He raised his eyes, and looked into the depths
Of those full orbs that suddenly declined,
Closing like petals on the folded flower;
But the electric light had passed from each,
And made them the irrevocable one.