PART V.

The F ATALIST replied not, but his brow
Showed wakened thought, as if upon his mind
Had broken sudden light. As one who treads
In Alpine solitudes a stone has cast
In an abyss, the startling rebound
Heard from reverberating depths, thus sunk
The utterance of the Pastor in his soul.
The Enthusiast had spoken, but awhile
Nature each eye absorbed.
In distance loomed
The azure hills, while, opening from beneath,
Yawned a stern chasm as by earthquake rent
Through the hill's heart; the waters rolled between.
The western sun in-looking that wild gorge
Filled it with purple hues. Silence reigned there,
As if great Nature felt the spectacle,
And drank the light shed from eternal day.
The fern, in beauty sleeping, sighed its joy;
The red ash glowed, the furze shone steeped in gold;
Twilight shed lustre o'er the crags it crowned,
And their sharp granite spears, shot high in heaven,
Softened their iron cones. The plaintive note
Of the far ring-dove fitfully arose,
All else was still; the hum of infinite life
Murmured around us and beneath, unseen.

We entered on a grassy area,
Girdled and overshadowed by ash-trees;
Cottages filled the intervening space,
Circling the enclosure, haven of repose
To him who wandered on the lonely hills.
The eye dwelt lovingly on that green spot;
And the heart, blessing it, allied the scene
With fond association. The grey boughs
Of the old trees, bowed o'er the greensward, looked
Like bearded age in silent reverence bent
O'er the fresh cheek of infancy. No sounds
Were there save children at their evening play,
Whose voices rose in fitful grief or joy
There pealed the laughter, chasing tears forgot,
And there the search for toys, still lost when found;
The time thus wasted by us, now absorbed
By heavier trifles; so we stood and watched
Departed childhood mirrored to us there;
The now and then, hours hoarded by us, spent
By them in thoughtless prodigality.
Life's solemn march by each alike pursued;
They mirroring their orient, we, earth-stained,
Who vainly would our course arrest ere merged
In the great deep. Upon a mossgrown wall
We sate; those voices, by the distance toned,
Sounded like echoes of departed days,
That soothed yet saddened, seated by the beds,
Where human life and all its griefs repose.

It was an altar worthy of the Lord,
That village-church of bygone centuries
The twilight, mellowing its Gothic panes,
Reflected martyrs' forms in rich relief,
In gorgeous colouring steeped, until each shape
Was filled with light as with a living soul.
Beneath the eastern oriel on his tomb
Reclined a Templar; his prayer-folded hands,
And crossed knees, showed he saw the Holy Land,
Ere gathered there in peace; his broken shield
With its armorial blazonry effaced,
Told from that grave the vanity of fame
One giant yew shadowed the burial-ground;
Beneath it silently we took our seats:
The holy hour, the place, and our own hearts,
Inspired tranquillity. The Pastor rose,
And pointed to a cot that stood apart:

" Not to contemplate beauty of the scene,
Nor dwell on thoughts that sublimate our life,
I drew you here, but human interests
To share: the tenant of that cot is dead.
She rests beneath this turf, and none would deem
Of the fine spirit of life extinguished there,
And beauty; she whose form was as a shrine
Lighted by sacred fire.
" Years have lapsed by,
Since that dark lady came attended here;
The homely front of yonder cot revealed
The mind of its changed inmate. She became
The housewife's awe or wonder; charities
Unsought that flowed from her, with gentlest words
To children given, her presence there endeared.
She lived among us, talked of, but unseen,
Nor heard save when, on autumn's evenings, notes
Of her guitar from that low casement swelled.
It was upon a winter's stormy night,
Came her request to see myself and child.
The winds roared o'er the mountains, snows fell fast;
Duty and fervid interest urged us on.
Vague thoughts absorbed me on the fate that led
This friendless woman to our solitudes,
That, at an hour when half the world reposed,
Appealed to strangers.
" Entering the cot,
Leisure was ours to contemplate her home.

" It was a chamber unadorned and pure,
Such as a saint had chosen for her cell.
One painting hung suspended from the wall,
The Jesus crucified; his arms outstretched
And nailed in blood, his eyeballs upwards strained
In mortal agony, his thorn-pierced brow,
And livid lips, and head in languor sunk,
Death's shadow imaged there. Beside the cross
The Virgin-Mother knelt, her eyes upraised,
Her form bent lowly at the feet of Him
She loved so well; that trusting mother! — all
Forgot, the promise, hope, faith, after-life,
All in the loss of her redeeming Son
The lowering night, the lightnings flashing o'er,
The lurid cross, the distant temple rent,
The pale woods tossing to the storm behind,
The solitude that God alone watched o'er,
Revealed the vision to the painter's soul.

" She entered: on her pale face passionless,
Her life was shown, the twofold spirit's rule.
Ancestral pride on her high forehead sate,
But on her lips depressed a sadness hung,
A blight fallen over roses colourless.
The tone of an imploring character
Was on them traced, as if she sought repose.
Touched with a sympathy profound, I spoke;
She sate as one who passively endured,
BuTheard not; her abstracted air expressed
An interest remote. Once her full eyes
She raised upon my daughter; never I
Forgot the expression, that a world of thought
Lived in a glance; withdrawn, they rested on
The scroll within her hands. She spoke; even now
Vibrates upon my ear that deep-toned voice
Of melody by suffering attuned;

" " The indulgence, friends, that I would claim of you
Might be withheld, but that my face reveals
The truth I could not tell; and there are griefs
That find no vent in tears. I could not pass
Unheard; I lived aloof from sympathies,
But I yearn, madden for them ere I die!
I have made this confession of a soul
With bitterness, welcomed from the knowledge owned
Of pangs deserved, the deepest unrevealed.
Words confess not our feelings, tears attest
Their impotence. Oh! I have felt within,
Till feeling deadened into apathy;
I have been mad, yet reasoned while I raved;
Racked by remorse until dull agony,
Exhausted, slept on torture. I have seen
Maniac visions, thickly-coming forms
Crowding upon my seared and heated brain;
Lurid lights flashing round me, vanishing
With the departing fiends, till night returned,
And all was blind, dead vacancy!
" " I came back
From death to torpid life; I watched day break
Sunlessly, opening upon iron walls
Heavily pressing round me. I have sat,
Immovable, uncounted hours, my hands
Pressed on my brow to stay the pulse that throbbed
As beneath rushing waters overwhelmed,
While I felt gathering slowly round my heart
Death's icy chill, till all was still and cold.
I felt I was a corpse within a shroud,
Stealing round me the worm that dieth not!
Yet still I lived, and while I breathlessly
Watched the inflowing consciousness, I heard
Life trampling on the ground above my head,
And hollow-sounding laughter; and I laid
And listened for my heart's returning beat,
Each sense absorbed in hearing.
" " Time rolled on;
The whirlwind prostrates to the earth the reed,
To rise again unbroken; this form lived,
Feeling and memory buried in its tomb.
Thoughts, that convulsed us once, like shadows pass,
Till life itself becomes but consciousness.
" " Then, the heart chastened, holier growth renews;
The sympathy that feels for others' woes,
And hope, felt by the hopeless. I have prayed
For these, until I felt regenerate:
Humility, like an angel, rose above
The ashes of a life extinct.

" " Receive
These scrolls; a tale of passion overwrought;
Revenge, despair, and jealousy, self-made fiends
That deal their penal retribution here.
I sought you but to make this sole request,
To express my last of human gratitude. "
She touched a silver bell, and, ere we found
Accordance of reply, she left us, led,
As one who suffered; and, when closed the door,
I felt it was for ever.
" Thus she died;
The last injunction, that o'er her due rites
Should be fulfilled, with no memorial stone.
The attendant stood by her last resting-place,
Rigid in grief, as marble motionless.
Nothing from her stern silence could be wrung;
She left the cottage never to return.

" I read that record, friends, of guilt, and wrong;
Unnatural strifes, an unimagined page
To those who vainly strive to image forth
Passions unproved. Staid wisdom draws no growths,
From blighted roots; her tale shall rest untold.
Yet one confession made may shadow forth
Retributive remorse that followed her.
To the high altar of her land she fled
From self-avenging conscience, to implore
Spiritual strength to endure her punishment.
Crowds filled the aisles, far-kneeling; God's high priest
Stretched forth his hands to bless, and in the name
Of the Atonement earthly sins forgave,
Such as remorse and tears might wash away.
Then while the organ in its thunder-notes
Pealed forth accorded pardon, while the joy
Thrilled through each breast that felt its prayer was heard,
One rose forth from that kneeling multitude,
A Soul forbid — behold her resting-place!"

Sadly we looked upon that humblest grave;
A tint of dying twilight touched the turf
With a green radiance, giving that wild spot
A show of beauty. The Enthusiast broke
The solemn pause: " Thus dies the beautiful,
The canker grief, consuming in its bud
Beauty that prostrated the hearts which gazed,
That yielded to quick impulse, or o'ercame;
The hate that was love's cure, the jealousy,
Revenge, and vain remorse, all ended there
Such the lament and elegy o'er her life."

The Fatalist answered with austerer tone
" Accord, but dwell not on the grief whose root
Grows not from truth that mourns for natural pangs;
Lament for her were impotent as vain
She spared not others, nor was spared; confess
The scales of justice are poised even here;
She suffered and she slept; the dream is o'er.
Death, the reality before us shown,
Face the unreal terror dreamers mourn,
And bards in imitative notes. Lo, there
The ancient monitor none heed or hear,
Oracular Earth, that silently proclaims
The dust we were, the shadows that we are.
Be the great truth proclaimed above the grave;
Life is a war, waged, or with foes without,
Or held within, each sleepless. Create peace
Whose cradle rests on conscious purpose done;
On our life-duties heedfully fulfilled.
Assume the resignation we aspire,
Till discipline become a silent joy;
Relax not moral strength in frailties
That sow decline; so shall our temple be
Held pure, the inmate heart, a sacred thing;
Its law, inviolate conscience still revered;
These, pillared on self-faith, and trust, and hope,
Shall guide us to the end." He ceased; his voice
Heard like a melody where discord joined.

The Pastor's face was turned toward the west,
Where the day sank beneath the rolling world.
Twilight's last hues were o'er the azure shed;
Autumnal tints still fading as faint stars,
Trembled like dewdrops on the cheek of heaven
Light cloud-flakes floated o'er the western steep,
Like veils cast off from the sun's fiery hair
The lesser hills in shadows hid their heads;
Bel-tor, alone, sublimest spirit, caught
The day-god's crown, his forehead forward bowed,
Glowing with holiest ecstasy.
" So end,"
The Pastor sighed, " vague guesses at God's truth,
Rejecting hope and faith, aught beyond range
Of our delusive vision. Oh that Thou,
Eternal being! hadst given utterance
To visible appearance; to mute nature
Voices, revealing truths beyond the grave!
That thy starred pages had been oracles;
That thou hadst whispered to the cradled child,
There is a brighter birth for thee!
" Unfolds
The grave one moral only, to rely
On vacillating human will to reach
Ethereal virtue? to claim wreaths, and won
By self-made greatness, faith, and strength, inborn?
We, named the god-like, and by our weak pride
Built up from failing memories, the records
Of our vain hopes or fears? we, things of dust
And contradiction, whose sublimest deeds
Flow forth but from a purer selfishness?

" Thou, Omnipresent and Ineffable!
Thou whom an earlier age saw manifest
In yonder orb of day, and felt its life
Entering their feeling being. Thou, the One!
Art still the same, found not by thought diseased,
But by the child whose heart is love and faith.
Yea, let us on our human strength rely,
But let thy triad, faith, and hope, and love,
Dwell in us; glorious elements, that make,
Or merit, an immortal life; that urge
To nobler emulation; and that leave
Indelible marks behind that cannot die.
As the waves everlastingly return
On the same track, so Thou, great Spirit of Life!
Sway'st to and fro the current of our thought.
Thou, in denials of blind unbelief,
Art most revealed; in foiled attempts to rise
Towards Thee, fiail man but owns his restlessness,
Rejecting faith in life that lies beyond
The vision of mortality; vain strife!
Discords that rise, and are apportionate
Of Life's great hymn of unison to Thee.

" Hear us above this grave, where we appeal,
Omniscient! — thou our aspiration know'st,
The one, wherein faithless and faithful join.
Oh, let not those who on love, hope, and faith,
Built up thy altar-place, the living soul,
Be no more seen! Make thou progressive man
Image of thy majestic universe,
Harmonious and august; let him endure
In bodiless essence or in spiritual form,
Where time and earth's mortality are sounds!
Let us move, star-like, steadfast in our spheres,
Our pathway measureless, our guide Thyself
Reflecting; till sublimer life absorb
Our beings merged in thy infinity."