To sit upon that antique seat,
While the hues of day were pale; 175
And the bright boy beside her feet
Now lay, lifting at intervals
His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse
calls

Following. He was a gentle boy 180
And in all gentle sports took joy;
Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
With a small feather for a sail,
His fancy on that spring would float,
If some invisible breeze might stir
Its marble calm and Helen smiled
Through tears of awe on the gay child,
To think that a boy as fair as he,
In years which never more may be,
By that same fount, in that same
wood,

190

The like sweet fancies had pursued; And that a mother, lost like her, Had mournfully sate watching him. Then all the scene was wont to swim Through the mist of a burning tear. 195

For many months had Helen known This scene; and now she thither turned

Her footsteps, not alone.
The friend whose falsehood she had
mourned,

Sate with her on that seat of stone. 200
Silent they sate; for evening,
And the power its glimpses bring
Had, with one awful shadow, quelled
The passion of their grief. They sate
With linked hands, for unrepelled 205
Had Helen taken Rosalind's.

Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds

The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair,

Which is twined in the sultry summer air

Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,

Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,

And the sound of her heart that ever beat,

I'll tell thee truth. He was a man
Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
Yet full of guile: his pale eyes ran 250
With tears, which each some false-
hood told,

And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
Would give the lie to his flushing cheek:
He was a coward to the strong:
He was a tyrant to the weak, 255
On whom his vengeance he would
wreak :

For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,

From many a stranger's eye would dart,

And on his memory cling, and follow His soul to its home so cold and hollow.

260

He was a tyrant to the weak,
And we were such, alas the day!
Oft, when my little ones at play,
Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
Or if they listened to some tale 265
Of travellers, or of fairy land,-
When the light from the wood-fire's
dying brand

Flashed on their faces,-if they heard
Or thought they heard upon the stair
His footstep, the suspended word 270
Died on my lips: we all grew pale:
The babe at my bosom was hushed
with fear

If it thought it heard its father near; And my two wild boys would near my knee

Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. 275

I'll tell thee truth: I loved another. His name in my ear was

ever

ringing, His form to my brain was ever clinging:

Yet if some stranger breathed that

This heart is stone: it did not break.
My father lived a little while,
But all might see that he was dying,
He smiled with such a woeful smile!
When he was in the churchyard
lying

Among the worms, we grew quite

And crept with the blood through

every vein;

355

And hour by hour, day after day, The wonder could not charm away, But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain, Until I knew it was a child, And then I wept. For long, long years 360 These frozen eyes had shed no tears: But now 'twas the season fair and mild

When April has wept itself to May: I sate through the sweet sunny day By my window bowered round with leaves,

365 And down my cheeks the quick tears fell

Like twinkling rain-drops from the

Glimmered among the moonlight dew:

Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs Their echoes in the darkness threw. When she grew calm, she thus did keep

The tenor of her tale:

He died: 420 I know not how: he was not old, If age be numbered by its years: But he was bowed and bent with

fears,

grave;

445

From me remorse then wrung that truth.

I could not bear the joy which gave
Too just a response to mine own.
In vain. I dared not feign a groan;
And in their artless looks I saw, 45°
Between the mists of fear and awe,
That my own thought was theirs;
and they

Expressed it not in words, but said,
Will pass in happy work and play, 455
Each in its heart, how every day
Now he is dead and gone away.

After the funeral all our kin Assembled, and the will was read. My friend, I tell thee, even the dead Have strength, their putrid shrouds within,

460

gold,