Sorrow had made her soft heart yet more soft,
And a new life within her own she bore Which made her tenderer, as she felt it move Beneath her breast, a refuge for her love.
This babe, she thought, would surely bring him back, And be a bond for ever them between;
Before its eyes the sullen tempest-rack
Would fade, and leave the face of heaven serene; And love's return doth more than fill the lack,
Which in his absence withered the heart's green: And yet a dim foreboding still would flit Between her and her hope to darken it.
She could not figure forth a happy fate,
Even for this life from heaven so newly come; The earth must needs be doubly desolate,
To him scarce parted from a fairer home: Such boding heavier on her bosom sate
One night, as, standing in the twilight gloam, She strained her eyes beyond that dizzy verge At whose foot faintly breaks the future's surge.
Poor little spirit! nought but shame and woe
Nurse the sick heart whose life-blood nurses thine :
Yet not those only; love hath triumphed so,
As for thy sake makes sorrow more divine:
And yet, though thou be pure, the world is foe
To purity, if born in such a shrine;
And, having trampled it for struggling thence,
Smiles to itself, and calls it Providence.
As thus she mused, a shadow seemed to rise
From out her thought, and turn to dreariness
All blissful hopes and sunny memories,
And the quick blood doth curdle up and press
About her heart, which seemed to shut its eyes
And hush itself, as who with shuddering guess Harks through the gloom, and dreads e'en now to feel Through his hot breast the icy slide of steel.
But, at that heart-beat, while in dread she was,
In the low wind the honeysuckles gleam,
A dewy thrill flits through the heavy grass,
And, looking forth, she saw, as in a dream,
Within the wood the moonlight's shadowy mass;
Night's starry heart yearning to hers doth seem,
And the deep sky, full-hearted with the moon,
Folds round her all the happiness of June.
What fear could face a heaven and earth like this? What silveriest cloud could hang 'neath such a sky? A tide of wondrous and unwonted bliss
Rolls back through all her pulses suddenly,
As if some seraph, who had learned to kiss
From the fair daughters of the world gone by,
Had wedded so his fallen light with hers,
Such sweet, strange joy through soul and body stirs.
Now seek we Mordred: He who did not fear
The crime, yet fears the latent consequence:
If it should reach a brother Templar's ear,
It haply might be made a good pretence
To cheat him of the hope he held most dear;
For he had spared no thought's or deed's expense,
That by-and-by might help his wish to clip
Its darling bride,—the high grand mastership.
The apathy, ere a crime resolved is done,
Is scarce less dreadful than remorse for crime; By no allurement can the soul be won
From brooding o'er the weary creep of time:
Mordred stole forth into the happy sun,
Striving to hum a scrap of Breton rhyme,
But the sky struck him speechless, and he tried
In vain to summon up his callous pride.
In the court-yard a fountain leaped alway,
A Triton blowing jewels through his shell
Into the sunshine; Mordred turned away,
Weary because the stone face did not tell
Of weariness, nor could he bear to-day,
Heart-sick, to hear the patient sink and swell
Of winds among the leaves, or golden bees
Drowsily humming in the orange-trees.
All happy sights and sounds now came to him
Like a reproach: he wandered far and wide,
Following the lead of his unquiet whim,
But still there went a something at his side
That made the cool breeze hot, the sunshine dim;
It would not flee, it could not be defied,
He could not see it, but he felt it there,
By the damp chill that crept among his hair.
Day wore at last; the evening star arose,
And throbbing in the sky grew red and set;
Then with a guilty, wavering step he goes
To the hid nook where they so oft had met
In happier season, for his heart well knows
That he is sure to find poor Margaret
Watching and waiting there with love-lorn breast,
Around her young dream's rudely scattered nest.
Why follow here that grim old chronicle
Which counts the dagger-strokes and drops of blood? Enough that Margaret by his mad steel fell,
Unmoved by murder from her trusting mood,
Smiling on him as Heaven smiles on Hell,
With a sad love, remembering when he stood,
Not fallen yet, the unsealer of her heart,
Of all her holy dreams the holiest part.
His crime complete, scarce knowing what he did
(So goes the tale), beneath the altar there
In the high church the stiffening corpse he hid;
And then, to 'scape that suffocating air,
Like a scared ghoule out of the porch he slid;
But his strained eyes saw blood-spots everywhere,
And ghastly faces thrust themselves between
His soul and hopes of peace with blasting mien.
His heart went out within him, like a spark
Dropt in the sea; wherever he made bold
To turn his eyes, he saw, all stiff and stark,
Pale Margaret lying dead; the lavish gold
Of her loose hair seemed in the cloudy dark
To spread a glory, and a thousandfold
More strangely pale and beautiful she grew:
Her silence stabbed his conscience through and through:
Or visions of past days,- -a mother's eyes
That smiled down on the fair boy at her knee.
Whose happy upturned face to hers replies,-
He saw sometimes: or Margaret mournfully
Gazed on him full of doubt, as one who tries
To crush belief that does love injury:
Then she would wring her hands, but soon again
Love's patience glimmered out through cloudy pain.
Meanwhile he dared not go and steal away
The silent, dead-cold witness of his sin;
He had not feared the life, but that dull clay,
Those open eyes that showed the death within,
Would surely stare him mad; yet all the day
A dreadful impulse, whence his will could win
No refuge, made him linger in the aisle,
Freezing with his wan look each greeting smile.
Now, on the second day there was to be
A festival in church: from far and near
Came flocking in the sunburnt peasantry,
And knights and dames with stately antique cheer, Blazing with pomp, as if all faërie
Had emptied her quaint halls, or, as it were,
The illuminated marge of some old book,
While we were gazing, life and motion took.
When all were entered, and the roving eyes
Of all were staid, some upon faces bright,
Some on the priests, some on the traceries
That decked the slumber of a marble knight,
And all the rustlings over that arise
From recognizing tokens of delight,
When friendly glances meet, then silent ease
Spread o'er the multitude by slow degrees.
Then swelled the organ: up through choir and nave
The music trembled with an inward thrill
Of bliss at its own grandeur: wave on wave
Its flood of mellow thunder rose, until
The hushed air shivered with the throb it gave;
Then, poising for a moment, it stood still,
And sank and rose again, to burst in spray
That wandered into silence far away.
Like to a mighty heart the music seemed,
That yearns with melodies it cannot speak,
Until, in grand despair of what it dreamed,
In the agony of effort it doth break,
Yet triumphs breaking; on it rushed and streamed
And wantoned in its might, as when a lake,
Long pent among the mountains, bursts its walls
And in one crowding gush leaps forth and falls.
Deeper and deeper shudders shook the air,
As the huge bass kept gathering heavily,
Like thunder when it rouses in its lair,
And with its hoarse growl shakes the low-hung sky,
It grew up like a darkness everywhere,
Filling the vast cathedral ;-suddenly,
From the dense mass a boy's clear treble broke
Like lightning, and the full-toned choir awoke.
Through gorgeous windows shone the sun aslant,
Brimming the church with gold and purple mist,
Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant,
Where fifty voices in one strand did twist
Their varicoloured tones, and left no want
To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed
In the warm music cloud, while, far below,
The organ heaved its surges to and fro.
As if a lark should suddenly drop dead
While the blue air yet trembled with its song,
So snapped at once that music's golden thread,
Struck by a nameless fear that leapt along
From heart to heart, and like a shadow spread
With instantaneous shiver through the throng,
So that some glanced behind, as half aware
A hideous shape of dread were standing there.
As when a crowd of pale men gather round,
Watching an eddy in the leaden deep,
From which they deem the body of one drowned
Will be cast forth, from face to face doth creep
An eager dread that holds all tongues fast bound,
Until the horror, with a ghastly leap,
Starts up, its dead blue arms stretched aimlessly,
Heaved with the swinging of the careless sea,-
So in the faces of all these there grew,
As by one impulse, a dark, freezing awe, Which, with a fearful fascination drew
All eyes toward the altar; damp and raw
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