"From thee in all their vigour came

"My arm of strength, my soul of flame"Thou didst not give me life alone,

"But all that made me more thine own.

290

"See what thy guilty love hath done!

"Repaid thee with too like a son!

295

"I am no bastard in my soul,

"For that, like thine, abhorred controul:

"And for my breath, that hasty boon

"Thou gav'st and wilt resume so soon, "I valued it no more than thou,

300

"When rose thy casque above thy brow, "And we, all side by side, have striven,

"And o'er the dead our coursers driven:

"The past is nothing—and at last

"The future can but be the past ;

"Yet would I that I then had died:

"For though thou work'dst my mother's ill, "And made thy own my destined bride,

"I feel thou art my father still;

305

"And, harsh as sounds thy hard decree,

310

""Tis not unjust, although from thee.

"As erred the sire, so erred the son-
"And thou must punish both in one.
"My crime seems worst to human view,
"But God must judge between us too!"

XIV.

He ceased—and stood with folded arms,

315

On which the circling fetters sounded;
And not an ear but felt as wounded,

320

And there with glassy gaze she stood
As ice were in her curdled blood;

335

But every now and then a tear

So large and slowly gathered slid

From the long dark fringe of that fair lid,
It was a thing to see, not hear!

And those who saw, it did surprise,

340

Such drops could fall from human eyes.
To speak she thought—the imperfect note
Was choked within her swelling throat,
Yet seemed in that low hollow groan
Her whole heart gushing in the tone.
It ceased-again she thought to speak,
Then burst her voice in one long shriek,
And to the earth she fell like stone
Or statue from its base o'erthrown,

345

More like a thing that ne'er had life,—

350

But scarce to reason-every sense

Had been o'erstrung by pangs intense;

And each frail fibre of her brain

360

(As bow-strings, when relaxed by rain,

That some one was to die-but who?

She had forgotten:-did she breathe?
Could this be still the earth beneath?
The sky above, and men around;

Or were they fiends who now so frowned
On one, before whose
eyes each

375

eye

Till then had smiled in sympathy?

All was confused and undefined,

To her all-jarred and wandering mind;

A chaos of wild hopes and fears:

And now in laughter, now in tears,

But madly still in each extreme,

She strove with that convulsive dream;

380

Hark! the hymn is singing—

The song for the dead below,

Or the living who shortly shall be so !

For a departing being's soul

The death-hymn peals and the hollow bells knoll:

He is near his mortal goal;

Kneeling at the Friar's knee;

Sad to hear and piteous to see

Kneeling on the bare cold ground,

396

With the block before and the guards around 400

And the headsman with his bare arm ready,

That the blow may be both swift and steady,

Feels if the axe be sharp and true—

Since he set its edge anew:

While the crowd in a speechless circle gather 405

To see the Son fall by the doom of the Father.

G