His head was leaning on a music-book,

And he was muttering; and his lean limbs shook.
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf,
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart,

As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion: soon he raised

His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed,
And spoke,-sometimes as one who wrote, and thought
His words might move some heart that heeded not,
If sent to distant lands;-and then as one
Reproaching deeds never to be undone,

With wondering self-compassion;-then his speech
Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
Unmodulated and expressionless,-

But that from one jarred accent you might guess
It was despair made them so uniform:

And all the while the loud and gusty storm

Hissed through the window, and we stood behind,
Stealing his accents from the envious wind,
Unseen. I yet remember what he said

Distinctly, such impression his words made.

"Month after month," he cried, "to bear this load,
And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad,
To drag life on-which like a heavy chain
Lengthens behind with many a link of pain,
And not to speak my grief-O, not to dare
To give a human voice to my despair;

But live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on,
As if I never went aside to groan,

And wear this mask of falsehood even to those
Who are most dear-not for my own repose.

Alas! no scorn, nor pain, nor hate, could be

So heavy as that falsehood is to me

But that I cannot bear more altered faces

Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces, More misery, disappointment, and mistrust,

To own me for their father.

Would the dust

Were covered in upon my body now!

That the life ceased to toil within my brow!

And then these thoughts would at the last be fled:

Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.

"What Power delights to torture us? I know
That to myself I do not wholly owe
What now I suffer, though in part I may.
Alas! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way
Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain,
My shadow, which will leave me not again.

If I have erred, there was no joy in error.
But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror;
I have not, as some do, bought penitence
With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence;
For then if love, and tenderness, and truth,
Had overlived Hope's momentary youth,

My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;
But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting
Met love excited by far other seeming

Until the end was gained :-as one from dreaming
Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state
Such as it is-

"O thou, my spirit's mate!
Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,
Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes
If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see;
My secret groans must be unheard by thee;
Thou wouldst weep tears, bitter as blood, to know
Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe.

Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed
In friendship, let me not that name degrade,
By placing on your hearts the secret load

Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road
To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye!
Love sometimes leads astray to misery.

Yet think not, though subdued (and I may well
Say that I am subdued)-that the full hell
Within me would infect the untainted breast
Of sacred nature with its own unrest;

As some perverted beings think to find
In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind

Which scorn or hate hath wounded.-O, how vain !
The dagger heals not, but may rend again.
Believe that I am ever still the same
In creed as in resolve; and what may tame
My heart, must leave the understanding free,
Or all would sink under this agony.-
Nor dream that I will join the vulgar lie,
Or with my silence sanction tyranny,
Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain
In any madness which the world calls gain;
Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern
As those which make me what I am, or turn
To avarice, or misanthropy, or lust:
Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!
Till then the dungeon may demand its prey;
And Poverty and Shame may meet and say,
Halting beside me in the public way,—
"That love-devoted youth is ours: let's sit
Beside him he may live some six months yet. -

Or the red scaffold, as our country bends,
May ask some willing victim; or ye, friends,
May fall under some sorrow, which this heart
Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert;
I am prepared, in truth, with no proud joy,
To do or suffer aught, as when a boy
I did devote to justice, and to love,
My nature, worthless now.

"I must remove

A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside !
O pallid as death's dedicated bride,
Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,
Am I not wan like thee? At the grave's call
I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball,

To meet the ghastly paramour, for whom
Thou hast deserted me, -and made the tomb
Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet

Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet
Thus-wide awake though dead-Yet stay, O, stay
Go not so soon-I know not what I say-
Hear but my reasons-I am mad, I fear,

My fancy is o'erwrought-thou art not here,
Pale art thou 'tis most true- -but thou art gone-
Thy work is finished; I am left alone.

"Nay was it I who woo'd thee to this breast,
Which like a serpent thou envenomest
As in repayment of the warmth it lent?
Didst thou not seek me for thine own content!
Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
That thou wert she who said 'You kiss me not
Ever; I fear you do not love me now.'
In truth I loved even to my overthrow
Her who would fain forget these words, but they
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.

"You say that I am proud; that when I speak, My lip is tortured with the wrongs, which break The spirit it expresses.-Never one

Humbled himself before, as I have done;

Even the instinctive worm on which we tread

Turns, though it wound not-then, with prostrate head,
Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me-and dies:
No:-wears a living death of agonies;

As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass,
Slow, ever-moving, making moments be
As mine seem, each an immortality!

"That you had never seen me! never heard
My voice! and more than all had ne'er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace;
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face!
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
With mine own quivering fingers! so that ne'er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there,
To disunite in horror! These were not

With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought,
Which flits athwart our musings, but can find

No rest within a pure and gentle mind

Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And sear'dst my memory o'er them,-for I heard
And can forget not-they were ministered,

One after one, those curses.

Mix them up

Like self-destroying poisons in one cup;

And they will make one blessing, which thou ne'er
Didst imprecate for on me-death!

A cruel punishment for one most cruel,

"It were

If such can love, to make that love the fuel
Of the mind's hell-hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain stone;
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see
The absent with a glass of phantasy,

And near the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth,
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold:-that thou on me
Should rain these plagues of blistering agony-
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love's too partial praise! Let none relent
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same
They seek for thou on me lookedst so and so,
And didst speak thus and thus. I live to show
How much men bear, and die not.

"Thou wilt tell,

With the grimace of hate, how horrible

It was to meet my love when thine grew less;

Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address

Such features to love's work.... This taunt, though true, (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue

Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)

Shall not be thy defence: for since thy lip

Met mine first, years long past,-since thine eye kind1 d With soft fire under mine,-I have not dwindled,

Nor changed in mind, or body, or in aught

But as love changes what it loveth not

After long years and many trials.

"How vain

Are words; I thought never to speak again,
Not even in secret, not to my own heart-
But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
And from my pen the words flow as I write,
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears-my sight
Is dim to see that (charactered in vain

On this unfeeling leaf) which burns the brain
And eats into it, blotting all things fair,

And wise and good, which time had written there.
Those who inflict must suffer, for they see

The work of their own hearts, and that must be
Our chastisement or recompense.-O child!

I would that thine were like to be more mild

For both our wretched sakes,-for thine the most,
Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost,
Without the power to wish it thine again.
And, as slow years pass, a funereal train,
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
No thought on my dead memory?

"Alas, love!

Fear me not against thee I'd not move

A finger in despite. Do I not live

That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate;

And, that thy lot may be less desolate
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
Then when thou speakest of me-never say,
'He could forgive not.'-Here I cast away
All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
Under these words, like embers, every spark
Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark
The grave is yawning :-as its roof shall cover
My limbs with dust and worms, under and over,
So let oblivion hide this grief.-The air
Closes upon my accents as despair
Upon my heart-let death upon my care!"