By blighted and remorseful years Of scourge, and fast, and sleepless tears ; For that dark love she dared to feel; Like him she saw upon the block, With heart that shared the headman's shock, In quickened brokenness that came, 520 But never tear his cheek descended, And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought The intersected lines of thought; Those furrows which the burning share 540 Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there; Scars of the lacerating mind Which the Soul's war doth leave behind. He was past all mirth or woe: Nothing more remained below, 545 But sleepless nights and heavy days, A mind all dead to scorn or praise, A heart which shunned itself-and yet 550 Which when it least appeared to melt, Intently thought-intensely felt: The deepest ice which ever froze Can only o'er the surface close The living stream lies quick below, And flows and cannot cease to flow. 555 Still was his sealed-up bosom haunted By thoughts which Nature hath implanted; When, struggling as they rise to start, 560 We check those waters of the heart, They are not dried-those tears unshed But flow back to the fountain head, If lopped with care, a strength may give, By which the rest shall bloom and live 580 All greenly fresh and wildly free. But if the lightning, in its wrath, The waving boughs with fury scathe, The massy trunk the ruin feels, And never more a leaf reveals. 585 H NOTES. Note 1, page 63, line 14. As twilight melts beneath the moon away. The lines contained in Section I. were printed as set to music some time since: but belonged to the poem where they now appear, the greater part of which was composed prior to "Lara" and other compositions since published. Note 2, page 75, last line. That should have won as haught a crest. Haught-haughty-" Away haught man, thou art insulting me." THE END. Shakspeare, Richard II. |