THE LOVER'S TALE.

THE original Preface to 'The Lover's Tale' states that it was composed in my nineteenth year. Two only of the three parts then written were printed, when, feeling the imperfection of the poem, I withdrew it from the press. One of my friends however who, boylike, admired the boy's work, distributed among our common associates of that hour some copies of these two parts, without my knowledge, without the omissions and amendments which I had in contemplation, and marred by the many misprints of the compositor. Seeing that these two parts have of late been mercilessly pirated, and that what I had deemed scarce worthy to live is not allowed to die, may I not be pardoned if I suffer the whole poem at last to come into the light-accompanied with a reprint of the sequel-a work of my mature life-'The Golden Supper'?

May 1879.

ARGUMENT.

JULIAN, whose cousin and foster-sister, Camilla, has been wedded to his friend and rival, Lionel, endeavours to narrate the story of his own love for her, and the strange sequel. He speaks (in Parts II. and III.) of having been haunted by visions and the sound of bells, tolling for a funeral, and at last ringing for a marriage; but he breaks away, overcome, as he approaches the Event, and a E witness to it completes the tale.

That air which pleased her first. I feel

I come, great Mistress of the ear and eye :
thy breath;
Thy breath is of the pinewood; and tho'
years

Have hollow'd out a deep and stormy
strait

Betwixt the native land of Love and me,
Breathe but a little on me, and the sail
Will draw me to the rising of the sun,
The lucid chambers of the morning star,
And East of Life.

Permit me, friend, I prythee,
To pass my hand across my brows, and

muse

On those dear hills, that never more will

meet

The sight that throbs and aches beneath
my touch,

As tho' there beat a heart in either eye;
For when the outer lights are darken'd

thus,

The memory's vision hath a keener edge.
It grows upon me now-the semicircle
Of dark-blue waters and the narrow fringe

The heart, and sometimes touches but Of curving beach—its wreaths of dripping

Moved from the cloud of unforgotten In trances and in visions: look at them, things, You lose yourself in utter ignorance; That sometimes on the horizon of the You cannot find their depth; for they go mind back,

Lies folded, often sweeps athwart in And farther back, and still withdraw

Trust me, long ago I should have died, if it were possible To die in gazing on that perfectness Which I do bear within me: I had died, But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb, Thine image, like a charm of light and strength

Upon the waters, push'd me back again

Mixt with the gorgeous west the light- On these deserted sands of barren life.

house shone,

And silver-smiling Venus ere she fell
Would often loiter in her balmy blue,
To crown it with herself.

Here, too, my love Waver'd at anchor with me, when day hung

Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark-
Forgetting how to render beautiful
Her countenance with quick and health-
ful blood-

Thou didst not sway me upward; could
I perish

From his mid-dome in Heaven's airy While thou, a meteor of the sepulchre,

halls;

Didst swathe thyself all round Hope's,

This is a charmed dwelling which I And first of love, tho' every turn and

Who toils across the middle moonlit For how should I have lived and not

How like each other was the birth of each!
The sister of my mother-she that bore
Camilla close beneath her beating heart,
Which to the imprison'd spirit of the child, One sustenance, which, still as thought

1

Made all our tastes and fancies like, Doth question'd memory answer not, nor

perhaps― All-all but one; and strange to me,

and sweet,

Sweet thro' strange years to know that
whatsoe'er

Our general mother meant for me alone,
Our mutual mother dealt to both of us :
So what was earliest mine in earliest life,
I shared with her in whom myself remains.
As was our childhood, so our infancy,
They tell me, was a very miracle
Of fellow-feeling and communion.

They tell me that we would not be alone,

tell

Of this our earliest, our closest-drawn, Most loveliest, earthly-heavenliest harmony?

O blossom'd portal of the lonely house, Green prelude, April promise, glad newyear

Of Being, which with earliest violets
And lavish carol of clear-throated larks
Fill'd all the March of life !-I will not
speak of thee

These have not seen thee, these can never
know thee,

We cried when we were parted; when I They cannot understand me.

wept,

Her smile lit up the rainbow on my tears, Stay'd on the cloud of sorrow; that we loved

The sound of one-another's voices more
Than the gray cuckoo loves his name, and
learn'd

To lisp in tune together; that we slept
In the same cradle always, face to face.
Heart beating time to heart, lip pressing
lip,

Folding each other, breathing on each
other,

Dreaming together (dreaming of each

other

They should have added), till the morning light

then

Pass we

A term of eighteen years. Ye would but

laugh,

If I should tell you how I hoard in thought

The faded rhymes and scraps of ancient

crones,

Gray relics of the nurseries of the world,
Which are as gems set in my memory,
Because she learnt them with me; or
what use

To know her father left us just before
The daffodil was blown? or how we

found

The dead man cast upon the shore? All this

Seems to the quiet daylight of your minds Sloped thro' the pines, upon the dewy | But cloud and smoke, and in the dark of

pane

mine

Falling, unseal'd our eyelids, and we woke Is traced with flame.
To gaze upon each other. If this be

true,

At thought of which my whole soul languishes

And faints, and hath no pulse, no breath
-as tho'

A man in some still garden should infuse
Rich atar in the bosom of the rose,

Till, drunk with its own wine, and over-
full

Of sweetness, and in smelling of itself,
It fall on its own thorns-if this be true-
And that way my wish leads me evermore
Still to believe it-'tis so sweet a thought,
Why in the utter stillness of the soul