And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell
Beat to the noiseless music of the night!

Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow

Of your soft splendours that you look so bright?

I have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell.

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell,

Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe

That seems to draw-but it shall not be so :
Let all be well, be well.

XIX.

1.

HER brother is coming back to-night,

Breaking up my dream of delight.

2.

My dream? do I dream of bliss?

I have walk'd awake with Truth.

O when did a morning shine

So rich in atonement as this

For my dark-dawning youth,

Darken'd watching a mother decline

And that dead man at her heart and mine:

For who was left to watch her but I?

Yet so did I let my freshness die.

3.

I trust that I did not talk

To gentle Maud in our walk

(For often in lonely wanderings

I have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that I did not talk,

Not touch on her father's sin :

I am sure I did but speak

Of my mother's faded cheek

When it slowly grew so thin,

That I felt she was slowly dying

Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt:

For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,

Shaking her head at her son and sighing

A world of trouble within!

4.

And Maud too, Maud was moved

To speak of the mother she loved

F

As one scarce less forlorn,

Dying abroad and it seems apart

From him who had ceased to share her heart,

And ever mourning over the feud,

The household Fury sprinkled with blood

By which our houses are torn :

How strange was what she said,

When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed-

That Maud's dark father and mine

Had bound us one to the other,

Betrothed us over their wine,

On the day when Maud was born;

Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath.

Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death,

Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn.

5.

But the true blood spilt had in it a heat

To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,

That, if left uncancell'd, had been so sweet:

And none of us thought of a something beyond,

A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,

As it were a duty done to the tomb,

To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches-I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer

To be friends, to be reconciled!

6.

But then what a flint is he!

Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,

I find whenever she touch'd on me
This brother had laugh'd her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken'd into a frown,
Chid her, and forbid her to speak