No swinging sign-board creaked from cottage elm
To stay his steps with faintness overcome;
"Twas dark and void as ocean's watery realm
Roaring with storms beneath night's starless gloom;
No gipsy cower'd o'er fire of furze or broom;
No labourer watched his red kiln glaring bright,
Nor taper glimmered dim from sick man's room;
Along the waste no line of mournful light
Her he addressed in words of cheering sound;
Recovering heart, like answer did she make;
And well it was that, of the corse there found,
In converse that ensued she nothing spake;
She knew not what dire pangs in him such tale could
wake.
But soon his voice and words of kind intent
Banished that dismal thought; and now the wind
From lamp of lonely toll-gate streamed athwart the In fainter howlings told its rage was spent:
At length, though hid in clouds, the moon arose;
The downs were visible-and now revealed
A structure stands, which two bare slopes enclose.
It was a spot, where, ancient vows fulfilled,
Kind pious hands did to the virgin build
A lonely spital, the belated swain
From the night terrors of that waste to shield:
But there no human being could remain,
Meanwhile discourse ensued of various kind,
Which by degrees a confidence of mind
And mutual interest failed not to create,
And, to a natural sympathy resigned,
In that forsaken building where they sate
The woman thus retraced her own untoward fate.
And now the walls are named the "Dead House" of the To lisp, he made me kneel beside my bed,
When hearing a deep sigh, that seemed to come
From one who mourned in sleep, he raised his head,
And saw a woman in the naked room
Outstretched, and turning on a restless bed:
The moon a wan dead light around her shed.
He waked her spake in tone that would not fail,
He hoped, to calm her mind; but ill he sped,
For of that ruin she had heard a tale
The staff I well remember which upbore
The bending body of my active sire;
His seat beneath the honied sycamore
Where the bees hummed, and chair by winter fire;
Which now with freezing thoughts did all her powers When market-morning came, the neat attire
Had heard of one who, forced from storms to shroud,
Felt the loose walls of this decayed retreat
Rock to incessant neighings shrill and loud,
While his horse pawed the floor with furious heat;
Till on a stone, that sparkled to his feet,
Struck, and still struck again, the troubled horse:
The man half raised the stone with pain and sweat,
Half raised, for well his arm might lose its force
Disclosing the grim head of a late murdered corse.
Such tale of this lone mansion she had learned,
And, when that shape, with eyes in sleep half drowned,
By the moon's sullen lamp she first discerned,
Cold stony horror all her senses bound.
With which, though bent on haste, myself I decked;
Our watchful house-dog, that would tease and tire
The stranger till its barking fit I checked;
The red-breast, known for years, which at my casement
pecked.
The suns of twenty summers danced along,—
Too little marked how fast they rolled away:
But, through severe mischance and cruel wrong,
My father's substance fell into decay:
We toiled and struggled, hoping for a day
When fortune might put on a kinder look;
But vain were wishes, efforts vain as they;
He from his old hereditary nook
Must part; the summons came; -our final leave we
as a hard change; an evil time was come; We tad no hope, and no relief could gain: E sun, with proud parade, the noisy drum
a: round to clear the streets of want and pain.
band's arms now only served to strain
My
Me and hus children hungering in his view;
La dismay my prayers and tears were vain:
To pa those miserable men he flew,
And now to the sea-coast, with numbers more, we drew.
XXXII.
The were we long neglected, and we bore
Xch row ere the fleet its anchor weighed;
Gen Bells before us, and our native shore,
We sreathed a pestilential air, that made
They looked, and saw a lengthening road, and wain
That rang down a bare slope not far remote:
The barrows glistered bright with drops of rain,
Whistled the wagoner with merry note,
The cock far off sounded his clarion throat;
But town, or farm, or hamlet, none they viewed,
Only were told there stood a lonely cot
A long mile thence. While thither they pursued
Their way, the Woman thus her mournful tale renewed
Some mighty gulf of separation past,
I seemed transported to another world;
A thought resigned with pain, when from the mast
The impatient mariner the sail unfurled,
And, whistling, called the wind that hardly curled
The silent sea. From the sweet thoughts of home
And from all hope I was for ever hurled.
For me-farthest from earthly port to roam
Rough potters seemed they, trading soberly With panniered asses driven from door to door;
Was best, could I but shun the spot where man might But life of happier sort set forth to me,
And other joys my fancy to allure
The bag-pipe dinning on the midnight moor
In barn uplighted; and companions boon,
Well met from far with revelry secure
Among the forest glades, while jocund June
Rolled fast along the sky his warm and genial moon.
The friends whom she had left but a few minutes past. Now he had fled, and whither none could say,
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