I lived; a living pulse then beat

Beneath my heart, that awakened me.
What was this pulse so warm and free?
Alas! I knew it could not be

My own dull blood. 'Twas like a thought
· Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
Under my bosom and in my brain,

And crept with the blood through every vein;
And hour by hour, day after day,
The wonder could not charm away,
But laid in sleep my wakeful pain,—
Until I knew it was a child,

And then I wept. For long long years
These frozen eyes had shed no tears :
But now 'Twas the season fair and mild
When April has wept itself to May:

I

I sate through the sweet sunny day
By my window bowered round with leaves,
And down my cheeks the quick tears fell 1
Like twinkling raindrops from the eaves
When warm Spring-showers are passing o'er.
O Helen, none can ever tell
The joy it was to weep once more!

I wept to think how hard it were

To kill my babe, and take from it
The sense of light, and the warm air,
And my own fond and tender care,

And love, and smiles; ere I knew yet
That these for it might, as for me,
Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet
To feed it from my faded breast,
Or mark my own heart's restless beat
Rock it to its untroubled rest;
And watch the growing soul beneath
Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,

Half interrupted by calm sighs;

And search the depth of its fair eyes

For long-departed memories.

And so I lived till that sweet load

Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed

The stream of years, and on it bore
Two shapes of gladness to my sight;
Two other babes, delightful more,

In my lost soul's abandoned night,
Than their own country-ships may be
Sailing towards wrecked mariners
Who cling to the rocks of a wintry sea.

For each, as it came, brought soothing tears; And a loosening warmth, as each one lay Sucking the sullen milk away,

About my frozen heart did play,

And weaned it, oh how painfully!

(As they themselves were weaned each one From that sweet food)—even from the thirst Of death and nothingness and rest,

Strange inmate of a living breast; Which all that I had undergone

Of grief and shame, since she who first
The gates of that dark refuge closed
Came to my sight, and almost burst
The seal of that Lethean spring.
But these fair shadows interposed :
For all delights are shadows now!
And from my brain to my dull brow
The heavy tears gather and flow :
I cannot speak-Oh let me weep!

The tears which fell from her wan eyes
Glimmered among the moonlight dew :
Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs

Their echoes in the darkness threw.
When she grew calm, she thus did keep
The tenor of her tale :-

"He died,

I know not how. He was not old,
If age be numbered by its years:
But he was bowed and bent with fears,
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;
And his strait lip and bloated cheek

Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers ;
And selfish cares with barren plough,

Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed
Upon the withering life within,
Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
Whether his ill were death or sin
None knew, until he died indeed,
And then men owned they were the same.

"Seven days within my chamber lay That corse, and my babes made holiday. At last, I told them what is death. The eldest, with a kind of shame,

Came to my knees with silent breath,

And sate awe-stricken at my feet;
And soon the others left their play,
And sate there too. It is unmeet
To shed on the brief flower of youth

The withering knowledge of the grave.
From me remorse then wrung that truth:
I could not bear the joy which gave
Too just a response to mine own.
In vain,—I dared not feign a groan ;
And in their artless looks I saw,
Between the mists of fear and awe,
That my own thought was theirs; and they
Expressed it not in words, but said
Each in its heart how every day
Will pass in happy work and play,
Now he is dead and gone away.

"After the funeral all our kin

Assembled, and the will was read. My friend, I tell thee, even the dead Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, To blast and torture. Those who live Still fear the living; but a corse Is merciless, and Power doth give To such pale tyrants half the spoil He rends from those who groan and toil, Because they blush not with remorse Among their crawling worms. Behold, I have no child! My tale grows old

With grief, and staggers: let it reach
The limits of my feeble speech,

And languidly at length recline

On the brink of its own grave and mine.

"Thou know'st what a thing is poverty
Among the fallen on evil days.
'Tis crime, and fear, and infamy,

And houseless want in frozen ways
Wandering ungarmented, and pain,
And, worse than all, that inward stain,
Foul self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears
First like hot gall, then dry for ever.
And well thou know'st a mother never
Could doom her children to this ill,—
And well he knew the same. The will
Imported that, if e'er again

I sought my children to behold, Or in my birthplace did remain

Beyond three days, whose hours were told, They should inherit nought. And he To whom next came their patrimony-A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold

Aye watched me, as the will was read,
With eyes askance, which sought to see
The secrets of my agony ;

And, with close lips and anxious brow,
Stood canvassing still to and fro
The chance of my resolve, and all
The dead man's caution just did call ;

For in that killing lie 'twas said-
'She is adulterous, and doth hold
In secret that the christian creed
Is false, and therefore is much need
That I should have a care to save

My children from eternal fire.'
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,
And therefore dared to be a liar!
In truth, the Indian on the pyre
Of her dead husband, half-consumed,
As well might there be false as I

To those abhorred embraces doomed,
Far worse than fire's brief agony.
As to the christian creed, if true
Or false, I never questioned it :
I took it as the vulgar do :

Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet
To doubt the things men say, or deem
That they are other than they seem.

"All present who those crimes did hear,
In feigned or actual scorn and fear-
Men, women, children-slunk away,
Whispering with self-contented pride

Which half suspects its own base lie.
I spoke to none, nor did abide,
But silently I went my way;

Nor noticed I where joyously

Sate my two younger babes at play,
In the courtyard through which I passed;
But went with footsteps firm and fast,
Till I came to the brink of the ocean green.
And there a woman with grey hairs,
Who had my mother's servant been,
Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
Made me accept a purse of gold-
Half of the earnings she had kept
To refuge her when weak and old.

"With woe which never sleeps or slept,
I wander now.-'Tis a vain thought:
But on yon Alp whose snowy head
Mid the azure air is islanded

(We see it-o'er the flood of cloud

Which sunrise from its eastern caves
Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,

Hung with its precipices proud—

From that grey stone where first we met)— There (now who knows the dead feel nought?)— Should be my grave; for he who yet

Is my soul's soul once said: "Twere sweet
Mid stars and lightnings to abide,

And winds, and lulling snows that beat

With their soft flakes the mountain wide,