And there was one those haunts who loved,
Who comes this night old scenes to see;
Who had her early playmate been,
But whom for years she had not seen,
The son of Amy Lee:

Of Boswell Kemp's despair, the son:
That orphan-boy, misfortune's heir;
Whom, for their servant Amy's sake,
The vicar and his wife did take,

Their Ellen's sports to share.

Twelve years beneath the vicar's roof
The smooth stream of his life had run ;
He there a sister found, and mother,
And unto all who knew no other,

Had seemed the vicar's son.

He had his father's raven hair,

His father's dark and piercing eyes,
Bold front, and sinews firmly knit,
Which early marked him out as fit
For hardy enterprise.

To run, to wrestle, or to leap,

To climb the forest's topmost tree;
To dart along the stream, to dive,
Or with the torrent's might to strive,
Brave equal, none had he.

And soon he felt his father's blood

On, through his veins, more strongly flow: Desires intense had he to roam,

Like birds which seek a foreign home,
Unknowing why they go.

The school became a weary place:

The vicar's kindness was a pain :
He read of Bamfylde Moore Carew,
Till nothing for his heart would do
But gipsies, and the lane.

"Be mine, my father's life," he cried,
"Although I suffer pains severe,
There is a something in my breast
That wars with this inglorious rest,
I cannot linger here.”

"And who can tell what I may be?"
That feeling was ambition's spring:

In fancy forward far he ran,

He was a youth, he was a man,

He was the Gipsy King.

He fled and wandered through the land; And worked or starved as chance befell:

He saw the various lives of men,

And often in the beggar's den

It was his lot to dwell.

His was an undirected mind

He ever undetermined stood:
Unskilled the fitting to discern:
Too quick to rest, submit, or learn:
And ready was at any turn,
For evil or for good.

But want and travel sharpen wit;

And by degrees he grew in knowledge;
And, as he was a lad of parts,

He soon the master was of arts

Taught in the wide world's college.

He 'camped with gipsies in the wolds;
And gazed in tall young gipsies' eyes:
And with much guile and little truth,
He had the ready tricks of youth
To stir their tears and sighs.

Early a father he became

But left his children in the land:
He soon forsakes who soon deceives-
He left them as the ostrich leaves
Her eggs amongst the sand.

Although by nature taught, he shunned
The dull disquietude of towns:
Where in the foxglove hummed the bee,
With wildest things he wandered free
Across the waving downs.

Not that he ever paused to look

Intently on a summer flower.-
Not that to him a soul was dealt
That of the soul of nature felt

The presence and the power:

He would be free-like the wild steed
That tramples on the desert wind:
On mountains, and beside the floods;
On heaths, and in the lanes and woods,
His soul was unconfined.

From year to year, from strength to strength-
Firm as a tower his manhood grew :

His energies of soul untamed,

Alike in mind and person framed

To suffer or subdue.

It is the spirit of the times

That breathes the soul into the man ;
That builds him up or overwhelms ;
Thus what Napoleon was in realms,
Was he in his own clan.

And now the crew with whom he went

Were 'camped beside the river Grete ;

And he, unknown unto that crew,
In the clear moonlight night withdrew
To Emsley's calm retreat.

June 1836.-VOL. XVI.-NO. LXII.

M

Sought he direct the vicar's door?

Thither he went not-through the grounds
By sinuous ways he closely crept;
And thence, like Satan, lightly leapt
The garden's sacred bounds.

Back looking through his heart he saw
The wild career that he had run:
He knew the vicar's noble heart-
And felt it was his proper part

The vicar's face to shun.

He went to where beneath the shade

There fell, but with no fall profound,
A sheet of water broad and white,
That made amid the quiet night

An ever-murmuring sound.
The grounds, the walks, the waterfall,
Distinctly in the moonlight seen,
So forcibly brought back the hours
That he had spent within those bowers,
So showed what he had been ;

That no fallen spirit from the skies,
Repentant, sad, yet unforgiven,
When turned the bowers of bliss to see,
Felt more than felt young Harry Lee,
When in his boyhood's heaven.
And when he started from that dream,
It was to meet a piercing look:
To feel himself more keenly foiled,
More back into himself recoiled,

For there stood Ellen Brooke.

But soon another mood assuming,
Ashamed to feel what he had felt,
And in the sight of one so fair,
He took the free complacent air
Of one unused to melt.

He smiled-but met no answering smile-
And then as promptly questioned he-
"You look as though you knew me not,
It may be that you have forgot

Your playmate, Harry Lee?"

Then of his life he told the story,

Far ranging past the bounds of truth;
Of wrongs and griefs that he had borne,
Since cast was on the world forlorn
His inexperienced youth.

She chid him for his wandering life,
For disobedience to her sire;
And then, as moved by his distress,
In words, the soul of tenderness,

She bade him thence retire.

He went but duly when the moon

Looked down on that delightful place,

He left the camp, the gipsies all,

And to the walks and waterfall

His steps did he retrace.

And still she chid him for his coming;
Still blended pity with her blame :
All unsuspicious as the dove,
Unknowing by such arts how love
Most fans his conquering flame.
None yet had praised fair Ellen Brooke,
None fondly gazed upon her face;
As yet Love had not found her out;
From prying eyes well fenced about,
In that secluded place.

Alone she read, alone she thought,
Alone, or by her father's side:
Maiden companion had she none;
And half her life seemed from her gone,
The day her mother died.

And now she loathes the light of day,

And more than ever loves the night: And many an anxious glance she turns, To where her father's taper burns,

As though she feared its light. For very wondrous is the tale

The gipsy tells of his free life;
Of revels in the woodland tent;
That even now does she consent
To be the gipsy's wife.

He thinks not there is in the deed
Ingratitude as black as hell:

What for past goodness should he care?
He only thinks the maid is fair,
And has a noble step and air,

And that he loves her well.

Awake, awake! good Vicar Brooke!

That theme may be a glorious theme:
Peruse the glowing page no more,
For grief is knocking at thy door,
To chase away the dream.

The presence bright, the steady light,

Thy wife, thy morning star, has set:
And soon the star that cheers the eve,
Is doomed thy aged sight to leave,
Though sadly lingering yet.

A day of stealth, a day of tears,

A day of watching and of dread, Was that on which the bands were tied, When Ellen Brooke, a thoughtful bride, Was to the woodlands led.

And when she reached the gipsies' camp,Fain would I here conclude the story,Such scenes uncouth distressed her sight; The death of love's created light,

The dimming of its glory.

The radiant arch, the heavenly bow,

With which she had the life invested,

And tribe with whom she link'd her lot,
Utterly vanished when the spot

She reached, whereon it rested.

She saw what love should never see;

What truth and honour grieved behold;
Regards upon the worthless squandered;
A faith that should be fixed that wandered;
A heart beloved, grow cold.

And thence was her's a troubled mind;
A breaking heart, a soul of fears;
And thence, in many a place apart,
She sought to ease her burthened heart
With unrelieving tears.

She fled-in utter woe she fled :

And but one living wish had she:
With wandering and with sorrow worn,
Cast down, despairing, faint, forlorn,
One wish-her home to see.

She reached it-stood beneath the shade,
Where fell, but with no fall profound,
That sheet of water, broad and white,
Which made, amid the quiet night,
An ever-murmuring sound.

She stood, and there unto her heart

A sense of all the past was given; And to her anguished soul it seemed Ages of sorrow had she dreamed

Since she forsook that heaven.

She felt her pulse more strongly beat,

Her blood rush on, then cease to flow, And the world vanished from her sight, And down she sank amid the night, As falls a wreath of snow.

There lay she in the moonlight calm,

Like some fair statue overthrown;
Grief, that has silent stood for years,
Imaged too sorrowful for tears,
Unweeping in the stone.

Could she have wept, she had not died.
Unto her heart the purple flood,
Too powerful for her wasted frame,
In one o'erwhelming torrent came,
And there for ever stood.

Send back no thoughts into her youth:
Behold her not as there she played;
When to her own sweet songs she danced,
Or like the butterfly she glanced

Out in the sun and shade.

Behold her not in after years,

Attended by her own fair light,

Like morning walking through the skies,
As with the glory of her eyes

She would dispel the night.

For vain it were to cherish grief

By dwelling on a mournful theme; The dews are dried, the leaves are shed, The fragrance and the bloom are dead, And all is but a dream.