When to the distant land the youth was sped, A lonely life the moody maiden led.
Still would she trace each dear, each well-known walk,
Still by the moonlight to her love would talk,
And fancy, as she paced among the trees,
She heard his whispers in the dying breeze.
Thus two years glided on in silent grief;
The third her bosom own'd the kind relief:
Absence had cool'd her love-the impoverish'd flame
Was dwindling fast, when lo! the tempter came ;
He offer'd wealth, and all the joys of life,
And the weak maid became another's wife!
Six guilty months had mark'd the false one's crime, When Bateman hail'd once more his native clime, Sure of her constancy, elate he came,
The lovely partner of his soul to claim,
Light was his heart, as up the well-known way
He bent his steps-and all his thoughts were gay.
Oh! who can paint his agonizing throes,
When on his ear the fatal news arose !
Chill'd with amazement, senseless with the blow,
He stood a marble monument of woe;
Till call'd to all the horrors of despair,
He smote his brow, and tore his horrent hair;
Then rush'd impetuous from the dreadful spot,
And sought those scenes (by memory ne'er forgot,)
Those scenes, the witness of their growing flame,
And now like witnesses of Margaret's shame.
'Twas night-he sought the river's lonely shore,
And trac'd again their former wanderings o'er.
Now on the bank in silent grief he stood,
And gazed intently on the stealing flood,
Death in his mien and madness in his eye,
He watch'd the waters as they murmur'd by ;
Bade the base murdress triumph o'er his grave
Prepar'd to plunge into the whelming wave.
Yet still he stood irresolutely bent,
Religion sternly stay'd his rash intent.
He knelt. Cool play'd upon his cheek the wind,
And fann'd the fever of his maddening mind.
The willows waved, the stream it sweetly swept,
The paly moonbeam on its surface slept,
And all was peace ;-he felt the general calm
O'er his rack'd bosom shed a genial balm :
When casting far behind his streaming eye,
He saw the Grove,-in fancy saw her lie,
His Margaret, lull'd in Germain's* arms to rest
And all the demon rose within his breast.
Convulsive now, he clench'd his trembling hand,
Cast his dark eye once more upon the land,
Then at one spring he spurn'd the yielding bank,
And in the calm deceitful current sank.
Sad on the solitude of night, the sound,
As in the stream he plung'd, was heard around:
Then all was still-the wave was rough no more,
The river swept as sweetly as before;
The willows waved, the moonbeams shone serene,
And peace returning brooded o'er the scene.
Now, see upon the perjured fair one hang
Remorse's glooms nd never-ceasing pang.
Full well she knew, repentant now too late,
She soon must bow beneath the stroke of fate.
But, for the babe she bore beneath her breast,
The offended God prolong'd her life unbless'd.
But fast the fleeting moments roll'd away,
And near, and nearer drew the dreaded day;
That day, foredoom'd to give her child the light,
And hurl its mother to the shades of night.
The hour arrived, and from the wretched wife
The guiltless baby struggled into life.
As night drew on, around her bed, a band
Of friends and kindred kindly took their stand;
In holy prayer they pass'd the creeping time,
Intent to expiate her awful crime.
Their prayers were fruitless. As the midnight came
A heavy sleep oppress'd each weary frame.
In vain they strove against the o'erwhelming load,
Some power unseen their drowsy lids bestrode.
Germain is the traditionary name of her husband.
They slept, till in the blushing eastern sky
The blooming morning oped her devy eye;
Then wakening wide they sought the ravish'd bed,
But lo! the hapless Margaret was fled;
And never more the weeping train were doom'd
To view the false one, in the deeps intomb'd.
The neighbouring rustics told that in the night
They heard such screams as froze them with affright;
And many an infant, at its mother's breast,
Started dismay'd, from its unthinking rest.
And even now, upon the heath forlorn,
They shew the path down which the fair was borne,
By the fell demons, to the yawning wave,
Her own, and murder'd lover's, mutual grave.
Such is the tale, so sad, to memory dear,
Which oft in youth has charm'd my listening ear,
That tale, which bade me find redoubled sweets
In the drear silence of these dark retreats,
And even now, with melancholy power,
Adds a new pleasure to the lonely hour.
'Mid all the charms by magic Nature given
To this wild spot, this sublunary heaven,
With double joy enthusiast Fancy leans
On the attendant legend of the scenes.
This sheds a fairy lustre on the floods,
And breathes a mellower gloom upon the woods;
This, as the distant cataract swells around,
Gives a romantic cadence to the sound;
This, and the deepening glen, the alley green,
The silver stream, with sedgy tufts between,
The massy rock, the wood-encompass'd leas,
The broom-clad islands, and the nodding trees,
The lengthening vista, and the present gloom,
The verdant pathway breathing waste perfume,
These are thy charms, the joys which these impart
Bind thee, bless'd Clifton ! close around my heart.
Dear native Grove! where'er my devious track,
To thee will Memory lead the wanderer back.
Whether in Arno's polish'd vales I stray,
Or where 'Oswego's swamps' obstruct the day;
Or wander lone, where, wildering and wide,
The tumbling torrent laves St. Gothard's side;"
Or by old Tejo's classic margent muse,
Or stand entranced with Pyrenean views;
Still, still to thee, where'er my footsteps roam,
My heart shall point, and lead the wanderer home.
When Splendour offers, and when Fame incites,
I'll pause, and think of all thy dear delights,
Reject the boon, and, wearied with the change,
Renounce the wish which first induced to range;
Turn to these scenes, thesc well-known scenes once
more,
Trace once again old Trent's romantic shore,
And, tired with worlds, and all their busy ways,
Here waste the little remnant of my days.
But if the Fates should this last wish deny,
And doom me on some foreign shore to die;
Oh! should it please the world's supernal King,
That weltering waves my funeral dirge shall sing;
Or that my corpse should, on some desert strand,
Lie stretch'd beneath the Simöom's blasting hand;
Still, though unwept I find a stranger tomb,
My sprite shall wander through this favourite gloom,
Ride on the wind that sweeps the leafless grove,
Sigh on the wood-blast of the dark alcove,
Sit, a lorn spectre on yon well-known grave,
And mix its moanings with the desert wave.
THE night it was still, and the moon it shone
And the waves at the foot of the rifted rock
They murmur'd pleasantly
When Gondoline roam'd along the shore,
A maiden full fair to the sight;
Though love had made bleak the rose on her cheek,
And turn'd it to deadly white.
Her thoughts they were drear, and the silent tear
It fill'd her faint blue eye,
As oft she heard, in Fancy's ear,
Her Bertrand's dying sigh.
Her Bertrand was the bravest youth
Of all our good King's men,
And he was gone to the Holy Land
To fight the Saracen.
And many a month had pass'd away,
And many a rolling year,
But nothing the maid from Palestine
Could of her lover hear.
Full oft she vainly tried to pierce
The ocean's misty face;
Full oft she thought her lover's bark
She on the wave could trace.
And every night she placed a light
In the high rock's lonely tower,
To guide her lover to the land,
Should the murky tempest lower.
But now despair had seized her breast,
And sunken in her eye;
'Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live,
And I in peace will die.'
She wander'd o'er the lonely shore,
The Curlew scream'd above,
She heard the scream with a sickening heart,
Much boding of her love.
Yet still she kept her lonely way,
And this was all her cry,
'Oh! tell me but if Bertrand live
And I in peace shall die.'
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