Maniac, The

THERE are two graves, and they are far apart, 
But I have scattered flowers on both to-day: 
Children were weeping over one, a fair 
Young girl's, whom they had dearly loved: and one 
Was a poor Maniac's, newly filled, and smoothed 
With soft green turf, where he might calmly sleep, 
After his horrid life-dream.

                                                   Once long since
I saw him wandering lone, as he was wont, 
With head uncovered, and his straggling locks 
Blazing into the air. Deep trenches ploughed 
By wild thought, tracked his cheek, and in each line 
Sat an insatiate demon of despair. 
His dark dilated eyes glared wildly out 
On vacancy, as if their orbs had caught
A sudden glimpse of the Eternal Horrors
That crowd the infinite Dark, and could not turn
From that dread vision. Fearfully his clenched
And bony hand smote down the viewless forms,
That gave the air he breathed a hue of hell;
While ever and anon he spurned the earth,
And muttered "Dead! dead! dead !" and then, oft-times,
His maniac laugh rang dismally from out
The hollow chambers of his desolate heart,
The knell of past affections, joys and hopes.
He shunned the dwellings and the paths of men,
And trod the loneliest woods, what time the owl
With boding cry, like wasted manhood's sob,
Made the night-echoes tremulous with fear :
Chiefly he sought the low swamp's trackless waste,
Where the white fog hung heaviest, and the shade
Of the thick cedar, and the solemn pine,
Shed grateful horrors o'er his starless Soul.
The night-birds flapped their pinions by his cheek,
And the hoarse frog croaked out his clamorous note
As he went by, and the shrill { katydids '
Shrieked their sharp contest in his heedless ears :
But when he pealed his wild and maniac laugh,
Till the deep bosom of the old woods shook
All else grew voiceless, and, with quicker beat,
Dark vans to eddies smote the sleeping fog :
Even the fire-flies smothered up their lamps,
That, like the flash of multitudinous swords 
In some far war-field, gave incessant gleams; 
While the dim line of congregated hills 
Sent back their answer. The benighted swain 
Caught quick, and held in long suspense, his breath, 
As sudden memories of old legends came, 
Taught on his nurse's knee, of the Black Fox — 
Scotland's dread devil — and his marvellous deeds. 
His eye would glance with quick and anxious look, 
At the live shadows of the moving boughs 
Beside him, as, with longer strides, he sped 
To the far star-beam of his cottage light.

0 who, that marked the wretched madman then, 
Lonely in heart and haunts, had seen in his, 
The manly features of young Donaldane, 
Whose heart was once affection's quiet nest; 
His soul the mother of high thoughts and pure, 
Fit for an Angel's love, save that a pride 
Too tender for a breast whose every pore 
Was instinct with quick life, within him dwelt!

He was a child of Passion and of Thought; 
Thought plumed to soar in heaven, not armed to delve; 
To win by flight the goal, which others seek 
By weary plodding; Passion warm with Love 
That knows no hiding, earnest, open, deep. 
Though he read not the spirit-life of things
In their eternal meaning — their God's- word, —
Nature was something more to him than what
The visible pictured to the visual orb :
Brooks were not simple brooks, but liquid thoughts.
Uttered in ripples on the pebbled shore,
Which filled his soul with their soft melody;
And sisterly sweet flowers, with honey lips,
Were dear companions, whispering blessed things,
Fraught with the kind humanities of love :
The blue lake seen by starlight, with its soft
Daguerreotype of heaven, the moss-clad rocks,
With time-wrought records of the buried Past;
Valley and hill, green trees and waving fields,
Were beings which had life; and each by turns,
In its own language, prophesied to him:
And oft, to cheat the sad hour of its grief,
He chanted their mute oracles in song.
The love he gave dumb natures was not lost;
For, though they made his soul no answering vow,
Yet they in him begot new kindnesses,
And nourished old affections; lent his heart
Sublime ideals of a purer life,
And a more high communion. Things which men
Pass thoughtless, or behold with icy heart,
He met with such kind heed that, day by day,
He grew into a very brotherhood
With them, and they at length, were as a part
Of his own being. With how much higher flight 
Man's soaring soul o'ertops insentient things, 
With so much nobler love and fellowship 
Would he have wedded his warm heart to man. 
But iron CUSTOM bound its withering chain 
Upon his bosom, and drove back the pulse 
Of its deep, earnest life: CONVENTION laid 
Her rigid finger on the burning lips 
Of his great soul, to dam the upgushing thought; 
And all his young affections run to waste, 
Too freely lavished on ideal things.

Early repulsed with cold neglect, or stung
With colder pity, he became acquaint
With bitterness, and armed himself with Pride,
That bosom-traitor to the wounded heart,
To guard his bleeding hope ; and, in such mood,
Even kindly Nature lost her power to heal.
Her soothings, like a mother's fond caress
Of an o'erfretful child, would oft provoke
A deeper restlessness, and plant new pangs
Into the growing sorrow of his soul.
When from a human shrine the priceless pearl
Of his rich love was blindly cast aside,
As nothing worth, he would go forth to lay
The slighted offering at Nature's feet,
And turn to weep ; for even in her courts
Where breathed his holiest worship, the same heart
From which he fled ruled there; for, as he passed,
The very birds, whose untaught melody
He loved so well, would shun him and grow mute,
And the fleet rabbit bound in fear away.
It grieved him sorely that perfidious man
Had taught them terror, who were born for joy.
With yearnings vain, and soft and tender words,
With gifts hung on the rocks and forest boughs.
He strove to banish from their timid breasts
The fear, which barred them from his willing love :
But they had learned to shun the insidious foe.
Whose cruel snares and cunningly laid baits
Beset them, hedging every woodland path.
And whose fell engines, with perfidious aim,
Showered death and wounds among their startled tribes;
Too well they knew the upright form of man 
Swathed a Soul fallen from its first estate, 
For when, ere taught to shun him, they had brought 
The humble offerings of their little hearts, 
With the dumb utterance of a wordless love, 
In song or gambol, — bondage, or the knife 
Of sateless gluttony, repaid their boon: 
So oft betrayed, perchance, a wiser heart 
Than bird's or beast's might know not whom to trust.
The mournful thoughts by such repulses wak'd
Grew dark, and deepened into faithlessness
In man's heart, and the great Heart of the world.
He saw unlove, distrust, and naked hate,
And the long visage of hypocrisy;
Saw man a traitor to his fellow man,
A tyrant there, and here a cringing slave:
Heard the loud shout of myriad-handed Wrong,
Drowning the death-cry of his bleeding prey;
And starving millions cursing the great heavens
That rained not bread into their shrivelled maws;
While the fat locustry of Priest and Lord
Rolled by, in pride of fratricidal pomp.
A thousand noble hearts had swelled and snapt,
Finding no answer to their cry for love:
A thousand famished hearts gnawed on themselves,
Hearts, like his own, too weak to stand erect
In calm self-trusting, and too proud to beg.
Over all Nature universal war
Made ravage, and the might of Terror reigned ;
Bird preyed on bird, brute brute, and man on all.
To him the eternal Asking came, as come
It must to every earnest soul, "Why thus
Runs Anarch Misrule its perpetual round,
If Order fills the throne; why Discord howl,
If the Great Law be jarless Harmony?"
Alas! in him that dread eternal WHY
Unanswered rang, and he became its prey.
For every lost beam of his fading trust,
The whole world seemed more false and meaningless.
By turns he fought and fled the growing doubt,
But like a fiend it haunted all his steps,
Blotting the glory from the universe,
Till o'er his soul the native joy of things
Could pour no light through Evil's full eclipse.

He heard the shrill-blown clarion of Reform
Summon stout hearts to battle on the wrong;
And a half-hope sprang gladdening his faint Soul,
As rank on rank the sacramental host
Of God's Elect, poured their linked files upon
The armies of the Alien. Forth with them
He marched, to windings of their Spartan flute,
Filled with the visions of heroic deeds,
Though not of hope, yet born of pure desire.
If Virtue yet survive the wrecks of Time,
If Truth and Love be no grand mockery,
Nor the great world a bubbling vat of Hell,
Haply some glimmer of its better soul
Will greet him there, and there even yet may be
Some heart of all those Chosen, who might fill
The infinite thirst and hunger of his own.
Small need he saw, where first he scanned the field
Of his last hope, for alien armies there;
That host itself went surging in the whirls
Of civil conflict, with more mad turmoil
Than shook the heavens, when wildest rout disranked
The innumerous foe. Not his the clear-eyed soul
To pierce that loud contending whirlpool down
To the calm center of a swerveless aim, —
The potent God's-will, blending in one tide
Of boundless good, its torn and warring waves; —
The storm was there, but where was the blue sky?

The grim Doubt grew into a very fiend,
And laughing, leapt upon his cheated heart,
Coiled its bat-wings arid clung there, black as hell,
And heavy as a nightmare. What could he?
Poor Donaldane, a brother brotherless,
With an Ideal too divine for earth;
Nigh stripped of faith in all he would have loved!

Yet there was One amid that dinning moil, 
Whose deep, calm eye, with glances of clear hope 
And love-sad pity, smote the shrivelled fiend 
Who clutched his heart so fiercely. In her face 
Was quiet beauty, and a soul of Good; 
Her voice was music, and a holy light 
Of faithful thought shone in her words sincere, — 
Light, driving back the strong Doubt from his breast,
If yet it might not open into bloom
The trodden rose-buds of a perfect Trust.

Lillian (fit name for one whose smallest deeds
Made her life musical,) henceforth became
The one sweet tone, in all that stormy war,
To the sick soul of Donaldane; in him
She stirred new pulses of new joy, unfelt
Till then, and, with a touch that she knew not,
Struck from the silence of his jangled heart
Divinest melody, in the silver chimes
Of generous thoughts, and the sweet will, that born
Of pure affection, showers its kindnesses
On all; for that soft tone of world-wide love,
And the rich music of her gentle voice,
Laden with earnest goodness, went with him —
The joy melodious of his silent way;

Out of his soul she might not lightly pass,
For she had come — as comes the welcome beam
Of morning to the dreamer, when wild shapes
Have marred some olden Beauty — with a light
Rekindling the fair forms of primal love,
Ideals perished in the long ago.
Amid the tumult of the turbulent crowd,
When the whole heart recoiled with aching grief
At what he saw, her spirit brought again
Those buried visions of diviner things,
And holier Being, that had peopled oft
 His boyhood's solitude, ere yet he knew 
That there were smiles of guilt and treachery.

Her voice was as the song of summer birds 
In the storm's roaring, her serene glance lit 
The smothered torch of his white love again, 
Not now to waste with buried fire his heart, 
But a pure flame above the hallowed shrine 
Of this, his new Divinity. A glance, 
A word, brought back with one electric flash 
Into the Man, the buried glory-beams 
That lit the Boy.

                            To him whose secret soul 
Hath never dreamed of those diviner forms 
Which people the bright realms of Thought, or sighed 
For the pure incarnation of his dream, 
Love hath no language to reveal her deep 
Mysterious presence, or the workings of 
Her prevalent spirit; but to one like him — 
Whose heart from childhood bore an aimless fire, 
While on the clear deeps of his gentle soul, 
In hours of calm, were mirrored the serene 
And lovely forms, that hover over us, 
Informing us with beauty — there but needs 
One glance, when eye to eye lends fire, to bear 
Her holiest revelation.

                                                   He beheld,
In her soft eye, and fair heart-speaking face.
Some gleams of the enshrined beatitudes,
Whose light once made his path a galaxy:
And now, for that he feared his own scarred heart,
Even as one of those Impalpable
She moved before him, and became to him
A holy vision, a sweet, waking dream,
Which, if he did but utter one poor word,
Would fade away for ever. Sanctity
Serene encircled her, through whose light wreaths
He would not pierce, with earthly speech like his ;
And though his heart was full of whitest love,
He gave his tongue no counsel, but did choose
Rather to worship in dumb reverence,
Than mar the shrine by rudely grasping it.
What if she were not all that he believed;
What if the mist-like halo of divine
And placid spirit-beauty, "were but cast
From his own deep unconscious Soul1? it fell
On a pure mirror, dimmed by no foul breath,
Or he had never seen it; was it fit
That he should pluck the sweet delusion off,
If it were thus, since in that fair reflex
His whole heart opened flower-like, day by day?
Nay, if the beam were his, 'twas only thus
It could be Life and Beauty to his soul.
But she was holy, and the atmosphere
Was tinged with heavenly radiance from within,
Making surrounding earth-clouds beautiful.
The commonest things put on a hue of heaven,
In her divine heart's presence, and the rude
Brown earth bloomed sweetly, under the warm light
Of her pure sun-like spirit. Round her path
Wood, rock, and stream, reflected loveliness,
As when the morning kisses the green earth.
Even the brown mill, wherein her busy hand
Waged war on- Chaos, Hunger, and grim Want,
(For she had been no pampered child of wealth,
But struck with toil the iron chords of life,)
Did rather seem a temple with meet songs
And orisons, than the hard prison it was ;
For a true heart had sent a living pulse
Through its steel nerves; a pure and holy Soul
Wrought worship in its blind Activities.

Donald forgot his darkness in her light,
His Winter smiled, and blossomed, in her Spring;
So deep a melody her silent heart
Infused into his spirit and his life,
All things grew musical; the jangling notes
Of outward Discord, could not reach his ear,
It was so filled with inborn harmony.
He sought not if the world was dark beyond
His orb of light, or if his own must wane; 
Whether the weltering chaos girdled in 
A hand-breadth round him, or a universe; 
In the loud Maelstrom of the boiling world 
His ear had caught the softest under-tone 
Of Love and Life, that held him so entranced, 
All the mad whirlpool thundered on unheard.

Even as the unconscious wind, whose breathing wakes
Eolian murmurs from its trembling harp,
She moved, the soul of melody in him;
And never knew the wealth of life she gave.
He told her not; she could not need his love,
And he was blest too deeply to profane,
With beggar' d words, his great and silent awe.

Yet he inscribed it on the hueless air
Of the lone wood, by leaf, and vine, and flower,
Even with the eye that read the tale in these,
For all were eloquent of silent Love:
And he revealed it to the midnight stars,
The rude old Constellations melted back,
As ere primeval wonders found in them
Lion and Centaur, and the myriad shapes
Of antique Poesy — and to him henceforth,
In thousand-fold bright figures, they did spell
LIFE, LOVE, and the sweet name of LILLIAN:
And on the green earth, travel-sore his feet 
Left records of the love he would not speak: 
For long lone hours he tracked the flying sun, 
Towards its home and hers, that he might be 
In her calm presence even for a day, 
To feed the hunger of his silent thought.

Alas! he had not learned that deeper love 
Which is an omnipresence, for it was 
His heart 's first lesson; and how far his glance 
Might have pierced into it, had not the page 
Been torn too sudden from his Book of Life, 
That shivered heart tells but a mournful guess!

One day young Lillian wandered to the hills, 
That girt with green the valley of her home; 
Her pure soul full of beauty and of prayer, 
There; from the din of busy life retired, 
To pierce through Being's garment of unrest 
To the calm beating of its Sabbath Heart. 
Sunset and Autumn filled the sky and earth 
With rival splendors, as if all the Day's 
And the Year's gorgeousness, were harvested 
And garnered in the west. The dying leaves 
Wore the rich blushes of their infant Spring, 
Like childhood's memories in the old man's soul. 
All glories mingled in the exodus
Of Day and Autumn, splendors from the deep
Shot through the trembling curtain, as they passed
Into the mighty Death-realm. Lillian
Sat on a moss-bed soft and delicate,
A very Eden for the fairy folk,
And thence looked forth on meadow, wood, and sky,
In their last hues of green, red, blue, and grey.
With intricate blendings of soft light and shade,
An endless maze of glories, many-dyed,
In wild entanglement, — as if the hand
Of Beauty 's Angel had unrolled her woof,
And flung the coiled mesh down the sky to earth,
In agony of infinite satelessness.
She saw, but this not only; for as one
Looks on his window and sees far beyond,
Her eye beheld that visible, yet pierced
To the full depths of splendor, of whose waves
That was a sun-lit spray-wreath, dashing up
Round the gray rocks of Time. Eternity
Lay under all, these, and the earth, the heavens.
And the great Universe. Yon very sky, —
Where now the Angels sow, with unseen hands
O'er all the bare champaign of gathered Day,
Star-germs whose blooms will be a new Day's-light, —
Shall shed its worlds, like flying leaves, to feed
With their decay another Universe.
All things are transient save the Eternal ONE.

Her clear eye glimpsing down the Infinite
Saw there, with faint half-vision, as in dream.
Glories, and Mysteries, and Beatitudes,
Flitting auroral; Splendors for which earth
Has not a name in all her myriad tongues,
For they were of the Life and Soul of Things;
Bora of the inmost Verity of All;
Seen only by the holy. Marvelled she
How thin a veil had hid their lovely forms,
Wholly transparent to the annointed eye,
A crystal pall before the pure of heart.
Yet pierced by no glance of the sensual.
That veil is woven in the loom of Life,
And every man fills up the delicate warp
Between himself and those bright Verities.
With woof of his own Being, gross or clear.
Close by the heart of the Serene and Pure
Their warm hearts beat, and lend it holy strength;
But to the breast thick bound in earthliness.
No spirit-pulse-beat sends its lifeful thrill.

0 then, saw Lillian whence and why had come 
Those vague ineffable yearnings of the soul 
As for some old "remembered home,” when stirred 
By low-voiced melodies of heart or tongue, 
Heroic Love-Deeds, Beauty, or the hush
Of speechless Adoration. Such things shook
The earth-dust from her -spirit, and half revealed 
Those pure Eternities, till oft her own, 
Unknowing then, had felt the wave-like swell 
Of their white bosoms, as they bore her up 
On those soft billows resting, into some 
Diviner sense of Beauty and of -Life. 
And oft-times through that melting veil she saw 
Their glorious forms in full dim outline, stand 
Maddeningly beautiful, like the airy limbs 
Of Wood-Nymph, when the dallying wind's caress 
Wreathes round them her own skirts of gossamer. 
Down-looking thus, through earth's clear crystalline
Clear only to the Trustful— Lillian 
Fed full her Soul on holy Mysteries, 
And bowed her low in worship of the Deep. 
So sat she, spirit-like, above the world, 
Till the bright gold grew crimson in the west, 
And the wood-glories dim'd. Then came a sense 
Of body's weakness, blending with the strength 
Of that Soul-gladness, and one whispered prayer 
Hung on her moving lip, “O Soul of souls. 
Father of Life and Death, if it may be 
That I have done my little here on earth, 
Let me glide hence into the deeps I see, 
And be a Soul forever!" For in sooth 
She had grown weary in the faithful strife, 
Wrestling with Error, and grim-visaged Want.

Slowly descending from the fading cloud,
A Being, beautiful beyond all thought,
Came o'er the wood; a star was on her brow,
And in her hand a coronal of flowers;
Majestic as the heavens her port, her glance
Soft as the moonbeam's pearl, thrice crystalized ;
She was so pure, and beautiful, she seemed
The incarnation of a Seraph's love,
And an Arch-Angel' s glory; one fair hand
Waved gracefully to the Watcher, one in air
Held the bright crown, as thrice her musical voice
Entranced the earth, "Come Lillian, sister come!
Come when the leaves fall, we are waiting thee."
She said, and passed away, as passed the hues
From the rich veil of sunset. Lillian pry'd
Into the fading west till all was dark j
And as the vision melted from the sky,
Bright eyes and floating tresses, and the curls
Round many a fair face, half-concealed and dim,
And scarce distinguished from the clouds, she saw
For a brief space; as if an Angel host
Swept out beyond the opening gates of heaven,
Wheeled, and were lost again. Then came a gush
Of most transcendent melody, 0 how sweet !
Mad'ning her soul with extasy of bliss.

That sound, the faintest mortal ever heard, 
Died not upon her ear; those airy shapes,
The dimmest mortal ever saw, went not; 
But they were with her alway, heard and seen, 
Though busy crowds went jostling in her path, 
And the dull iron heart-beat of the Mill — 
Brown fiend of Toil — still vexed the ear of Day 
With horrid monotone. Unheard, unseen 
They moved, for now her spirit dwelt apart 
Among the Angels.

                                   A few days, and then
The halls of Labor heard her step no more. 
On the white pillow rested her white cheek, 
And her pale hand did mock the snowy sheet, 
No more to wrestle with the powers of Ill. 
Day after day with intense joy she watched 
The dull brown mark of dissolution, creep 
Over the gorgeous woodlands; with like swift 
And sure advance, Disease clipped, thread by thread, 
The ties which bound her Spirit to its clay, 
That, when the blast should drive the first grey shower 
Of withered leaves, her life might pass with it, 
As hue by hue the Autumn glories dimmed 
And perished, gleam on gleam the bright Death-world! 
Unfolded to her Soul, unspeakable 
And full of heaven, a universe of Thought. 
0 tell me not that wild Delirium wrought 
Those glorious forms, majestical, which filled
That world of splendor and of mystery;
Or poured from urns of living pearl and gold,
O'erhung with wreaths of deathless Amaranth,
Those pure translucent waters, dancing down
O'er smoothest pebbles, and round flowering banks
Of such ineffable beauty, that the seer
Could only weep in dumb calm extasy :
Say not that discord of the brain could wake
Those tones, which made the air one breathing Soul
Of overwhelming melody to her,
With songs of birds and spirit- voices blent ;
Could paint those Angel eyes, whose glances deep,
Through loops in woven myrtle bowers shot forth.
Revealed a whole Eternity of Love.
O say it not, fond watchers by her couch;
For then were madness the sole Beautiful,
All else a heaviness of eye and heart.

Poor Lillian! strove she with half-uttered words,
On tremulous white lips, to articulate
The Great Unspeakable; shook her slender frame,
As shakes the cloud with thunder, at the flash
Of that all-glorious Apocalypse.
Ah! poor dumb Lillian! her broken speech
Was born of earth; her vision, of the Heavens !
And she did weep in bitterness of soul
To see the loved turn from her, with a look
Of pitying distrust, by which she knew
They deemed her mad. 0 utter agony!
Will they not see; is there no spirit there
To join that shivered mirror, and unite
Her broken image of the great Unknown?
Ah none; and that poor heart went hushed and dumb
With infinite splendor, crowned with infinite grief.
Peace to thee, Lillian, now thy soul hath rest,
In the great Silence of Eternity!

No peace to Donaldane, though far away
From where kind hands had veiled the broken shrine
Of his heart's idol, where no cruel winds
Had blown the tale of ruin, how the Ark
Of his Love's worship, earthward sunk, despoiled
Of its Shekinah: yet a twilight gloom
Hung over him, as from the shadowy wing
Of Death, stretched broad above, it had come down.
There went the murmur of a solemn dirge
Through his unconscious soul, by night and day,
Blent with the soft sweet name of Lillian.
Something was written in the silent stars,
The summer flowers, the green earth, and the brooks,
That tinged his hours with quiet mournfulness.
All tones that trembled in the hushed air, seemed
The low faint prelude to a requiem j
But not a thought received the whispered hint,
Or dreamed the hovering sorrow was for him.
But the unborn fulfillment could not wait
Till its dim signs were read aright j it came,
A sudden gloom launched forth, as if at once
Lightning were changed to blackness, and shot down
Across his path. His hope, the gasping year,
Peace, Love, and Lillian, died in one short breath,
Even with the word which told him of his grief.
And a new year came in with that new wo,
Its only boon for wretched Donaldane.
He was not born to conquer in defeat,
Nor trained to triumph in his great despair.
Though he had dwelt among the beautiful
And glorious things of Earth, lived in the life
Of bird and flower, of grasses and green leaves;
And bowed to grandeur with a wordless awe;
Yet he had never pierced the rind of things
After their deepest mystery, to the core
And central secret, where mutation lies
On the rock-basis of the Immutable.
They passed him by, a pageant of bright forms,
Gay maskers full of momentary life,
Pushed from the stage by each succeeding troop;
Their mission ended with the forms they bore.
From their fair visors looked on him no eye
Lit at the soul of the Eternal Seer:
They went and were no more, and he must find
Some new-born fairness where to feed his soul.

The infinite under-Life, that bubbles up
Into those wells of Being, tree and man,
Star, and the worlds, he had not dived to that;
So that his soul had now no resting place.
Lillian had gone into the utter Dark,
She who was all the incarnate perfectness
Of his most pure Ideal; and to seek
Another shrine for his dethroned and stript
Divinity, for this he had no heart.
Where, 'mid the thousands whom he trusted not,
For the repulses of the few, could he,
If yet he dared to seek, have found her peer?
What if there glided past him many souls
Almost as holy and divine as hers,
Nay all as holy and divine as hers;
They were but specters glimmering through the Dark,
Vexing the midnight of his buried Trust.

Alas! what boots it now to walk with men,
When men are gibbering demons that do grin
With fell delight upon his agonies! —
For so he deemed the careless smiles of them
He met; — and wherefore should he not escape
Such cold and heartless mockery of wo?
Did they not see that he was desolate,
A scathed and sapless trunk, fire-scorched and black
With lightning-paths, and yet to leer and mow
Upon him! O! forlorn, poor heart,
Such visions mark the darkness of despair;
Such wild notes ring from shattered lyres alone.

The world itself expired when Lillian died,
And there were left but death, and deadly things,
And many legions of unquiet ghosts,
Troubling the lampless charnel; so he went
A hopeless wanderer, to the gloomy woods,
To be alone with his great solitude.
There he aroused old echoes from their sleep,
Calling the elements, and all deep powers,
To render back the spirit of his Love.

          “O! I am a wretched man, 
               Poor of heart and very sore;
          I have lost my Lillian, 
               I can lose no more.

          Heavens! have ye heard of her? 
               Wanders she there, 
               Where your bright armies are ?
           Render some word of her!

           “Pity me, a lonely man;
               Ye are many, Stars of night, 
          Then give back my Lillian
               With her golden light.

          I have sore need of her;
               Stars she was fair 
          As your loveliest are;
               Took ye no heed of her?

          "Darkness! thou primeval ban, 
               Older than the solid globe,
          Hast thou hid my Lillian 
               In thy gloomy robe?
          Waves of thy river once 
               Poured o'er her soul, 
          I’ll rush where they roll
               For her deliverance I

          "Morning! on the mountain top.
               Envious of her lovelier blush, 
          Hast thou drunk her being up,
               With its sunny gush? 
          Pent in alembics, I'll
               All thy rays burn,
               Till her spirit return 
          From its condemned exile.

           “Colorless and breathing Air, — 
               Liquid marble, sky-embrac'd —
          Is my Lillian floating there 
               In thy desert waste?
          Roaming all lands over, 
               Where thy streams flow,
               Night and day will I go,
          But for one glance of her.

          “Hungry, all-devouring Sea!
               Rumbling in thy coral caves,
          Tell! O tell me where is she
               Whom my spirit craves?
          Is’t her control hushes
               Now, thy great deep?
               Ah! no more will ye sleep,
          When there my soul rushes!

          “Deathless, lifeless, void Inane!
               Utter hollow Nothingness!
          Sunk she in thy black domain
               O! thou beingless?
          Then must I violate
               Even thy reign, 
               To restore her again,
          Or be annihilate!”

In vain he questioned Darkness and the Stars, 
Ocean and Air, and the unbreathing blank 
Of utter Nothing; from his hollow heart 
Came the lone answer, "Lillian is dead!" 
At last his boiling thought grew rudderless, 
Dashing from rock to rock of agony, 
Yet ever true to the one haven of wo.

A mad, wild sympathy with outward things
Lay in him; and he was a rock, a tree.
Night and the heavens, and every thing by turns
That met his eye or whirling phantasy;
And ever his delirious thoughts revolved
Round one devouring center, like the rush
Of downward waves in the Corbrechton's whirl;
Now startling silence with a wilder song.

          "She has gone, gone, gone !
               I am Night, and the Demon King 
          Has plucked out all my stars; 
          See ! these eye-holes are the scars.
               And the moon filled this black ring; 
          I am Night with never a dawn, 
          She is gone, gone, gone!

           “For the Dead my bareness grieves.
               I am a forest the winds have whipt, 
          And left me not a leaf; 
          Winter was the hoary thief
               By whom all my boughs were stript ; 
               Winds whirl my beautiful leaves, For the dead my bareness grieves.
        
          "O me the day is black!
               I am Day and the sun is dead, 
          Dead, and darker than pitch! 
               Now discover which is which;
               Day and Night have met and wed, 
          And the sun will never come back: 
          O me! the day is black!

          "Earth will ne'er see more of wet,
               I am a cloud that cannot rain; 
          The Frost has locked me up, 
          Here my lightning-bolts must stop;
               Racking me with inward pain; 
          Clouds rack, and winds fret, 
          Earth will ne 'er see more of wet.

          "O! my brain, my burning brain !
               Only by me the world is man'd, 
          And feels my brain a grip 
          Out of which it cannot slip,
               'Tis a Demon's red-hot hand! 
          The world reels into wreck again, 
          O! my brain, my burning brain!''

Aye, could it rain, could that all-torturing wo 
Burst forth in tears, there yet were left some hope 
That light and greenness would return, to bless 
Thy night of barrenness, poor Donaldane; 
But stars, the sun, the rain, and the green leaves 
Came not; and the hot brain poured wilder still
Its boiling vortex of mad phantasies,
And inextinguishable thoughts, that down
To their fixed center of eternal black
Rolled headlong, bounding with impetuous whirl.

One day, when the wild tumult seemed to sleep, 
He went once more to the forsaken home 
Of his loved Lillian, to find perhaps 
Some sad joy in the things which she had seen, 
he spot where she had lived, and loved, and toiled. 
Feared, hoped and died. But inward waste found there 
Fit symbol in the outward; the old mill, 
Where her hands grappled the gaunt Hunger-fiend, 
Was gone to dust; the fire had trodden it, 
With red foot, into ashes. Two black beams 
Bending to ruin, held the tottering weight 
Of a huge wheel, one time the iron heart 
Whence all those hushed Activities drew life; 
So scorched and black lay all his buried hopes, 
So, with shrunk arms, the memory of the Past 
Sustained the unmoving cold heart of his Lore, 
In thoughts, fire-stricken, of his Lillian.

Turn away, mourner! for that hot brain spins 
And whirls again to madness; fly the Dark, 
Or it shall close thee in for ever—fly! 
But he might never fly the utter night 
Which was within him. Ha forgot all thought 
Of why he came into that blackened place,
And only wondered it was not more black.
Then he dragged on his shrivel'd heart again ;
And wandered far away from his old home,
In loneliest places, amid caves, and fens
Thick studded with dark shrubs, or where huge rocks
Hung toppling, and strange echoes loved to dwell.

There was one spot amid the Northern hills
He loved, if it be love that weds the soul, 
Night-struck, to kindred horrors. Far around 
Was stretched the base of a broad pyramid, 
Rock piled on rock confused and tumbled down 
In huge disorder, as if there were once 
The magazine of some Heaven-warring brood 
Titan's or Fiend's; and through the clefts, between 
The rough round rocks, a forest of huge trees 
Had forced its way into the earth and heavens, 
Once hiding the brown hill with lovely green: 
But now the fire had scathed its ancient trunks, 
And they stood tall and black, beneath the moon. 
With stout bare arms stretched threatening to the sky, 
As if the grim old giants flung again
Defiance to the Highest. Some lay prone 
From rock to rock, or trunk on trunk, thick fallen, 
As smit down by the Thunderer, like the field, — 
Wars harvest or the husbandman's — where toil 
Or sword had cloven down a People's hope.

There the bald eagle screamed, as he soared up
 In wide gyrations for his Northern flight. 
The fire-eyes of the wild-cat glared between 
The jutting rocks, and the brown rattlesnake 
Shook his shrill signal ; over them, the owl 
Made the night quiver with his dismal hoot. 
Close round the mountain-base a narrow swamp 
Lay dank and chilly, where, as o'er a grave, 
The ghost-shapes crept in cerements of white fog, 
Out of whose breast the frog-song’s dolorous pitch 
Rose dismally. Across this Acheron 
Swelled up a ferny knoll uncultivate 
Save by the sexton's spade; it was a place 
Of human graves, for, even there, in some 
Forgotten day, men lived, and loved, and died. 
Over the graves a few half-trunks stood up 
Blackened and bare, Fiend-watchers waiting, grim 
And terrible, for the waking of the dead. 
Round them in darkest midnight, travelers lost 
Had seen strange fire-balls quiver, and go out 
In myriad blue sparkles, and come back. 
Ere their arched hairs were laid, more dreadful still 
While hoarse, unearthly cries, and watery shapes 
Filled the deep valley. Wondering fear had made 
That spot as terrible as desolate.

There the lone Maniac sought his noon-day lair 
Under a beetling crag, and fed upon
The roots and cresses of the valley. There 
Trampled the midnight rocks with wandering feet. 
And fed his soul on horrors; gladdened most 
When storm and rattling thunder rolled above, 
And lightning-gleams ran down the splintering trunks, 
Licking the moss'd rocks with blue tongues of fire.

The great North winds went howling through the vale, 
And the old tree-trunks creaked, and groaned, and tossed
Their rived arms round, as in dumb agony.
 The Maniac's eye saw, in their dim great forms 
Writhing in midnight tempest, the wild dance 
Of giant skeletons. In such an hour 
His soul rejoiced, as with a joy of hell, 
In hosted terrors. Standing on the rocks, 
While meteors quivered o'er the marsh, and winds 
Were up among the tree-tops, he would shout 
In broken song his mad and horrible glee.

                    THE SKELETON DANCE.

          “Hurrah, hurrah, ha! ha! ha! ha!
               Who goes to the dance to-night, 
          The great dance of the skeletons, 
          The dead Earth's old and mighty ones,
               Stalwart kings of terrible height, 
          Og of Bashan, and all his sons,
          Goliath of Gath; and the Anakims,
          Titans huge with skinny limbs; 
               Giants taller than Cormoran, 
               Who can clasp the full moon at a span!

           “See, they come! their hall is there, 
               On the rock-hill high and bare,
          A goblin leads them in, with his lamp,
               Whose wicks are fed with the oil of the dead,
          And lit at the fungus of the swamp.
          Hark ye, hear their hollow tramp; 
               Bony shanks and grisly locks 
               Waving and rattling over the rocks;
          Patter, patter, patter! now how their feet clatter, 
               As they come all fresh from their graves; 
               Sweet, grinning and chapless braves,
          Dewy and green with the sepulchre's damp !

          "Blow aloud Piper, blow, blow!
               Now it is time the dance began,
               Split your pipes old Borean, 
          Up and at it, oho! oho! 
          Lead off yonder a half a million, 
          Down and up in a gay cotillion:
               Not so high, you've split the sky!
               Don't you see how the fires fly? 
           ‘Bo-ho-oh-hoo-o! bo-whoo-oh!' 
          Blow aloud Piper! blow, blow, 
     Ha, ha, ha! Cormoran's head beat out a star.

          "Come Typheus, thunder-scarred, 
               Rise in Etna's sulphur-vomit, 
               Fly to the dancers like a comet; 
          Never thy frightful wounds regard;
               Ha, he comes with Leads to spare, 
               A hundred dragon heads in air; 
          His every leap is a hundred rods, 
          And every head with his leaping nods; 
          Well done, terror of the Gods! 
     'Ba-a-a-a' hurrah, hurrah! 
          Jupiter thinks it best to go; 
          He sees below, his old foe, 
          Wheeling and reeling to and fro:

                ‘Caw, caw, caw!' ha! ha! ha! 
          No longer Apollo his harp will follow, 
     He has taken to singing ‘caw! caw! caw!" 
          Juno lows, Diana mews,
               Ha, how the witch-cat flies! 
               Do you see the sparks of her eyes? 
          The coward Gods the brutes abuse. 
               Ha! that bolt from the riven skies! 
               Shivered and low Typheus lies, 
          Despoiled in bones and thews.

           “Mimas aching from the thunder, 
               Shake again your nerves of iron;
          Enceladus 'scaped from under 
               Etna, trip with Porphyrion,
           And twisting them up to and fro, 
           Take the gnarled trees as you go.

           "Shaking high his hundred hands
                Rattling bony in the air, 
           There the huge Briareus stands,
                Wha! what was that sudden glare? 
           His eyes have dropped out of their holes! 
           And see they glow like burning coals, 
     Just under the rock's edge there! 
            ‘Bo-ho-oo — Whoo-o-o.’ I wonder 
           If Jupiter's cart has dumped its thunder.

           "Where's your Patagonian maid 
           Will waltz with a man without a head? — 
                Great Goliath standing there; — 
                See, his arms are in the air, 
           And his bones shake in their sockets 
           Every time his foot the rock hits. 
                Ho! make way for her, there is she, 
                How green and lanky her limbs be. 
           Hold your light up lantern-devil: 
           Here's the place to see the revel.
                      Whirl, whirl, whirl; 
                      Headless giant, 
                Keep your eye on 't, 
           Lo he leaps with the lanky girl.

           "Crash, tumble, rumble, rumble,
                Crash, flash and another crash! — 
           Ho, that Titan's head is humble ;
                I saw it split on the rocks,
                In a shower of white scalp-locks; 
           His head is gone, and he dances on;
                And the grave-dust flies;— 
                     If they had eyes
            ‘Twere sad work for them there,
           In such a horrid air.

           "Skinny fragments fall like rain;
                Arm and shoulder, rib and head, 
           Rattle down, as on amain
                All the dead, with measured tread 
           Leap at what the Piper played. 
           O-o-o-o! Piper blow! 
           Enceladus now has played us Tricks of the olden time again.

                Piper, pipe it louder yet,
                For a wedding day is set, 
           A wedding of bones, and a feast of bones,
           And a sweet symphony of groans !
                Oh-ho-oh! Louder blow. 
           On this rock I lay my head; 
           Death and I to-night must wed. 
           What a blow! Oh, ho, oh!

           Demogorgon from the sky 
           Flung the socket of his thigh ;
                Come, and see the blood, Grim !
                Fill your skull up to the brim, 
           Drink it off and take a bout, 
           And we'll wed when the dance is out !

           "O horror! horror! horror! 
           This was the grave of all my sorrow; 
           And one I knew was buried there, 
           Under this bosom so red and bare: 
           I see! I see! I see! 'Tis she! Ha! ha! ha! Oh, oh, ho! ah!"

A shivered bough had gored him in its fall,
And the quick lightning showed the spouting blood
On the grey rock, an instant, and was gone.
Phosphoric sparks, from many a trunk's decay,
Showered down like snow, as the torn limbs struck off
The wasting circles that had chronicled
The slow flight of the Ages.

                                 Long he lay
In pain and hunger, till a passer by,
Drawn by his feeble meanings to the spot, 
Took up the wasted form and bore it on 
To the kind shelter of his cottage roof ; 
A poor man's humble home. There tenderly
As he would nourish his own father's son,
He nursed the wounded man; aye, took the bread
From his own lips to satisfy his want.
His trembling younkers, while they shook to see
Those wild eyes staring on them, would divide
Their scanty meal with him, and then thank God
That he had brought the poor man to their roof,
That they might know the blessedness there is
In heartfelt charity. Such kindly deeds
Make earth more beautiful, and sow the germs
Of larger faith in the wide Human Heart.
More holy seem they in the Poor Man's cot,
For there 'tis sweeter virtue to be kind.
Happy the poor who can be generous.
And who may see in their blithe little ones
A human Heart, expanding their young breasts,
And opening to the needy their small hands
With some meet charity, — for they are blessed.

Dwelt Donald peaceful in the cotter's hut, 
Till strength and wholeness came to him again, 
Then in the stillness of the night he fled, 
Leaving his helpers to awake and wonder. 
But what availed their wonder, or their search? 
Far from their cot the foot of Donaldane 
Tracked the lone shore, by midnight, to and fro, 
Wet by the Atlantic wave ; and in his ear, 
The great voice of the ever sounding deep
Rang like the death dirge of the Universe.
Away, away from that eternal dirge
He'd fled, and ever as he fled it rang
Through his void heart, "The universe is dead!"
He plunged into the waters, but the waves
Cried "dead," and flung him back. In the blank air
Low voices whispered hoarsely, "dead, dead, dead! "
He climbed a tall rock which hung o'er the sea,
To whose peaked height no wave could hurl him back;
Far down below went moaning the wild dirge,
And forms were on the billows beckoning him.
But ha! was that a spectre, too, who sank
In the bare rock close down by where he stood ?
He recked not, for that instant a quick flash
Shot through his brain, and over all the world,
And struck the universe and all things dead ;
Only he seemed to live. He saw the sun
Rot out of the pale sky, and grain by grain
Drop down into the void abyss below;
The moon waned ray by ray, till all was gone ;
The stars ran lawless in the lawless heavens,
And smote each other, orb on orb fierce-hurled
With mutual ruin, till the stars were lost,
And left the heavens a universal blank.
The earth decayed and crumbled into nought.
And inch by inch the ruin crept upon
The cliff whereon he stood. Died heat and cold;
Darkness and light; and the invisible air,
Save where he hung, evanished and was not.
Little by little crumbled down the cliff,
And like a sand-hill sank beneath his feet.
He watched the dwindling atoms as they fell,
Till they were lost in utter nothingness.
Stooping to pry into that nether Blank,
A fragment of the chalky rock went down,
Leaving weak foothold on the lessened peak :
He followed with keen glance the falling mass,
Yet clinging with strange terror to the firm,
And, as the last point vanished on its track,
As melting, fading it went whirling on —
Dim rising like a vapor, from the deep,
He saw — ah yes ! it was his Lillian ;
Distinct one moment, and her pale form grew
Fainter and fainter in the hollow deep ;
An infinite sadness shone in her white face,
And seemed it tears were in her melting eyes.
"Stay! stay!;' shrieked Donald, “Lillian! Lillian!
What means this ruin? stay, my love! O stay,
And I will come to thee!" Came faintly back
A musical voice, as vanished the last glimpse
Of her fair form, "THE UNIVERSE IS DEAD!”
Off from the rock, that shivered at his leap,
He plunged into the void and utter Blank,
Whirling in breathless horror, down, down, down,
Ten thousand thousand fathoms hurled below; 
Right on, and on, and on, with nought of life, 
Fluid or solid round, whereby to count 
The long dark ages of his awful flight. 
Swifter and swifter down with lightning speed 
Through infinite blankness, dumb and terrible, 
He whirled away whole Eons. Cycles vast, 
By fire-leaps numbered of his burning heart, 
Whose molten lead drove down with gathering force 
His whirling form, sheer through the immense profound;
Deep below deep, abyss beneath abyss, 
Boundless on boundless stretching ; down and down 
With swift redoubling speed, beyond the flight 
Of never-flagging and all-piercing thought; 
Falling and falling, and each nether deep 
The height from which to plunge into the void, 
Ten thousand times his utmost reach, below, 
Into the soundless, everlasting DOWN! 
Of infinite being, only he was left, 
A flying atom in a boundless blank; 
And this his wild down rushing, the one force 
Left of the countless potencies. "O now 
For one firm rock whereon to dash this clay
 Into impalpable atoms! But, alas! 
The very rocks have perished. O my God!
Is this wild fall for ever? with no end,
No end, but just beginning when the last
Far stretch of Thought has spanned innumerous years?
But oh, no hope! for God himself is dead!
Chaos is dead, and I am all that is."
Such thought, an instant flashing o'er his brain,
Had measured, in his fall, ten thousand times
The space from earth to the remotest star,
Till in his seeming he had now become
Only a formless motion whirling on, —
When a dull plunge and momentary rush
Of waters over him, brought back the sense
Of Life, the Ocean, and the world, once more :
He had plunged down delirious from the rock,
Into the hungry deep. Another dash
In the white wave, a few brave swimmer-strokes
Beating the insatiate waters back, and then
A strong hand griped him by his lifted arm,
And held him forward to the dim shore-line ;
Another hand smote fast the indignant waves,
That growled to see their prey plucked from their jaws;
And mid rude buffetings and swelling rage 
Manfully kept the wide-mouthed ruin back. 
Treading the waters under him, like a Soul 
Ploughing through overwhelming doubt to light,
Sped the bold swimmer to the solid land ;
Now wholly plunged beneath the breaking wave.
And now high hung in the dim star-lit air;
Borne like the sea-bird on the backward rush
Of the recoiling billows, or sucked down
In some wild whirl which gurgles round the rocks
That gird the shore. O gallantly that hand
Shook death and terrors off, wreathed in the mane
Of the devouring monster, from whose throat
Its worthy mate drew forth the helpless prey;
And both nigh spent with straining toil bore up
The rescued Maniac to the solid shore.

Leaned on a rock they rested side by side, 
The stranger and the madman, silently 
Gazing by starlight into either face. T
he sudden dash of chill waves over him 
Half cooled in Donald's ever burning brain 
The hot hand clenching it, for now his wild 
Despairing look, was changed to boundless grief, 
As he met calmly the inquiring glance 
Of his Deliverer. But they spoke no word; 
The stranger asked not of his wretchedness, 
Why with such desperation he had sought 
To force the secrets of the Great Unknown; 
Whether 'twere madness, or vain love, or both,
Made such rude knocking at the gate of death ;
He asked not, for within his pitying glance,
And the warm drops that from his mild eye fell
On the poor Maniac 's hand — no dripping brine
From the cold deep, — was haply something told
Of a tried heart, too well acquaint with tears
To rush profanely on another's wo,
And pry into that deepest sanctity,
The holy shrine of Sorrow. Silently
They gazed upon each other, silently
Rose, and together under the still stars
Went forward to a dim-seen cot, that stood
Just on the eastern horizon; for now
The cold wind of advancing Autumn searched
Their drenched limbs with too keen a scrutiny.
They roused the dwellers, and the dwellers stirred
The slumbering fire, whose quivering tongues licked up
The traveller's [sic] briny drench. And all that rude,
Great-hearted, rough-palmed kindness could perform,
Was offered gladly; for the dwellers there
Knew well such suffering; who full oft had seen
The struggling mariner bear bravely up,
When the great storm-waltz churned the troubled sea
Into a foam around his splintered bark;
And they had ever a stout hand to help,
An open heart to pity the distressed.
Worn with long watching, Donaldane sank down 
In fitful sleep before the blazing fire. 
Where they had spread for him a hasty couch; 
And sleep that night on many a rougher bed 
Showered sweeter dreams than could have pierced the ring 
Of that poor Maniac's fire-girdled brain.

Briefly the stranger, who had sometimes seen
Those hardy dwellers, as they plied their trade
On the great waters — faithful fishermen, —
Told as he might, what brought them, in such hour
Such guests, unbidden, to their courtesy.
He had gone forth to muse upon the rocks;
Whether for love of the immortal stars,
The divine Darkness, and the moaning sea,
Or full of grief, he said not; there he sat
In long down-looking through the crystal earth,
Into its mystery, so held entranced
He marked not other watcher, till the foot
Of the intruder roused him, pressing close
To where he rested o 'er some thunder-scar,
Or earthquake-track, ploughed in the cliff long since.
Lightly he dropped unheeded in the cleft,
While passed the intruder on and stood upright
On the rock's verge, so statue-like and firm,
He seemed as chiseled from the solid cliff.

"Why thus alone, close o'er the dizzy edge
Where the young eagle would have shrunk to rest,
He stood so fearlessly," the stranger said,
"I marvelled much, and twice or thrice half rose
To snatch him from the imminent peak, as some
Half-seeing guess of his intent spurred on;
But not a limb stirred, and it well might be
No ill thought led him; for I could not trace
What passion worked in his reverted face,
Madness, or grief, or poesy. But still
I watched him, busied with the inward thought
Of what might chance. Far o'er the jutting rock
He bent and spoke, I only heard the name
Of ‘Lillian;' — ‘Hold rash man!' — but he marked not,
For as I leapt to snatch him from his fall,
Light as a bird he vaulted from the cliff,
Into the deep below. Force forwarding
Instinctive impulse, urged me headlong down
The same wild flight, by many an early feat
Of rash boy-daring made less terrible.
I saw his hand above the water stretched,
And round me the dark shore — a broken wall
Crushing the insurgent waters into sound,
Which heaven flung back in spray of sparkling light ;
What toil to reach that shore it matters not,
Since here we are, delivered from the deep.
Yon restless sleeper, moaning in his dreams,
May prove some frantic lover smit with grief,
Whom cruel pangs have urged to desperate deeds.
Kindness will knit again his raveled heart,
And he will live to bless you, when the love
Of all repays him for the loss of one.
Be whom he may, or what the ill that draws
His death-ward glances may; be sure of this,
Kind deeds were never lost, and cannot be.
I go my way and ye will see me not,
Take this and help the needy." He flung down
His scanty purse, and if it were not much,
Those tears of Love, which quenched his manly eyes,
Were worth a thousand such, arid yet 'twas all.
He stayed no words but left them wondering,
And the grey morning knew not where he fled.

Years rolled and Change kept its unchanging course. 
Where now is the heart-shriveled maniac, 
To whom the gyres of Time had been in red 
Fire-cycles, wheeling through the heaven's black vault? 
No more the hills are startled by his cry, 
Or the swamp echoes with his horrible laugh; 
Where now is that forlorn and wretched man? 
He had gone back to his ancestral home, 
Wild as the gale, yet harmless as the breeze, 
And O for the sweet name of Christian Love,
And brotherly affection! he who found
In stranger-hearts the tender sympathy
He needed most, but knew not how to prize,
Was brotherless in his own home, though some
Who called his dead sire "Father," gathered there.
They cast him on the hard and legal stint
Of a Town's charity, whose loveless gifts
Are meted out with cold official care,
By grudging souls, who feed on the decay
Of starving mendicants, — keepers of the Poor,
Scanting the little they need least of all —
The coveted pittance of unsocial bread ; —
Denying wholly what they most require,
The tender love which all men owe to all,
And most, to the infirm, forlorn, and poor.

Into such hands they gave their brotherless 
And stricken brother, and thenceforward deemed 
The perfect law of Charity fulfilled. 
Three times a day, around their smoking board, 
They thanked the Lord for his great bounty, given To
 them unworthy, wholly vile and lean; 
Three times a week, at sound of Sabbath-bell,
They went into the synagogues to pray; 
And gave thank-offerings of words to God: 
And twice a year paid meager tithes to feed
The Poor they spurned from all their bolted doors;
But never gave kind word, or gentle look, 
To feed the keener hunger of the heart.

Soul-buried Donald, what a home was thine !
Only one house so narrow, none so cold.
Half sunk in earth, and fashioned of bare stones
As if from their own bosoms rived, they built
A prison for the outcast, goaded on
By Fear and Mammon; there they thrust him in,
A crimeless victim, to that living grave
So close, that, burrowed in his broken straw,
His outstretched hand might rest on either wall.
Silent and savage, in his noisome den,
Grim as a wolf he sat, as day by day
Through the black bars, at morning's twilight hour,
They gave him food. A blanket torn and foul,
Garment and bed, half covered his gaunt form.
And it was stiff with winter's icy breath.
All night the hoar-frost gathered on the wall,
And scarce the day could melt it into dew,
The pent air hung around the horrid cell,
Heavy with torture, rank with lingering death,
And loathsome as the unbreathing sepulcher.
Once, long ago, he howled in agony, —
Smote the hard walls, and gnashed upon the bars.
When first he saw how dreadful was the doom
Which closed him in; but many, many moons.
Had fill'd above him since he was worn down
To a grim, silent hopelessness, a dumb
Pale image of insufferable wo.
A thousand times returning day revealed
That tomb's black maw to his unmoving eye,
A thousand times more welcome darkness drew
Its ebon curtain round his darker soul.
Till he had lost all thought of night or day,
Of cold or heat, and there was left alone
One dull unbounded sense of misery.

Were it not better that the narrower house — 
Where never change can mock the heart with hope, 
And there is left no room for wo to come — 
Were now his resting place? It is not well 
That such a den should keep a human form; 
And who may break its iron bars but Death? 
Death's mightier; Love! the one Omnipotent, 
Nerving with strength the boundless heart of man.

There had gone up from many a gloomy lair
In the wide land, — where madness clanked its chain,
And eat the bread of bitterness— the cry
Of spirit's desolation, the wild laugh,
The maniac yell, the mumbled muttering,
And feeblest low whine of inanity,
Blending in one shrill piercing dissonance. —
The wild dirge of dethroned Divinities, —
Of Soul and Heart, driven crownless, and in chains
Of utter darkness, to lone wandering. 
Pity had poured her tears upon the scars 
And fetters of the Bondman, not in vain; 
Had blessed the toil-worn laborer with her prayers. 
Sought out the pale, despairing Magdalen, 
Whom heartless ‘virtue’ spurned from human love, 
And, with a thousand deeds of blessedness, 
Won heaven for bosoms that did shelter her; 
But long her ear caught not the moan of these 
Out-cast so far, so lonely cooped, in dens 
And iron cages, ‘mid the louder din 
Of tongued and congregated suffering. 
But Love will quicken the dull sense, and find 
An ear for every feeblest sound of want; 
Sorrow shall not be buried down so deep, 
But God, and the good hearts he dwelleth in, 
Will hear its smothered voice, and bring relief.

The broken moans of crazed Humanity
Cast forth and wandering stark among the tombs
And crying fellowless from granite dens,
At last went thrilling through the great, warm heart
Of one weak woman, touching there the chords
Of infinite pity, whose low melody
Kindled her woman' s-heart to heroic strength
And divine daring, as no bugle-blast
E'er fired the warrior's in the field of arms.
Despite the scorn of little souls wrapped up
la their huge seeming, the unmanly taunt 
Of polished ruffians, or the coarser jeers 
Of brutal Ignorance, like a ray from God 
She shot clear day-light into darkened souls; 
Melted Memnonian music from stone hearts, 
And lit again the altars of old joy: 
Or rather was she not the incarnate soul 
Of primal harmony, binding up once more 
The shivered chords of Life, in many a breast, 
Tuning again the jangled hearts that wo 
Had stricken into discord ? A sweet Spring 
To shivering birds whose song was frozen up; 
A soft shower to the desert, in whose tears
Glittering with new God's-promises, the scorched 
And shriveled flowers, sprang fresh and beautiful, 
With some sweet gleams of earlier loveliness. 
Was she not sent from God to teach anew 
The evangel of old prophets, — the supreme 
Omnipotence of Love, — at whose meek voice 
Loudest and dumbest demons are cast out; 
And in whose sunny glance the earthliest soul 
Puts on a hue of life's own verdantness ?

From tomb to tomb she passed, where blind unlove 
Had chained its wretched victims, and brought out 
The dead and dark into the marvelous light
 Of Life and Love. Servant of him who is
"The Resurrection and the Life," she called

The bound, soul-blind, and heart-dead, back from death,
Opened their wondering eyes, to see the chain 
Struck off, and the black sepulcher left behind: 
While earth once more became a verity. 
For even to them, long barred in hopeless gloom, 
To whom the great world had become a hell, 
Or an unmeaning blank, there yet was left 
Some beauty in the sunshine, and the trees; 
Some music in the birds and water-falls; 
Some joy in Love, some glimmer of live hope, 
In the great fore-life of Eternity.

Donald sat crouching in his lonely cave.
With pale cheek leaned upon his fleshless hand.
Hollow with hunger, and disease, and wo,
His eye fixed on the earth with vacant stare.
Alas! why trouble him, that filthy mass
Of rags will be his shroud, this narrow pit
His grave ere long, what now has life for him ?
Ah, say it not. If the expiring lamp
May blaze one instant brightly ere it die, —
If the parched summer may have one fresh shower,
And a short greenness, ere the winter come, —
If the dark Soul may catch one glimpse of heaven,
Ere it fly forth into the vast Unknown, —
Say not ‘what boots it?' God is shining there, 
Making such life-from-death most beautiful.

Strong hands put back the rusted bolt which held
The prisoner's door, and the old hinges growled
To be thus shaken from their long repose;
And then a light step, and a silvery voice
Were heard in the poor Maniac's cell. Ah, me!
What should soft woman seek in such a spot?
Know ye not then this history of her heart,
Where man can suffer she can minister?
“ Donald!" he moved not, and a gentle hand
Fell lightly on his shoulder. "Donaldane,
Come, Spring is waking up the flowers again,
And the young birds are glad; come forth and feel
The sunshine, and the soft wind." "Yes," he said,
"I know it, she is dead, and I am tired;
But I must watch to keep the worms away.
O she had beautiful eyes — a grave-worm came
And gnawed them hollow, one day, while I slept:
And now they're crawling to her lips!" His eyes
Just lifted, rested on his warden's form
Leaned by the door, and a half-savageness
Lit them a moment, as he fell again
Into grim silence. With one hand, waved back
That woman the stern warder, and in one
Took Donald's skeleton hand, and with a firm
But tender earnestness, and many words 
Fit spoken, led him forth into the air, 
On unresisting limbs that feebly bore 
The weight of his shrunk body: once in fear 
And weak defiance he looked back, but saw 
No watcher, and then tottered feebly on 
With his heroic Leader, and behind 
Left his wolf-lair forever.

                                                   Many days
Went over his new home, before the light 
Pierced down into his soul, yet more and more 
His heart knew rest, and sometimes a half-joy 
Shone in his dimmed eye. Summer came, and forth 
Among the green shrubs, and the pleasant flowers, 
He walked and sat, while every day there came 
Some larger sense of freedom and of peace; 
And more and more the music of kind hearts 
Awoke in him a consciousness of love. 
His step was feeble on the green-sward path, 
For sure Consumption, with white hand, had come 
To lead him home, so long a wanderer. 
But while the wasting form consumed away, 
The Spirit grew more gentle and serene, 
With oft a trembling gleam of innocent joy.
 Long as the Summer walked upon the hills 
He sought the fields, with feeble step and slow,
Rested, or moved among their pleasant things,
Silent and smiling all the live-long day,
And not unblessed the quiet hours stole on.
He plucked the silken tassels of the corn.
And sported with them with a child's delight ;
He watched the wild-flowers in their opening growth.
And, when the sun shrunk up their delicate leaves,
Brought water in his palm to nourish them;
He took the fire-fly from the cruel mesh
Of the black spider, and clapped hands for joy
To see the winged star mount into its heaven ;
Piled nuts upon the jutty rocks, where chirped
The blithe red squirrel, for he said it was
His little brother ; and one day he saw
The new moon, shriveled to a very thread,
Go down behind a rock, and he stole out
With a rich bowl of milk, and set it there
For his pale sister. Ah, poor heart of hearts;
‘Twas shivered, but had kept its gentle love.

When Autumn came, and the cold winds were out,
He went no more into the open fields,
But Peace sat with him at the ingle-side.
He half remembered his old joy of heart,
And partly knew that there had been a cloud
Over his being; and sometimes he spoke
Of the new Life that waited for him, there
Up where the stars were, and the great moon went
When she came back out of her western grave. 
He saw a coffin lowered into the earth,
 And while they wept, who stood around, he said 
He would not that when he had gone away 
They should enclose him so, but he would have 
His bosom bare to the fresh earth, and then 
He would rise up, pure from the grosser clay, 
A beautiful mist, and soar into the sky, 
All full of sunshine and of happiness, 
Floating aloft and feasting on the scent 
Of blooming roses. Never more the moon 
Should pine away for grief and loneliness, 
For he would love her; and love all her stars, 
And they should only weep henceforth for joy, 
To light with dew the blooming stars of earth.

And so with fancies strange but beautiful 
And tinged with colors of his earlier love, 
He spent the hours, and ere the Autumn boughs 
Were stripped of their bright hues, he closed his eyes: 
And while a sweet smile curled his pallid lip, 
He whispered “Lillian," and passed away, 
Still as the falling leaf when not a breeze 
Disturbs the splendor of the Autumn wood