Not then I sorrow'd, though the eyes might weep,
Nor came the devil near me save in sleep.
"Then was the pillow rarely press'd in vain ;
Then sprang the heart to meet returning light;
Conscience had never rack'd the throbbing brain,
Nor weary'd spirits made the sun less bright;
Duties were easy, brief was every pain,
Disgust unknown where all things brought delight.
What would I give, to be as she is now,
That fair young creature with the spotless brow!
Thus CARRYL thought, (as we in turn might do,)
And many a smother'd sigh convuls'd his breast,
While linger'd on the maid his raptur'd view,
And drank in all that lovely face exprest.
But, leaving him awhile, we must pursue
Our rudely pencill'd sketches of the rest,
And first, that CONSTANCE VERE may stand complete, Delineate her form from throat to feet.
Her stature was below the middle height,
And delicately slender, but not thin,
Her figure; for her bust was full, though slight,
And full her graceful throat and rounded chin.
Her taper hands were on the outside white,
But tinted like the ocean shell within ;
And the small foot beneath her garment's fold
Look'd perfect as if just come from a mould.
But, more than all, she had that rare attraction,
Better than beauty, to our hero's mind,
An air that show'd her breeding and extraction
Were nothing of the ordinary kind.
And with the soul that hallow'd her blue eyes,
Made reverent even the old, and charm'd the wise.
Here leave we for the present CONSTANCE VERE.
The Baron MAXIMILIAN, who is reading
A song of PEBBLE's with grimaces queer,
While hums the poet, with his native breeding,
The tune (Bold Thompson) in his wondering ear,
We leave him to this intellectual feeding,
Till more at ease (for now we must move faster)
We bring him in with FELIX and his master.
Save the three boys, each member of this set
A different motive led upon their tour :
CONSTANCE to meet whatever might be met
Of good unknown; alas! how very sure
To find that sin and sorrow, toil and fret,
Are everywhere the lot of rich and poor;
Her sister to make conquests, I suppose.
The Baron's motive Heaven only knows!
PEBBLE himself, like half the people there,
The same wise motive that has lately driven
So many thousands heat and dust to bear,
To watch a British steamer leave the haven ;
The same which makes their kindred fools repair
To NIBLO's alleys every summer even,
To see a foreign mountebank aspire
To tread a hawser with her tail on fire.
The third
group, and the last I have to mention,
Consists of two, a maiden and her sire.
In the Fourth Canto it is my intention
To give their history, which will not tire.
At present I shall show that no invention
Of poet or of painter could aspire
To gift a pair, in picture or in song,
With such rare graces as to these belong.
For no wild fiction is thy worth, ESTELLE!
Nor yet thy loveliness beyond compare ;
And he of whose kind soul I have to tell,
That aged man who sits beside thee there,
His image too is mirror'd in that well
Whose waters seldom reach this upper
The good DESSANTI was her sire by option;
ESTELLE was but the child of his adoption.
Her origin involves a brief romance,
A tale of strange disaster, tears, and blood.
Suffice it for the present, that in FRANCE
She drew her earliest breath; but he who stood
Her friend and saviour in her worst mischance,
And since the best of fathers, he, the good
DESSANTI, was by birth a SAVOYARD,
And liv'd at CHAMBERY with this his ward.
Not always in this wintry world of ours
Is virtue blighted by incessant frost.
Upon its delicate stem ofttimes sweet flow'rs
Grow clustering; and who plants it finds his cost
More than repaid, when, after years, it tow'rs
High as a palm, and, weary, worn, and tost,
On the world's scene, he finds beneath its shade
The sweetest shelter his own hands have made.
When, one by one, the good man's children pin'd With slow disease, and to their triple grave
The care-worn mother in her turn consign'd
Slept the long sleep, it seem'd as HEAVEN to save
The lone survivor to his love assign'd
That sweet ESTELLE. Now on life's ebbing wave
His bark swam buoyant, and his age declining
Was even more bright than when its noon was shining.
We hear sometimes of apostolic faces,
Such as poetic dreams the saints have given
Who taught, in other times and other places,
Gentile and Jew the surest route to HEAVEN,
But such as (in this world so little grace is)
You now will hardly find one time in seven,
Nay, in the modern gallery of teachers,
Seven times in seventy hundred thousand preachers.
What wonder? since not any where we see
The meekness, charity, and self-denial
Taught by the Lamb who bled upon the tree,
And practis'd by the Saints when put to trial ;
But now the reverend race in nought agree
Save vanity, and pouring, from the vial
St. JOHN dreamt of, the hailstones of damnation (1)
On all who take their own road to salvation.
(1) "And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air," etc. "And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven; every stone about the weight of a talent. And men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." Revelations, xvi. 17 and 21.
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