Rosalind and Helen Read Online

Go home,

Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.

We only cried with joy to see each other;

We are quite merry now: Good-night.

The boy

Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,

And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy

Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee

Of light and unsuspecting infancy,

And whispered in her ear, »Bring home with you

That sweet strange lady-friend.« Then off he flew,

But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,

Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,

Hiding her face, stood weeping silently,

In silence then they took the way

Beneath the forest's solitude.

It was a vast and antique wood,

Thro' which they took their way;

And the gray shades of evening

O'er that green wilderness did fling

Still deeper solitude.

Pursuing still the path that wound

The vast and knotted trees around

Through which slow shades were wandering,

To a deep lawny dell they came,

To a stone seat beside a spring,

O'er which the columned wood did frame

A roofless temple, like the fane

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,

Man's early race once knelt beneath

The overhanging deity.

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,

Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,

The pale snake, that with eager breath

Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,

Is beaming with many a mingled hue,

Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,

When he floats on that dark and lucid flood

In the light of his own loveliness;

And the birds that in the fountain dip

Their plumes, with fearless fellowship

Above and round him wheel and hover.

The fitful wind is heard to stir

One solitary leaf on high;

The chirping of the grasshopper

Fills every pause. There is emotion

In all that dwells at noontide here:

Then, through the intricate wild wood,

A maze of life and light and motion

Is woven. But there is stillness now:

Gloom, and the trance of Nature now:

The snake is in his cave asleep;

The birds are on the branches dreaming:

Only the shadows creep:

Only the glow-worm is gleaming:

Only the owls and the nightingales

Wake in this dell when daylight fails,

And gray shades gather in the woods:

And the owls have all fled far away

In a merrier glen to hoot and play,

For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.

The accustomed nightingale still broods

On her accustomed bough,

But she is mute; for her false mate

Has fled and left her desolate.

This silent spot tradition old

Had peopled with the spectral dead.

For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold

And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told

That a hellish shape at midnight led

The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,

And sate on the seat beside him there,

Till a naked child came wandering by,

When the fiend would change to a lady fair!

A fearful tale! The truth was worse:

For here a sister and a brother

Had solemnized a monstrous curse,

Meeting in this fair solitude:

For beneath yon very sky,

Had they resigned to one another

Body and soul. The multitude:

Tracking them to the secret wood,

Tore limb from limb their innocent child,

And stabbed and trampled on its mother;

But the youth, for God's most holy grace,

A priest saved to burn in the market-place.

Duly at evening Helen came

To this lone silent spot,

From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow

So much of sympathy to borrow

As soothed her own dark lot.

Duly each evening from her home,

With her fair child would Helen come

To sit upon that antique seat.

While the hues of day were pale;

And the bright boy beside her feet

Now lay, lifting at intervals

His broad blue eyes on her;

Now, where some sudden impulse calls

Following. He was a gentle boy

And in all gentle sports took joy;

Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,

With a small feather for a sail,

His fancy on that spring would float,

If some invisible breeze might stir

Its marble calm: and Helen smiled

Through tears of awe on the gay child,

To think that a boy as fair as he,

In years which never more may be,

By that same fount, in that same wood,

The like sweet fancies had pursued;

And that a mother, lost like her,

Had mournfully sate watching him.

Then all the scene was wont to swim

Through the mist of a burning tear.

For many months had Helen known

This scene; and now she thither turned

Her footsteps, not alone.

The friend whose falsehood she had mourned,

Sate with her on that seat of stone.

Silent they sate; for evening,

And the power its glimpses bring

Had, with one awful shadow, quelled

The passion of their grief. They sate

With linked hands, for unrepelled

Had Helen taken Rosalind's.

Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds

The tangled locks of the night-shade's hair,

Which is twined in the sultry summer air

Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,

Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,

And the sound of her heart that ever beat,

As with sighs and words she breathed on her,

Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,

Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;

And from her labouring bosom now,

Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,

The voice of a long pent sorrow came.

Rosalind. I saw the dark earth fall upon

The coffin; and I saw the stone

Laid over him whom this cold breast

Had pillowed to his nightly rest!

Thou knowest not, thou canst not know

My agony. Oh! I could not weep:

The sources whence such blessings flow

Were not to be approached by me!

But I could smile, and I could sleep,

Though with a self-accusing heart.

In morning's light, in evening's gloom,

I watched, – and would not thence depart –

My husband's unlamented tomb.

My children knew their sire was gone,

But when I told them, – »he is dead,« –

They laughed aloud in frantic glee,

They clapped their hands and leaped about,

Answering each other's ecstasy

With many a prank and merry shout.

But I sate silent and alone,

Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.

They laughed, for he was dead: but I

Sate with a hard and tearless eye,

And with a heart which would deny

The secret joy it could not quell,

Low muttering o'er his loathed name;

Till from that self-contention came

Remorse where sin was none; a hell

Which in pure spirits should not dwell.

I'll tell thee truth. He was a man

Hard, selfish, loving only gold,

Yet full of guile: his pale eyes ran

With tears, which each some falsehood told,

And oft his smooth and bridled tongue

Would give the lie to his flushing cheek:

He was a coward to the strong:

He was a tyrant to the weak,

On whom his vengeance he would wreak:

For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,

From many a stranger's eye would dart,

And on his memory cling, and follow

His soul to its home so cold and hollow.

He was a tyrant to the weak,

And we were such, alas the day!

Oft, when my little ones at play,

Were in youth's natural lightness gay,

Or if they listened to some tale

Of travellers, or of fairy land, –

When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand

Flashed on their faces, – if they heard

Or thought they heard upon the stair

His footstep, the suspended word

Died on my lips: we all grew pale:

The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear

If it thought it heard its father near;

And my two wild boys would near my knee

Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.

I'll tell thee truth: I loved another.

His name in my ear was ever ringing,

His form to my brain was ever clinging:

Yet if some stranger breathed that name,

My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast:

My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,

My days were dim in the shadow cast

By the memory of the same!

Day and night, day and night,

He was my breath and life and light,

For three short years, which soon were passed.

On the fourth, my gentle mother

Led me to the shrine, to be

His sworn bride eternally.

And now we stood on the altar stair,

When my father came from a distant land,

And with a loud and fearful cry

Rushed between us suddenly.

I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,

I saw his lean and lifted hand,

And heard his words, – and live!

Oh God! Wherefore do I live? – »Hold, hold!«

He cried, – »I tell thee 'tis her brother!

Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod

Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold:

I am now weak, and pale, and old:

We were once dear to one another,

I and that corpse! Thou art our child!«

Then with a laugh both long and wild

The youth upon the pavement fell:

They found him dead! All looked on me,

The spasms of my despair to see:

But I was calm. I went away:

I was clammy-cold like clay!

I did not weep: I did not speak:

But day by day, week after week,

I walked about like a corpse alive!

Alas! sweet friend, you must believe

This heart is stone: it did not break.

My father lived a little while,

But all might see that he was dying,

He smiled with such a woeful smile!

When he was in the churchyard lying

Among the worms, we grew quite poor,

So that no one would give us bread:

My mother looked at me, and said

Faint words of cheer, which only meant

That she could die and be content;

So I went forth from the same church door

To another husband's bed.

And this was he who died at last,

When weeks and months and years had passed,

Through which I firmly did fulfil

My duties, a devoted wife,

With the stern step of vanquished will,

Walking beneath the night of life,

Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain

Falling for ever, pain by pain,

The very hope of death's dear rest;

Which, since the heart within my breast

Of natural life was dispossessed,

Its strange sustainer there had been.

When flowers were dead, and grass was green

Upon my mother's grave, – that mother

Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make

My wan eyes glitter for her sake,

Was my vowed task, the single care

Which once gave life to my despair, –

When she was a thing that did not stir

And the crawling worms were cradling her

To a sleep more deep and so more sweet

Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,

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 sate through the sweet sunny day

By my window bowered round with leaves,

And down my cheeks the quick tears fell

Like twinkling rain-drops 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 rock 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 knowest 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 knowest 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 court-yard 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 gray 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 gray 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,

Where weary meteor lamps repose,

And languid storms their pinions close:

And all things strong and bright and pure,

And ever during, aye endure:

Who knows, if one were buried there,

But these things might our spirits make,

Amid the all-surrounding air,

Their own eternity partake?«

Then 'twas a wild and playful saying

At which I laughed, or seemed to laugh:

They were his words: now heed my praying,

And let them be my epitaph.

Thy memory for a term may be

My monument. Wilt remember me?

I know thou wilt, and canst forgive

Whilst in this erring world to live

My soul disdained not, that I thought

Its lying forms were worthy aught

And much less thee.

Helen. O speak not so,

But come to me and pour thy woe

Into this heart, full though it be,

Ay, overflowing with its own:

I thought that grief had severed me

From all beside who weep and groan;

Its likeness upon earth to be,

Its express image; but thou art

More wretched. Sweet! we will not part

Henceforth, if death be not division;

If so, the dead feel no contrition.

But wilt thou hear since last we parted

All that has left me broken hearted?

Rosalind. Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn

Of their thin beams by that delusive morn

Which sinks again in darkness, like the light

Of early love, soon lost in total night.

Helen. Alas! Italian winds are mild,

But my bosom is cold – wintry cold –

When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,

Soft music, my poor brain is wild,

And I am weak like a nursling child,

Though my soul with grief is gray and old.

Rosalind. Weep not at thine own words, though they must make

Me weep. What is thy tale?

Helen.