The only end of such a strange despair.

To live deformed; enfeebled; still to sigh

Through changeless days that o'er the heart

go by

Colourless,-formless,-melting as they go

H

Into a dull and unrecorded woe,

Why strive for gladness in such dreary shade?

Why seek to feel less cheerless, less afraid?

What recks a little more or less of gloom,

When a continual darkness is our doom?

But custom, which, to unused eyes that dwell
Long in the blankness of a prison cell,

At length shows glimmerings through some ruined hole,

Trains to endurance the imprisoned soul;

And teaching how with deepest gloom to cope,

Bids patience light her lamp, when sets the sun of hope.

And even like one who sinks to brief repose Cumbered with mournfulness from many woes; Who, restless dreaming, full of horror sleeps, And with a worse than waking anguish weeps,

Till in his dream some precipice appear

Which he must face however great his fear:

Who stepping on those rocks, then feels them.

break

Beneath him, and, with shrieks, leaps up

awake;

And seeing but the grey unwelcome morn,

And feeling but the usual sense forlorn,

Of loss and dull remembrance of known grief,
Melts into tears that partly bring relief,

Because, though misery holds him, yet his dreams
More dreadful were than all around him

seems:

So, in the life grown real of loss and woe,

She woke to crippled days; which, sad and slow And infinitely weary as they were,

At first, appeared less hard than fancy deemed,

to bear.

But as those days rolled on, of grinding pain,
Of wild untamed regrets, and yearnings vain,
Sad Gertrude grew to weep with restless tears
For all the vanished joys of blighted years.

And most she mourned with feverish piteous

pining,

When o'er the land the summer sun was

shining;

And all the volumes and the missals rare,

Which Claud had gathered with a tender care,

Seemed nothing to the book of nature, spread
Around her helpless feet and weary head.

Oh! woodland paths she ne'er again may see,
Oh! tossing branches of the forest tree,
Oh! loveliest banks in all the land of France,
Glassing your shadows in the silvery Rance;
Oh! river with your swift yet quiet tide,

Specked with white sails that seem in dreams

to glide;

Oh! ruddy orchards, basking on the hills,

Whose plenteous fruit the thirsty flagon fills;

And oh ye winds, which, free and unconfined,
No sickness poisons, and no heart can bind,-
Restore her to enjoyment of the earth!
Echo again her songs of careless mirth,

Those little Breton songs so wildly sweet,
Fragments of music strange and incomplete,
Her small red mouth went warbling by the way
Through the glad roamings of her active day.

It may not be! Blighted are summer hours!

The bee goes booming through the plats of flowers,

The butterfly its tiny mate pursues

With rapid fluttering of its painted hues,