And gay retainers gather round the hearth,

9

With tongues all loudness, and with eyes all mirth.

II.

The chief of Lara is returned again:

And why had Lara crossed the bounding main?

Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,
Lord of himself;-that heritage of woe,

That fearful empire which the human breast
But holds to rob the heart within of rest!—
With none to check, and few to point in time
The thousand paths that slope the way to crime;
Then, when he most required commandment, then
Had Lara's daring boyhood governed men.
It skills not, boots not step by step to trace

His youth through all the mazes of its race;

20

Short was the course his restlessness had run,

But long enough to leave him half undone.

III.

And Lara left in youth his father-land;

But from the hour he waved his parting hand

Each trace waxed fainter of his course, till all

Had nearly ceased his memory to recall.

His sire was dust, his vassals could declare,

'Twas all they knew, that Lara was not there; 30 Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew

Cold in the many, anxious in the few.

His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name,
His portrait darkens in its fading frame,

Another chief consoled his destined bride

The young forgot him, and the old had died;

"Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir,

And sighs for sables which he must not wear.
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace
The Laras' last and longest dwelling place;

But one is absent from the mouldering file,
That now were welcome in that Gothic pile.

40

IV.

He comes at last in sudden loneliness,

And whence they know not, why they need not guess;
They more might marvel, when the greeting's o'er,

Not that he came, but came not long before:
No train is his beyond a single page,

Of foreign aspect, and of tender age.

Years had rolled on, and fast they speed away

To those that wander as to those that stay;

50

But lack of tidings from another clime
Had lent a flagging wing to weary Time.
They see, they recognise, yet almost deem
The present dubious, or the past a dream.

He lives, nor yet is past his manhood's prime, Though seared by toil, and something touched by

time;

His faults, whate'er they were, if scarce forgot,
Might be untaught him by his varied lot;

Nor good nor ill of late were known, his name
Might yet uphold his patrimonial fame:

His soul in youth was haughty, but his sins
No more than pleasure from the stripling wins;
And such, if not yet hardened in their course,
Might be redeemed, nor ask a long remorse.

60

And they indeed were changed-'tis quickly seen

Whate'er he be, 'twas not what he had been:
That brow in furrowed lines had fixed at last,
And spake of passions, but of passion past;
The pride, but not the fire, of early days,
Coldness of mien, and carelessness of praise;
A high demeanour, and a glance that took

Their thoughts from others by a single look;
And that sarcastic levity of tongue,

The stinging of a heart the world hath stung,
That darts in seeming playfulness around,

70

And makes those feel that will not own the wound; All these seemed his, and something more beneath, Than glance could well reveal, or accent breathe. Ambition, glory, love, the common aim,

That some can conquer, and that all would claim, 80