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I trust that I did not talk
To gentle Maud in our walk wo-
(For often in lonely wanderings
Ì have cursed him even to lifeless things),
But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father's sin:
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother's faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying
Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt:
For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing
A world of trouble within!
And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
As one scarce less forlorn,
Dying abroad and it seems apart
From him who had ceased to share her heart,
And ever mourning over the feud,
The household Fury sprinkled with blood
By which our houses are torn:
How strange was what she said, 'w deel an
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed—
That Maud's dark father and mine
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,
Maud On the day when Maud was born;
Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath.
Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death.
Mine, mine-our fathers have sworn.
But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,
That, if left uncancell'd, had been so sweet:
And none of us thought of a something beyond,
A desire that awoke in the heart of the child,
As it were a duty done to the tomb,
To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled;
And I was cursing them and my doom,
And letting a dangerous thought run wild
While often abroad in the fragrant gloom
Of foreign churches-I see her there,
Bright English lily, breathing a prayer
To be friends, to be reconciled!
But then what a flint is he! bell be and mut
Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch'd on meorod
This brother had laugh'd her down, for y
And at last, when each came home,
Chid her, and forbid her to speak
He had darken'd into a frown, mid phon[M
To me, her friend of the years before;
And this was what had redden'd her cheek
When I bow'd to her on the moor.
Yet Maud, altho' not blind
To the faults of his heart and mind,
I see she cannot but love him,
And says he is rough but kind,
And wishes me to approve him,
And tells me, when she lay
Sick once, with a fear of
That he left his wine and horses and play,
Sat with her, read to her, night and day,
And tended her like a nurse.
Kind? but the deathbed desire
Spurn'd by this heir of the liar-
Rough but kind? yet I know
He has plotted against me in this,
That he plots against me still.
Kind to Maud? that were not amiss.
Well, rough but kind; why let it be so:
For shall not Maud have her will?
Maud ✪ then, what then shall I say?
If ever I should forget,
May God make me more wretched
Then ever I have been yet!
By the loss of that dead weight,
That I should grow light-headed, I fear,
Fantastically merry ;
But that her brother comes, like a blight
On my fresh hope, to the Hall to-night.
exheb buddisab sdt ud & bai 20
Strange, that I felt so gay,
Strange, that I tried to-day
To beguile her melancholy;
The Sultan, as we name him,-
She did not wish to blame him—
But he vext her and perplext her
With his worldly talk and folly:
Was it gentle to reprove
her M104
For stealing out of view
From a little lazy lover
Who but claims her as his due ?11
Or for chilling his caresses
By the coldness of her manners,
Nay, the plainness of her dresses?
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