ROSALIND AND HELEN,

A MODERN ECLOGUE.

ADVERTISEMENT TO ROSALIND AND HELEN, &c.

NAPLES, Dec. 20, 1818.

THE story of Rosalind and Helen is undoubtedly not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and, if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story: and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure which only pretends to be regular, inasmuch as it corresponds with and expresses the irregularity of the imaginations which inspire it.

I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.

SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.
ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.

HELEN.

COME hither, my sweet Rosalind.

'Tis long since thou and I have met : And yet methinks it were unkind

Those moments to forget.

Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying

To the hues of yon fair heaven.
Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me,
And be as thou wert wont to be

Ere we were disunited?

None doth behold us now: the power
That led us forth at this lone hour

Will be but ill requited

If thou depart in scorn: oh! come
And talk of our abandoned home.
Remember, this is Italy,

And we are exiles. Talk with me

Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
Barren and dark although they be,

Were dearer than these chesnut woods;
Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream :
Which that we have abandoned now
Weighs on the heart like that remorse

Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
No more our youthful intercourse :

That cannot be. Rosalind, speak,

Speak to me! Leave me not !—When morn did come,
When evening fell upon our common home,
When for one hour we parted—Do not frown ;

I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken.
But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,
And not my scorned self, who prayed to thee.

ROSALIND.

Is it a dream, or do I see

And hear frail Helen? I would flee
Thy tainting touch; but former years
Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
And my o'erburthened memory

Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.

I share thy crime. I cannot choose

But weep for thee; mine own strange grief

But seldom stoops to such relief:

Nor ever did I love thee less,

Though mourning o'er thy wickedness

Even with a sister's woe. I knew

What to the evil world is due,

And therefore sternly did refuse

Bewildered by my dire despair,

Wondering I blush and weep that thou

Shouldst love me still-thou only !—There, Let us sit on that grey stone,

Till our mournful talk be done.

HELEN.

Alas! not there; I cannot bear
The murmur of this lake to hear.
A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
Which never yet I heard elsewhere
But in our native land, recurs,

Even here where now we meet. It stirs
Too much of suffocating sorrow!

In the dell of yon dark chesnut wood
Is a stone seat, a solitude

Less like our own :-The ghost of Peace
Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
If thy kind feelings should not cease,
We may sit here.

And I will follow.

ROSALIND.

Thou lead, my sweet,

HENRY.

'Tis Fenici's seat

Where you are going?-This is not the way,

Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
Close to the little river.

HELEN.

Yes, I know;

I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,

Dear boy; why do you sob?

HENRY.

I do not know:

But it might break any one's heart to see
You and the lady cry so bitterly.

HELEN.

It is a gentle child, my friend. 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.

VOL. I.

R

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

Through 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 grey 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.