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!

6.

But then what a flint is he!

Abroad, at Florence, at Rome,
I find whenever she touch'd on me
This brother had laugh'd her down,
And at last, when each came home,
He had darken'd into a frown,
Chid her, and forbid her to speak

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 worse,

That he left his wine and horses and play,

Sat with her, read to her, night and day,

And tended her like a nurse.

8.

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?

9.

For, Maud, so tender and true,

As long as my life endures

I feel I shall owe you a debt,
That I never can hope to pay;

And if ever I should forget

That I owe this debt to you

And for your sweet sake to yours;

O then, what then shall I say?

If ever I should forget,

May God make me more wretched

Than ever I have been yet!

10.

So now I have sworn to bury

All this dead body of hate,

I feel so free and so clear

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.

XX.

1.

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 himBut he vext her and perplext her With his worldly talk and folly : Was it gentle to reprove her

For stealing out of view

From a little lazy lover

Who but claims her as his due ?

Or for chilling his caresses

By the coldness of her manners,