MAUD. I HATE the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood red heath, The red-ribb’d ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers • Death.' For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, His who had given me life-O father ! O God! was it well ?Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush’d, and dinted into the ground: There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell. Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd, And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann’d with despair, And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright, And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he : his honest fame should at least by me Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we be maintained : But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d. have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own bearthstone ? But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word ? Is it peace or war ? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. |