And have you not lingered, lingered still,
All unfettered in thought and will,
A fair and cherished boy;
Until you felt it pain to part
From the wild creations of your art,
Until your young and innocent heart
Seemed bursting with its joy?
And then, oh then, hath your waking eye
Opened in all its ecstacy,
And seen your mother leaning o'er you,
The loved and loving one that bore you,
Giving her own, her fond caress,
And looking her eloquent tenderness?
Was it not heaven to fly from the scene
Where the heart in the vision of night had been,
And drink, in one o'erflowing kiss,
Your deep reality of bliss?
Such was LILLIAN's passionate madness,
Such was the calm of her waking gladness.
Enough! my tale is all too long:
Fair children, if the trifling song,
That flows for you to-night,
Hath stolen from you one gay laugh,
Or given your quiet hearts to quaff
One cup of young delight,
Pay ye the rhymer for his toils
In the coinage of your golden smiles,
And treasure up his idle verse,
With the stories ye loved from the lips of your nurse.
WHERE foams and flows the glorious Rhine, ruin wan and gray
O'erlooks the corn-field and the vine,
Majestic in its dark decay.
Among their dim clouds, long ago,
They mocked the battles that raged below,
And greeted the guests in arms that came,
With hissing arrow, and scalding flame :
But there is not one of the homes of pride
That frown on the breast of the peaceful tide,
Whose leafy walls more proudly tower
Than these, the walls of Belmont Tower.
Where foams and flows the glorious Rhine,
Many a fierce and fiery lord
Did carve the meat, and pour the wine,
For all that revelled at his board.
Father and son, they were all alike,
Firm to endure, and fast to strike;
Little they loved but a Frau or a feast,
Nothing they feared but a prayer or a priest;
But there was not one in all the land
More trusty of heart, or more stout of hand,
More valiant in field, or more courteous in bower,
Than Otto, the Lord of Belmont Tower.
Are you rich, single, and 'your Grace'?
I pity your unhappy case;
Before you leave your travelling carriage,
The women have arranged your marriage;
Where'er your weary
wit may lead you,
They pet you, praise you, fret you, feed you;
Consult your taste in wreaths and laces,
And make you make their books at Races,
Your little pony, Tam O'Shanter,
Is found to have the sweetest canter;
Your curricle is quite reviving,
And Jane 's so bold when you are driving!
Some recollect your father's habits,
And know the warren, and the rabbits!
The place is really princely-only
They're sure you 'll find it vastly lonely.
You go to Cheltenham, for the waters,
And meet the Countess and her daughters;
You take a cottage at Geneva-
Lo! Lady Anne and Lady Eva.
In horror of another session,
You just surrender at discretion,
And live to curse the frauds of mothers,
And envy all your younger brothers.
Count Otto bowed, Count Otto smiled,
When My Lady praised her darling child;
Count Otto smiled, Count Otto bowed,
When the child those praises disavowed;
As a knight should gaze Count Otto gazed,
Where Bertha in all her beauty blazed;
As a knight should hear Count Otto heard,
When Liba sang like a forest bird-
But he thought, I trow, about as long
Of Bertha's beauty and Liba's song,
As the sun may think of the clouds that play
O'er his radiant path on a summer day.
Many a maid had dreams of state,
As the Count rode up to her father's gate;
Many a maid shed tears of pain,
As the count rode back to his Tower again;
But little he cared, as it should seem,
For the sad, sad tear, or the fond, fond dreamAlone he lived-alone, and free
As the owl that dwells in the hollow tree:
And the Baroness said, and the Baron swore,
There never was knight so shy before!
It was almost the first of May:
The sun all smiles had passed away;
The moon was beautifully bright;
Earth, heaven, as usual in such cases,
Looked up and down with happy faces;
In short, it was a charming night.
And all alone, at twelve o'clock,
The young Count clambered down the rock,
Unfurled the sail, unchained the oar,
And pushed the shallop from the shore.
The holiness that sweet time flings
Upon all human thoughts and things,
When Sorrow checks her idle sighs,
And care shuts fast her wearied eyes;
The splendor of the hues that played
Fantastical o'er hill and glade,
As verdant slope and barren cliff
Seemed darting by the tiny skiff;
The flowers, whose faint tips, here and there,
Breathed out such fragrance, you might swear
That every soundless gale that fanned
The tide came fresh from fairy land;
The music of the mountain rill,
Leaping in glee from hill to hill,
To which some wild bird, now and then,
Made answer from her darksome glen—
All this to him had rarer pleasure
Than jester's wit or minstrel's measure;
And, if you ever loved romancing,
Or felt extremely tired of dancing,
You will not wonder that Count Otto
Left Lady Hildegonde's ridotto.
What melody glides o'er the star-lit stream?
Angels of grace! does the young Count dream?
"Lurley! Lurley !"
Or is the scene indeed so fair
That a nymph of the sea or a nymph of the air
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