stay, but felt some chance Must serve us for the rest: musing, I pass From scene to scene of My Dear Lady’s life, And leave my other memories undisturbed.

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Beneath this airy sapphire’s brooding rest, Its shadows overcast me with a chill Like coming storm, that black calamity Which struck and took our Darling from their charge And mine. Grief stupefied us all. At once The childless mother lost her wavering strength, And lay prostrated; never tasting life On earth again! Beside her husband sat And watched her fading; saw the last poor smile Wane from her features; till the closing eyes Lit into tearful rapture; when he knew Love’s immortality to her revealed. With both her own she mutely clasped his hand, p. 149And held it in most gentle pressures fixed: But when the tender grasp relaxed and fell, The world closed round him to a stony blank.

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And now was stricken down the mighty man; As the ripe harvest levelled by a storm At morningtide; which, ere sun warmth anew Can flatter into strength, a second storm O’erwhelms and scattereth to waste at even.

When that torpidity which follows pain Through strangeness passed to natural regard For daily wants; his vacant home he loathed: His spacious garden grounds; his lake; his woods; The breezy air; the overhanging heaven, He loathed: he loathed them all. When spring aroused The amorous songsters of the copse and field To seasonable joy, their music mocked His sadness with its echoes, babbling tales Of what had been: and he, in bitterness, p. 150Resolved to quit a place where every turn Stood like a foe, whose settled leering eye In silence gloared with hope to mark his fall; He left our country. Far, in Eastern climes, His nation serving well, he fought and died: And never had a nobler man upheld The majesty of England’s worth and name.

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Long toil-devoted years have gloomed and shone Since these events closed up my doors of life. Partly from choice, and part necessity, With 

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