LIV.

"This little spirit with imploring eyes Wanders alone the dreary wild of space; The shadow of his pain for ever lies

Upon my soul in this new dwelling-place ; His loneliness makes me in Paradise

More lonely, and, unless I see his face, Even here for grief could I lie down and die, Save for my curse of immortality.,

LV.

"World after world he sees around him swim Crowded with happy souls, that take no heed Of the sad eyes that from the night's faint rim Gaze sick with longing on them as they speed With golden gates, that only shut out him;

And shapes sometimes from Hell's abysses freed Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep

Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy deep.

LVI.

and I must pine

"I am a mother, — spirits do not shake
This much of earth from them,
Till I can feel his little hands and take
His

weary head upon this heart of mine; And, might it be, full gladly for his sake

Would I this solitude of bliss resign,

And be shut out of Heaven to dwell with him
For ever in that silence drear and dim.

LVII.

"I strove to hush my soul, and would not speak At first, for thy dear sake; a woman's love

Is mighty, but a mother's heart is weak,

And by its weakness overcomes; I strove To smother bitter thoughts with patience meek, But still in the abyss my soul would rove, Seeking my child, and drove me here to claim

The rite that gives him peace in Christ's dear name.

LVIII.

"I sit and weep while blessed spirits sing;

I can but long and pine the while they praise, And, leaning o'er the wall of Heaven, I fling

My voice to where I deem my infant strays, Like a robbed bird that cries in vain to bring

Her nestlings back beneath her wings' embrace; But still he answers not, and I but know

That Heaven and earth are both alike in woe.

LIX.

"And thou, dear Mordred, after penance done, By blessed Mary's grace may'st meet me here, For she it was that pitied my sad moan,

Herself not free from mother's pangs whilere, And gave me leave to wander forth alone

To ask due rites for him I held so dear: When Holy Church shall grant his soul release, I shall possess my heart and be at peace.

LX.

66

Yes, ages hence, in joy we yet may meet,
By sorrow thou, and I by patience, tried;
No steep is hard for love's white feet to climb,
And faith is but ambition purified,

And hope and memory would still be sweet,
Though every other joy were quite denied ;
So let us look toward our gleam of light,
Although between lie leagues of barren night.”

LXI.

Then the pale priests, with ceremony due,
Baptized the child within its dreadful tomb
Beneath that mother's heart, whose instinct true
Star-like had battled down the triple gloom

Of sorrow, love, and death: young maidens, too,
Strewed the pale corpse with many a milkwhite bloom,

And parted the bright hair, and on the breast

Crossed the unconscious hands in sign of rest.

LXII.

Some said, that, when the priest had sprinkled o'er

The consecrated drops, they seemed to hear A sigh, as of some heart from travail sore

Released, and then two voices singing clear, Misereatur Deus, more and more

Fading far upward, and their ghastly fear Fell from them with that sound, as bodies fall From souls upspringing to celestial hall.

LXIII.

And Mordred seemed to hear it and to grow Lighter at heart, and they who marked him said, That something of the darkness of his woe

Had from his stony eyes and visage fled,

Which glimmered now with a strange inward glow, As when the sun, with tempest-rack o'erspread, Bursts through a sidelong rift, and on his scalp

Goldens afar some huge cloud-builded Alp.