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Blest, but for some dark under-current woe
That seems to draw-but it shall not be so :
Let all be well, be well.

XIX.

1.

HER brother is coming back to-night,
Breaking up my dream of delight.

2.

My dream? do I dream of bliss?
I have walk'd awake with Truth.
O when did a morning shine
So rich in atonement as this

For my dark-dawning youth,

Darken'd watching a mother decline

And that dead man at her heart and mine:
For who was left to watch her but I?

Yet so did I let my freshness die.

3.

I trust that I did not talk

To gentle Maud in our walk
(For often in lonely wanderings

Ì have cursed him even to lifeless things)
But I trust that I did not talk,
Not touch on her father's sin:
I am sure I did but speak
Of my mother's faded cheek
When it slowly grew so thin,
That I felt she was slowly dying

Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt
For how often I caught her with eyes all wet,
Shaking her head at her son and sighing
A world of trouble within!

4.

And Maud too, Maud was moved
To speak of the mother she loved
As one scarce less forlorn,

Dying abroad and it seems apart

From him who had ceased to share her heart,
And ever mourning over the feud,

The household Fury sprinkled with blood
By which our houses are torn:
How strange was what she said,
When only Maud and the brother
Hung over her dying bed-

That Maud's dark father and mine
Had bound us one to the other,
Betrothed us over their wine,

On the day when Maud was born;

Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath. Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death, Mine, mine--our fathers have sworn.

5.

But the true blood spilt had in it a heat
To dissolve the precious seal on a bond,
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

To me, her friend of the years before;

And this was what had redden'd her cheek When I bow'd to her on the moor.

Yet Maud, altho' not blind

To the faults of his heart and mind,
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 him-
But 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?

MAUD.

Or for chilling his caresses By the coldness of her manners, Nay, the plainness of her dresses? Now I know her but in two, Nor can pronounce upon it If one should ask me whether The habit, hat, and feather, Or the frock and gypsy bonnet Be the neater and completer; For nothing can be sweeter Than maiden Maud in either.

2.

But to-morrow, if we live,
Our ponderous squire will give
A grand political dinner
To half the squirelings near;
And Maud will wear her jewels,
And the bird of prey will hover,
And the titmouse hope to win her
With his chirrup at her ear.

3.

A grand political dinner
To the men of many acres,
A gathering of the Tory,
A dinner and then a dance
For the maids and marriage-makers,
And every eye but mine will glance
At Maud in all her glory.

4.

For I am not invited,

But, with the Sultan's pardon,
I am all as well delighted,

For I know her own rose-garden,

And mean to linger in it
Till the dancing will be over;

And then, O then, come out to me

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