THE WORDS OF ROSALIND'S SCROLL.

“I left thee last, a child at heart,

A woman scarce in years.

I come to thee, a solemn corpse

Which neither feels nor fears.

I have no breath to use in sighs;

They laid the dead-weights on mine eyes

To seal them safe from tears.

“Look on me with thine own calm look:

I meet it calm as thou.

No look of thine can change this smile,

Or break thy sinful vow:

I tell thee that my poor scorned heart

Is of thine earth — thine earth, a part:

It cannot vex thee now.

“But out, alas! these words are writ

By a living, loving one,

Adown whose cheeks, the proofs of life

The warm quick tears do run:

Ah, let the unloving corpse control

Thy scorn back from the loving soul

Whose place of rest is won.

“I have prayed for thee with bursting sob

When passion's course was free;

I have prayed for thee with silent lips,

In the anguish none could see:

They whispered oft,‘ She sleepeth soft’ —

But I only prayed for thee.

“Go to! I pray for thee no more:

The corpse's tongue is still,

Its folded fingers point to heaven,

But point there stiff and chill:

No farther wrong, no farther woe

Hath license from the sin below

Its tranquil heart to thrill.

“I charge thee, by the living's prayer,

And the dead's silentness,

To wring from out thy soul a cry

Which God shall hear and bless!

Lest Heaven's own palm droop in my hand,

And pale among the saints I stand,

A saint companionless.”

Bow lower down before the throne,

Triumphant Rosalind!

He boweth on thy corpse his face,

And weepeth as the blind:

‘ Twas a dread sight to see them so,

For the senseless corpse rocked to and fro

With the wail of his living mind.

But dreader sight, could such be seen,

His inward mind did lie,

Whose long-subjected humanness

Gave out its lion-cry,

And fiercely rent its tenement

In a mortal agony.

I tell you, friends, had you heard his wail,

‘ Twould haunt you in court and mart,

And in merry feast until you set

Your cup down to depart —

That weeping wild of a reckless child

From a proud man's broken heart.

O broken heart, O broken vow,

That wore so proud a feature!

God, grasping as a thunderbolt

The man's rejected nature,

Smote him therewith i’ the presence high

Of his so worshipped earth and sky

That looked on all indifferently —

A wailing human creature.

A human creature found too weak

To bear his human pain —

( May Heaven's dear grace have spoken peace

To his dying heart and brain! )

For when they came at dawn of day

To lift the lady's corpse away,

Her bier was holding twain.

They dug beneath the kirkyard grass,

For born one dwelling deep;

To which, when years had mossed the stone,

Sir Roland brought his little son

To watch the funeral heap:

And when the happy boy would rather

Turn upward his blithe eyes to see

The wood-doves nodding from the tree,

“Nay, boy, look downward,” said his father,

“Upon this human dust asleep.

And hold it in thy constant ken

That God's own unity compresses

( One into one ) the human many,

And that his everlastingness is

The bond which is not loosed by any:

That thou and I this law must keep,

If not in love, in sorrow then,—

Though smiling not like other men,

Still, like them we must weep.”