II.

Dim skies and heavy rain!—
And by Mahana's Lake she roams again;
Nursing her agony with insensate care,
And pampering her despair:
Has sought out every scene
Where she and Ranolf had together been:
On every sight
Of wonder once and such delight
Again has dwelt:
And in their presence felt—
Delight? Ah no! increased distress—
No wonder—worse than weariness.

The clouds were dark and low;
Rain falling, soft and slow;
Day closing on her woe;
As, little heeding where she went,
With trouble more than travel spent,
She wandered reckless near the weird ravine
That leads up to the Lake of waters green,
page 439 Through spectral shapes forlorn
Of rocks all torn and weather-worn;
More gaunt, distorted, grim,
Thus shadowy seen through vapours dim.
Then at the entrance of that dismal vale,
Where dense broom-thickets hide
Mud-pools that boil on every side,
And pit the crust, that anywhere might fail
The footstep, with foul cauldrons deep and wide;—
There, she—with hands upon her knees that hid
Her face, unmoving sat.
And though the rain had soaked her flaxen mat,
And slowly down the silken tresses slid,
That fell neglected on the ground;
Though in the silence as they slipped,
The unkindly drops of dew
Audibly dripped and dripped—
She felt it not, nor knew.
The only sight or sound
She saw or heard around,
Was that lost voice, that vanished face
That once had glorified the place;
And now, in such a torturing maze
Of tender recollections, wound
Her burning brain, her breaking heart;
The past to life appeared to start
In vivid hues too beautiful to bear!
Her vanished Bliss seemed over her to glare,
A deadly-terrible Angel lovely-bright,
With outspread wings ablaze
Above her hung;—till blasted by its light
Down—down—she cowered—she sank—in misery's blackest night.
page 440 How the gleam iridescent and shapeless—that lies
Like the Wreck of a Rainbow flung crushed on the skies
In the rack of the tempest, low down where it flies,
With its hues dimly blurred;—to the mariner drear,
How forlornly it bids the fair vision appear
Of the Arch all resplendent! the luminous Bow
In the glory of orange and purple aglow;
On the thick, of the violet shadow behind
In rounded perfection so sharply defined;
So airily tender—transparently mild,
Yet so firmly enthroned o'er the elements wild;
So softly aspiring, so gracefully grand,
On the air, like a rock, it has taken its stand,
And lords it serenely o'er ocean and land!—
Even so—as she lay overwhelmed by despair
Wan, weary and haggard—crushed, cowering there,
Even so—and so sadly! her woe-begone mien
Might have roused the remembrance of what she had been
When the Maid in the maddening days that had flown
In the bloom and the pride of her happiness shone!