The Sunset.

There late was One within whose subtle being,     As light and wind within some delicate cloud     That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,     Genius and death contended. None may know     The sweetness of the joy which made his breath     Fail, like the trances of the summer air,     When, with the Lady of his love, who then     First knew the unreserve of mingled being,     He walked along the pathway of a field     Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,     But to the west was open to the sky.     There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold     Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points     Of the far level grass and nodding flowers     And the old dandelion's hoary beard,     And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay     On the brown massy woods - and in the east     The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose     Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,     While the faint stars were gathering overhead. -     'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,     'I never saw the sun? We will walk here     To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.'     That night the youth and lady mingled lay     In love and sleep - but when the morning came     The lady found her lover dead and cold.     Let none believe that God in mercy gave     That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,     But year by year lived on - in truth I think     Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,     And that she did not die, but lived to tend     Her aged father, were a kind of madness,     If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.     For but to see her were to read the tale     Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts     Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief; -     Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:     Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,     Her lips and cheeks were like things dead - so pale;     Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins     And weak articulations might be seen     Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self     Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,     Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!     'Inheritor of more than earth can give,     Passionless calm and silence unreproved,     Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,     And are the uncomplaining things they seem,     Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;     Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were - Peace!'     This was the only moan she ever made.     NOTES:     _4 death 1839; youth 1824.     _22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.     _37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.     _38 worn 1824; torn 1839.