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Who had brought the system into disgrace,
Till the Devil himself grew red in the face
At sins he had never decreed!

"This abbot heard, through the sedgy grate
Of his cloister of shell and weed,
The woful princess bewailing her fate,
Then saw the approaching barge of state--
And closing his missal and locking his gate,
He leaped aboard with speed.

"A scion of Church and State was he,
In his cloister of shell and weed,--
And well he knew if a wedding should be,
That he as chief prelate under the sea,
Must be there to perform the solemn decree,
To sign and to seal the deed!"


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VIII.
WHILE the songs were sung, each passing breath
Seemed breathed from the feverish breast of Death;
All the air which had heard the tune 
Hung sultry and heavy and dead,
Pulsed through and through with flushes of red,
And hot as a broad, unshielded noon
In a fiery clime at the end of June.

In the purple sky, an hour too soon,
Like a wedding-bark await
At a Venetian palace-gate,
Floated the empty, crescent moon,
Moored at a crimson cloud,--a barge of state
In the sunset's broad lagune.


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But to Agatha that cloud
Seemed like a world consuming with fire--
Whereon the avenging sun had breathed his ire!
And the moon was only a poor corpse in a shroud,
Which had been shot from a bark forlorn
Into the tranquil sea at morn,
That rose at eve a ghastly sight,
To blanch the mariner's cheek with fright!

Incongruous fancies, a maniac crowd,
Leaped through her brain, and shrieked aloud;
While, as to a blighting gust
Of red ashes and dust,
With a desperate wail her sad soul bowed.
And when with dry, hot eyes she saw--
Each throbbing like a burning heart--
The glowing lady lean and draw
Roland close to her heaving side,
And smoothing his floating locks apart,
With looks of mingled passion and pride,

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Press on his brow a heated kiss,--
Her heart, as one in a nightmare dream,
Striving with fruitless effort to scream,
Seemed plunging down a black abyss.

But when the lady, with sidelong eyes
Half-veiled in mocking hate's eclipse,--
A look which pitied, yet seemed to despise--
Glanced at the maiden's face of despair,
And bending down and down with triumphant air,
Set the hot seal of her love on his lips--
There was more than a frenzied soul could bear!
A sudden shriek--wild, sharp, and shrill!
A plunge!--a gurgle!--a widening thrill
Rippling the water! And all was still!

"Oh, see!" cried the lady,--"O Roland, behold!
She has leapt in the sea!
She is drowned in the sea!
And it is all for the love of thee!

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Her heart was so warm, and your blood was so cold!"
"By Heaven!" he cried, "it shall not be!"
Then another plunge and another thrill
Rippled the wave; and a voice as shrill
As ever a fiend could shout in glee,
Cried, "Adieu! adieu!
Till we meet anew
In our palace of splendour far under the sea!"

And all the air, the moment after,
Was filled with wild demoniac laughter--
And like swift hounds in pursuit of a wolf,
Sudden flaws from the leash of the gale
Leapt upon the straining sail,
And chased it over the flashing gulf.
Away and away, with a murderous flight,
Sped the bark,--away and away!
Doubling the headland into the bay,
Like a red-handed homicide flying from sight!


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IX.
THE toil, the danger and despair
Struggling with hope in that brief moment there,
May not be chronicled or said;
Or how it seemed from ocean's shadowy bed
That demon shapes leapt up, with murderous hands,
Striving to pluck the desperate swimmer down,
That with his burden he might sink and drown,
And lie supine upon the charnel sands.

But still he laboured;--and a form divine,
Such as an angel clothed in sunshine hath,
Glimmered before him, walking on the brine--
Slow leading shoreward in a golden path.
And well he knew 'twas that sweet pitying sprite
Which he had driven into the howling night!

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But now her pale lips seemed to move
Forgivingly with smiles of love,--
Until his heart with hope beat high and warm,
And a new impulse nerved his straggling arm.

Anon his feet were on the slanting sands,
Where slow he toiled with the increasing weight,
Which, like a sea-weed stranded, desolate,
Hung o'er his arm with dripping hair and hands.
And now wild groups came down the sloping lands,
Looming gigantic 'gainst the level sun,
And their long shadows to the beach did run
Precipitate with uncontrolléd wo--
Outstripping those who followed! Till anon
Around the melancholy show
The people gathered, and with faces wan
Told their great grief as only mourners can
Who loved the thing they mourn from the hour its life began!


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Foremost her sire, a wild disconsolate man,
Mingled with the wet grief of the sea
The tears of his tempest agony,
Which like baptismal waters ran 
Over her breathless breast, as from the hand
Of the pale priestess Sorrow flung,
Naming her one of that most enviable band
Whom loving Death has ta'en into his land
While beautiful and young--
Into the land of May, forever green,
To be crowned with virgin flowers immortally a queen.

With shreds of white hair sorrowing in the breeze,
The village priest leant o'er her with a prayer;
And then he said, "Let loving arms of care
Take up this mournful victim of the seas,
And bear her to the church, and on a bier
Lay her before the sacred altar-shrine,
Where the mild Saviour, with His eyes divine,
Looks peace to grief, and hope to those who fear;

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And as he lifted Jairus' child from death,
He may renew even here the life-reviving breath."
And as he bade they bore her; while behind
Pale Roland followed with bewildered mind.


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X.
WHEN they had gained the little chapel door,
And were about to cross the sacred sill,
Their drownéd burden, breathless as before,
The anxious crowd beheld, with sudden thrill,
The serpent ring her dripping right-hand bore
Leap from her finger and as lightning pass,
Flashing between their feet,
Searing the ground with heat,
A crooked flame that vanished in the grass.

Then straightway to the maiden's cheek
Flushed up a little dawn of life;

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And her waking pulses, weary and weak,
In their recovery seemed to speak
Of the long and maddening strife,
Of the maniac dreams which had filled her brain,
While her heart lay stunned in its night of pain.

And when at the altar-shrine
They laid her like a corpse supine,
Scarce noting the life-announcing sign,
Then Roland fell on his knees, and pressed
Her cold white hands to his aching breast:
And instantly the long frozen pain
Which had oppressed and benumbed his brain,
Seemed to melt in a repentant glow,
And in floods of tears to his eyelids flow,
Till his sad heart felt like an arid plain
That is drenched with a generous summer rain.

Was it the sunset's parting beam
Piercing the little window red?

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Or was it the lightning's vivid gleam
Through the startled twilight shed?
They only knew a crimson flush,
Making the sacred shadows blush,
Shot up the aisle, as if the fiery rays
Of a meteor-ball had set the air ablaze:
And then a baleful voice
Drew their eyes to the door away;
And all could plainly hear it say,
"Come, Roland, come! Thou hast no choice:
Thou shalt not, darest not stay:
The prayer which thou must learn to pray
At another altar must be made,
And thy vows to another God be paid!"

And gazing through the door, they saw
The lady and monk beyond the sill;
And every breast was filled with awe,
And every pulse ran chill.

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They stood like travellers in the night,
Surrounded by a blazing light,
Who see the eyes of the wolf and pard,
Fixed with wild and eager desire,
Insane with hunger, and only debarred
By a living threshold of circling fire.

Then Roland cried, "Avaunt! avaunt!
Here at this holy altar I swear,
By my future hopes and my past despair,
To fly from the fiends and that lonely haunt,
With pain, and wo, and demons rife!
And if once this sweet maid come to life,
To claim her my bride! And in token of this,
I set on her lips this sealing kiss!"

He spake and bowed--lips touched to lips;
And as a taper, when the gusty dark
Has blown its splendour into eclipse,
While its wick still holds the crimson spark,

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Which, touching another taper's rays,
Instantly stands in the air ablaze,--
So life, in a swift contagious flame,
Suddenly illumined the maiden's frame!

A moment surveying the sacred place,
Her blue eyes turned, then with modest grace
Gazing up into Roland's face,
Her sweet tongue said, in its first release,
With words which seemed breathed from the lips of peace--
"The spell is past! Oh, hour divine!
Thou, thou art mine! and I am thine!"

And the listening shadows cool and gray,
In the gallery, like a responding choir,
Where the organ glowed like an altar-fire,
Seemed to the echoing vault to say,
Softly as at a nuptial shrine--
"Thou art mine! and I am thine!"


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And still through the breathless moments after,
Like doves beneath the sheltering rafter,
Along the roof in faint decline,
The echoes whispered with voices fine--
"Mine and thine! mine and thine!"

And now, like a golden trumpet, blown
To make a glorious victory known,
The organ with its roll divine,
Poured abroad from its thrilling tongue
Words the sweetest ever sung--
"Mine and thine! mine and thine!"

And up in the tower the iron bell
Suddenly felt the joyous spell,
And flung its accents clear and gay,
As if it were rung on a wedding-day;
And like a singer swaying his head
To mark the time
Of some happy rhyme,

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Breathing his heart in every line,
Thus swayed the bell, and swaying said--
"Mine and thine! mine and thine!"


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XI.
THE lady standing beyond the door,
Like one whose despair can bear no more,
Shrieked a fiendish shriek of wrath;
And, with a hollow sepulchral sound,
Her body fell upon the ground
And lay a corpse along the path!

And then a shadow, like a cloud
On a hissing whirlwind fierce and loud,
Swept seaward, pierced with curses and shrieks,
Which like the lightning's fiery streaks
Flashed madly through the twilight shades,
Cleaving the air with sulphurous blades!


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Then the people ran to the headland height
With the fascination of wonder and fright,--
And saw the little dragon bark,
Speeding out to the eastern dark--
Away and away, as swift and bright
As a red flamingo's sudden flight.

And climbing the black rocks high and higher
They gazed and gazed with aching sight,--
Till into the distant realm of night
They saw it pass--a ship on fire!

Then Roland, who gazed on the body which lay
In the path, a loathsome shape of clay,
Defiled by a fiend and cast away,
Called to the sturdy sacristan,
Who came, a shuddering, awe-struck man,
And bade him with his graveyard crew
Bear and bury the thing from view.

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But when they strove, with fear and disgust,
To raise that form which once had been
The temple of Beauty and then of Sin,
It fell from their hands a mass of dust,--
Like a cavern of sand, so fragile and thin,
That a single touch will shatter it in;--
Or like a long-consuméd brand,
Whose form in the ashes seems to stand,
From whence the hungry flame has fled
And left it a thing devoured and dead,
Which the lightest touch of the lifting hand
Shivers to nothing, a shapeless mass;--
Thus the body fell, and lay on the grass
A crumbled pile at their startled feet,
As if it had been consumed by the heat
Of that most subtle and fiery fiend
Which so long it had fearfully harboured and screened!


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Days dawned and set, and year by year
The bride became more fair and dear;
And Roland saw with secret delight,
As her face grew more refined and bright,
How through every feature it seemed
That the light of his long-lost Ida beamed!
And by degrees her softening voice
Like Ida's made his heart rejoice;
Until, when the first few years had flown,
He forgot that his early love had died,
And walking at his lady's side,
He called her "Ida," and she replied
To the name as it had been her own.

Never more to that lonely height,
Where only the wild birds of the sea
Peopled the gusty balcony,
He turned his feet; but lived and moved
Among his fellows--revered, beloved;

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And the world was no more a world of blight,
But a realm of sunshine, warm and bright.
With his brooding grief no longer blind,
This simple truth his soul discerned,--
And well it were for all mankind
Had they the selfsame lesson learned,--
That it is not in the world abroad,
In the sight of men and the light of God,
That fierce temptations chiefly dwell;
But in the misanthropic cell,
Where the selfish passions are all enshrined
And worshipped by one darksome mind.


THE END.


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