Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1824.pdf/68



Is he the bridegroom?—ah! that tells the tale! The common history of trusting love— Neglect and change. - - -

In the last picture is no sunny sky— No landscape, with its grapes and leaves and flowers Revelling in summer, but a convent cell— With its dim grating, and its crucifix Beside the skull and hour-glass. And here lies Upon the pallet the false hunter's love. Death has most awful lessons! It is sad, Aye, strange, to see even the aged die; But about youth there is a confidence In life, that makes it terrible. But here, Fear is forgot in sorrow; and the heart Goes back to the fair girl and her first dreams Of hope and happiness, the purple flowers Springing beneath the rainbow-light of love Into such luxury! Then comes the change— From utter confidence, to just a thought There is a shade of coldness; then the pulse, Awakening to the torture of distrust, The hope that clings to the least glimpse of blue Amid a sky of murkiness; the fear That sickens at itself; the fond deceit, That will not see the truth; the tenderness, That only asks to trust; and, at the last, The knowledge we have known in vain so long Comes like a thunderbolt, and crushes. Then Loses the blue eye its full azure beauty, For tears have darkened it; then the young cheek Fades in the autumn of the heart—despair! And brow and lip grow sunk and wan, just like The pale inhabitant of this dim cell. The sun is setting, and one last red gleam Is on the sufferer's forehead; and her eyes Are lighted strangely by it, yet the lids Droop heavily upon them; and the cheek And wasted arms wear the cold marble hue Of parting life. The painter had just seized The broken heart's last pulse, and look, and breath. L. E. L.