A TALE OF THE SECRET TRIBUNAL.
PART II.
Sweet is the gloom of forest shades,
Their pillar'd walks, and dim arcades,
With all the thousand flowers that blow,
A waste of loveliness, below.
To him whose soul the world would fly,
For Nature's lonely majesty:
To bard, when wrapt in mighty themes,
To lover, lost in fairy dreams,
To hermit, whose prophetic thought
By fits a gleam of heaven hath caught,
And, in the visions of his rest,
Held bright communion with the blest,
'Tis sweet, but solemn—there alike
Silence and sound with awe can strike.
The deep Eolian murmur made
By sighing breeze and rustling shade,
And cavern'd fountain gushing nigh,
And wild-bee's plaintive lullaby,
Or the dead stillness of the bowers,
When dark the summer-tempest lowers;
When silent Nature seems to wait
The gathering Thunder's voice of fate,
When the aspen scarcely waves in air,>
And the clouds collect for the lightning's glare, >
Each, each alike is awful there, >
And thrills the soul with feelings high,
As some majestic harmony.
But she, the maid, whose footsteps traced
Each green retreat, in breathless haste,
Young Ella linger'd not, to hear
The wood-notes, lost on mourner's ear;
The shivering leaf, the breeze's play,
The fountain's gush, the wild-bird's lay;
These charm not now—her sire she sought,
With trembling frame, with anxious thought,
And, starting, if a forest deer, >
But mov'd the rustling branches near, >
First felt that innocence may fear. >
