Amid the moss,
    The hermit scoop’d a solitary grave
    Below the pine-trees, and he sang a stave,
    Or two, or three, of some old requiem
    As in their narrow home he buried them. 
    And many a day, before that blessed spot
    He sate, in lone and melancholy thought,
    Gazing upon the grave; and one had guess’d
    Of some dark secret shadowing his breast. 
    And yet, to see him, with his silver hair
    Adrift and floating in the sea-borne air,
    And features chasten’d in the tears of woe,
    In sooth ’twas merely sad to see him so! 
    A wreck of nature, floating far and fast,
    Upon the stream of Time—­to sink at last!

    And he is wandering by the shore again,
    Hard leaning on his staff; the azure main
    Lies sleeping far before him, with his seas
    Fast folded in the bosom of the breeze,
    That like the angel Peace hath dropt his wings
    Around the warring waters.  Sadly sings
    To his own heart that lonely hermit man,
    A tale of other days, when passion ran
    Along his pulses, like a troubled stream,
    And glory was a splendour, and a dream! 
    He stoop’d to gather up a shining gem,
    That lay amid the shells, as bright as them,—­
    It was a cross, the cross that Agathe
    Had given to her Julio:  the play
    Of the fierce sunbeams fell upon its face,
    And on the glistering jewels—­But the trace
    Of some old thought came burning to the brain
    Of the pale hermit, and he shrunk in pain
    Before the holy symbol.  It was not
    Because of the eternal ransom wrought
    In ages far away, or he had bent
    In pure devotion sad and reverent;
    But now, he started, as he look’d upon
    That jewell’d thing, and wildly he is gone
    Back to the mossy grave, away, away:—­
    “My child! my child! my own, own Agathe!”

    It is her father,—­he,—­an alter’d man! 
    His quiet had been wounded, and the ban
    Of misery came over him, and froze
    The bright and holy tides, that fell and rose
    In joy amid his heart.  To think of her,
    That he had injured so, and all so fair,
    So fond, so like the chosen of his youth,—­
    It was a very dismal thought, in truth,
    That he had left her hopelessly, for aye,
    Within the cloister-wall to droop, and die! 
    And so he could not bear to have it be;
    But sought for some lone island in the sea,
    Where he might dwell in doleful solitude,
    And do strange penance in his mirthless mood,
    For this same crime, unnaturally wild,
    That he had done unto his saintly child. 
    And ever he did think, when he had laid
    These lovers in the grave, that, through the shade
    Of ghastly features melting to decay,
    He saw the image of his Agathe.