And where a little terrace from its bowers,
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers, 1250
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o’er
The liquid marble of the windless lake;
And where the aged forest’s limbs look hoar,
Under the leaves which their green garments make,
They come: ’Tis Helen’s home, and clean and white, 1255
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
In some such solitude, its casements bright
Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
And even within ’twas scarce like Italy.
And when she saw how all things there were planned, 1260
As in an English home, dim memory
Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one
Whose mind is where his body cannot be,
Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
And said, ’Observe, that brow was Lionel’s, 1265
Those lips were his, and so he ever kept
One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
You cannot see his eyes—they are two wells
Of liquid love: let us not wake him yet.’
But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept 1270
A shower of burning tears, which fell upon
His face, and so his opening lashes shone
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.
So Rosalind and Helen lived together
1275
Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,
Such as they were, when o’er the mountain heather
They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.
And after many years, for human things
Change even like the ocean and the wind,
1280
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
And in their circle thence some visitings
Of joy ’mid their new calm would intervene:
A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
And motions which o’er things indifferent shed
1285
The grace and gentleness from whence they came.
And Helen’s boy grew with her, and they fed
From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
Like springs which mingle in one flood became,
And in their union soon their parents saw
1290
The shadow of the peace denied to them.
And Rosalind, for when the living stem
Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,
Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors followed her remains
1295
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna’s precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,
1300
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and thro’ the night