And thou, from love’s and man’s deceptions free,
Wilt dwell in virgin-state, and walk to Heaven with me.” 
   The Maiden frown’d, and then conceived “that wives
Could walk as well, and lead as holy lives,
As angry prudes who scorn’d the marriage-chain,
Or luckless maids, who sought it still in vain.” 
   The Friend was vex’d—­she paused; at length she cried,
“Know your own danger, then your lot decide: 
That traitor Beswell, while he seeks your hand,
Has, I affirm, a wanton at command;
A slave, a creature from a foreign place,
The nurse and mother of a spurious race;
Brown ugly bastards (Heaven the word forgive,
And the deed punish!) in his cottage live;
To town if business calls him, there he stays
In sinful pleasures wasting countless days. 
Nor doubt the facts, for I can witness call,
For every crime, and prove them one and all.” 
   Here ceased th’ informer; Arabella’s look
Was like a schoolboy’s puzzled by his book;
Intent she cast her eyes upon the floor,
Paused—­then replied —
                        “I wish to know no more: 
I question not your motive, zeal, or love,
But must decline such dubious points to prove. 
All is not true, I judge, for who can guess
Those deeds of darkness men with care suppress? 
He brought a slave perhaps to England’s coast,
And made her free; it is our country’s boast! 
And she perchance too grateful—­good and ill
Were sown at first, and grow together still;
The colour’d infants on the village green,
What are they more than we have often seen? 
Children half-clothed who round their village stray,
In sun or rain, now starved, now beaten, they
Will the dark colour of their fate betray: 
Let us in Christian love for all account,
And then behold to what such tales amount.” 
   “His heart is evil,” said the impatient Friend: 
“My duty bids me try that heart to mend,”
Replied the virgin; “we may be too nice
And lose a soul in our contempt of vice;
If false the charge, I then shall show regard
For a good man, and be his just reward: 
And what for virtue can I better do
Than to reclaim him, if the charge be true?”
   She spoke, nor more her holy work delay’d;
’Twas time to lend an erring mortal aid: 
“The noblest way,” she judged, “a soul to win,
Was with an act of kindness to begin,
To make the sinner sure, and then t’attack the sin.” {3}

TALE X.

THE LOVER’S JOURNEY.

The sun is in the heavens, and the proud day,
Attended with the pleasures of the world,
Is all too wanton. 
                      Shakespeare, King John.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet. 
Are of imagination all compact. 
             Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Oh! how this spring of love resembleth
Th’ uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all her beauty to the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away. 
                  Two Gentlemen of Verona.