“and here’s the birth-day ring—nor man nor devil

should once have torn it from my living hand,

perchance ’twill look as well on mr. neville;

and that—and that is all—and now i stand

absolved of each dissever’d tie and band—

and so farewell, till time’s eternal sickle

shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land

some other may be found for truth to stickle

almost as fair—and not so false and fickle!”

[pg 329]

and there he ceased: as truly it was time,

for of the various themes that left his mouth,

one half surpass’d her intellectual climb:

she knew no more than the old hill of howth

about that “children of a larger growth,”

who notes proceedings of the f. r. s.’s;

kit north, was just as strange to her as south,

except the south the weathercock expresses,

nay, bartley’s orrery defied her guesses.

howbeit some notion of his jealous drift

she gather’d from the simple outward fact,

that her own lap contained each slighted gift;

though quite unconscious of his cause to act

so like othello, with his face unblack’d;

“alas!” she sobbed, “your cruel course i see

these faded charms no longer can attract;

your fancy palls, and you would wander free,

and lay your own apostacy on me!”

“i, false!—unjust lorenzo!—and to you!

oh, all ye holy gospels that incline

the soul to truth, bear witness i am true!

by all that lives, of earthly or divine—

so long as this poor throbbing heart is mine—

i false!—the world shall change its course as soon!

true as the streamlet to the stars that shine—

true as the dial to the sun at noon,

true as the tide to ‘yonder blessed moon’!”

and as she spoke, she pointed through the window,

somewhere above the houses’ distant tops,

betwixt the chimney-pots of mrs. lindo,

and todd and sturch’s cheapest of all shops

[pg 330]

for ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops:—

meanwhile, as she upraised her face so grecian,

and eyes suffused with scintillating drops,

lorenzo looked, too, o’er the blinds venetian,

to see the sphere so troubled with repletion.

“the moon!” he cried, and an electric spasm

seem’d all at once his features to distort,

and fix’d his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm—

his faculties benumb’d and all amort—

at last his voice came, of most shrilly sort,

just like a sea-gull’s wheeling round a rock—

“speak!—ellen!—is your sight indeed so short?

the moon!—brute! savage that i am, and block!

the moon! (o, ye romantics, what a shock!)

why that’s the new illuminated clock!”