A TALE WITHOUT A NAME.

"O woman! in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"

SCOTT's Marmion, canto vi.

PART I.

He had no friend on earth but thee;

No hope in heaven above;

By day and night, o'er land and sea,

No solace but thy love:

He wander'd here, he wander'd there,

A fugitive like Cain;

And mourn'd like him, in dark despair,

A brother rashly slain.

Rashly, yet not in sudden wrath,

They quarrell'd in their pride,

He sprang upon his brother's path,

And smote him that he died.

A nightmare sat upon his brain,

All stone within he felt;

A death-watch tick'd through every vein, Till the dire blow was dealt.

As from a dream, in pale surprize,
Waking, the murderer stood;

He met the victim's closing eyes,

He saw his brother's blood:

That blood pursued him on his way,

A living, murmuring stream;
Those eyes before him flash'd dismay,

In vain he strove to fly the scene,

And breathe beyond that time;

Tormented memory glared between ;

Immortal seem'd his crime:

His thoughts, his words, his actions all Turn'd on his fallen brother;

That hour he never could recall,

Nor ever live another.

To him the very clouds stood still,
The ground appear'd unchanged;

One light was ever on the hill,

-That hill where'er he ranged:

He heard the brook, the birds, the wind,

Sound in the glen below;

The self-same tree he cower'd behind,

He struck the self-same blow.

Yet was not reason quite o'erthrown,

Nor so benign his lot,

To dwell in frenzied grief alone,

All other woe forgot:

The world within, and world around,

Clash'd in perpetual strife;

Present and past close interwound

Through his whole thread of life.

That thread, inextricably spun,

Might reach eternity;

For ever doing, never done,

That moment's deed might be;

This was a worm that would not die,

A fire unquenchable :

Ah! whither shall the sufferer fly?

Fly from a bosom-hell?

He had no friend on earth but thee,

No hope in heaven above;

By day and night, o'er land and sea,

Not time nor place, nor crime nor shame,

Could change thy spousal truth;

In desolate old age the same

As in the joy of youth.

Not death, but infamy, to 'scape,
He left his native coast;

To death in any other shape,

He long'd to yield the ghost: But infamy his steps pursued, And haunted every place,

While death, though like a lover wooed,

Fled from his loathed embrace.

He wander'd here, he wander'd there,

And she his angel-guide,

The silent spectre of despair,
With mercy at his side;

Whose love and loveliness alone

Shed comfort round his gloom,