One discourteous remembrance of things pass'd away.
'Twas a sight that was pleasant, indeed, to be seen,
These friends exchange greetings;--the men who had been
Foes so nearly in days that were past.
This, no doubt,
Is why, on the night I am speaking about,
My Lord Alfred sat down by himself at roulette,
Without one suspicion his bosom to fret,
Although he had left, with his pleasant French friend,
Matilda, half vex'd, at the room's farthest end.

XV.

Lord Alfred his combat with Fortune began
With a few modest thalers--away they all ran--
The reserve follow'd fast in the rear. As his purse
Grew lighter his spirits grew sensibly worse.
One needs not a Bacon to find a cause for it:
'Tis an old law in physics--Natura abhorret
Vacuum--and my lord, as he watch'd his last crown
Tumble into the bank, turn'd away with a frown
Which the brows of Napoleon himself might have deck'd
On that day of all days when an empire was wreck'd
On thy plain, Waterloo, and he witness'd the last
Of his favorite Guard cut to pieces, aghast!
Just then Alfred felt, he could scarcely tell why,
Within him the sudden strange sense that some eye
Had long been intently regarding him there,--
That some gaze was upon him too searching to bear.
He rose and look'd up. Was it fact? Was it fable?
Was it dream? Was it waking? Across the green table,
That face, with its features so fatally known--
Those eyes, whose deep gaze answer'd strangely his own
What was it? Some ghost from its grave come again?
Some cheat of a feverish, fanciful brain?
Or was it herself with those deep eyes of hers,
And that face unforgotten?--Lucile de Nevers!

XVI.

Ah, well that pale woman a phantom might seem,
Who appear'd to herself but the dream of a dream!
'Neath those features so calm, that fair forehead so hush'd,
That pale cheek forever by passion unflush'd,
There yawn'd an insatiate void, and there heaved
A tumult of restless regrets unrelieved.
The brief noon of beauty was passing away,
And the chill of the twilight fell, silent and gray,
O'er that deep, self-perceived isolation of soul.
And now, as all around her the dim evening stole,
With its weird desolations, she inwardly