grieved
For the want of that tender assurance received
From the warmth of a whisper, the glance of an eye,
Which should say, or should look, "Fear thou naught,--I am by!"
And thus, through that lonely and self-fix'd existence,
Crept a vague sense of silence, and horror, and distance:
A strange sort of faint-footed fear,--like a mouse
That comes out, when 'tis dark, in some old ducal house
Long deserted, where no one the creature can scare,
And the forms on the arras are all that move there.

In Rome,--in the Forum,--there open'd one night
A gulf. All the augurs turn'd pale at the sight.
In this omen the anger of Heaven they read.
Men consulted the gods: then the oracle said:--
"Ever open this gulf shall endure, till at last
That which Rome hath most precious within it be cast."
The Romans threw in it their corn and their stuff,
But the gulf yawn'd as wide. Rome seem'd likely enough
To be ruin'd ere this rent in her heart she could choke.
Then Curtius, revering the oracle, spoke:
"O Quirites! to this Heaven's question is come:
What to Rome is most precious? The manhood of Rome."
He plunged, and the gulf closed.
The tale is not new;
But the moral applies many ways, and is true.
How, for hearts rent in twain, shall the curse be destroy'd?
'Tis a warm human one that must fill up the void.
Through many a heart runs the rent in the fable;
But who to discover a Curtius is able?

XVII.

Back she came from her long hiding-place, at the source
Of the sunrise; where, fair in their fabulous course,
Run the rivers of Eden: an exile again,
To the cities of Europe--the scenes, and the men,
And the life, and the ways, she had left: still oppress'd
With the same hungry heart, and unpeaceable breast.
The same, to the same things! The world she had quitted
With a sigh, with a sigh she re-enter'd. Soon flitted
Through the salons and clubs, to the great satisfaction
Of Paris, the news of a novel attraction.
The enchanting Lucile, the gay Countess, once more,
To her old friend, the World, had reopen'd her door;
The World came, and shook hands, and was pleased and amused
With what the World then went away and abused.
From the woman's fair fame it in naught could detract: