e.
Fold her, good Time, from my remembrance,
O, this is bitterest mortality,
That living heart of love should be the urn
Where lie the ashes of our joys that turn
To bitterness, and all our lives o'erflow
Till dearest love be grown a hateful woe;
My sun of youth has set, methinks it should
Have set with such a splendour as had all
My sober days with mellow light imbued;
O bitter sun of youth whose knavish pledge
Of high-born hope and holy privilege
But led me undefended to my fall,
O lamentable day when I was born!
What shapes are those that mock me with their scorn?
What trumpet-call is this within my breast?
I am grown wise, my senses are increased,
It is the breath of fiends that drowns my speech,
The bellowing of devils as they feast.
I am the taunt of devils, and they preach
Of death, of cursing, and of endless woe;
The lightnings of this devil-tempest show
Horrors not dreamed of

* * * * *

O thou Vengeful Power,
I am forspent, if merit there can be
In self accusing, in this darkest hour
O hear me, and I pray thee pity me,
For I have sinned, O fool, unwise and blind!
And I am Atma; whom thou hadst designed
For life of sanctity and holy quest.
Lord, I am Atma, and I have transgressed;
I sought the Present whom we may not seek,
The Future whom I slighted went before
And waited armed and my goods did take.
This is my sin that sent on high behest
I slept; Lord, as one waited at thy golden door
A hundred years, and snatched a little rest,
And waked to see the closing gateway drawn
And lived thereafter only in the dawn
Of that brief moment's light, so also I
Must dream of wasted radiance till I die."

CHAPTER XIX.

The quiet days were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, and
his strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watch
our ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It was
the waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountain
crest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot across
the welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dying
season. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, and
birds of passage took their flight. Atm