“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!—a............