Antonina and the room they occupied. At length, as if animated by a sudden determination, he again approached his companion, and thus addressed her:—
'It is right that I should return. I will do your bidding, and depart for the camp (but not till the break of day), while you, Antonina, remain in concealment and in safety here. None can come hither to disturb you. The Goths will not revisit the fields they have already stripped; the husbandman who owns this dwelling is imprisoned in the beleaguered city; the peasants from the country beyond dare not approach so near to the invading hosts; and Goisvintha, whom you dread, knows not even of the existence of such a refuge as this. Here, though lonely, you will be secure; here you can await my return, when each succeeding night gives me the opportunity of departing from the camp; and here I will warn you beforehand, if the city is devoted to an assault. Though solitary, you will not be abandoned—we shall not be parted one from the other. Often and often I shall return to look on you, and to listen to you, and to love you! You will be happier here, even in this lonely place, than in the former home that you have lost through your father's wrath!'
'Oh! I will willingly remain—I will joyfully await you!' cried the girl, raising her beaming eyes to Hermanric's face. 'I will never speak mournfully to you again; I will never remind you more of all that I have suffered, and all that I have lost! How merciful you were to me, when I first saw you in your tent—how doubly merciful you are to me here! I am proud when I look on your stature, and your strength, and your heavy weapons, and know that you are happy in remaining with me; that you will succour my father; that you will return from your glittering encampments to this farm-house, where I am left to await you! Already I have forgotten all that has happened to me of woe; already I am more joyful than ever I was in my life before! See, I am no longer weeping in sorrow! If there are any tears still on my cheeks, they are the tears of gladness that every one welcomes—tears to sing and rejoice in!'
She ceased abruptly, as if words failed to give expression to her new delight. All the gloomy emotions that had oppressed her but a short time before had now completely vanished; and the young, fresh heart, superior still to despair and woe, basked as happily again in its native atmosphere of joy as a bird in the sunlight of morning and spring.
Then, when after an interval of delay their former tranquility had returned to them, how softly and lightly the quiet hours of the remaining night flowed onward to the two watchers in the lonely house! How gladly the delighted girl disclosed her hidden thoughts, and poured forth her innocent confessions, to the dweller among other nations and the child of other impressions than her own! All the various reflections aroused in her mind by the natural objects she had secretly studied, by the mighty imagery of her Bible lore, by the gloomy histories of saints' visions and martyrs' sufferings, which she had learnt and pondered over by her father's side, were now drawn from their treasured places in her memory, and addressed to the ear of the Goth. As the child flies to the nurse with the story of its first toy; as the girl resorts to the sister with the confession of her first love; as the poet hurries to the friend with the plan of his first composition; so did Antonina seek the attention of Hermanric with the first outward revealings enjoyed by her faculties and the first acknowledgment of her emotions liberated from her heart.
The longer the Goth listened to her, the more perfect became the enchantment of her words, half struggling into poetry, and her voice half gliding into music. As her low, still, varying tones wound smoothly into his ear, his thoughts suddenly and intuitively reverted to her formerly expressed remembrances of her lost lute, inciting him to ask her, with new interest and animation, of the manner of her acquisition of that knowledge of song, which she had already assured him that she possessed.
'I have learned many odes of many poets,' said she, quickly and confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see. Of the few that I know of these, there is one that I first learned and loved most. I will sing it, that you may be assured I will not fail to you in my promised art.'
She hesitated for a moment. Sorrowful remembrances of the events that had followed the utterance of the last notes she sang in her father's garden, swelled within her, and held her speechless. Soon, however, after a short interval of silence, she recovered her self-possession, and began to sing, in low tremulous tones, that harmonised well with the character of the words and the strain of the melody which she had chosen.
THE MISSION OF THE TEAR
I.
The skies were its birth-place—the TEAR was the child
Of the dark maiden SORROW, by young JOY beguil'd;
It was born in convulsion; 'twas nurtur'd in woe;
And the world was yet young when it wander'd below.
II.
No angel-bright guardians watch'd over its birth,
Ere yet it was suffer'd to roam upon earth;
No spirits of gladness its soft form caress'd;
SIGHS mourned round its cradle, and hush'd it to rest.
III.
Though JOY might endeavour, with kisses and wiles,
To lure it away to his household of smiles:
From the daylight he lived in it turn'd in affright,
To nestle with SORROW in climates of night.
IV.
When it came upon earth, 'twas to choose a career,
The brightest and best that is left to a TEAR;
To hallow delight, and bestow the relief
Denied by despair to the fulness of grief.
V.
Few repell'd it—some bless'd it—wherever it came;
Whether soft'ning their sorrow, or soothing their shame;
And the joyful themselves, though its name they might fear,
Oft welcom'd the calming approach of the TEAR!
VI.
Years on years have worn onward, as—watch'd from above—
Speeds that meek spirit yet on its labour of love;
Still the exile of Heav'n, it ne'er shall away,
Every heart has a home for it, roam where it may!
For the first few minutes after she had concluded the ode, Hermanric was hardly conscious that she had ceased; and when at length she looked up at him, her mute petition for approval had an eloquence which would have been marred to the Goth at that moment, by the utterance of single word. A rapture, an inspiration, a new life moved within him. The hour and the scene completed what the magic of the song had begun. His expression now glowed with a southern warmth; his words assumed a Roman fervour. Gradually, as they discoursed, the voice of the girl was less frequently audible. A change was passing over her spirit; from the teacher, she was now becoming the pupil.
As she still listened to the Goth, as she felt the birth of new feelings within her while he spoke, her cheeks glowed, her features lightened up, her very form seemed to freshen and expand. No intruding thought or awakening
