And Azo found another bride, 530

And goodly sons grew by his side;

But none so lovely and so brave

As him who withered in the grave;[429]

Or if they were—on his cold eye

Their growth but glanced unheeded by,

Or noticed with a smothered sigh.

But never tear his cheek descended,

And never smile his brow unbended;

And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought

The intersected lines of thought; 540

Those furrows which the burning share

Of Sorrow ploughs untimely there;

Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.[430]

He was past all mirth or woe:

Nothing more remained below

But sleepless nights and heavy days,

A mind all dead to scorn or praise,

A heart which shunned itself—and yet

That would not yield, nor could forget, 550

Which, when it least appeared to melt,

Intensely thought—intensely felt:

The deepest ice which ever froze

Can only o'er the surface close;

The living stream lies quick below,

And flows, and cannot cease to flow.[431]

Still was his sealed-up bosom haunted[rf]

By thoughts which Nature hath implanted;

Too deeply rooted thence to vanish,

Howe'er our stifled tears we banish; 560

When struggling as they rise to start,

We check those waters of the heart,

They are not dried—those tears unshed

But flow back to the fountain head,

And resting in their spring more pure,

For ever in its depth endure,

Unseen—unwept—but uncongealed,

And cherished most where least revealed.

With inward starts of feeling left,

To throb o'er those of life bereft, 570

Without the power to fill again

The desert gap which made his pain;

Without the hope to meet them where

United souls shall gladness share;

With all the consciousness that he

Had only passed a just decree;[rg]

That they had wrought their doom of ill;

Yet Azo's age was wretched still.

The tainted branches of the tree,

If lopped with care, a strength may give, 580

By which the rest shall bloom and live

All greenly fresh and wildly free:

But if the lightning, in its wrath,

The waving boughs with fury scathe,

The massy trunk the ruin feels,

And never more a leaf reveals.