IX.

Then I looked up and read his helpless face:
Peace touched the temples and the eyelids, slept
On drooping lashes, made itself a place
In smiles that gently to the corners crept
Of parting lips, and came and went, to show
The happy freedom of the heart below.

X.

A holy rest! wherein the man became
Man's interceding representative:
In Sleep's white realm fell off his mask of blame,
And he was sacred, for that he did live.
His presence marred no more the quiet deep,
But all the glen became a shrine of sleep!

XI.

And then I mused:--How lovely this repose!
How the shut sense its dwelling consecrates!
Sleep guards itself against the hands of foes:
Its breath disarms the Envies and the Hates
Which haunt our lives: were this mine enemy,
My stealthy watch could not less reverent be!

XII.

Here lie our human passions, sung to rest
By tender Nature, anxious to restore
Some hours of innocence to every breast,
To part the husks around the untainted core
Of life, and show, in equal helplessness,
The hearts that wound us and the hearts that bless!

XIII.

How swiftly in this frame the primal seeds
Of purity and peace revive anew!
One wave of sleep the stain of evil deeds
Effaces, as with Heaven's baptismal dew.
The pure white flame through all its ashes burns:
The effluent being to its source returns.

XIV.

So hang their hands that would have done me wrong;
So sweet their breathing whose unkindly spite
Provoked the bitter measures of my song;
So they might slumber, sacred in my sight,
As I in theirs:--why waste contentious breath?
Forget, like Sleep, and then forgive, like Death!

XV.

I bowed my head: the sleeper gently smiled,--
How far he lay from every sting and smart!
Some sinless dream his wandering thought beguiled,
And left its sweetness in his open heart.
The God that watched him in the lonely glen
Sent me, consoled and patient, back to men.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

XL.

It would lead us far too widely from the simple order of our narrative
to detail the early history of Madame Arles; and although the knowledge
of it might serve in some degree to explain the peculiar interest which
that poo