Guilt can never soar:
The proud, the wayward--who have fixed below 1800
Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe,
Lose in that one their all--perchance a mite--
But who in patience parts with all delight?
Full many a stoic eye and aspect stern
Mask hearts where Grief hath little left to learn;
And many a withering thought lies hid, not lost,
In smiles that least befit who wear them most.

XXII.

By those, that deepest feel, is ill exprest
The indistinctness of the suffering breast;
Where thousand thoughts begin to end in one, 1810
Which seeks from all the refuge found in none;
No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.
On Conrad's stricken soul Exhaustion prest,
And Stupor almost lulled it into rest;
So feeble now--his mother's softness crept
To those wild eyes, which like an infant's wept:
It was the very weakness of his brain,
Which thus confessed without relieving pain.
None saw his trickling tears--perchance, if seen, 1820
That useless flood of grief had never been:
Nor long they flowed--he dried them to depart,
In helpless--hopeless--brokenness of heart:
The Sun goes forth, but Conrad's day is dim:
And the night cometh--ne'er to pass from him.[io]
There is no darkness like the cloud of mind,
On Grief's vain eye--the blindest of the blind!
Which may not--dare not see--but turns aside
To blackest shade--nor will endure a guide!

XXIII.[237]

His heart was formed for softness--warped to wrong, 1830
Betrayed too early, and beguiled too long;
Each feeling pure--as falls the dropping dew
Within the grot--like that had hardened too;
Less clear, perchance, its earthly trials passed,
But sunk, and chilled, and petrified at last.[238]
Yet tempests wear, and lightning cleaves the rock;
If such his heart, so shattered it the shock.
There grew one flower beneath its rugged brow,
Though dark the shade--it sheltered--saved till now.
The thunder came--that bolt hath blasted both, 1840
The Granite's firmness, and the Lily's growth:
The gentle plant hath left no leaf to tell
Its tale, but shrunk and withered where it fell;
And of its cold protector, blacken round