at to her made sweet
_Books writ on lovers' moan_."

And so the poem babbles on through several very sickly pages, in which
the following descriptive stanza occurs:--

"The flat white river lapsed along,
Now a broad broken glare,
Now winding through the bosom'd lands,
Till lost in distance, where
The tall hills, sunning their chisell'd peaks,
_Made emptier the empty air_."

During one of their ramblings, Maud becomes visibly embarrassed.

"But Merton's thoughts were less confused:
'What, _I_ wrong ought so good?
Besides, the danger that is seen
Is easily withstood:'
Then loud, 'The sun is very warm'--
_And they walk'd into the wood_."

The wood consisting of a forest of as shady asterisks as the most
fastidious lovers could desire.

"Months pass'd away, and every day
The lovers still were wont
To meet together, and their shame
At meeting had grown blunt;
_For they were of an age when sin
Is only seen in front_."

The father, however, who was also of an age to see sin _in front_,
suspects that his daughter is with child, and taxes her with it. Maud
confesses her shame; upon which, as we are led to conjecture, old Gerald
dies broken-hearted--while the girl is safely delivered under a cloud of
asterisks. She is deterred from disclosing her situation to Merton, the
father of the child--and why? for this very natural reason, forsooth,
that

"He, if that were done,
Could hardly fail to know
The ruin he had caused, he might
Be brought to share her woe,
Making it doubly sharp."

So, rather than occasion the slightest distress or inconvenience to her
seducer, she magnanimously resolves to murder her baby; and accordingly
the usual machinery of the poem is brought into play--the
asterisks--which on former occasions answered the purpose of a forest
and a cloud, being now converted into a very convenient pool, in which
she quietly immerses the offspring of her illicit passion. And the deed
being done, its appalling consequences on her conscience are thus
powerfully and naturally depicted--

"_Lo! in her eyes stands the great surprise
That comes with the first crime_.

"She throws a glance of terror round--
There's not a creature nigh;
But behold the sun that looketh through
The frowning western sky,
Is lifting up one broad beam, _like
A lash of God'