The joy of the reviving maiden when she found her preserver bending over her, and conjuring her to speak to him once more and forgive his stratagem, we shall not attempt to describe. Suffice it to say that the day of the tourney which opened as the darkest, set as the brightest, in her life.
The young Earl happening to see his mistress accidentally had imbibed the romantic idea of wooing her as an unknown and untitled stranger. For this purpose he had secretly followed her down to the lodge, and attired in an outlaw’s dress, had hovered around her path, waiting for a fitting opportunity to introduce himself. The manner in which he was at length favored by circumstances, as well as his subsequent success in his suit, the reader has seen. But his pretended character was not without its evils. He was seen, suspected, and captured by the forest keepers in the way we have described. He only escaped by revealing his rank. After his recovery from the wound he had received on that occasion, he had arrived at lord Mountfort’s castle, determining to contest the prize in the approaching tourney, and then reveal himself to his mistress.
It was but a few weeks after the fête, when the young Earl of Hastings led to the altar the fair daughter of the house of Mountfort, who never forgot, in her titled husband, the unknown OUTLAW LOVER.
How swiftly do old memories float about our riper hours! They’re like the fragrant breath that fills the vase of perish’d flowers; They bear an unextinguish’d ray, a light that never dies, A borrow’d radiance gilding earth with lustre from the skies.
The joys that gather round us now, with all their rainbow beams, Are bright, but evanescent, as the shadows in our dreams; They pass before us like the leaves swept by the autumn’s blast, Alas! too fragile for the earth—too beautiful to last.
We see the human flowers cut down, the kindred ones of home, Whose garden was the loving heart, where storm clouds seldom come, Making within that temple fair, a wilderness of woes, A desert drear of that which once could “blossom as the Rose.”
We see the clasping chains unloose, and sever link by link, Till hope turns shudderingly away, from sorrow’s fearful brink, The band of sweet relationship, of close unwoven ties, Is broken here—to reunite forever in the skies.