Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844

Its slaty parched ball
Fixedly, though expressionless,
Gleams on the distant hall.”

Witchaire then goes and drowns himself, in a river which “runneth round” the lady’s property—a dreadful warning to all young lovers “who love too much to sue.”

On a fine day in the following summer, the poet brings the lady to the banks of this river. His evident intention is, to raise in the reader’s mind the expectation that she shall discover her lover’s body, or some other circumstance indicative of the fatal catastrophe. This expectation, however, he disappoints. The only remarkable occurrence which takes place is, that the lady does not find the corpse, nor does any evidence transpire which can lead her to suppose that the suicide had ever been committed; and with this senseless and inconclusive conclusion the reader is befooled.

The only incident which we ever heard of, at all rivaling this story in an abortive ending, is one which we once heard related at a party, where the conversation turned on the singular manner in which valuable articles thrown into the sea had been sometimes recovered, and restored to their owners—the ring of Polycrates, which was found in the maw of a fish after having been sunk in deep waters, being, as the reader knows, the first and most remarkable instance of such recoveries. After the rest of the company had exhausted their marvellous relations, the following tale was told as the climax of all such wonderful narratives; and it was admitted on all hands that the force of surprise could no further go. We shall endeavour to versify it, à la Patmore, conceiving that its issue is very similar to that of his story of “The River.”

The Ring and the Fish

A lady and her lover once
Were walking on a rocky beach:
Soft at first, and gentle, was
The music of their mutual speech,
And the looks were gentle, too,
With which each regarded each.

At length some casual word occurr’d
Which somewhat moved the lady’s bile;
From less to more her anger wax’d—
How sheepish look’d her swain the while!—
And now upon their faces twain
There is not seen a single smile.

A ring was on the lady’s hand,
The gift of that dumb-founder’d lover—

In scorn she pluck’d it from her hand,
And flung it far the waters over—
Far beyond the power of any
Duck or drag-net to recover.

Remorse then smote the lady’s heart
When she had thrown her ring away;
She paceth o’er the rocky beach,
And resteth neither night nor day;
But still the burthen of her song
Is, “Oh, my ring! my ring!” alway.

Her lover now essays to soothe
The dark compunctious visitings,
That assail the lady’s breast
With a thousand thousand stings,
For that she had thrown away
This, the paragon of rings.

But all in vain; at length one day
A fisher chanced to draw his net
Across the sullen spot that held
The gem that made the lady fret,
And caught about the finest cod
That ever he had captured yet.

He had a basket on his back,
And he placed his booty in it;
The lady’s lover bought the fish,
And, when the cook began to skin it,
She found—incredible surprise!—
She found the ring—was not within it.

The next tale, called “The Woodman’s Daughter,” is a story of seduction, madness, and child-murder. These are powerful materials to work with; yet it is not every man’s hand that they will suit. In the hands of common-place, they are simply revolting. In the hands of folly and affectation, their repulsiveness is aggravated by the simpering conceits which usurp the place of the strongest passions of our nature. He only is privileged to unveil these gloomy depths of erring humanity, who can subdue their repulsiveness by touches of ethereal feeling; and whose imagination, buoyant above the waves of passion, bears the heart of the reader into havens of calm beauty, even when following the most deplorable aberrations of a child of sin. Such a man is not Mr Patmore. He has no imagination at all—or, what is the same thing, an imagination which welters in impotence, far below the level of the emotions which it ought to overrule. The pitfalls of his tale of misery are covered over with thin sprinklings of asterisks—the poorest subterfuge of an impoverished imagination; and besotted indeed is the senselessness with which he disports himself around their margin. Maud, the victim, is the daughter of Gerald, the woodman; and Merton, the seducer, is the son of a rich squire in the neighbourhood. Maud used to accompany her father to his employment in the woods.

“She merely went to think she help’d;
And whilst he hack’d and saw’d,
The rich squire’s son, a young boy then,
For whole days, as if aw’d,
Stood by, and gazed alternately
At Gerald and at Maud.

“He sometimes, in a sullen tone,
Would offer fruits, and she
Always received his gifts with an air,
So unreserved and free,
That half-feign’d distance soon became
Familiarity.

“Therefore in time, when Gerald shook
The woods at his employ,
The young heir and the cottage-girl
Would steal out to enjoy
The music of each other’s talk—
A simple girl and boy.

“They pass’d their time, both girl and boy,
Uncheck’d, unquestion’d; yet
They always hid their wanderings
By wood and rivulet,
Because they could not give themselves
A reason why they met.

—It may have been in the ancient time,
Before Love’s earliest ban,
Psychëan curiosity
Had broken Nature’s plan;
When all that was not youth was age,
And men knew less of Man;—

“Or when the works of time shall reach