grateful to his love than to the harder and more engrossing passion
which divided his heart.

The nearer he grew to the dazzling object, to the possession of which
Fate seemed to have shaped all circumstances, the more he felt the
charm of those mystic influences which his colder reason had
disdained. He who is ambitious of things afar, and uncertain, passes
at once into the Poet-Land of Imagination; to aspire and to imagine
are yearnings twin-born.

When in his fresh youth and his calm lofty manhood, Harold saw action,
how adventurous soever, limited to the barriers of noble duty; when he
lived but for his country, all spread clear before his vision in the
sunlight of day; but as the barriers receded, while the horizon
extended, his eye left the Certain to rest on the Vague. As self,
though still half concealed from his conscience, gradually assumed the
wide space love of country had filled, the maze of delusion commenced:
he was to shape fate out of circumstance,--no longer defy fate through
virtue; and thus Hilda became to him as a voice that answered the
questions of his own restless heart. He needed encouragement from the
Unknown to sanction his desires and confirm his ends. But Edith,
rejoicing in the fair fame of her betrothed, and content in the pure
rapture of beholding him again, reposed in the divine credulity of the
happy hour; she marked not, in Harold's visits, that, on entrance, the
Earl's eye sought first the stern face of the Vala--she wondered not
why those two conversed in whispers together, or stood so often at
moonlight by the Runic grave. Alone, of all womankind, she felt that
Harold loved her, that that love had braved time, absence, change, and
hope deferred; and she knew not that what love has most to dread in
the wild heart of aspiring man, is not persons, but things,--is not