But who is Maud—and who is Maud's chaplain, whose skeleton Anne confesses was in her father's house? 'Tis not easy to know without reading the whole poem—but listen to Anne Ayliffe.
"'One morning,—years elapsed,—we spied afloat,
Wrapp'd in a gown, a body black and bloat.
Its head droop'd backwards, legs and arras were sunk,
And refluent waters just heaved up the trunk.
'Twas Chaplain Hyde—uncover'd on the sands;
Stones fill'd his hood, a crucifix his hands.
Prayers, tapers, knell, and consecrated earth,
Were forfeit, father thought, whate'er their worth;
Why then should this confession give remorse?—
He did, he did, anatomize that corse.
And I, in wonder gazing, traced his knife,
Through inmost springs of motion, sense, and life;
Limbs, with contractile sinews strung to act,
Nerves, which excite those sinews to contract,
Those nerves excited by the brain I found,
That brain through other nerves by objects round.
That beauteous brain! Man outward moves august;
He lifts his head to heaven, and spurns the dust;
But inward,—oh what work, what art divine!
The shapely bones, the column of the spine,
The conduits laid for blood from chyle derived,
The strange alembics for that chyle contrived;
Like separate creatures, or machines, possest
Of powers distinct, consenting with the rest;—
The rest may mandates from the brain fulfil,
But these disown obedience to the will,
And, self-inform'd, incessant action keep,
Unknown to error, rest, fatigue, or sleep;
Without our reason's guide, or sense's aid:—
I saw, adored, and lauded Him who made.
But ah!—I saw no vestige of a soul:
No place for that, no use—throughout the whole.
With that all parts seem'd fashion'd to dispense,
And act by nerves through impulse on the sense.
Nor saw one token that your creed confirms,
One sign of life hereafter, save the worm's.
There, Faith to Heaven, my guardian angel, fled:
I mourn'd, then jeer'd, and envied next, the dead.
Between two prophets wavering till that day,
I after doubted both, and ceased to pray.'"
More she said, and more she is going to say, about Chaplain Hyde, and Maud, and her own strange, wild, and miserable self, when she exclaims wildly,
"Hark! this moment here
An angel's voice, or devil's pierced my ear!
Or say, if mortal's, from which side the grave?
Ay, and ere now, methinks, unless I rave,
I have heard sighs, heard meanings, in the room,
Heard accents, like I would forget of whom,
As whispering what might not be louder said.
Again! Fitz-Hugh of Merton! Is he dead?"
She catches him by the arm—and knows his hand. "But whence this monkish cuff?" Sole answer—"Memento mori!" Then comes on her impassioned appeal to the monk—once a man she loved—poured in a low tone into his own ear—a revelation—of necessity broken, and somewhat difficult to understand but making much clear that till then was dark. We now learn that Fitz Hugh's father had left his all in charge to hers, who soon found that that all was but debts, and discharged them without complaint. A wicked uncle of Fitz-Hugh's accused the physician of pillage, and a scheme
"To staiu with his the lineage of a lord,
And bait the bastard girl to noose the plunder'd ward."
To such loose accusations, Fitz-Hugh had basely lent his ear, and at his uncle's instigation, and that of his own false heart, written a letter to his benefactor, threatening to vindicate
