The poems and prose writings of Sumner Lincoln Fairfield ::

This Poem is founded on the terrible incidents recorded in the nineteenth chapter of Genesis. All readers of biblical history are thoroughly acquainted with the ineffable crimes—the luxury and abandonment—the impiety and shamelessness—and the merciless fate of the inhabitants of the Cities of the Plain. Whether their utter destruction was the result of natural causes or the immediate infliction of an offended Deity, it is unnecessary to inquire, as this is a matter of no importance to the Poet. It avails not to controvert or confirm the assertion that no bird can fly over the Dead Sea; that no fish can live or human being drown in its bitter waters; for all the purposes of poetry, it is enough to know that Desolation has spread its wings over the countless dead and that no voice, during thousands of years, has startled the ravining wild beast from his idle search of prey.

O'er the blue verge of summer's glorious vault,
In godlike beauty, rolled the tropic sun,
Wrapt in his gorgeous splendors, like the hope,
The last wild hope that leaves us desolate,
Most radiant at the hour when dusky night
Waves her dim pinions, and, with clouded smiles,
Looks o'er the darkening earth and deep blue heaven;
And, 'neath the shadow of an ancient palm,
Towering in majesty, its ample boughs,
Green in the dew, far branching round his tent,
On Mamre's plain, in Hebron's pleasant Land,
The Father of the Faithful sat alone.
Flowers of all hues blushed beauty while they breath'd
Their odours o'er the scene of peace and love;
The rose, the enamour'd heart's fair history,
The bulbul's worship since the Lesbian maid
Transfused her burning soul into its folds;
The violet, tender as a maiden's fame,
Whose bloom grows deeper at the kiss of air;
The rich geranium, whose colors burn
Amid the incense of its threaded leaves;
The purple lotus floating on the stream,
That seems to catch its radiance as it flows,
E'en as the prophet breathes the breath of heaven;
And each delicious thing that buds and blooms
In the fair Orient—the realm of light.
Beneath the palmy shades, their noontide bowers,
The flocks and herds leapt up and snuff'd the air,
And feasted on the verdure wet with dew,
Drinking the freshness of the evening breeze;
And plants, and flowering shrubs, and crispy grass
Lifted their drooping fibres and shrunk leaves

In silent worship unto heaven; and birds,
The happiest minstrels of eternal love,
Sung vesper hymns, while the tall cedars threw
Their solemn shadows o'er the boundless fields,
And eve's soft-tinted clouds hung in the sky
In that fantastic form and wild array
Lovers adore and poets paint; and airs,
Born in the fairy realms of ether, swayed
Their filmy folds, and pictur'd magic domes,
Fair temples pinnacled, and palaces,
Sweet groves and gardens, and the seashore cliffs,
Which changed, each moment, like a summer dream,
Raised by the spell of necromantic power.

At his tent-door, amid the shadowy scene,
Reposed the Father of the Faithful now;
And there he led the quiet life of love,
Whose annals are good deeds and hallowed thoughts,
And purified affections—love to man,
And gratitude to God; thence he upraised
Heartfelt orisons, every morn and eve,
To Him, the Supreme Good, whose works and ways,
Howe'er mysterious, are forever just;
Rendering continual homage, that His laws,
In peril's hour, when many evils came
From men and things, had shielded him and kept
The light of beauty burning in his heart;
Had been to him a glory and a crown,
Earth never could confer or rend away.

Thus, as he worshipped in the sanctitude
Of a forgiving heart, Three Forms, like men,
Save that their seraph brows wore majesty
That shamed the common sons of earth, appeared,
Unsummoned guests—unheralded by ought
Familiar with earth's usage; for no sound
Of footstep rustled in the grove—no shade
Glimmered amid the twilight to reveal
Approaching visitants; and these, that now
Came, strong avengers, to Gomorrah's bowers

And Admah's halls, in outward semblance seem'd
But wayworn palmers, destined to the shrine
Of sanctity; yet sacred was the name
Of stranger in the East, and household bread
Sealed the true bond of heartfelt brotherhood.
So the great Father of the Faithful rose
To do them reverence as his pilgrim guests,
And to their seeming and intent purveyed
His hospitalities; then on their way
Held consort for a time, and treasured well
Angelic counsel humanly bestowed.

While thus they communed on their path, amid
The shadows of the oriental night;
Quick as the barque leaps o'er the cataract,
Or gossamer is borne on tempest winds,
E'en in a moment's unperceived elapse,
The Glory of the Triad turned his eye
Full on the gleaming Cities of the Plain,
And his broad brow glowed like a fiery cloud,
As, trumpet-like, his awful voice arose,
Denouncing judgement—“They must perish!” Far,
Through lower and mid and upper air, and thence
Through all the starry spheres, and upward still
From heaven to heaven arose the dread decree—
All angels, from the cherub full of love
And gentleness, to the archangel throned
On thunders, crying in the voice of death,
Awfully echoed—“They must perish.”—Then
The rush of mighty winds went by; wild sounds
Mysterious murmured in the startled sky;
The quick earth quivered, and the hillgirt sea,
Through its dark mass of troubled waters, heaved,
Moaning to its unfathomable abyss;
And every sable forest and bare cliff
Gave forth strange accents—and the world was full
Of fearful omens. Silent mid the Three
The awestruck Father stood, while through the skies
Flew the dread mandate, and the Earth, aghast

With terror, to its deep foundation shrunk.
Silent he stood; how awful was the pause!
Thrice o'er the fated cities, dark as night,
A giant vision passed; thrice o'er them flashed
A fiery sword and sceptre broke in twain;
Thrice rung a warning cry, that rose unheard,
Though conscious Earth did quake: then all was still—
Still as the realms of Hela, still as fear,
Whose pulse doth sound like midnight's deep-voiced knell.
Wildered and crushed by terror and despair,
The Shepherd Prince on Earth's cold bosom fell,
And a wild vision of the woes to come,
In broken tumult, searched his burning brain.

But Faith has godlike power, and holy men
May intercede, when terrors are abroad,
With God as with their high and holy friend,
E'en when his messengers are bolts of flame,
And thunders wake the astonished universe
To utterance of His awful destinies.
Strength to contend and fortitude to bear
Attend the heroic spirits of the Good;
Alike in desert land and meadows green,
Tissued with dimpling rills, that purl in smiles;
Alike in pleasure and adversity,
The strong persuasion of avoided ill
And shunn'd allurement fills the heart with joy,
And the unsinning for the guilty pray
Though destined wrath hath ratified their doom.
Upheld by faith that falters not in woe,
The intercessor rose and cried aloud
For mercy on the guilty race:—“Slay not
“The scorner in his scoffing! shall the voice
“Of blasphemy be heard e'en in the grave?
“Oh! must they die in utmost guilt—debarr'd
“Forever from thy light and beauty, Lord?
“Beyond atonement and the reach of hope?”
“Counsel, entreatment, menace they have heard
“In vain; their doom is fixed and cannot change.”

To the blue heavens, o'ercanopied with stars,
Serene in glory—oracles of years!
In anguish, then, he lifted up his soul,
And yet once more besought. “Wilt thou destroy
“The sinner and the saint together, Lord?
“The son of Belial and thy covenant's heir?”
“The Righteous are redeemed,” a Voice replied.
Again and yet again the holy man
Implored forbearance, still, with faltering voice,
Pleading in awe with the Supreme of Heaven,
To stay the hour of vengeance—but in vain!
For not among the nations, on whose pride
The signet of destruction had been set,
Was left the least redemption from the wrath
Omnipotent—most awful when deferred!
So o'er the plain of Mamre, 'neath the glow
Of the starr'd firmament, slowly in grief,
Lone as the breaking billow of the main,
The Patriarch trod his melancholy way;
Yet oft turned back to weep and gaze once more
On the doomed cities, where destruction called
Dark desolation to attend his path,
And Ruin flapped the air with bloodred wings.

On Zion's hill (the name of other days)
The Father of the Faithful sought repose,
And grief fell on his heart, and dreariness
Came o'er his spirit as he watched the storm
That gathered round the Cities of the Plain.

In starlight beauty lay the pleasant plains
Of Jordan; and on every hillock green
Slept the white flocks, dotting the uplands green,
And imaged household bliss; the slumbering herds
Were gathered round the wells, awaiting morn
Never to dawn on them; the shepherd's crook
Leaned idly by the palm, while, mid his fold,
He watched and read the stars, and skill'd in lore
By solitary commune, gave them names
Unfolding nature; all their potencies

O'er birth-hours and successive times he knew;
How in their march they bore our fate along,
And mingled good and evil lot below
With their eccentric motions; how our life
Revolves from pleasure to calamity
In ceaseless alternations, as the stars
Describe their evolutions in the skies.
Thus to the old Chaldee heaven's watchers were
High Deities, and worship, morn and eve,
When they came forth in the blue deep of heaven,
And when they faded in the dayspring's gush,
Was rendered unto them; and so he grew
Resigned to their mysterious destinies,
And they became his gods, revealing powers,
Benignant or malign. Or, by the side
Of fellow herdsman lying, he became
The historian of the elder days, when Earth
Was full of love, and all its motions were
Sweet poetry; and then he told the tales
Of reverend eld, how sun-winged angels came
In the world's youth, and held converse with men,
Ministering condolement to their grief,
And counsel for their guidance; how the Earth
Sprung into life at His immortal word,
And forests rose from the unfathomed sea,
Blooming in beauty; and how, when their sire
Had sinn'd, and woe was born of his offence,
And troubles came, and he was driven forth
From Paradise, on diamond pinions flew
Young Hope before him on his exile way,
Winning him gently from his cherished grief,
And lighting with her smile the rugged path,
That, through the gloom of years, led unto bliss.
In such discourse on laws and legends passed
The lingering night, and not a sound revealed
The terrors of the awful day to come.

The dewy glistening of the starlight groves,
The hush of the broad leaves, the scudding clouds,
Through whose dim folds full many a diamond star

Looked beautiful—the stillness and the charm
Of Night—the poet's hour of love—when heaven
Bends o'er his bosom smiling! all the scene
Breathed sweetness and blushed odours; rivulets
Glided along in music, faint and soft
As the low breathing of a newborn babe,
And the trees sighed their melancholy song
To the night-breeze, so indistinct, the ear
Could catch the hum of silence; in the vale
The flow of Jordan by its reedy banks,
Where hive the honey-bees and herons build,
Mysterious rose, and melancholy notes,
(Such as float o'er the heart in rapture's hour
When lofty thoughts with inspiration burn,)
Sighed o'er the hills and mingled with the breath
Of flocks that slept upon the upland mead.

It was a lovely scene—a holy time,
A season of deep feeling, and a place
Whose garniture was love; the senses sleep
The spirit wakes to bliss on such a night;
The outward forms of cold realities
Are mellowed into beauty, and the heart
Is lifted up into a realm of dreams
And visionries; and glory fills the mind,
And we become the pure abstracted things
Imagination pictures, when we rove
By flowery brooks or on the mountain side,
Or mid the hyrst's deep solitudes and muse
On the heart's mysteries—its hopes and fears,
Its trials and its final destiny.

Life—what is human life? quick breathings sent
From the deep pulses of a bleeding heart!
Life! 'tis the shadow of the dial-stone,
The echo of the solitary bell!
Life! 'tis the music of departed days,
Dew upon earth and vapour in the sky,
A beauty and a glory—and a dream!

On such a holy night the pleasant scenes
Of earlier life recur in all their bloom,
And faded glories waken, and the heart
Is young again; the fountain of the soul,
Stirr'd by the wings of angels, brings forth joy,
That springs to being as in olden time
Heaven's daughter from the ocean's silvery foam.
But green leaves wither in the autumn winds,
And desolation marks the closing year;
Years blanch the head and harrow the quick heart,
And furrow the fair brow and crush the frame,
And leave us blighted hopes and broken hearts,
And scattered vestiges of wasted power;
And we are left alone in the cold world,
Without a friend, and to life's lingering close
Our toil must be the weary gathering-in
Of blasted fruits and mildewed flowers (that youth
Planted in gladness) and despair o'erlooks
The harvest of our agony—alas!
How deep we feel without participant
When silence slumbers on the dreamy heart!
But soon 't will prove a silence none can break,
The shadowing of oblivion! when the hopes,
That light the spirit's glorious orrery,
(The golden Chersonesus of our dreams,)
Will vanish, and the fearful night of doom
Will come, as came the tempest of despair
O'er the proud nations of the fruitful Plain.

In meek and solemn worship Haran's son
Had offered up his evening sacrifice
When the angelic visitants appeared.

From the outer gate of Sodom, revently
The unpersuading advocate of truth
Among the faithless Punics of old days,
The moral Centaurs of a peopled waste,—
Whose nameless guilt in latter time hath grown
Into the proverb of supremest shame,
A word ineffable—arose, sole good
Mid evil, mid the bann'd sole bless'd, and bowed

Before the avenging ministers of doom.
Onward through mocking multitudes he led
The heavenly visitants, and, though reviled,
He answered not again; the holy light
Of his example, like the Hyades,
Shone in a cold and cloudy clime; to him
Truth was a triumph, virtue a reward,
And evil things the dusky hues that gave
His glory lustre; like Cyrene's sage,
He felt the troubles of humanity,
But not like him pourtrayed them; he was meek
And patient in his sufferance of earth's ills,
For 'mid the worst of woe he e'er beheld
Redeeming judgement in a holier world.
He had gone forth by Jordan's banks to pray
With heart as pure as the famed river's spring,
The fountain Paneade: and he had gazed
On Palestine's blue hills, and breathed the airs
Of Araby the Blest, while pondering o'er
The sin, the shame, the guilt, the wanton lust,
Of all who shared the mercies of the Lord
E'en with his chosen; the good man alone
Had wandered forth to pray, and more, perchance,
To lead some atheist to the tree of life.
And so he sat in Sodom's gate, and night
Look'd down upon him from her starry throne
With a mild sorrow, and her gentle dews
Fell round him in the starlight, and his heart
Grew calm beneath the blessed influence
Of that sweet hour when dovelike breezes bring
Soft odours from the flower, and the stars
Are full of glory, and the dark cold earth
Looks beautiful amid the holy light.
Wrapt in his high communion, passers-by
Blasphemed him as they went and on him threw
Reproach and scorn; like misbelievers now,
Unto his warnings rendering mad replies—
“Hoar hypocrite! thy drivelling suits thee well!”
But faithful still and reckless of his doom,
Like the first martyr dying at his shrine,
His voice was raised against all evil men,

In peril's hour his spirit slumbered not.
Strong in his faith, temptation he o'ercame,
Collusion scorned; with priests and haughty kings,
Like Agelnoth and Agobard, he held
His soul triumphant, though wassailers drowned
His fond orisons in loud mockeries.
“The mercy of the Lord doth linger long,
“His loving-kindness hath been sorely tried,”
Said Haran's chosen son; and—as he spake—
The dread destroyers entered Sodom's gate.

In ancient days, ere Shiloh's advent, God
Held commune with his chosen, as a man
With his familiar friend; his angels flew,
Invisible couriers of sightless air,
On good or evil mission, like the bolt
That lightens through immensity, till earth
Drew near: then as their glorious pinions fann'd
The dark, gross atmosphere of this lower world,
They, on the instant, took a human shape,
And clothed their heavenly essence in the garb
Of human habitude. And these that now
Left their bright thrones on men and evil things
To pour long suffering vengeance, wore the forms
And did observe the usages of men,
Apparent sustenance and rest received,
Indulged discourse of earthly interests,
And held the stranger's converse for a while:
How flocks and herds did prosper; how the fields
Yielded their vintage; how the cities thrived
In commerce with the nations. Thence they spake
Of government and laws, and moral use
Of privilege vouchsafed; “Doth man retain,
“Like the seashell when taken from the deep,
“A living witness of his godlike birth?
“Or, like the rose-flower's spirit, doth his heart
“Derive its breath of praise from holy air?”
With downcast eyes and clouded brow, their host
Sighed mournful disallowance, and a tear
Fell from the good man's eye—it could not save
The guilty wantoning in loathsome crime!

Amid their speech a hum of multitudes
Far distant rose, and shouts and lozel cries,
With fiendish imprecations, blasphemies,
Wild howlings and loud mockeries; and a rush
Of a vast throng was heard, like autumn winds
Pent long in mountain hollows, when they burst
At the dead midnight forth; and the deep tramp
Of feet wex'd audible, and human forms
Distincter grew in one tumultuous mass.
Nearer they came and wilder rose their cries,
Blent with the clash of weapons, swords and spears
And instruments of carnage: confident,
Exulting in their power, no law with them
Availed to shield the guiltless, or deter
The sinner, save the insolent caprice
Of hot-brained revel. Onward so they came,
Like billows breaking over ocean reefs,
And leaguered the lone mansion, summoning,
For deeds ineffable, the stranger guests.
But silent stood the Arbiters of Doom,
Though o'er their seraph brows a glory passed,
Like the revealment of electric fire
On the dark outskirts of the hurricane.
Again wild curses rose and blasphemies,
Again the summons pealed aloud—but yet
The High Three mov'd not; fear to them unknown,
And peril, they beheld the guilt and grief
Of man, with marvelling and ruth; and still
They held their awful strength unmenacing.
On pressed the maddened tumult, and the gate
Rung, shook and shivered 'neath the mad assault.
But yet their fixed gaze changed not! Vainly now
The eloquent voice of Haran's son arose,
Vain his fond prayer, his intercession vain,
His last despairing sacrifice to save
The perpetration of the unhallowed deed.
They mock'd, they spurn'd him; shouts and savage yells,
Loud oaths and curses, intermingled, rose
Far o'er the city, and the starlight skies
Echoed the startling echo—while the hearts

Of Lot's beloved fainted in their fear,
And exultation bade the throng rush on,
And seize with ruffian grasp, and bear away—
—Back fell astonished the vast multitude!
Silence stood listening for their blasphemies!
Amid the throng no voice was heard, nor sound
Of human life; like pillars in the gloom
Of Night they stood—blind, motionless and dumb!
The earth beneath them quaked, a moaning sound
Passed o'er their spirits like the distant roll
Of chariots in the battle, or the sea
Searching the caverns of the mountain rocks,
Where the proud lion meets leviathan,
And mammoth gores behemoth; then they fell
In the highway, and side by side sunk down,
Victims of unseen power; they rose no more!

“Go, warn thy kindred that they tarry not,
“For wrath awaits, and vengeance is abroad;
“Loose not the girdle of thy loins—break not
“The latchet of thy sandal-shoon—away!
“The bow is bended and the arrow drawn,
“The hearts of men are branded deep with guilt,
“The earth is stained with evil, and the voice
“Of stern oppression reacheth unto heaven.
“Go forth among the Zuzims, seek thy kin,
“And cry woe, woe to him who tarrieth here!
“The Chastener lifts his sword! the Avenger comes!
“Like the strong oaks of Bashan, they shall fall,
“The mighty—blasted as an autumn leaf,
“E'en in the strength of their dominion—now!
“The slayers are abroad—the storm of death
“Already hurtles in the troubled air.
“Haste! haste away!”—And forth the good man went.

—O Hope! creator of a fairy heaven!
Manna of angels! rainbow of the heart,
That, throned in heaven, doth ever rest on earth!
From our first sigh, unto our latest groan,
From the first throb until the heart is cold,

Thou art a gladness and a mockery,
A glory and a vision—thou sweet child
Of the immortal spirit! In our days
Of sorrow, with thy bland hypocrisies,
Thou dost delude us, and we love and trust
Thy beautiful illusions, though the soil
Of disappointment yet is on our souls.
Thou eldorado of the poor man's dream!
Sire of repentance! child of vain desires!
The bleeding heart clings to thee when all hope
Is madness; o'er our thoughts thou ever holdst
Eternal empire—and thou dost console
The felon in his cell, the galley slave,
The exile and the wanderer o'er the earth,
And pour'st the balm of transitory peace
E'en on the heart that sighs o'er kindred guilt.

Guided by thee, forth went the holy man,
And told of gathering ruin, but his sons
Held banqueting with lemans, and they scorned
The warning of their hoary sire; and e'er,
Amid the blandishments of song and dance,
The music, perfume and bewilderment
Of heart and brain—the dreamy revelries
Of a rejoicing spirit, high and proud,
His daughters listened not in danger's hour;
“Father! thy dreams ill suit the festive hall!
“Thy beggar pilgrims will o'erturn the world!
“The winged creatures of the fair blue air
“Would scorn the deed discourteous; shall they mar
“Our mirth to whom unceasing joy and love
“Are one eternal birthright? Oh! rejoice!
“The deluge hath been once—the bow is set—
“Chaos is passed—lead on the joyous dance!
“Away! away! alas, the mad old man!
“Woe to gainsayers when the Lord commands!”
It seemed the sighing of the summer wind
Or echo of the viol, and the dance
Moved on—the banquet and the wantoning.
Thus to the last beseeching and the wail

Of agonized affection made reply
The sons of heatheness—the bitter fruit
Of many a wakeful watching—many an hour
Of toil and trouble and redeeming joy.
They scorned the prophecy and they were scorned
In its accomplishment; a father's voice,
Unheeded, called aloud on righteous heaven,
And desolation on their pride came down.
With a sick heart the son of Haran turned
From grandeur, guilt, and madness—and pursued
His lonely way with faltering steps and slow;
And oft he stopp'd and gazed and wept alone
For his doomed children—left in ruin's grasp—
Then followed on his solitary path,
Wailing and weeping, as he passed away.
Around his dwelling all was stillness now
And silvery silence, and the good man paused
In meditation on his earlier days,
When far away, in Ur of the Chaldees,
He felt the bliss of being, ere the woes
Of life came o'er him—ere his bosom knew
The canker that corrodes the hollow heart,
The last extremity of grief, the strife
Of earth and heaven—of fervent, long-tried love
With conscious worthlessness! It was the hour
When rosy Morn meets her dark sister Night
Upon the confines of their wide demesnes,
And the gray shadows darkened while nor sun,
Nor moon, nor stars, held empire o'er the world.
Dark fell the dream of other days upon
The Chaldee's heart; a vision rose before
His spirit—and he wept!—
“Haste! haste away!”
Cried the destroyers—and the upper air
Was full of voices, crying “haste away!
“The storm of ruin sleeps till thou art past
“The mountains of thy refuge; heaven doth bear
“The guilt of men till thou hast fled afar.
“Fly to the deep clefts of the rugged rocks,
“The mansions of the ancient hills—away!

“Must they be left in unredeemed despair,
“Doom'd to the death of demons—they who clung
“Unto thy bosom, Love! whose smiles and tears
“Were rainbows to our bridal blessedness?
“Who were to us a treasure and a joy,
“A trouble and a triumph o'er the ills
“That ever wait our portion on the earth!
“Must they be left who laughed and leapt for joy
“Amid the green woods and the viny fields,
“Adoring the Supreme whom now they scorn?
“Oh! must they perish in their guilt?”—“Away!”
A cold, stern answer to a father's love;
And tears gushed from his aged eyes, and grief
Swelled in his widowed bosom, as he turned
On his departure—yet such tears and woes—
So deep—so awful—even angels felt
A portion of their bitterness, though none
Flow from the sunlight fountains of their bliss.
Slowly the Orient kindled in the dawn,
And dusky vapours curled, in grotesque forms,
O'er vale and upland, tinged with lurid light,
That heaved in masses o'er the ancient hills,
Darkening the brow of snowy Lebanon,
And over Tabor, Hermon, and the plains
Of Ezdraelon hanging like the smoke
Of Hecla o'er Icelandic solitudes.
Forth went the Chosen Family, in haste,
And the High Three, like towers of strength, behind
Majestic marched; o'er Siddim's purple plain,
(Late field of slaughter, where the haughty king
Chedorlaomer battled with his foes,
The rebel sovereigns of the tribute towns)
They fled in terror to the hills; and dark
And darker grew the heavens; fitful gleams
Of gory gloom threw o'er the sable skies
Unnatural blackness; bloodred clouds arose,
And all the horizon quivered as they rushed
In giant armies to the cope of heaven.
Like fiery vapours of a burning world,
They gathered round and shut out light and joy

From the devoted victims of despair.
And they, who were in after ages called
Mothers of nations, gazed in shuddering fear
Where the red banner of destruction shook
O'er Palestine's dark mountains and the towers
Of Sodom and Gomorrah; and deep sounds,
As of the sundering of the earth, arose,
And hollow moanings, as the world bewailed
The ruin of its fairest though its worst.
The birds, with open beaks and fluttering wings,
Rose from the creaking woods and fled in haste
Unto the pinnacles of mountains, crowned
With forests inaccessible, or down
Mid dells and gorges and cliff-arched ravines
Took refuge, trembling—ever and anon
Peering with terror o'er the rugged rocks,
Then shrinking quickly back; the flocks and herds
Looked up amazed as o'er the morning skies
Gathered the miracle of horror's night;
The green turf withered and the fountains turned
To poison, and the leaves in cinders dropped,
And the dark waters quivered and men's breath
Became an agony, and all the air
Seem'd panting; and the starting eye grew wild
Beholding things o'erturned and mixed and lost
In a strange chaos; 't was a fearful time,
A desolation to the trembling heart;
And nature groaned through all her matchless works
When Guilt called down the vengeance of the Just.

“Time wears apace—Almighty vengeance waits,
“Flee to the caverns—to the mountains flee!
“Look not behind, for desolation's wings
“Winnow the Cities of the Plain; they are,
“They shall not be; like a forsaken bough,
“Whose fruit doth turn to ashes, or a tower
“Left in deserted vineyard to become
“The dwelling of the owl and bat—so they
“Shall be a hissing and a scorn forever!
“Their days are numbered and their guilt is sealed;

“Like chaff before the whirlwind, when the storm
“Howls o'er the hills, in all their pride and power,
“E'en in a moment they shall disappear:
“And never more the sound of mirth—the song,
“The voice of bridal or of banqueting,
“The prayers of idol worship or the noise
“Of battle shall be heard in all their realms.
“The hour draws nigh; the sons of evil now
“Are ripe for judgement; lo! amid the skies
“The banner of the Terrible! away!”
Thus urged the high Avengers and their cry
Was ever to all searchings into doom—
“On! for the judgement of the Lord delays!
“Behold! the heavens grow darker and the clouds
“Hang in the sky like Ararat's great ark
“Above the drowning world—a fearful sign
“To earth and heaven; dark stand the forest trees
“And leafless—verdure hath forsaken earth—
“And bird and beast are gasping out their breath,
“That soon will close—and yet the Cities sleep!
“The shattered elements are leagued in war—
“Terror before and wild affright; behind,
“Fear, feeble as the unweaned child that shrinks
“And shudders while the tempest sweeps along!
“Unto the mountains of thy refuge fly!”
And on they hurried; but the human heart
Lingers, like Adam near lost paradise,
Loth to forsake the objects of its love,
Cleaves to its wedded blisses and imparts
Its sweet affections, like the sun to heaven,
To all it cherished in life's earlier years.
When days of evil come and sorrows crush
Our quick and fine-toned feelings to the dust;
And we must wear the sackcloth of the heart,
And leave beloved things and pass away
When Danger's eye is on them and the sword
Is ready to devour—the spirit 's tried
As in a fiery furnace; when despair
Asunder rends the bleeding bonds of love,
And to the bosom even guilt is dear,

How dreadful is the sacrifice of all
The soul hath sanctified! Without a pang,
A last, long lingering gaze that bids farewell
Forever and forever, who can part
From beings loved though lost to loveliness?
It is a bitter trial to forsake,
E'en for a season in this changeful world,
The things we cherish! strange uncertainties
Await the briefest interval—an hour
Hath changed the destinies of half the world,
A moment sundered hearts that met no more.
But, oh! to part from dear familiar scenes
And creatures of endearment and to know
Death and eternity will be between
All future meeting—'t is a cup of woe,
That burns and burns forever in the soul,
Till the grave closes o'er its agonies.
Vain, from the lips of angels, is the hest,
That bars the love of mother from her child;
Love, which is born of woe and sanctified
By suffering; knows no limit, feels no want
When fearful maladies assail; in days
Of cold adversity shares every grief,
And is a higher joy than earth affords
When sunny seasons blossom! From the fount
Of her devoted heart her spirit flows
Through every vein whose life was born in hers,—
And death may stifle but can never quench
The love whose birth-hour is eternity.
From the last hill top that o'erlooked the plain,
When the last glance must now be rendered back,
The last sigh given for forsaken love,
Ere from the view she sunk forever, turned
The Victim Mother once again to weep
The guilt and ruin of the loved, the lost,
The young, the beautiful; her writhen brow
Breathed anguish, and her wildly straining eyes
Sought vainly for the dwellings of the doomed!
With outstretched arms and quivering lips, she stood
In agony unuttered—unrelieved,

By sigh or tear; and so her spirit fled,
The broken heart lay bleeding, but the life
Vanished—and there, Death's chosen monument,
She stands, o'erlooking the Dead Sea, e'en now,
Where herb, nor tree, nor winged bird can live,
Where all her hopes were buried in the gulf
Of desolating ruin; there she stands,
The mother dying for her children's sake,
The Niobe of nature! sculptured Love!
More beautiful than Venus in her pride!
Draw near, behold the triumph of the heart
O'er terror and the war of earth and heaven!

From every point of heaven the black clouds rolled
In masses to the zenith, and the woods
Crumbled to ashes, and unearthly sounds
Moaned in the caverns of the ancient hills,
And every rushing stream was like a flood
Of flame that burned along its blacken'd way.
There was no sun in the o'erpurpled East,
But a dark gory globe, the abode of fiends,
That like a mighty wreck, mid fire and gloom,
Tossing along the billows, but revealed
Terrors the spirit shuddered to behold—
For Retribution sat enthroned in Heaven.

While thus the Chosen fled unto the hills,
Amid the glorious oriental night,
The voice of Songsters and the viol's play,
The merry music of the psaltery,
And dulcimer and harp and tabret rose
Through palace court, the chambers and sweet bowers
Of the proud, purple Cities of the Plain;
And carollings of high carousal blent
With lozel strains and battle songs and jests
Not to be uttered in these latter days,
And maniac shouting, with the long, loud laugh,
Revealing a light heart, whose breath was mirth,
That throbbed, undreading ill or pain or death,
In confidence of many joyous days

Sunny as Yemen or the paradise
Of Islam's dark-eyed houris; and the cup
Was pledged to beauty while the mazy dance
Echoed the sound of sweet-toned instruments,
And eyes voluptuous, brighter than the gems
That glittered on the full white bosom, rolled
Around the pillar'd halls, and, wantonly,
Their magic glances flashed on every heart.
Like sunbows arched along the wavy cloud,
Born of the lightning and the rain-shower, Love,
High master of the revel, threw around
His wizard glances and the throng obeyed
The eloquent behest; white bosoms heaved
Beneath transparent draperies, that gave
Mysterious beauty to the bounding limbs,
And the flushed brow and burning cheek and lip,
The rosy wines, the mellow fruits—the glow
Of thousand lights—the gushing waterfalls,
Whose music stole along the outer courts,
The bloom of nature and the flush of hope,
The shadowed forms, the winning attitudes,
And the wild fever of excited sense—
All filled the brain with visions of delight,
And the heart rioted in wanton bliss.

O holy Night! unto the sage thou art,
And to the poet and the prophet e'er
A time of gladness; when, mid antique lore,
And visionary phantasies and dreams,
And glorious revelations, they become
Beings of brighter worlds than this, thou art
A season of deep counsel and high thoughts,
Or when the hollowness and falsities
Of earthly things oppress the lofty mind
In day's rude glare, thou comest with a step
So gentle that the weary heart hath rest
In thy soft shadows; but, to evil men
And evil purposes, thine hours become
The robe of guilt that gloats and feeds on shame.
Oh! many a deed, darker than is thy gloom,

Lies hidden in thy lone recesses here,
But, over all, there looketh forth an Eye,
To which the darkness is no covering.

Sabea's caravan, the worshippers
Of Mythra and Zohail and Mazzaloth,
Loaded with gorgeous raiment and perfumes,
From Araby the Blest, and pearls and shells,
From Oman's sea, whose shore the wild kings roam,
Pictured like rainbows or the leprous heart
Of a proud priest whose soul is sacrilege,
Ere that dread eve of judgement, when the Lord
Gathered his terrors for an utter war
And desolation of unrighteous men,
Had entered in Gomorrah and diffused
Gladness through all the Cities of the Plain.
Oh! then they dreamed on long bright years of wealth
And glory and rejoicing, and their hearts
Rebelled in haughty confidence; their gods
Became a jesting and a mockery;
Earth was elysium—for the world had poured
Its treasures o'er them and their lot was blessed.
Trusting their own frail pride, they scorned the Power,
That spanned the heavens, forgetting He could wear
Garments of vengeance and hear not the voice
Of dying supplication, when He trod
The winepress of his wrath and on them poured
Dark retribution—when the cup of woe
Was drained unto its deepest dregs—and when
He wrapt the blazing heavens around His brow,
And in the majesty of glory came,
Earth, seas, and skies dissolving at His frown.
Far streamed the festive lights through colonnade
And banquet hall and palace bower, and forms,
In bright array were flitting there, and all
The sons and daughters of the wise Chaldee
Were gay as birds of Paradise; the voice
Of beauty chanted the lascivious song,
And perfume floated in the music's breath.
But, oh, the madness of the mirth! no dream

Portended woe to come; no omen taught
Mysterious prophecy; the hoary sage,
The tiar'd priest of the strong Emims failed
In knowledge of his lore; the enchanter now,
Amazed, beheld his magic science lost.
Lone stood the temples—every idol fell,
But none were there to mark the prodigy.
The starry genii held their altitudes
Indicative of no disaster now,
And not a whisper breathed that could forewarn
The terrors of the dawn; so joyance leapt
In every heart until their halls grew dim,
And weary nature craved repose;—then sunk
The gay host into slumber; death were not
A deeper solitude—save where the step
Of the bent pilgrim, hastening on his way,
Broke the deep silence of the cities doomed,
Or the lone caravan, departing, sent
The echoes of their many hurrying feet.

The storm of wrath had gathered and it hung
In giant folds of blackness round the skies,
Revealed, not lightened by the glorious sun,
Whose disk gloomed like an universe of blood—
A burning ocean from the hearts of men.
The thick, hushed atmosphere did seem alive,
And beings diabolic in the clouds
Laughed louder than the storm's mysterious roar.
Beneath the black and sundered rocks the herds
Lay gasping in their agonies, and oft
The forests and the crags fell down and crushed
The dying; yet no wind stirr'd the dead boughs,
But all the world seemed waiting—mute and still—
The bursting of destruction's barriers.
Yet the bare, leafless, blackened forests shook,
Reeled and uptore the solid earth and crashed
Down the deep precipice—and tigers howled,
With famished wolves, and owls and bitterns moaned,
And vultures swooped and screamed, and eagles wheeled,
(Shunning to taste the prey that Ruin gave,)

Through the red scorching air and shrieked on high.
Now heaved the Earth, and deep low muttering sounds
Passed o'er her dark abysses, while above
Voices did question and reply, in words
That sounded like a deep toned organ's roll.
These were the oracles of coming doom,
But none did hear them save the Shepherd Prince
And Haran's son in Zoar—and they knelt
In prayer for all who were to perish now.
Darker and darker grew the storm; the glare
And gloom were terrible; the pause—the awe—
The riot of the hurrying elements—
The howling of the demons o'er their prey—
The bursting earth and the dissolving sky.
Wild meteors burst amid the lurid heavens
Louder than all the world's artillery,
And shattered globes of fire glared o'er the gloom,
Like hell's eternal billows through the night
Of death that dies not—horror without end.

As when the sea-flood, Orellana meets
In conflict with the ocean, every isle
Of Amazonia quivers in the shock,
So the earth trembled when the whirlwind rose
And howled through ether with a louder roar
Than the tornado of the equinox.
Unearthly voices echoed through the heavens
As every hurrying cloud of fire on high
Had its peculiar captain in the war
Of God with men. Now, at the appointed hour
Of vengeance, burst from every point of heaven
The tempest of destruction;awfully
The shattering thunders broke—the lightning fell
In one wild blaze unquenchable—a flood
Of flame as if the fountains of the skies
Were broken up and earth and nature given
A sacrifice to judgement!—Now awoke
The slumbering Cities in their agony
And utter woe, for o'er them leapt and hissed,
In serpent wreaths, the master element,

That mounted up in pyramids of flame,
As it would mingle with the burning heavens.
Ye terrors of an angry God! above,
Below, a penal world of gory light
No power could quench, and thunders, not like earth's,
At intervals, but one unceasing roar,
So loud, all worlds replied; so strong, they shook
Ten thousand meteors from their sightless spheres.
Then forth, like Eblis and his legions driven
By Azrael from the gates of Paradise,
In madness rushed the myriads of the Plain.
From falling tower and crushing colonnade,
And melted roof and shattered battlement,
They leapt in raving agony—the flames
Clinging, like serpents, to their tender flesh.
Then rose the voice of wailing; then the arms
Of the young mother grew around her child,
And the son clung about his father's neck,
And lovely maidens fainted in their fear
And woke no more; then sorcerers tried their charms
In vain; and priests invoked aloud their gods
Without reply. Amid the awful storm,
Among their dying people, stood the kings,
The haughty gods of idol worshippers,
Powerless and helpless as the unweaned child,
While heaven above and hell beneath conjoined
In the destruction; and their crowned queens
And daughters beautiful and kindred high
Clung round them wailing, and ten thousand prayers
Shrieked with unnumbered curses! Towers of fire
Rose round them high as heaven, and their flesh
Consumed, and then their hollow cries and prayers
And imprecations waxed more terrible.
The awful glare for leagues around revealed
The dying nations; Jordan's swelling stream
Boiled through the furnace, and the mountain cliffs
Unto their deep foundations shivered—Earth,
A trembling mass of fiery ashes, heaved
Beneath the countless multitudes; the world
Reeled to and fro and all the heavens did seem

Ready to fall.—Hosts upon hosts now lay
Dead, and the dying fell upon them there,
The monarch and the mendicant—the prince
And peasant, the fair dame in Persian robes
And the poor outcast, side by side were thrown,
And, mid the pauses of the tempest, rose
Loud yells of agony; and demons then
Mocked their last anguish, till an angel voice,
That shook the heavens, drowned the dying groans,
And cried “It is enough!”—the skies were bright!
And on the instant, the astonished Earth
Yawned in a bottomless chasm 'neath the host
Of Sodom and Gomorrah; and the dead
And dying, mingled in a mass of fire
And blood, went down into the gulf of woe,
And burning temples, palaces and towers
Glared wildly o'er them as they fell! From depths
Dark and unmeasured, like a spectre, rose
The Dead and Deadly Sea; an outstretched arm
Quivered, at intervals, along the wave,
Once rose a shriek of Death—and all was still!

HOUSEHOLD HOURS.

Howe'er the sceptic scoffs, the poet sighs,
Hope oft reveals her dimly shadowed dreams,
And seraph joy descends from pale blue skies,
And, like sweet sunset on wood-skirted streams,
Peace breathes around her stilling harmonies,
Her whispered music,—while her soft eye beams—
And the deep bliss, that crowns the household hearth,
From all its woes redeems the bleeding earth.

Like woods that shadow the blue mountain sky,
The troubled heart still seeks its home in heaven,
In those affections which can never die,
In hallowed love and human wrongs forgiven!
From the fair gardens of The Blest on high
The fruit of life is yet to lost man given,
And 'mid the quiet of his still abode
Spirits attend him from the throne of God.

The mild deep gentleness, the smile that throws
Light from the bosom o'er the high pale brow,
And cheek that flushes like the Maymorn rose;
The all-reposing sympathies, that grow
Like violets in the heart, and o'er our woes
The silent breathings of their beauty throw—
Oh! every glance at daily life doth prove
The depth, the strength, the truth of woman's love!

When harvest days are past, and autumn skies
The giant forests tinge with glorious hues,
How o'er the twilight of our thought sweet eyes
The fairy beauty of the soul diffuse!

The inspiring air like spirit voices sighs
Mid the close pines and solitary yews,
Though the broad leaves on forest boughs look sere,
And naked woodlands wail the dying year.

Yet the late season brings no hours of gloom,
Though thoughtful sadness sighs her evening hymn,
For hearthfires now light up the curtained room,
And Love's wings float amid the twilight dim:
Lost loved ones gather round us from the tomb,
And blest revealments o'er our spirits swim,
While Hopes, that drooped in trials, soar on high,
And linked affections bear into the sky.

Then, side by side, hearts wedded in their youth,
In their meek blessedness expand and glow,
And, though the world be faithless, still their truth
No pause, no change, no soil of Time may know!
They hold communion with a world, in sooth,
Beyond the stain of sin, the waste of woe,
And the deep sanctities of wellspent hours
Crown their fair fame with Eden's deathless flowers.

Frail as the moth's fair wing is common fame,
Brief as the sunlight of an April morn;
But Love perpetuates the sacred name
Devoted to its shrine; in glory born,
The Boy-God gladly to the lone earth came
To vanquish victors and to smile at scorn,
And he will rise, when all is finished here,
The holiest seraph of the highest sphere.

As fell the prophet's mantle, in old time,
On the meek heir of Israel's sainted sage,
Woman! so falls thy unseen power sublime
On the lone desert of man's pilgrimage;
Thy sweet thoughts breathe, from Love's delicious clime,
Beauty in youth, and Faith in fading age;
Through all Earth's years of travail, strife and toil,
His parched affections linger round thy smile.

In the young beauty of thy womanhood
Thou livest in the being yet to be,
Yearning for blessedness ill understood,
And known, young mother! only unto thee.
Love is her life; and to the wise and good
Her heart is heaven—'t is even unto me,
Though oft misguided and betrayed and grieved,
The only bliss of which I'm not bereaved.

Draw near, ye whom my bosom hath enshrined!
O Thou! whose life breathes in my heart! and Thou
Whose gentle spirit dwelleth in my mind,
Whose love, like sunlight, rests upon my brow!
Draw near the hearth! the cold and moaning wind
Scatters the ruins of the forest now,
But blessings crown us in our own still home—
Hail, holy image of the Life to come!

Hail, ye fair charities! the mellow showers
Of the heart's springtime! from your rosy breath
The wayworn pilgrim, though the tempest lours,
Breathes a new being in the realm of Death,
And bears the burden of life's darker hours
With cheerlier aspect o'er the lonely heath,
That spreads between us and the unfading clime
Where true Love triumphs o'er the death of Time.

THE SUMMER EVENING HYMN.

With what a shadowing of her broad dim wings
Pale Twilight stealeth over vale and hill!
And what a floating crowd of fairy things
Render mute homage to her voiceless will!
Blest Eventide! thy silent coming brings
Remorseless Quiet and Contentment still,
Gay Fancies and rejoicing Hopes, that roll
Like fair stars o'er the shut lids of the soul.

Welcome! reliever of midsummer heat!
A blessing waits upon thy bounty now:
Breath, that is bliss, attends the heart's deep beat,
And fresh winds fan the dull and weary brow.
Lo! how the sunset, in a showery sheet
Of rich light, waves along the horizon low,
While o'er yon isle its parting glories rest
Like Memory's brightness in the good man's breast.

The songbird lifts its voice in vesper praise
And then mid dewy leaves seeks out its nest,
And flocks and herds, that sleep on burning days,
Graze on the clover now like creatures blest;
'T is joy unto a heart that widely strays
O'er the dark sea of life and hath no rest,
To blend its sympathies with all that breathe,
And unto woods and streams its thoughts bequeathe.

Along the gleaming brook, that purls and plays
Among the pebbles and o'erarching roots
Of this old elm—the haunt of careless days—
(Ah! little now their simple pleasure boots!)
Let me repose and with a heart of praise
Render meet thanks for every joy that shoots
Up from the hedge of thorns—the barren road—
Which year by year my faltering feet have trod.

It is no season for repining care,
And my free spirit falters not, for yet
There is a magic in the rosy air
And dewy earth, when summer's sun hath set,
That lifteth up my thoughts, in silent prayer,
Where human weakness or demurring let
Taints not the springs of Thought, whose secret home
Is in the twilight bowers of time to come.

The changeful beauty of the sunset sky
Fades softly o'er the blue of Alna bay,
Like hallowed thoughts of saints who meekly die,
Whose faith was true, whose deeds were just alway;

White clouds, that o'er the azure ocean fly,
Retain awhile the holy light of day,
Then all is dimness, stillness, soft repose,
The hour of love for Nightingale and Rose.

Gush, ye blue waters from your fountain dell!
Soar, ye dim mountains to the fading heaven!
The upland woods of Edgecomb softly swell,
The Camden hills, amid the dusky even,
Throned o'er the hoary pilgrim's holy well,
Like prophets stand—to whom all worlds are given.
The pensive heart, with all the world at rest,
Sleeps mid the shades of its own peaceful breast.

In the deep woods of Damariscotta's glen,
Though rude yet holy, stands the ruined fane,
Devoted, in this wild of warrior men,
Ages ago, to God! the evening strain,
The morning prayer and psalm rose grandly then,
For lurking foes were near—a hideous train!
Few, feeble, faithful, there the pilgrims prayed,
And holy be THE Temple of the Glade.

The sacred places of the elder time
Retain no more their everlasting name,
But long their memory shall be held sublime
Who for their faith into the forest came,
Dared all the perils of a cruel clime,
And held their holy freedom ample fame;
Holier, a hut in ruins mid our woods
Than all Palmyra's marble solitudes.

The valley brook hath now a mighty voice,
The larch and fir trees sigh their vesper hymn,
The Thousand Stars upon their thrones rejoice,
And Nature slumbers on her mountains dim.
Far from the throng of men and city's noise,
While shadows glimmer as they sink and swim,
My heart finds gladness in this tender gloom,
And deeply yearneth for the life to come.

THE LAST NIGHT OF POMPEII:

A POEM IN THREE CANTOS.

PREFACE.

The cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, Retina, and Stabiæ, with many beautiful villages, were destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, during the first year of the reign of Titus, on the 24th of August, in the year of our Lord, seventy-nine. Buried during more than seventeen hundred years, even their very names were almost forgotten, when the plough of a peasant struck upon the roof of the loftiest and most magnificent mansion in Pompeii; and the excavations of the last fifty years have furnished the tourist, the antiquarian, the novelist, and the poet, with many a subject of picturesque and glowing description. The cities of the dead have not wanted frequent and often faithful historians; every disinterred temple, amphitheatre, statue, pillar, tomb, and painting has found admirers. It was expedient, therefore, to throw action into a picture at all times impressive, and to delineate, without flattery, those existing manners, customs, and morals, which, sanctioned as they were, not only by usage, but by legislators and the priesthood, can leave little regret and less astonishment at the terrible overthrow of cities as excessive and not so venial in their crimes as Gomorrah.

The founders of Rome, like the Pelasgi of Greece, were outlawed fugitives from almost every nation—the very seminoles of the world. Their earliest laws, discipline, science, and literature were all created by habitual war. Political ascendancy, acquired by remorseless military skill, was with each the highest good; and hence, though less capricious and somewhat more grateful than the Athenians, there never was a period in Rome when the people, after long suffering, exacted their rights, without incurring the vengeance of the patricians. The aristocracy held the supreme power; in their esteem the commonalty were vassals of the soil. To resist these arrogated privileges, the tribunes instigated factions, and the venerable Forum became the arena of revolt, conspiracy, and blood. The very senators ascended the rostrum spotted with gore. Liberty was defined by

philosophers, developed by rhetorical declaimers, and adored in the fictions of poesy, but it was never enjoyed. There were grandeur, vast dominions, empires in bondage, triumphal processions, unrivalled wealth, magnificent prodigality and profligacy, but no just freedom. Roman citizenship was national pride, not individual prerogative.— The ignorant cannot govern, though they may tyrannize; and ancient sages and priests were too wise to instruct the multitude, though they valued uninitiated sectaries; for communicated knowledge would supersede the lucrative occupations and mysterious powers of their successors.

Cæsar rose upon the ruins of the consulship as that had risen upon the decemvirate. Authority now became personal, concentrated and unappealable, but otherwise there was little change. The Senate had long been the mere market of ambition; the people were mercenaries or serfs; the consuls were colluders of some faction, perpetually renewed, or its obedient slaves; and the victorious commander of the legions, long the arbiter of the Roman destinies, on the field of Pharsalia, merely decorated imperial power with a diadem.

Titus was the tenth emperor, and doubtless a just man; but the epithets of exaggerated praise bestowed upon him sufficiently indicate the character of, at least, seven of his predecessors; and his own brief reign, which was terminated by the poison of his inhuman brother Domitian, demonstrates the morals, humanity, and courage of the age. Therefore, in the picture I have attempted to draw, I have not been intimidated by the victories, arts, literature or mythology of the Romans, but have desired to paint with fidelity the universal licentiousness, which, having infected every heart, left the battlements of the Eternal City ready to fall before the barbarian avenger.

Every province of the vast empire rivalled the imperial capital, and almost every proconsul imitated—sometimes even exceeded— the despotism and debaucheries of Caligula and Heliogabalus. The union of civil and military power, while it concentrated the energies of government, conferred upon the provincial commander an irresponsible authority, against which it was folly to remonstrate, and madness to rebel. The fathers of Rome were too corrupt to investigate the sources of their revenue or the characters of its gatherers; and too indolent in patrician profligacy to execute any edicts, except such as suited their own haughty yet grovelling passions. The fountain being thus contaminated, its thousand streams distributed corruption over the whole empire; and all, who drank its waters, partook the character of them who watched beside the wellspring. Few of those, who

wore the Roman crown, died by the ordinance of nature; the Prætorians, like the modern Janizaries and Strelitzes, obeyed the decisions of their turbulent prefects; and what a Sejanus failed to accomplish for himself, a more politic Macro effected for another, through whom he ruled everything but that imperial folly which ended in assassination. Yet sanguinary as was the ascent, unhappy the possession, and quick the downfall of power, the governors of the provinces were less implicated in the royal revolutions than almost any men in Rome. While the Quæstor of the Palatine discovered no defalcation of the revenue, and no rumour of sedition reached the Senate, the proconsul remained in his lucrative government during pleasure; and none of all the Conscript Fathers deemed it expedient to examine the condition of the country over which he swayed his iron rod.

THE ARGUMENT.

An Italian Sunset. Evening in the Apennines. Hymn of the Vestal. Introduction of Pansa, a Roman Decurion converted to Christianity, and Mariamne, a captive Jewess, also a convert. Forebodings of the destruction. A picture of Pompeii and of Jerusalem in ruins. The Forum of Pompeii; the manners and morals of Campania pourtrayed. Diomede, the prætor. The night storm. Vesuvius threatening. Dialogue of Pansa and Mariamne. The midnight Prayer. The comet rushing amidst the shattered clouds of the tempest. Mariamne relates her interview with St Paul, and Pansa describes the martyrdom of the great Apostle, which he is supposed to have witnessed. Pansa and Mariamne seized in the cavern of Vesuvius by the emissaries of the prætor, and dragged separately away to suffer the vengeance which pagan hatred inflicted on Christian fortitude and fidelity.

CANTO I.

Mid mellow folds of gorgeous purple clouds,
The flowered pavilions of the spirit winds,
That danced in music to the Ausonian breeze,
Along the deep blue vault of Italy,
Like a descending god of Fable's creed,
(Titan in ancient dreams, whose faintest smile

Elysian splendours breathed through ocean's realm,)
Casting aside earth's throbbing dust, to put
His diadem of deathless glory on,
The sun went slowly down the Apennines.
Far up the living dome of heaven, the clouds,
Pearling the azure, like a seraph's robe,
Wreathed o'er the blessed and beaming face of heaven,
And glanced, mid blush and shadow, o'er the sky,
Full of the gentle spirit of the air,
The mediator of the elements.
As if imbued with virgin thought, the leaves
Smiled in their love and tenderness; sweet airs
Sighed o'er the summer earth, their music, soft
As hymns of heaven o'er spirits disenthralled;
And odours rose from vale and hillside green
Like the incense of a heart earth ne'er can soil.
The hills cast giant shadows, in whose depth
Wild jagged rocks and solitary floods,
And forests gnarl'd and hoar, looking deep awe,
Like the vast deserts of a dream, replied
To voices of unresting phantoms, there,
Till daydawn, wrapt in dark sublimities.
On the fair shores and seaworn promontories,
Where many a Doric palace, in its pride
And hoary grandeur, hung above the lapse
Of twilight waters whispering vesper songs
And matin anthems, childlike slumbered now,
In speechless beauty, the last light; afar,
The avalanche in the ravine glimmered back
The trembling and most transitory glow;
The beaked and burnished galleys on the wave
With quivering banners hung, and gay triremes
Passed by each isle and headland like the shade
Of Enna's idol through the realm of Dis.
All nature, in her holy hour of love,
Lifted in rapture the heart's vesper prayer;
The prayer, which purer hearts in every age
Uplift when Time or Grief casts over earth
The shadow of the tomb, and fills the soul
With influences of a happier world.
And from Pompeii's Field of Tombs the voice

Of Vesta's priestess, o'er Love's sepulchre
Bending beneath the holy Heaven, sent up
The anguish of bereavement, and the doubts
Of an immortal mind, that knew not yet
Its immortality, yet seeking Faith,
And sighing o'er the pomp of paynim rites.

THE VESTAL'S HYMN.

Zephyr of Twilight! thine ethereal breath,
With spirit strains, steals through elysian groves:
Bringst thou no memories from the home of death?
No whispered yearnings from departed loves?

Fann'd not thy wing, ere stars above thee glowed,
The pure, pale brow that on my birthhour smiled?
And bearst thou not from Destiny's abode
One kiss from mother to her vestal child?

Cold sleep the ashes of the heart that breathed
But for my bliss—when being's suns were few;
And hath the spirit no bright hope bequeathed?
Oh! must it drink the grave's eternal dew?

Hesper! the beauty of thy virgin light
Blossoms along the blue of yon sweet sky;
Yet vain my heart soars—from the deep of night
No voice or vision thrills my ear or eye.

From Vesta's vigil shrine no light ascends
Beyond this realm of sin, doubt, grief, and death;
Reveals no heaven where meet immortal friends,
Shadows no being victor over breath!

Around the throne of Angerona lie,
Buried in darkness, all the hopes of Time;
Dreams, auguries, oracles beyond the sky
Predict no Future filled with thought sublime.

What realm mysterious, wrapt in loneliest gloom,
Lives, Oh, my mother! in thy love's sweet light?

Whither, upsoaring from Earth's prison tomb,
Wanders thy spirit on the shores of night?

Sunlight and fragrance, dewbeam and still eve
Shed not their bliss and beauty on thine urn!
Has Earth no hope time never can bereave?
No power again to bid the pale dust burn?

The rippling rills, the radiant morns, the flowers,
Bursting in beauty, showers of iris hues,
Starlight and Love—the Graces and the Hours—
Each—all must vanish like the twilight dews!

Budding to wither—lingering to impart
Life's hopeless pangs when thought shall sink in gloom—
Can all earth's beauties soothe the shuddering heart?
Or e'en the Thunderer's eye illume the tomb?

Alone, and in her soul bewildered, to her shrine
Of old accustomed worship slowly passed
The solitary seeker after Truth.
And now from mountain tents 'mid ilex woods,
Or gay pavilions in Campanian vales,
Wandered, on twilight airs, through clustering vines,
The cithern's music, and the lute's soft strain
Echoed the spirit of love's melody.
The hills seemed living with delight, and there,
As summer's burning solstice felt the breath
Of gentlest Autumn, had the wise and gay
Retired to revel or to meditate,
In fellowship or loneliness, and seek
Felicity or wisdom from the woods;
And there the dreams of Arcady—high thoughts,
That, in the elder days, inspired the soul
Of sage or poet with revealments caught
From heaven, that clothed all earth with light, became
The blest companions of the pure in heart.

The gorgeous radiance of the sunset fled
Like young Love's visions or the arrow's plume,
O'er the dim isles and sea of Italy,

'Mid the dark foliage mingling like the hopes
Of morn with night-fears, when Thought's shadows blend
With beautiful existences beyond
The mockery and the madness of this life.
In glimmering grandeur lay the glorious sea,
Whose waters wafted spoils from orient realms,
And mirrored Nature's beauty, while dread war
Bathed Punic banners in the gore of Rome.
The Evening Isles of love and loveliness
Slept in the soothing solitude, wherein
The awful intellect of Rome sought peace
In grey philosophy, while faction drenched
The earth with blood, and dark conspirators
Walked the thronged Forum, dooming, at a glance,
The loftiest to extinction; here the bard
Unfolded earth's and heaven's mysteries,
Creating the world's creed, and Fiction's brow
Wreathing with the immortal buds of truth.
Among the sanctities of groves and streams,
The worn and wearied bosom breathed again
Its birthright bliss, and wisdom, born of woe,
Uttered its oracles to coming years;
And in the midst of all that thrills and charms,
Weds beauty unto grandeur, earth to heaven,
Here tyrant crime achieved, by nameless deeds,
The world's redemption from remorseless guilt.

Bland airs flew o'er the faded heavens, and streams,
That in the noonday dazzled, and e'en now
Drank the rich hues of eventide, purled on
With lovelier music, and the green still shores
Looked up to the blue mountains with the face—
The cherub face of sinless infancy—
With hope and joy perpetual in that look;
For, 'mid all changes, still the faded bloom
Shall be renewed—the slumbering heart revived.
The pearly moonlight streamed through softest clouds
With an ethereal lustre; and the stars,
The dread sabaoth of the unbounded air,

From the blue depths between the snowy drifts,
Gleamed like the eyes of holiest seraphim.

Beneath the dying glories of the day,
And the unspeakable beauty of the night,
Yet in the haunt of peril, looking o'er
Pompeii's domes—two Forms in silence stood,
Pale, yet unfaltering—famished, yet in soul,
Fed from the altar of the Atoner's love.
One—a tried warrior by his eye and brow
And dauntless port—leaned on the shattered ledge
Of a Vesuvian cavern, o'er which trailed
Dark matted vines and cedars thickly hung,
Hoar, hideous, wedged in rocks, and fleckering o'er
The jagged vestibule with living gloom,
And shutting from the inner vault, where slept
The banned and hunted Nazarenes, all beams
That on the outward world shed life and love.
With dark eyes lifted to his troubled face,
Her head upon his bosom, half reclined
A Hebrew Captive, dragged amid the spoils
Of holiest Moriah, when the hour
Of Desolation fell on Zion's towers,
To swell the victor's wild array, and add
Another cup of vengeance and despair
To the death banquet of world-wasting Rome.
There, amid Volcan's wrecks and the wild gloom
Of Nature's loneliest and most fearful scenes,
The wedded Christians dwelt in Love's own heaven;
There Mariamne clung to Pansa's breast,
Fearing no fate she e'er might share with him.
The melancholy loveliness of Love,
That dares the voiceless desert and inspires
The forest solitude, around her hung
Like wreathing clouds around an angel's form;
On her pale brow the very soul of faith
Rested as on its shrine; and earth's vain pride
Ne'er found a home within the chastened heart
Which burned and breathed Love's immortality.
Like her, the sun-clothed vision, in whose crown
Gleamed the twelve orbs of glory as she stood

Amid the floating moon's young shadowy light,
When to the earth the giant Dragon cast
The stars, triumphing o'er his spoil; so, 'mid grief,
And want, and loneliness, and danger, stood
The Daughter of the East, in every woe
Fearless, in every peril quick in thought.
Thoughts, winnowed from the gross and grovelling dust
Of earth, and glistening with the hues of heaven,
Passed o'er their mingled spirits in the depth
Of the hoar Apennines, and thus he spake—
The Roman warrior, who had made his home,
In earlier days, ere Truth had pierced his heart,
On tented battlefield—whose joy had been
The spoil of nations gasping on the waste
Of conquest; but amid the flames and shrieks
Of Solyma, he heard the Voice that fills
Infinity, with awe ineffable,
And worshipped 'mid the scorn of pagan bands.
Relentless as the edict he obeyed,
His dauntless soul with war's own wrath had burned,
And in the Triumph's madness, mocked the moans
Of fallen freemen, as his fellows did,
The Legions of the Loveless; but the Faith,
Whose Founder wept the doom which guilt had wrought,
Sunk on his bosom, as the sunset sinks
Upon the wild and savage mountain peak,
Clothing its barrenness with beauty!—Thus
His saddened but serene mind communed now.
“Oh, the still, sacred, soothing light that bathes
The blue, world-studded heavens—while the air
Gushes in living music, and inspires
The purified and thrilled spirit with the power
To cast aside the thrall of flesh and soar
To converse with the seraphim, and prayer
Beneath His throne whose death-groan rent all earth!
Men's madness comes not here—it cannot dwell
Within the bosom's temple that imbibes
The oracles of Truth in every breeze.
Thou need'st not, Love! thy tephilim to lift

Thy thoughts within the vail, nor seek I more
The prestiges of augurs to impart
The destined future, nor vain amulets
To guard what He, who gave, can well preserve.
Look, Mariamne! on the dimpled sea,
That slumbers like the jasper waters seen
In the apocalypse of Patmos, hang
The crowding sails of merchant barks delayed,
The altars at their prows casting pale gleams,
While by the dagon deities of earth,
The terrible apotheoses, wrought
From desolating passions, vainly now
The mariners invoke the gale to bear
Barbaric treasures to the imperial mart;
But lo! nor leaf nor flower the pearl-dew stirs
By Twilight wept o'er forest, in reply!”

Wrapt by the charm and majesty—the bloom,
Verdure and stillness of the world and skies—
Yet looking far beyond them, thus replied
The High Priest's banished child unto the thought
Of the baptized and scorned Decurion.
“Methinks, my Pansa! that in evil times,
The soul becomes a prophet to itself,
And, like the seer before the unholy king,
Predicts the woe it shudders to conceive.
The shadows of the hoar and giant woods,
The sea's unearthly gleam, and hollow voice,
All the unlimited heaven, where phantom shapes
Glimmer amid the void immensity,
And meteors madly rush through shoreless space,
In awful silence, o'er the universe
Throned like Death's Angel, sink upon my soul,
With an unwonted dread, and throng my brain
Like breathless ministries of doom. Among
The rifted ruins of the Volcan's wrath,
Scoriæ and dusky foliage scorched and sear,
The pale green moss, thick shrubs and mazy vines
Of these dark rocks, a spirit seems to breathe
Wild revelations of a fiery doom.
Like the mysterious and unvoiced Name,

Upon the white gem written, which none beheld
But the anointed, fearful characters
Seem to my startled vision forming now
Among yon dense and fire-winged thunderclouds,
Whose dusky peaks ascend above the hills;
And, lo! with what a brow of majesty
Vesuvius, through the bland transparent air,
And pallid moonlight, o'er our vigil bends!
Dwells there not terror in earth's breathlessness?
And peril in the slumber of the Mount?”

Sadly the Roman turned his gaze below
Upon the fated city, gleaming now
With countless lights o'er pageantries and feasts,
That flared in mockery of the hallowed heaven,
Then thus to Mariamne's fear replied:
“The happy deem not so—discern not ought
Beyond the wanton luxuries of Time:
For, knowing not the evil, which, (as clouds
Impart a lovelier glory to the skies,)
Invests all good with loftier attributes,
They fear not Justice which they never knew.
Behold Pompeii's gorgeous luxuries—
The maskings, orgies, agonalia now
Madly triumphing o'er her lava streets!
Her frescoed palaces and sculptured domes
Flash back the torchlights of licentious throngs,
And countless chariots, rivaling their God
Of Morn, are hurled along the trembling side
Of this most awful Mount, as if the fire
Had never wreathed to heaven and poured o'er earth
In bloodred torrents! By the Nola gate,
Towers the proud temple of the Idol, first
Made and adored by earth's first Rebel—him
Called Belus, and exalted to a God
By the debased and impious sons of Ham.
There Parian columns and Mosaic floors,
And golden shrines and lavers and proud forms
Wrought by Praxiteles with godlike skill,
And pictures glowing with unshadowed charms
To tempt, or mythologic pomp to awe

The enthusiast and the sceptic, can attest
Idolatry's magnificence. Within,
The secret stair—the victim, whose wild shrieks
Are oracles—the flamen o'er his wine
Or darker deeds of sacrilege, while throngs
Of blind adorers in Fear's madness bend
And pile first fruits and gold around her shrine—
These are the illusions and the destinies
Of Isis, and her earthborn vassals, love!
Feargotten phantoms triumph there; and all
Impurities exult in their excess.
The rites of Thamuz and Astarte blend,—
Union unhallowed! and cast o'er the heart
Darkness and desolation and despair.
What recks the augur of his auguries?
The aruspices, of portents? or the priests
Of Egypt's Isis, of their oracles?
Think they of aspects men believe they rule?
Dream they of perils in their revelry?
Know they the God whose least respected works
They mock, as deities, by all excess
Loathsome and nameless to the human ear?”

Thought hurried fast through Mariamne's soul,
And on her brow the mighty spirit burned
Of the Judæan dynasties, while thus
She poured the passion of her wrecked heart forth:
“The destined hour of justice and despair,
When they shall gather wisdom, flings its shade
Upon the dial of the conqueror's doom.
Said not the Christ from the bright Olive Mount,
Looking upon the temple in its pride,
And glorious beauty, that the Holy Place
Should be defiled—the city trampled—all
Its princely dwellers captive, slain, or strewn
Like sear leaves o'er the unreceiving world,
Or scorned for uttering creeds the torture taught?
And not one stone upon another left
To mark where once Earth's Sanctuary stood?
Alas! she sleeps in desolation's arms,
The city of my childhood, and not one

Of all the pleasant haunts, the palmgrove plain
Of Sharon, and Siloa's holy fount,
And Lebanon's pavillioned wood—which Love,
At daydawn and the twilight, sanctified,
Is left amid the ruins of my home!
But, Pansa! thou my home and temple art,
And the Atoner, whom my people slew,
The God of this wrecked heart—wrecked when it felt
Its father slain, its race to bondage sold
Beneath the patriarch's Terebinth! alas!
That bigot faction—pride unquenched by woe—
And thanklessness and treachery and wrath,
Perpetuated by all punishment,
And more than either, the one awful crime
That ne'er shall be forgiven, till the faith
That mocked and shall mock, ages hence the same,
Without a country, law, chief, priest and home,
They were, in glory, with them all—shall fill
Their dark and desolated minds with light—
Alas! these led the Romans to the spoil,
And allied with his bands to our despair!
—But I do grieve thee, love! by selfish plaint,
And shut my soul from knowledge of the rites
And ministrations of thy monarch race.
Power and impunity with them, as all,
Forestall, I dread, their doom; but yet once more,
As we behold Campania's loveliest realm
Unfolded far beneath us, let me learn
The polity and faith of Italy.
Yon Dome, that now in dusky grandeur soars
O'er all Pompeii's fanes and palaces?”—

“Was once,” said Pansa, with a Roman's pride
And grief, “ere Freedom perished, and the car
Of conquest bore the tyrant to his throne,
The venerated home of Human Right,
Liberty's temple, where the tribune's voice
Forbade the consul's edict, and the least,
Unworthiest citizen of Rome's great realm
Saw himself honoured as a son of Rome.
Now, beautified by Parian colonnades,

And jetting fountains and immortal busts
Of Rome's immortal mind, when power, conferred
In peril, was resigned in safety's arms;
Now, 'mid Mosaic corridors and halls,
And princely trophies, from the spoils of Greece,
Of Zeuxis and Apelles, and the forms
Of Phidias, warrior statues, giant steeds,
And consuls stern in look, austere in life,
Dispensing bondage from the Capitol,
Or tributary diadems to earth—
Now, o'er this pomp of intellect and might,
The serpent spirit of a helot race,
Licking the dust of purple tyranny,
And crushing thought that dares be fetterless,
Through the mind's ruin, fraught with venom, glides.
Behold yon pillared ranges to the east!
(A sceptered figure overtops the dome,
Her brazen scales are superfluities—)
In the Ausonian days ere heaven revoked
Its holiest gifts to man; ere granite gods,
Sphynxes, cabiri, apes and crocodiles
Became corrupted nature's deities,
There reigned Astræa, bright Aurora's child,
The Titan's seraph—gentle e'en to crime,
Radiant in beauty to the Good; the clouds
Of passion never darkened her sweet brow,
Revenge and hate and venal compact ne'er
Confronted her calm look of sanctity.
Then the Basilicæ were temples meet
For prayer and hymn to the Divinity,
And Majesty and wisdom, peace and love
Dwelt with a sad yet just humanity.
Alas, for the brief vision! and alas
For the world's madness! giant Evil rushed
Through wrecked hearts and crushed spirits, and o'erspread
All realms; and casting earth's stain from her wings,
The goddess rose to the elysian throne
She left to meet derision and despair.
Then grovelling men groped through the dens of guilt,

Blaspheming and infuriate with crime,
The agonies of guilt without its shame,
Remorselessness and misery, to their home—
The sepulchre, their sons built to defile.
Thus felt, though feigning, pagan Rome's best minds:
And since the fated hour when faction raised
The tyrant's banner and the Cæsar's blood
Poured o'er his rival's pillar, none have stayed
The fiery deluge of unpunished wrong.
The Ambracian waters were not deeper dyed
Than judgment in yon courts; there's not a stone,
That bears not witness to man's wrong and woe,
Injustice, calumny and death; wrung tears
Have stained the Prætor's seat of perfidy;
And sighs unsolaced through the long arcades
Echoed like voices of accusing ghosts;
And hopeless shrieks ascended from the cells
Beneath the dark tribunal, where the will
Of one that cannot be arraigned, dooms all
To lingering anguish or unwitnessed death.
Alas, my Mariamne! while I gaze
On those dread mansions, burning terrors thrill
My heart, lest this dark, dripping mountain vault,
The home of fear and famine, where we wake
Gasping amid the sulphur fumes and blind
With the volcano's gory glare, and awed
By the earthquake's shudder and the mountain's roar—
Lest even this should be no refuge, love!
And fail to shield us from the felon clutch
Of Diomede's apparitors! forefend,
O Heaven! the hour of our betrayal! once
My stricken and stunned soul beheld the death—
Let us within, my love! my heart misgives
E'en while it images the wanton power,

The gnawing avarice, the bigot pride,
And pagan hate, the maddening lusts of him,
Whose sire—(and ne'er had father truer son)
Sejanus taught, Tiberius trusted in,
Caligula exalted; Nero loved
This subtle, quick Sicilian, and all since
Upon the imperial throne have left in place
Pompeii's Prætor—for his heart feels not!
Honoured by these, what have not we to fear?
His minion's glance is ruin unto both!
My life, his prey, thy beauty—stand not so,
Beyond the shadow of the precipice!
His seekers are abroad—the assassin games
Of yon vast amphitheatre will feast,
Erelong, the merciless idolators!
Enter the cavern, Mariamne! hark!
Torn lichens fall from the steep rocks o'erhead—
A sandal hath dislodged them—yet no eye
Of mortal may discern us from the crag
That beetles there—again! I hear the fall
Of guarded steps—so, softly, love! within!”

Darkness around the rugged crypt—(wherein
The pard had sorted with the serpent, ere
The Roman Convert made his home there, sought
By the fierce demon of the idol faith)—
Floated in wreaths, and round the jutting rocks,
Whence trickled the hill fountains, drop by drop,
Mocking the pulses of each lingering hour,
Hung in its home of centuries; but now
Gloom e'en more terrible from thunder clouds
Rushed on the tempest's wings o'er every star
Of bright blue ether, and o'er laughing earth,
(Breathed on by Zephyr from his vesper throne,
Late when the Oreads danced upon the mount,)
And winds in moaning gusts, like spirits doomed,
Swept through the cavern; and the giant trees,
Through shivering canopies, their voices cast
Upon the whirlwind; and the Apennines
Loomed through the ghastly midnight, shadowing forms
Like Earth Gods in the revel of their wrath,

With whom through ages of quick agony,
Vengeance had been an ecstacy; and whirled
In fury o'er the crags, huge boughs, and leaves,
And dust, leaving the gnarl'd grotesque roots bare,
Quivered along the sky; and lightning leapt
O'er cloven yet contending woods, from mass
To mass of all the surging sea of clouds,
That rioted amid the firmament,
Flashing like edicts from the infinite Mind
Of Godhead; and from sea, shore, cliff and vale
A deep wild groan in shuddering echoes passed
Through the earth's heart, and met the crash and howl
Of momentary thunders in mid air.

In silence from the moss couch of their cell,
'Mid the deep arches of the grotto, prayer
Ascended from the pale lips but tried hearts
Of earth's unfriended exiles—heaven's redeemed;
And there, as o'er their voiceless orisons
The wild tornado's music rushed, the Faith
Sublime, which, through all torture and all dread,
The Christian Martyr in heaven's triumph bore,
Pervaded every thought that soared beyond
The doubt and fear and anguish of their fate.
The first vast masses of dark vapour poured
Their deluge, and the torrents from ravines
And precipices hurried, in wild foam,
To channels bright with verdure and dry beds
Of mountain lakes, flinging their turbid floods
Down the deep boiling chasm and with the sea,
Now hurling its tumultuous waves along
The echoing shores and up the promontories,
Conflicting for the masterdom. Each glen,
Tangled with thorns, and every dim defile,
O'erhung with jagged cliffs, to the dread hymn
Of the night storm, shouted their oracles;
And from the summit of Vesuvius curled
A pyramid of vapour, tinged and stained
With a strange, smothered and unearthly light.
Portents and prophecies more awful fell
On every vigilant awed sense than e'er,

From Pythia shrieking on the tripod, sent
Terror and madness to the undoubting heart.
But, while the hollow dirge of the strong blast
Startled the dreaming world, the unruffled minds
Of the disciples with The Paraclete
Communed and gathered from the Cross new power
O'er famine, danger, loneliness and death.

Forth from the cavern's freezing gloom again
Came Mariamne, and upon the verge
Of the black rocks she with her wedded lord
Stood gazing on the tempest—then thus said:
“Thou fearest not now, my Pansa! though the Mount
Unquenchable beneath us quakes; wars not
The dread of human wrath with thy fixed trust
In God? thine eye shrinks not when all the heavens
Blaze, and thine ear shuts not when thunders burst,
Shocking the immensity; why fearst thou man?”

“I know him, and that knowledge is worst fear.
The Little and the Mighty are with him
In peril imminent; his passions grasp
All, being or to be, and what his love
Spares, his hate dooms—and what his avarice,
Ambition tortures; and his envy creeps,
A cold, still, mortal serpent, o'er the wreck
Of the quick heart he rends. But He, who died
For crime not his, hath taught my else fierce heart
To bend in meekness; therefore, fear invades
My too acquainted spirit when the shade
Of Diomede along my night dreams stalks.
But from His revelations I do know
The Maker, and his holiest name is Love,
And that consists not with the sceptic's dread.
Man, gifted with a might above all law,
And made exempt by guilt from punishment,
(And such is this proconsul) must become
The tyrant of his province; and the heart,
That weds a persecuted faith, and loves
A banished mortal, who on earth to him

Is as elysium, must from peril quail,
And shudder e'en at shadows menacing.”

“Yet paynim hate but lifts our thoughts to heaven,”
Said Mariamne, (e'en in woe like hers,
Breathing the thoughts which Miriam from the shores
Of Edom's sea breathed o'er the drowning host,)
“Their fountain first and final home, as feigned
Thy poet, of the Titans, thrown to earth
By might supernal, yet unconquered; still
They from the bosom of their mother sprung
With strength renewed, and added wrath, pourtrayed
Upon their godlike majesty of mien.
Man may destroy, but cannot desecrate;
May mock, but never can make vain our faith;
And if our hopes, like Christ's own kingdom, are
Not of this world, why should we linger on
In this unworthy fear, and shun the crown
Laid up for martyred witnesses of truth?
Let the worst come in the worst agonies!
We part, my love! but for an hour of woe;
Nor shall we leave—the sport of heathen scorn—
Bright sons and gentle daughters to endure
Inherited affliction, homeless need,
Perpetuated vengeance; round our hearts,
In the dread trial hour of tortured flesh,
The parent's matchless and undying love,
With all its blest endearments, and the charms
Of budding childhood's rainbow pleasantries,
Gushings of the soul's springtime, falling o'er
Maturer years like sunbright dews of heaven,
Will never cling and chain our daunted minds
To earth's vain interests. We shall depart
Like sunbows from the cataract, renewed
By luminaries that have no twilight—where
Winter and hoar age, doubt, care, strife and fear,
The desert and the samiel, the realm
Of flowers and pestilence, the purple pomp
And tattered want of human life are not.
What say the Greek and Roman sages, love?
What Judah's peerless monarch, mid the wealth,

The radiance and the perfumes and the power,
The majesty of thrones and diadems,
And the excess of mortal pleasure, said
In his immortal wisdom (how 't was soiled
By passion, in his age, for idol charms,
Heaven knows and sorrows o'er humanity,)
Ambition, pride, pomp, pleasure—all
Are but the vanities that tempt man on
To shame, satiety and death—or worse,
Reckless dishonour and shunned solitude,
Living with dire remembrances of joy.”

To Judah's daughter thus her lord replied:
“The God, my Mariamne! who for guilt,
Incurred in other forms or worlds unknown,
Ere the great cycles brought our being here,
(As some have deemed, if erring or inspired
I know not,) clothed our spirits in this robe
Of frail flesh, subject to necessities
From birth to burial, ne'er debased the mind
Unto the body's weakness, yet left not
Thought, at all seasons, master of our clay.
Wander not oft the wisest? sink not oft
The strong? and blench the fearless? and delay
To reason with blasphemers the most skilled?
And tamper with temptation, the most pure?
In the imparted strength of heaven I trust,
When the last trial of my faith shall come,
That the disciple will not prove apostate.
But having thee, my bride! e'en from the mouth
Of this wild Cacus vault, that looks beneath
Into the chaos of the mountain gorge,
The air, the forest, the blue glimmering waves,
The meadows with their melodies, the cliffs
Curtained by countless waving vines, or dark
With desolate magnificence, o'erwhelm
My soul with grandeur, love and beauty, till,
Uttering to thee the bliss which nature breathes,
And thrilled by her seraphic eloquence,
I mingle with the tenderness and bloom
Of her unfolded scenes, and shrink to meet

The power that rends away these charms—this love
So sternly proved through each uncertain hour
Since from Moriah's temple, wreathed with flame,
I snatched thee, pale and shuddering, and abjured
Fame, country, faith, home, hope to win thy love,
And share the bliss of its immortal bloom.
Life pure amid corruption, will to bear
Protracted evil, gratitude for all
The gifts of God, and prayer and praise in grief,
May prove a sacrifice to heaven not less
Than all the tortures of the martyrdom.
The tempest passes and the night wears on;
The dome of heaven is filled with prophecies!
With voices low, but heard where breathless thoughts
Are oft the most accepted music, let
Our evening hymn ascend, and then to rest.”

THE MIDNIGHT PRAYER.

From the wild cavern's still profound,
From cliffs that hang o'er viewless flame,
Our spirits soar beyond the bound
Of being to THY hallowed name.
In gloom and peril, God! thou art
Our hope amid the lion's lair,
And from the desolated heart,
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The lustres of our lives are few,
On darkened earth, our bliss still less;
Yet daydawn hears, and evelight dew,
Our hymns of love in lone distress:
By no green banks, as prayed our sires,
Our sighs win heaven to Time's despair,
But we are heard by seraph choirs—
Hear thou, O Christ! our midnight prayer!

No magian charms or mystic dreams,
Or Delian voices, uttering doubt,

By fountains dim and shadowy streams,
The fear, the awe of doom breathe out;
By shrines, red bolts have sanctified,
While dragons haunted meteor air,
We worship not as shadows glide—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The breathing earth, the gleaming heaven,
The song of sea, mount, vale and stream,
While dimness waves o'er holy even,
Blend our glad souls with beauty's beam;
But darkness, danger, torrents raise
Our hopes to Thee, Death-Victor! where
In virgin light fly tearless days—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

The bard bereaved from Orcus' gloom,
Through Hades, led his love to light,
And thine adorers from thy tomb
Drink glory in their being's night;
More blest to need as thou didst, Lord!
Than be the Phrygian monarch's heir,
Wanting the rapture of thy word—
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer?

Judea's incense hills are dim
And silent, where the song went up;
Hushed holy harp and temple hymn—
The slayer drinks the spoiler's cup!
Earth o'er the sophist's vision sighs,
O'er deeds, king, priest, and people dare,
And wilt thou not from pitying skies,
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

Loosed from dark homage unto Fear,
Lamiæ, lares, teraphim,
And Delphian voice and Ebal seer,
Thy bright revealments round us swim,
Pouring upon the path we tread,
Though perill'd, lone, and rough and bare,
Light that inspires the martyred dead!
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

In sleep and vigil, guard and guide,
In secret quest of earthly food,
From outward foes and inward pride,
And the fiend's wiles in solitude!
O'er idol rites Thy radiance pour,
Till, like the myriad worlds of air,
The Universe, as one, adore!
Redeemer! hear our midnight prayer!

“What terrible and ghastly blaze flares through
The cavern, filling its abyss with flame?”
Said Pansa, hurrying from the grotto's gloom,
As the last breathings of the solemn song
Whispered along the arches. “Love! behold!
The surges of the tempest fluctuate
In fierce tumultuous masses 'neath yon orb
Of livid fire that from the north careers
O'er the astonished and convulsed firmament!
Nor terror nor surprise is in thy look,
For well thou know'st that awful herald, seen
Through shadows of events yet unconceived
By all, save Him who mourned while all the pomp
Of thy Jerusalem before Him glowed.
The comet! meteor of despair to man!
Like a condemned, demolished world of flame,
With a vast atmosphere of torrent fire,
It traverses immensity with speed
Confounding thought, hurled on by viewless power
Omnipotent and unimagined, robed
In dreadful beauty—heaven's volcano—home,
Perchance, of those gigantic spirits cast
From holiness to hopelessness by pride.
Lo! how it sweeps o'er the sky's ocean! wreaths
Of purple light along its borders mount
What seem innumerable colonnades
Wrought by the seraphim, most meet to bear
A temple huge as Atlas; myriad hues,
Deeper and lovelier than prismatic lights,
Curl o'er the quivering arch as if to roof
The vast mysterious fabric of the sea

Of clouds that throng eternity, to which
Egypt's most mighty pyramid were not
More than a tinted shell to Caucasus.
Are those, that swirl like wrecks amid the surf,
Vast mountains wrenched from their abysses, thrown
From one fire billow's bosom and engulphed
To be again hurled on another's crest?
Lo! through the sky, air-rocks, hissing and red,
From the volcanic worlds of heaven descend!
What terrors of infinity they speak!
What revelations of Almighty Mind!
What be yon dark and spectral images
That through the bickering fiery waves move slow
Yet haughtily? oh, what a furnace glare
Rolled o'er the shadows then, and left their forms
Radiant with ruin! and above, methinks,
Broad wings of diamond brilliance wave and flash.
What said thy sires, Love! Israel's holy seers
Of such revealments of divinity?”

With dark eyes lifted to the troubled sky,
And voice subdued by awe, and heart o'erfraught,
Thus Mariamne to her lord replied.
“Seldom they came and brandished o'er the world
Their flickering and serpent tongues of flame:
Seldom—for generations, centuries passed,
And men saw not the burning heavens o'erwrit
In gory characters of forewarned fate.
Yet deemed our sages, least of dust, that all
The meteors warring with the myriad worlds,
That circle through the abyss of air, had been,
Ere man, time, sin, or death was, stars of bloom,
Casting their beauty and their fragrance on
The zephyr, hymning, on their flight through space,
The Maker, and awaiting life to fill
Their groves and valleys with the prayer and song.
Yon shattered mass of boiling minerals,
Thus in its whirlwind madness driven on
O'er shocked and startled ether, starskill'd eyes
Of the Captivity's prophetic Eld

Beheld in vision ere, in arcs and wreaths,
The gory torrents of volcanic fire
Precipitated through the sphere of earth.
Much in dread visions when between the wings
Of cherubim The Glory rested—much
In banishment and desert solitude—
And more in ruin—to the soul of seers
Was given to know; more than all human thought
Through all its systems can impart to man.
Yet with least erring eye the Apostle saw,
What time he felt the martyr's hovering crown.

“The cohorts of the conqueror, when we trod—
(A banished nation from our birth soil rent,
Outcast from earth and heaven—from home and hope)
The path of bondage, paused beneath the hill
Of sycamores, when the meridian sun
Hurled his fierce arrowy splendours; and around
The cool o'ershadowed fountains, scowling on
The scorched and agonizing captives, lay
The imperial legions, casting bitter scorn
And ribald merriment on each who passed
Among their stern battalions to assuage
His deadly thirst:—scarce deigned plebeian hate
This solitary solace;—and they held
Each pilgrim by the beard and bade him bow
In adoration to the Labarum,
And then with cruel scoffs, they questioned him
Of the sacked Temple's spoils—what hoards of gold
The chalices, cups, lavers, shrines would bring
To the vast coffers of the Palatine!
With lips unmoistened, weary, sick in soul,
I turned aside into a dreary rift
Of rock o'erbowered with briar and aconite,
To pray and perish, for I had on earth
No friend! my father, on that morn, had laid
His weary head upon my breaking heart
And died. They bound him to a blighted tree
Upon a desert crag, and, to my shrieks
Shouting, ‘The traitor may forget the path

The Avenger treads! let him look on to Rome!’
The savage spoilers dragged me from his corse.
Thus to the earth I cast me, wailing low,
When a hand lifted me, and I beheld
A form, a face, so towering, worn and full
Of grief and intellect and holiness,
Of majesty and mildness, that, methought,
'T was the Love-Angel! then his deep soft voice
Passed through my mind's depths like a cherub hymn.
‘Daughter!’ he said, ‘one doom is sealed in blood!
The Holy City, stained by guilt, defiled
By treason, sacrilege and rapine, sleeps
In dust—and who but God shall bid her wake?
Yet judgment tarries not, because the arm
Of Rome's proud Desolator worked the will
Of heaven, fulfilling his own ruthless lust.
Thou shalt behold the destiny of them
Who from the furnace of ambition cast
Their brands of ruin o'er the world—for me—
The numbered hours rush on. My daughter! hear!
Thou art the child's child of one great in all
That magnifies the mind and fills the heart
With earth's sublimest influences—all
That clothes our flesh with spirit light, and lifts
Our dim thoughts from the dungeon of our clay.
Gamaliel, thy wise ancestor’—My soul
Glowed at the name, and, gazing on that face
Which never blanched with fear though tyrants frowned,
Nor in success exulted, proud of gifts,
Quickly I said, ‘Who should have talked with him,
Master in Israel, and yet survive?’

‘'T is Saul of Tarsus!’ said he, with his eyes
Downcast in pale contrition: ‘he who first
Bore faggot, brand and crucifix, and watched
O'er the red garments of the martyred saint;
And, when the Temple's vail was rent, and heaven
Shuddered as the pale King of Shadows waved
His sceptre o'er the Son of God,—was held
Aloft, amidst the people, to behold

Him by our sires blasphemed and slain.—If toil,
Baffled temptation, patient suffering,
Perils by land and wave, and every ill
Mortality hath borne—added to zeal
And many years of vigil thought, may hope
For pardon of my crime, I have not lacked.
But, daughter! as I rested on my path,
And saw thee clinging to thy father's corse,
I sought to unfold to thee, now wrapt in grief,
The sole Redemption our ost fathers spurned.’”

She paused as on its wandering orbit now
Rushed madly the lost star, and gazing, cried;
“—But mark red Ruin's summoner! beneath
The quivering zenith and the zodiac dimmed
By his wild glories, how the herald scorns
The dominations of the dust, and dares
The loftiest hierarchies of the heaven!
Ghastly with lava light, the molten clouds
In cloven masses swirl before his path,
And with the crash and uproar of the war
Of all the antagonizing elements,
The demon comet cleaves the shuddering air!”

“And now,” said Pansa, “lo! the meteor flings
Its glare o'er the voluptuous wantonness
Of Baiæ and Pausylipo, upon
The fairest bosom of earth's beauty laid
To stain, defile and desecrate! beyond,
The waters of Parthenope, along
The curved and blossomed shores, from the dark brow
Of the Misenum to Surrentum rocks
And Capreæ's isle of carnage, curl and moan;
And on the ebbless sea the furnace fires,
With darkness struggling, cast their horrid light.
The promontories and proud Apennines
Seem to uplift their precipices o'er
The wild air and affrighted sea in dread;
And the deep forests, quaking yet beneath
The Alpine torrent blast, through all their clouds

Of leaves, drink the dark crimson streams that pour
In lurid cataracts of flame from heaven:
And every breathing thing—man, beast, tree, flower—
Pants in the siroc that from Lybian sands
Hastens to mingle with the withering breath
Of yon gigantic world of Death! Fear holds
My spirit captive to the majesty
Of the unearthly Portent. But thou, Love!
With the Apostle didst commune, thou saidst—
O God! I saw him die!—what said he, then,
In his own peril and thine agony?”

“Thus spake the prophet saint, with voice as sweet
As when he uttered blessings on his foes.
‘Fulfilled by Christian faith, the Law, whose voice
Was judgment to our fathers, by the blood
Of the One Victim unto all becomes
The very soul of Love!’ Thus he began,
And with an eloquence that thrilled my heart,
Contrite and meek, interpreted the law,
That spake in thunders from the Desert Mount;—
He, the Awakener of nations, whose high gifts,
E'en in the grandest spheres of fame, had won
The palm and laurel crown, but that in vain
Cajoling tempters spread their blandishments
And the seducings of apt sophistries
Tangled their meshes round him. Affluence,
Dominion o'er the treasures and the thoughts
Of traitor worshippers, the feigned awe breathed
By vassal sycophants through tainted courts,
Thronged temples, porticoes, and schools of sects,
He cast aside as winds do dust to dust.
He felt his intellect's supremacy,
And shrunk from moulded clay that lipped his name
In interested ecstacies—he knew
Himself and sought not other knowledge here.
In place of men's dissembled treacheries,
He, clothed with immortality's own light,
Pictured the Passion, spread the Eucharist,
Soothed the quick pangs of lonely malady,

Warded the fold of faith assailed, and stood
In every danger on the vanward tower
To watch, guard, counsel, lead, bear scorn, and die!
Brief was our converse, for the Flavian trump,
With its deep echoes, startled the great host.
But from that hour, through agony and shame,
I have not trembled to confess The Word,
Whose smile is, e'en in the worst evil, heaven.
‘Farewell! my captive child!’ he said, ‘when power
Purples the rills with blood of martyrdom
And wanton crime mocks thy unpitied moans,
Forget not Calvary and Gethsemane!
Forget not that my eye beholds e'en now,
Down the dark lapses of Time unconceived,
A terrible atonement of the doom
That made our Solyma a desert! o'er
Infinitude the vision rushes—earth
With shrieks of wrath and quick convulsions hails
The herald of despair—it whirls and leaps,
Like living madness now, and tosses o'er
Unterminating and unsounded air
Perpetual deluges of flame, to warn
The scoffer and the rioter. Farewell!
Desolate daughter of a slaughtered sire!
Forget not! and the Paraclete console
Thy lingering sorrows! mine are almost done!’
The fountain of my heart o'erflowed; I looked,
Yet never more beheld the godlike brow
Of Christendom's apostle; through the shades
Of the descending cavern slowly waved
His mantle, the white turban seemed to hang
A moment in the gloom; his sandalled feet
Sent back a few low sounds—and he had passed
Unto his mission and his martyrdom!
But tell me, love! beneath this ghastly light,
The story of his doom—how passed his soul
From torture into triumph when the flesh
Clung round the spirit in its agony?”

“In calm magnificence that spirit passed
From gloom to glory, through its martyrdom,

Triumphant over agony and scorn!”
Said Pansa, casting on the o'erhung crags
And piles of rifted scoriæ half green'd o'er,
(Beauty embracing ruin,) glances quick
As through the midnight smothered sounds arose
Like breaths held back, and then, at intervals,
Gasping in sobs, like moanings of the surf.
With startled ear, strained eye and quivering brow,
Listened the Christian; but the dells reposed
In their green blessedness, the hills looked down
From their cold solitudes; above, the flame
Of the banned star flared far and dim—beneath,
Pompeii lay, folded in sleep that flings
Oblivion o'er the exhaustion of desire;
And, breathing terror from his burdened heart,
He thus pourtrayed the passion of the Saint.

“No psalteries or harps their music poured
Around his death-hour; no bewailing dirge
Gushed from the tabret, and no gentle voice
Arose, lamenting o'er his felon doom.
Alone amid his slayers and the foes
Of Him they crucified, Paul calmly stood,
Nor daring pagan hate nor dreading it,
His white hair streaming on the autumnal wind.
His countenance, trenched o'er by thought and care
And toil and suffering, gathered, as he looked
Upon the Prætor on his throne of power,
The grandeur of his youth, the matchless light
Of a triumphant intellect that grasped
An immortality of bliss, and feared
No mortal agony when death was heaven.
‘Thou art a Christian?’ Paul held up the Cross.
‘Thou art a Hebrew?’ ‘Ay, I was, and worse!’
‘Thou art a Traitor?’ ‘Not to God or man!’
Cried the Apostle, and his monarch form
Rose from the ruins of his years, and stood,
Like the unpeered statue of Olympian Jove,
Before the quailing Paynim. ‘Edicts, hurled
By Agrippina's son, had Rome a soul,

E'en from blasphemed humanity would call
For vengeance on the utterer. Where 's the guilt
Of thought? the crime of faith, whose very soul
Is low-voiced worship and still charities?
The loftiest mind most loves humility!
The imperial ban, ('t was uttered by the banned,)
Leaves deeds untouched but criminates the thought:
Hales famished, homeless and (for this vain world)
Hopeless believers of an humble faith,
To judgment, not to trial, and allows
The apostacy, it e'er arraigns as crime.
Death or Denial! is the only law
Of Rome, whose wings are o'er the world, to men
So poor, they have no pillow, and so few,
They have no power: and yet the Palatine
Fears they—they may subvert its giant might!
Is Truth so terrible to the Immortal Gods,
That they should tremble at a mortal voice?
Dreads the fierce Thunderer the cicada's song?
Or your gay god of Revels, lest the charm
Of his wreathed thyrsus may depart, when woods
And caverns are the palaces, and rills
And berries all the banquet of his foes?
Yet none of all thy fabled deities,
Save hirsute fauns and lonely oreads,
Behold our rites, or need shrink to behold.
How should conspiracy consort with want
And weakness so extreme, they lack the power
To lift the dying head or bear the corse
Beyond the grotto where they weep and pray?
And who of all Rome's judges can arraign
The Christian for a deed that could design
Possession of a hamlet, or a hut?
We seek no empire save the free soul's thought;
We court no patron save The Crucified;
We win no crown save that of martyrdom.’

‘Smite, silence the blasphemer!’ shrieked the judge,
Robing his fear in wrath; ‘too long we waste
The Empire's time—chain the conspirator!
And, lictors! guard his cross from slaves, and all

The baser multitudes that throng to hear
The maniac treasons of the Nazarenes.
Hoar breeder of sedition, thou must die!’

‘Nature said that when I was born, and God,
Ere that, a thousand ages, when Sin rose
From Hades; not in vain have all the power,
Splendour and guilt of Rome before me passed
In danger yet in solitude, and now
I fold unto my bosom that deep death
I never sought nor shunned, and thank the ruth
Of that derision which ordains the Cross.
The MASTER of your vast—of every realm,
Sea, earth and sky hold, taught me by His groan
That the last breath was agony, but He
Hath sent the Paraclete to o'ershadow all
Who perish by his Passion, and I go,
Purple idolater! having wandered long
Through many years of weariness, to rest,
Where, couldst thou ever share my bliss, this hour,
With less of anguish, would pass o'er my soul!’
Then led they him unto the Accursed Field
Beyond the Patriot's Precipice, 'mid bands
Of mailed Prætorians, in the blaze of noon,
Bearing the Labarum, whose folds were dipped
In the world's blood; and proudly in the van
The aruspices in purple trabeæ walked,
Their oakleaf chaplets waving: then in throngs,
The mad Luperci, atheist priests of Mars,
In crimson togas and broad burnished plates
Of brass that mirrored carnage, followed quick,
And the wild flamens of Cybele, stained
By the red vintage, and the countless crowd

Of magi, augurs, senators and slaves,
Paphians and vestals, through the marble streets,
From dusky lanes and sculptured palaces,
Temple and forum and Cimmerian den,
Outpoured in pageantry or squalid want,
Like Scylla's whirlpool fiends, to feast on death.
'T was ever thus in Rome; she nursed her horde
Of bandits, from the first, on blood; and war,
Wedding with carnage, wrote her very creed
In groans, and wrought her gods from myriad crimes.
So on they led the Martyr stooping low
Beneath the felon cross, his glorious brow,
Oft wet with dungeon dew, soiled by the dust
Of the armed cohort, yet his undimmed eye
Flashing its birthlight radiance unto heaven,
Drinking revealments of God's paradise.
Oath, menace, jeer and ribald mockeries,
The vulgar's worship of all greatness, passed
Like the sirocco, o'er Campanian flowers,
Or snowpiles of the Apennines, gathering bloom
And zephyr freshness, o'er his sainted soul.
His lofty nature did, a moment, seem
Burning in scorn upon his lips, and once,
Clasping the heavy cross as 't were a wand,
He lifted his proud form and matchless head,
And o'er the helmed lictors looked upon
The mockers—and they shrunk beneath his glance
Like grass beneath the samiel; yet no more,
Hushing the spirit of his grandeur, he
Deigned to deem earth his home, or earthly things
Fit wakeners of his thought. And so he came
Unto the Accursed Field, and one, all shunned,
Loathing, drave down the massy cross, whereon,
With lingering patience, he had stretched and nailed,
Through palm and sole, the Martyr, every blow
Tearing the impaled nerves, and through heart and brain
Sending a sick convulsion; but the pangs
Passed quickly o'er his features, though the limbs
Quivered, and, as he looked to heaven, a light,
Brighter than all Heaven's constellations blent,
Fell round the Martyr in his agony!

‘A prodigy! Jove flashes wrath! the gods
Forbid the death!’ shouted the multitude,
Like foliage fluctuating, as the spells
Of all-believing Fear fell on their hearts.
‘All Rome shall perish if the Christian dies!’

‘Hence, vassals! fools! home to your huts! away!’
Passed the proud Prefect's deep, stern, ruthless voice,
Whose echo was an oracle. ‘Ye slaves!
The beast should batten on the slain, I know,
And ye can taunt and torture helplessness,
Yet dread the very shade of Danger's ghost;
But, by the Spectre River! Rome's best spears
Shall search your dastard dust, if ye but speak
Ere each adores his Lares! hence! away!’

The Gracchi from the Aventine dragged forth
For senators to slaughter well displayed
The liberties of Rome; and they, who held
The Briton chief barbarian, shrunk away,
When a patrician bade, without a voice!
But bondage and brute violence are one.

Then, as the steps of the vast throng retired
Like dying waves, the priests and guards outspread
Their banquet on the plain beneath the tents,
(The kalends of the seventh month had come)
They bore to shield the sun, while there they watched
The fever, famine, thirst and pangs of death.
Pheasants, Falernian, mirth, song, jest and oath
Inspired the revel 'neath the cross, and all
Care and command, save that which bade them see
The Martyr die, fled from their spirits now.
Wanton with wine, the priest revealed to scorn
His wiles and sophistries and oracles,

Blessing the phantom gods that shadows held
Dominion o'er the conscious fears of men.
Warriors portrayed, on tales of other climes,
Numidia, Arcady or Syrian realms,
The splendour of the spoil, the gems and gold,
The perfumes, luxuries and regal robes,
Fair slaves and diamonds, from the Orient shores
Wafted, in homage to the diadem
That circled nations. Many a demon deed
And dark career of crime then first to light
Leapt from the dizzy brain of guilt, and moved
Applause and rival histories of acts
O'erpast; how dusky kings in palaces,
Amid their pomp, gleaming magnificence,
Did perish in the flame, and none could save
The victim, though they bore his coffers forth.
How queens and virgin beauties in their bowers,
On broidered couches slumbering, while their robes
Like zodiacs, glittered in the purple light,
Felt not the serpent that trailed o'er their sleep,
But died in their pavilions, voicelessly!
Then senators and knights, with mutual mirth,
Discoursed of laws enacted or suppressed
As suited Cæsar; and quenched liberties,
Naming them treason; and asserted rights,
They branded as seditions; and revealed
To the unshuddering guards the mysteries
Of Rome's proud Forum, where the agonies
Of desolated kingdoms, and the shrieks
Of nations in their bondage, and the tears
Of eloquent affection to the lords
Of Power were music and unholy mirth.
Then round the Martyr mingled voices rose
Louder, and laughter to impiety
Replied, and men, the gods, truth, chastity,
Love, honour, courage and fidelity,
All were but mockeries to the rioters.

“Hercle! is this the Lupercal? ye howl
Like Conscript Fathers when the spoil is lost!
Peace!” said the Prefect—“see ye not the lips
Of yon hoar traitor trembling with quick thought?

Listen! he speaks his last,—his heart 's too old
To linger in the torture of the tree!”

“The Isles shall wait, Jehovah! for thy law,
And Knowledge to and fro shall spread, till earth
Utter Thy praise like voices of the sea!”
Thus spake the victim, in delirium,
Wrought by deep anguish, wandering yet among
The dear homes of his mission. “Dangers wave
Their wings around us, brethren! and the waste,
Boundless and shadowless, must still be trod!
Yet not by dim lights of a doubting faith
Are ye led on through wrong and woe and want,
For the Anointed hath not left us here
Without a Comforter, and hath He not
Laid up, in many mansions, crowns of joy,
Where mortal doth put on immortality?
Grieve not the Spirit! yet a little while,
And ye shall reap the harvest and rejoice;
And though, ere then, this flesh must see decay,
Yet I shall mingle with your prayer and hymn,
By morn and eve—and breathe the Saviour's smile
O'er the glad Isles of Gentiles so beloved!”

Then spasms of vivid pain passed o'er his face,
His eyes rolled back upon the brain, and left
The pale streaked orbs writhing in gloom—the lids
Now folded to their lashes, coiling now
In nature's deep convulsion, till the veins,
O'erfraught, seemed bursting o'er his haggard brow.
His livid lips, parted by torture, breathed
Deep undistinguished murmurs, then compressed
Like sculptured curves and lines of thought; the limbs,
Meantime, grew cold, and the dark gathering blood
Forsook its own familiar channel, when
The shadows of the sepulchre stole on.

“Dis leaves his realm to welcome him,” said one.
“Peace! thou discourteous knight! jeers skill not now;
Thy mirth is motlied with mortality,
And thou thyself mayst pray for Lethe ere
The graceless Stygian grasps thine obolus.
Put on thy knighthood! peace! he speaks again!”
And the proud Prefect flung his casque to earth.

In moans, like autumn gusts, the Martyr spake,
Hovering o'er shattered memories like the sun
O'er broken billows of the shoreless sea!
Let me behold thy domes, Damascus! meet
It is the arrows of Life's penitence
Should pierce the persecutor.—Oh, farewell!
My brother! blessed in Pisidia be
Thy walk and watching!—To the Unknown God!
Are ye the worshipped wisdom of all Greece,
When ye disdain your thrice ten thousand gods,
Adoring Doubt or Demon, knowing not
The Deity revealed!—Ye can attest,
I have not coveted the gold of earth,
The gorgeous raiment or vain pomp of men,
But ministered, in all, unto myself!
—Ay, driven to and fro in Adria
Upon Euroclydon, no hope is left
But in the Wielder of the wave and wind.
Despair not! though sun, moon and stars are hid,
Jehovah watches from eternity!
—Contend not, brethren! untaught man may win
Redemption from the deep crimes of his age,
And be a law unto himself; e'en Rome
Hath in her centuries of guilt had such.
—Oh, sorrow not like them who have no hope!
The seed shall not decay though I am dust!
—Why do ye scourge me, soldiers! know ye not
I am a Roman? I appeal to Cæsar!
—Bring me a winter robe when thou dost come
Again—the night is cold among the hills,
And I am very weary! so, farewell!”
Then the bare nerves and sinews sent their pangs
For the last time upon his fainting heart,

And, as beyond the trembling battlements
Of agonizing flesh, the spirit strove
To flee, beholding heaven, the bitter strife
O'erawed the infidels, and round the Cross
Stood silent pagan revellers! Once more
The Apostle's peerless mind gleamed out—his eyes,
Living in the dark light of boyhood, flung
Their dying splendours o'er the Imperial Hills,
The mountains and the waters—while his pulse
Intensely throbbed and paused—and the heart's chill
And fever rushed to life's deep fount and spread
A shuddering faintness and sick gasping sense
Of falling through infinitude, o'er all
The vital functions of his frame. “My God!”
'T was the last breath that quivered on his lips—
A hollow echo from the martyr's tomb,
Yet it said “Saviour! let me—see—Thy face!”
And Saul of Tarsus stood before his God!”

“As thou shalt stand before Gætulia's king,
The Barcan lion!” cried the ruthless voice
Of Diomede's outwatching messenger,
The pander of the Prætor's evil will,
Grasping the Christian while his fellows rushed
Upon his pale but dreadless Hebrew bride.
“Well!” said the minion, “traitors serve, sometimes,
The empire's weal, and martyrdom, methinks,
Hath a rare syren music, for ye stood
Wrapt in your exalted Nazarene,
Till we could climb the cliffs and do the hest
Of the proconsul, unfulfilled too long!
Come, Rabbi! thou art skilled in subterfuge,
And hast not scorned the sword in better times—
The games shall test thy genius—on with me!
The Gladiator's banquet waits, and thou
Shalt quaff the Massic or the Tears of Christ.
Veles! thou hast thy charge! the Prætor's coin
Rewards not slack obedience, though his wrath
Ne'er palters with a thought of treachery!

The lady—(Venus! but she hath a brow
Like the coy Delian queen!)—must be disposed,
With all respect,—lead on! the day-star wanes!”

“Thraso! we were not foes when, side by side,
We scaled Antonia's tower, and saw the walls
Of Zion crushed. Why now? what are our deeds
That thus from caverns we to death are dragged?”
Said Pansa, with the heart's best eloquence,
As down the steep crags turned the lictor band,
Bearing his bride. “Why from my heart, by guile
Betrayed, by violence asunder rent,
Tear'st thou my Mariamne, mocking thus?”

“And dost thou ask, apostate? hast thou not
Contemned the gods, scorning thy father's faith?
Forsaken the eagle banners, deeming rocks
Better than camps! and sowed sedition, thick
As sand-clouds, through the legions? Thou hast wed
A captive, too, whom, though with all thy gold
Thou bought'st, poor fool! yet hast not held, as bids
The law, in bondage! dost thou ask again?
Mine office deigns no farther word, but more
Thou soon shalt learn in bitterness! lead on!”

“Bear me with her, where'er ye drag, whate'er
Ye or your lords in lawlessness inflict!
No more my voice shall crave or ye deny!”
Cried Pansa, struggling with the lictor horde.

“The Prætor's edict suits no purposes
Apostates may desire; your destinies
Have separate mansions, renegade!” Along
Ravine and precipice and lava bed,
Vineyard, pomegranate grove and vale of bloom,
The Pagan haled his victims, till the gate
Of doomed Pompeii oped and Pansa saw,
In speechless agony, a moment ere

The Mamertine abysses were his home,
Pale shuddering Mariamne through the gloom
Of statues, pillars, temples and hushed streets,
Where fountains only witnessed deeds of death,
Borne like a shadow to a nameless doom.

The inneffable enormities of Tiberius while he lived, amid massacre and debauchery, at Capri, startled even the degraded Romans into a sense of shame as well as fear.

I have represented Mount Vesuvius throughout the poem as a portion of the Campanian Hills.

Charms in Hebrew and pagan worship, the tricks of jugglers and imaginary protections against evil spirits and earthly calamities.

Mysterious demigods of Egypt and Samothrace.

The battle of Actium, fought upon the Ambracian gulf, forever decided the fate of Roman liberty. The glory of Octavius Cæsar rose from the blood of that fearful day, and most fearfully did it glow till barbarian retribution made Italy's charms a curse.

I have appropriated to the Chief Ruler of Pompeii, the name of its wealthiest citizen. It has been asserted, by some, that he was only a freedman; yet the Emperors seldom hesitated to confer their judicial or fiscal offices upon any who scrupled not to embrace the most oppressive means in the irresponsible administration of power. His character, therefore, as I have attempted to depict it, would synchronize with the condition of the age and the avowed crimes of Pompeii. Apparitors were officers of justice or injustice—bailiffs—so called from their suddenly appearing when undesired.

Solomon. “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity.”

Lustra—periods of fifty months: at the close of which, sacrifices of purification were offered.

The Campus Sceleratus, where vestal virgins were buried alive when they followed the example of Rhœa Sylvia. The Tarpeian Rock was not far removed from such appropriate neighbourhood.

The prognosticators of Rome were allowed extraordinary honours; and their trabeæ, or robes of office, nearly resembled those of the Emperors. Every superstition exalts its expositors; and the Roman priests well knew the power which fear and ignorance conferred upon them, and abhorred in the same degree that they dreaded the illumination of Christianity. The fasces, the trabeæ, pretextæ, and curule chair were introduced by Tarquin Priscus from conquered Tuscany.

For attempting, by the enactment of the Agrarian Law, to restrain the exorbitant power of the patricians, Tiberius Gracchus was assassinated in the Capitol by Scipio Nasica; Caius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus were killed by Opimius, the consul; Saturninus, the tribune, was murdered by a mob of Conscript Fathers; and Livius Drusus, on the same account, was slain in his own house. All in Rome, who could not trace their descent from the highwayman Romulus, or some one of his least merciful banditti, were esteemed no better than vassals. The Romans never understood either justice, mercy, or freedom; their dominion was acquired by the sword without remorse, and it perished by the sword without regret.

I have made the dying ejaculations of St Paul to consist mostly of portions of his own powerful writings. Nothing more beautiful or splendid can be found in any compositions—more vivid with the heart's best emotions and the mind's most lofty conceptions—than the remonstrances and arguments of the great Apostle, who devoted himself to the propagation of that religion he had once assailed, with an energy and enthusiasm and utter oblivion of self, which should find more imitators among the curates of men's souls.

The wine of Mount Vesuvius is profanely called Lacrymæ Christi.

Dungeons even more horrible than those of Venetian and Austrian tyranny, dug immediately beneath the elevated seat of the Prætor, in the hall of judgment; and so called from the Roman consul Mamertinus, who planned their construction, and who should have been, like Phalaris and the inventor of the guillotine, the first to test the merit of his philanthropic ingenuity.

CANTO II.

Vandal and violator, Time! thou art
The spirit's master—the heart's mocker! thou
Pourest the deluge of returnless years
Over the gasping bosom, and on thought,
That, in aurora streams of magic light,
Flung its deep glory o'er the heavens, dost heap
Clouds without flame or voice, cold, deep and dark,
Which are the shroud of the mind's sepulchre!
Far better not to be than thus to be!
Better to wander like the gossamer,
The baffled buffet of each aimless wind,
Than sink like dial shadows, all but breath
Leaving the wreck that trembles on the strand.
And why to man, feeble in youth's best hours
Of bud and bloom, in all his holiest hopes
So false unto himself and his compeers,
Are strength, pride, power and burning thoughts assigned?
Why is his grandeur wedded to despair?
His love to grief? his heart to hopelessness?
His fame and his dominion to the dust?
Yet thou, Tyrant of Air! hast chronicles
Of darker import, and the world is filled
With thine unpitying ministers of woe.
Beneath the rush of thy dark pinions nought
Lives, or life lingers, breathing at its birth
The death that soon becomes an ecstacy.
Wan yet not hoary, broken at the goal
Of young ambition, myriads writhe beneath
The agonies thou bring'st; and nevermore,
But in the tomb, seek solace of sweet sleep.
Earth's beauty, heaven's magnificence, the charms
Of zephyrs, verdure, azure, light, hills, streams,
And forests castled by eternal rocks,
Beheld long, fade upon the sated soul,

Exhaust by their sublimities, and shed
Their fragrance, music and romance on hearts
Inured and soiled—too weak to bear their bliss,
Too cold to feel their glories! And we roam
The paradise of all earth's pleasantries,
Amid the care, toil, phrenzy, want and strife
Of the protracted agonies of breath,
Feeding on raptures, that, fulfilled, are woes!
But o'er thy ruins, Time! and the thick clouds
Of the heart's mysteries a sun shall burst,
As now Apollo's steeds, caparisoned
In hues of heaven, rush up the Apennines,
Stareyed Eous and wild Phlegon first,
Pouring the sungod's splendours o'er the domes
Of doomed Pompeii nevermore to sleep.
As from the violet pavilion stole
The dayspring's beautiful and blessed light,
Like rose leaves floating, and the mountains bent
Their awful brows in worship at the fount
Of radiance, by all ages sacred held
As the peculiar home of deity,
Mythra or Bel or Elios—(the name
Erred, but the spirit filled the heavens with life,)
Uprose the vassals from their earth-beds, late
On yesternight pressed by the sinking limbs
And breaking hearts of bondage; no perfumes
Soothed bodies gashed with scourges, or shorn heads,
No lavers waited thraldom; on they flung
Rude garments soiled by servitude, and turned
To grind at the accursed mill, and lift
Their branded brows at the stern master's voice,
In silence passing o'er Mosaic floors
To bear the golden bowl or myrrhine cup,
Falernian, or frankincense to their lords.
For them no statue bowed in majesty,
No council framed a law, and none of all
The common deeds of earth had interest;
For they were stricken from the roll of men

And banished from humanity, and Rome
Gazed from the temple of her trophies on
The hopeless captives—from her triumph hills,
Where armies shouted Liberty! upon
Her myriads of bondmen, with a smile,
That thanked her thrice ten thousand deities,
The o'ershadowing empire of the world was Free!

Probably among no people, not even the mercenary Africans themselves, who are always more ready to sell than the Christian trafficker is to buy, was the condition of slaves so utterly hopeless and irreclaimable as in the republics of Greece and Rome. Their vivid jealousy of personal privileges peculiarly fitted them to tyrannize over every people not incorporated within their chartered dominions. Nothing is so cruel as boasting philanthropy; nothing so unjust as a dominant hierarchy; nothing so capricious and despotic as an unrestrained democracy.

Waking to want from dreams of affluence,
Parting from splendour to meet toil and tears,
Then rose pale Indigence in shattered cells,
Dusky and damp and squalid, yet o'ertaxed
By the imperial rescript, to endure
The taunts of mimes, the old indignities
Of freedmen, merciless in novel power,
The insolence of taskers and the shame
Of late dismissal with their pittance, when
The proud patrician deigned to bid his slave
Cast the base drachms at the plebeian's feet!
Ere melted the wreathed mists from isle or mount,
City or lake, Pompeii's pinnacles
Ascending in uncertain grandeur yet,
The artizan went forth to build again
The fabrics earthquakes had late sported with;
Doomed, ere the dial rested shadowless,
To cease from toil forever!—and the sounds
Of early servile labour multiplied
Through glimmering arcades and noisome courts,
Thronged ever by the peasants pomp creates,
As the bright sungod o'er the mountains rose,
And his broad disk poured glory over earth.
Late from their holy dreams in the profound
Of their proud temples, ne'er by foot profane
Invaded, waked the pagan oracles,
The ministers of mysteries all unrevealed,

Save to the forgers of the fictions—gazed
Bewildered on the amphoræ that stood
Beneath their sacred stores —and turned, once more,
To matin visions of deluding faith,
Processions and responses, gorgeous robes,
Banquets, and free bequests when they alone
Stood o'er the dying, and dominion bought
By endless cycles of hypocrisies.
All hierarchies, howsoe'er unlike
In ritual, are in earthly hope the same;
Pleasure, their idol: ease, their ecstacy;
Power, their ambition; and the will of God,
The blasphemed dictate of their own mad lusts.

The priests of Pompeii were no believers in preshadowed Mohammedan sobriety or the Genevan doctrine of total abstinence; but, rather, devout apostles of good fellowship, bonhommie and bienseance, whose credenda have lacked no devotees among the administrators of a very different religion. Their amphoræ or wine casks were always amply supplied by votaries who did not doubt that their spiritual guides possessed the same prerogatives in Tartarus which less remote exclusives in sanctity assume to exercise in Hades. The skeletons of many priests, on the excavation of Pompeii, were found amidst the relics of their revel. Can we suppose that even the ministers of a degraded superstition and a most lascivious mythology could trust in the protection of Jove or Osiris? or must we rather conclude that criminal appetite excluded natural fear and that they reasoned, like Pompey on his last journey—“It is necessary that we should be gluttons and revellers, but it is not necessary that we should live?”

The virgin dew yet on the verdure hung,
When, one by one, the mourners of the lost
Stole to the Street of Sepulchres and sat
Beside the ashes of their ancestors,
Watching the beams that nevermore would greet
The perished, and, (they thought not,) nevermore
Pompeii guide to her festivities!
Few, on this mission of elysian love,
Left Tyrian couches and the bliss of sense;
Yet they were blest in the seraphic gift
Of feeling, which in solitude is heaven!
Tombs were the earliest temples, the first prayers
Gushings of grief, the holiest offerings,
Tears of bereavement, and the loveliest hymns,
Sighs over the departed; worship, then,
Rose from the heart, that mid these simple rites,
Felt no delusion or vain mystery:
Urns were the altars, and the incense, love.

The sodden pulse, offered by humble faith,
Desiring not demanding, far outweighed
Oblations chosen from barbaric spoils;
And with a purer purpose, poverty
Knelt by the wayside image of a god
Than gorgeous pontiffs by Olympian shrines.
When sin gains sanction and the heart is soiled
By unrebuked and customary crime,
The tenderest yearnings of the bosom—love,
With its dependence and delight—its smile,
Like rifted rose leaves, and its tear, like dew
Shook from the pinions of the seraphim,
Breathe unaccepted music; the caress
Of childhood hath no bliss—its early words
And looks of marvel find no fellowship—
For the evil usages of life, that dwells
But in the glare and heat of midnight pomp,
Corrode, corrupt and desecrate all love.
Yet some preserve the vivid thoughts—the charms
Of household sanctities; and one such now
Rose from affection's spotless couch and bent
O'er the angel face of virgin infancy;
And thus her gentle and blest thoughts found words;
“Thou sleep'st in Love's own heaven, my child! that brow
No guilt hath darkened and no sorrow trenched:
Those lips, which through thy fragrant breath receive
The incense hues of thy sweet heart, no gust
Of uttered passion hath defiled; thy cheek
Glows with elysian health and holiness:
And all thy little frame seems thrilling now
With the pure visions of a soul skyborn.
The Lares be around thee, oh, my child!
For never yearned Cybele over Jove
With transport deeper than is mine o'er thee!”
Then o'er her bed she spread the drapery,
Kissing the shut lids and unsullied brow,
Where the mind dreamed, perchance, of bliss foregone,
And, shading with her byssus robe and flowers
The sunbeams from the sleeper, with a step
Soft as the antelope's, she stole and knelt
In prayer for that loved one at Vesta's shrine.

Breathing their bliss in melodies of love,
Their pictured wings fanning the ether, flew
The songbirds, and the groves were full of joy
Too pure for any voice but music's, when,
Lifting their dim eyes to the blaze of day,
Campania's proud patricians deemed the hour
So far removed from common time of rest,
That, with due honour, they might breathe the breeze,
That o'er the dimpled waters and the flowers,
Since the first tints of dawn, had played like thought
Over the face of childhood—yet bore now
The vivid heat and dense effluviæ
Of culminating sun and marsh exhaled.
To mask the treacheries of eye and lip
Is pride's philosophy, the felon's skill,
The code of kings, the priesthood's mystic creed,
Unknown to commoners; and none beheld,
Save the bronze lares, revel's quivering eye,
And dull brow bound with iron, or the face
Of matron guilt pallid with watch and waste,
And trembling in the faintness of a heart
Wrecked by excess of passion, yet again
Gasping for midnight poison! Untrimmed lamps,
Sculptured with shapes of ribaldry to lure
Even satiety to sin's embrace,
To tempt the timid and inflame the inured,
Stood round the household altar, and upon
The silken couch of customary crime
Shed the pale, sickly light of vice o'erworn.
Oh, that lascivious guilt at midnight wore
The lurid look, the loathing shame of morn!
Bracelets of gems, enchanted amulets,
And vases wrought with wanton images,
And frescoes, picturing the satyr joys
Of Jove and Hermes and the Laurel God,
(For the old divinities were human crimes)
And fountains, with nude naiads twining round

The unveiled tritons, with a maddened sense,
And groups of Paphians, in the forest dim,
(Where gloating forms lifted the filmy robes
Of the bacchantes in voluptuous sleep,)
Holding their revelries with gods disguised,
And every portraiture of pleasure known
To them, whose whole religion was excess,—
All, in the chaos of the morning, flung
Alluring raptures over sated sense
And sickened passion, uttering, without voice,
“Ye buy Repentance at the price of Hell!”

The sensualities of Pompeii were not restricted by any deference to decorum even in external dissembling; but the passions, which burned in their bosoms, were too graphically represented upon their customary utensils. The secret deposites of the Museum Borbonico at Naples will illustrate this to any who are incredulous of the noisome excess to which sin may be extended.

Loathing the fiend they folded to their hearts,
The madness and the malady of life,
The languor and the listlessness, that spring
From the exhaustion of a maniac lust,
The masters of the throng, in marble baths
And Araby's perfumes and cordial cups,
Sought renovation for renewed delights.
Odours and thermal waters may subdue
The maddening fever of the flesh, but Time
Never can hush the muttering lips of guilt,
Nor quell Death's agonies which guilt inflicts.
The Sybarite from Salmacis arose
His orgies to renew with Sin's worst zeal,
But Lethe had no power o'er memories
Of broken vows and imprecating oaths
Made by the River of the Dead, what time
Cocytus moaned and Phlegethon upcast
Its lurid gleams o'er torrent chasms of gloom,
Bidding the banished reveller, who dared
To mock the Styx, roam by its blackened shores
Through the dark endlessness of shame and woe!

Even in the age proverbial for its effeminacy and vice, the Sybarites were quoted as the acme of examples; and the waters of Salmacis, by some mysterious properties, were considered capable of restoring the frame, exhausted by profligacy, to its original vigour.

No one who had broken an oath made by the Styx (which not even the gods dared to infringe) could be permitted to drink of Lethe or oblivion of the evils and sufferings which he had been doomed to bear for his crimes.

It was the Harvest Festival; the corn
Of Ceres filled the garners, and the vine
Of the Mirth-Maker from the winepress poured

Divine Falernian; and the autumnal feast,
The Gathering of the Fruits, to all the gods,
(Through the Idæan Mother, source of all)
Was dedicated with a soul of joy.
In every temple the proud priesthood put
Their purple vestures and tiaras on
For the solemnities they loved to hold,
And masked the pride of most unholy power
Beneath an austere aspect and a faith
That spared no violator of their laws.
With citharæ and trumps and cymbals' clang,
And blasts of buccinæ and softened strains
Of flute and dulcimer, came all the pomp
In its sublimest pageantry; the god
Of light gleaming on banners wrought with forms
Picturing theogenies or bridal rites,
Or earthliest deeds of the divinities.
First walked Jove's pontiff in his diadem,
His crowned and sceptred standard fleckered o'er
With lightning bolts and tempest gloom, upborne
By popæ weaponed for the sacrifice.
Then in the mazes of a wanton dance,
Lifting the thyrsus crowned with ivy wreaths,
And muttering banquet hymns, the priests of mirth,
With antic faces and wild steps, leapt on.
Next, with a golden ensign, vales and hills
Along its borders, filled with flocks and herds,
And tall sheaves, in the centre, slowly trod
The ministers of Saturn's Daughter blest.
But, dimming all by splendour only known
In Egypt's voiceless mysteries, above
The long array now towered the gonfalon
Of Isis, glowing with devices Shame
Shrunk to behold, the shapes of Earth's worst sins
Deified fiends! and with the lozel's smiles,
Her crowned pastophori, proud of their shame,

Waved round the ribald picture, as they passed
The mansions of their votaries, and maids
And matrons hailed it from their porticoes.
Apollo, from his eyes of ecstacy
And lips of bloom filling the bosomed air
With oracles; and Hermes, in the embrace
Of Iris, winging the blue heavens of love,
With his enchanted rod pointing to earth;
Vesta, 'mid her Penates welcoming;
The heavenly Venus, with her starlight eyes,
Veiled brow and girded cestus, looking up
To the pure azure, spotless as her soul!
Followed by the more worshipped Cyprian queen,
So shadowed by her draperies that guilt
Revelled in beauty mocked with robes to tempt;
The Wargod, with the ancilia and the plumes
Of gory fight, whose triumph was despair;
Proud Pallas, with stern lips, and stainless brow,
Surmounted by its olive wreath, and eyes
That never quailed in their calm chastity;
Cotytto—the earth-passion's idol—'mid
The unclothed Baptæ, painted with designs
To startle e'en sear'd sense into a blush;
The Seaking with his trident; the castout
And shapeless Forger of the lightning bolts;
The Deity of Erebus, with her
He bore from Enna, and his son, the god
Of gold; Diana, in her treble forms,
Magician, huntress, virgin of the skies;
Hirsute and pranksy Pan, amid his fauns;
Nymphs, dryads, oreads and tritons;—all
The beautiful, or dread, or uncouth thoughts
Imagination made divinities,
In lengthened march, along Pompeii's streets,
Tow'rd the Pantheon, in their triumph moved.

The pamylia and phallephoria. The character of the Romans under the emperors renders it unnecessary for me to create any reluctance on their part to gaze upon objects in public processions, which, in other communities, would never have been imagined. Greece took her religion from Egypt—Rome hers from Greece—and both had public temples dedicated to the Aspasias, Galateas and Campaspes of the age. The pastophori or priests of Isis, therefore, felt themselves much at home in Pompeii.

The sacred shields of Rome—borne in the processions of Mars, who of all the monstrous idols was the most worshipped because the least merciful. Is it not a singular anomaly of the human mind that in every creed the god of vengeance has always been the most opulent and popular?

Behind the glittering crowd, the hecatomb
Of victims, led by golden cords, moved on.

To every god the sacrifice was meet;
The dove to Venus, and the bull to Mars;
To Dian, the proud stag—the lawless goat,
That tears the vine leaves, to the deity
Of the gay banquet: and their horns, o'erlaid
With gold, tossed haughtily amid the crowd,
As, rolling their undreading eyeballs round,
They glared defiance and amazement, mute
Yet merciless when fit occasion came.
“An evil omen! lo! the victims strive,
And we must drag them to the altar!” said
The trembling augur—“what most dismal grief
And destiny o'erhangs to whelm us now!”
Yet onward surged the multitudes, with boughs
Of olive in their hands and laurel crowns,
And Zeian barley spears folded in wreaths
By locks from richest fleeces, as they passed
The temple images, with practised skill,
Bending their foreheads on expanded palms.
And onward, o'er the Appian Way, the host
Of mitred, robed and bannered priests drew nigh
The Fane of all the Gods, and, at a word,
The music softened to a solemn strain,
The measured voices of the holy chiefs
Ascended in a song, and as they ceased,
The people, like the ocean's myriad waves,
Raised their responses to the harvest prayer.

Nothing could be more ominous of evil than any resistance or even reluctance on the part of the victims to be sacrificed. That the offering might be auspicious it was necessary that the animal should seem to rejoice in its sacred death.

More properly, the Via Consularis.

THE PÆAN OF THE PANTHEON.

STROPHE.

Wielder of Worlds, that round Elysium dance
Beneath the brightness of thy sleepless eye,
Who from the bosom of the flame dost glance,
And feel'st our time in thine Eternity!
Thou deathless Jove!
Monarch of awe and Love!
Look from the radiant height of thy dominion
On thine adorers now,

And waft thy smile on Hermes' rainbow pinion,
And bend thine awful brow!
Immortal and supreme!
With vows and victims to thy shrine we come,
With hearts that breathe the incense of their praise,
And first fruits borne from each protected home,
To bless thee for the blessings of our days!
Have we not heard thy spirit in the dreams,
That glance o'er thought like morn's young light on streams?
In visions, watched thy bird of triumph near
The azure realms of thine ethereal sphere,
Waiting behests of victories and powers
And counsels from thy throne!
Hath not thy thunder voice, the summer showers,
The lightning spirit, all thine own,
Bade strew the exulting earth with fruits and flowers?
Therefore, we render up
The spotless victim from the wood
And household field, and from libation cup
Pour the rich vine's unmingled blood.
Accept our praise and prayer,
Sceptred Immortal of the chainless Air!

Chorus.
—King of Elysium! hear, oh hear
From thine Olympian seat!
To priest and people bow thy sovereign ear!
We dare not see thy face, but kiss thy sacred feet!

ANTISTROPHE.

God of the Mornlight! when the orient glows
With thy triumphant smile, and ether feels
The Hours and Seasons, 'mid their clouds of rose,
Swept o'er its bosom on the living wheels
Of thy proud car,
When, through the abysses of the heaven, each star
Before the splendour of thy spirit fades
Like insect glimmerings in the noontide glades!
Hail, radiant Phœbus! lord
Of love and life, of wisdom, music, mirth,
At whose resistless word

Being and bliss dance o'er the blossomed earth!
O Pythian Victor, hear!
Pæonian Healer of our ills, behold!
Breather of Oracles! thy sons draw near
To feel the music of thy lyre unfold,
As shadows change before the morn to gold,
The sealed-up volume of our darkened minds.
Breathe on Favonian winds,
And from the effluence of immortal light
Strew our dim thoughts with rays,
Till, sorrowing o'er this failing praise,
We know, with burning hearts, to sing thy deeds aright!
God of the harp and bow,
Whose thoughts are sunbeam arrows, hear!
Giver of flowers! dissolver of the snow!
Accept our gifts and let thy sons draw near!

Chorus.
—Io Pæan! from thy sphere,
King of prophets, hear, oh hear!
From hallowed fount and hoary hill,
And haunt of song and sunlight near,
With inspirations come and every bosom fill.

EPODE.

Reveal the shrine! wave ye the laurel boughs,
Dipped in the fount that purifies the heart!
Unsullied Dian! breathe our holiest vows!
Storm-crowned Poseidon! to the imperial mart
Thou bearest the Median gems,
And loftiest Asian diadems,
And o'er thy billowy world we pour our praise!
Uranian Venus! let the vesper rays
Of thy beatitude around us float and dwell,
Till thine ethereal loveliness o'ercomes
The stains and shadows of thy mocker here,
And high the Vinegod's song may swell
Among the shrines of Vesta's hallowed home
Without a following tear;
And Isis' mystic rites may thrill
The soul with Plato's most celestial vision,
And Pallas in her grandeur fill

The heart of Ceres with her mind elysian!
Blesser with bounty, hail!
What but thy gifts can mortals offer thee?
Smile on the banquet and the song and tale
The Dionysius breathes to thy divinity!
Hail, all ye gods of heaven, earth, wave and wind!
Ye oceans from the streams of human mind!
With spotless garments and unsandalled feet,
Purified bodies and undaring souls,
We the Pantheon tread! oh, meet,
Meet your adorers! lo! the incense rolls
Along Corinthian columns and wrought roof,
Like Manes wandering o'er the fields of bliss!
Chill not our worship with a stern reproof!
Hail, all ye gods! we worship with a kiss!

Chorus.
—From shore and sea and vale and mountain,
Hail, ye divinities of weal or woe!
Olympus, Ida, grotto, fountain,—
We in your Pantheon kneel—around your altars bow!

Through the bronze gates, sculptured with legends feigned
Of the theocracies, the pageant swept,
A thousand feet dancing the song, and paused
Around the shrines they dragged the victims up.
Then, bending from Jove's altar to the east,
The Pontiff raised the golden chalice, crowned
With wine unmingled, and, amid the shower
Of green herbs, myrrh, obelia and vine leaves,
Poured out the brimmed libation on the head
Of the awaiting sacrifice, from flocks
Chosen for beauty, and young quickening life.
Then with a laurel branch, he sprinkled all,
Circling the altar thrice; the heralds, then,
Cried, “Who is here?” and all the multitudes
Like the chafed billows answered, “Many and Good!”

“Breathe not the words of omen!” “Lo! we stand
Like Harpocrates in the vestibule!”
The high Priest, 'mid the wreathing incense, raised
The prayer; the augur, with his wand marked out
The heavens; the aruspices, with eyes of awe,
Behind the slayers of the sacrifice
Stood gazing on the victims. “Hath no spot,
No arrow from the Huntress' bow or dart
Of Pythius stained the offering?” said the priest.
“'Tis fair and perfect, and unblemished stands
To give its body to the Harvest Queen
And all the gods!—We pour into its ear
The holy water—yet it doth not nod!
We bend the neck—it struggles for the flight!
Dismal presages! omens of despair!”
The Pontiff quailed, not in the dread of gods,
(His sole divinity was his own power)
But fear of superstition's evil thought,
As from the fluctuating host arose
A smothered shriek of terrour; and, in tones
Quick, stern, and deep as the exploded bolt,
Commanded—“Strike! the wrath of Jove attends
The impious delay!”—and, hushed as heaven
When broods the hurricane on cloudy deeps,
The worshippers stood trembling as they looked,—
The agonies and ecstacies of fear
And hope, in stormlike glimpses, shadowing o'er
The broken waves of faces—on the shrine,
And saw the axe of the cultrarius fall!
Maddened and bleeding, yet not slain, the ram
Flung back his twisted horns—sent up a sound
Of anguish, and in frenzy on the air
Springing, in his fierce death-throes, fell amidst
Dismayed adorers and gasped out his life.
Shrieks o'er the panting silence rose and filled
The temple, and in horrour shrunk the throng
As o'er the accursed rites pale Nemesis,
Leading the Destinies, had come to blast
The sacrifice with sacrilege; but now

The Pontiff's voice, bidding his lictors quell
The tumult, called another victim up
And stillness brooded o'er the stricken crowd.
Gashing the lifted neck, the popæ held
The brazen ewers beneath the bubbling blood,
And white robed flamens bade the people note
The happiest augury—without a sigh
Or tremor, seen or heard, the victim died.
Then flayed and opened they the offering,
Lifting the vitals on their weapons' points.
With writhing brows, pale lips and ashen cheeks,
And failing hearts, in horror's panic voice,
The aruspices proclaimed the prodigies.
“The entrails palpitate—the liver's lobes
Are withered, and the heart hath shrivelled up!”
Groans rose from living surges round; yet loud
The High Priest uttered—“Lay them on the fire!”
'T was done: and wine and oil poured amply o'er,
Yet still the sacrificer wildly cried—
“Woe unto all! the wandering fires hiss up
Through the black vapours—lapping o'er the flesh
They burn not, but abandon! ashes fill
The temple, whirled upon the wind that waves
The flame through smothering clouds, towards the Mount,
That, since first light, hath hurled its lava forth!
Hark! the wild thunder bursts upon the right!
Ravens and vultures pass us on the left!
Fly, votaries! from the wrath of heaven, oh, fly!
The Vestals shriek, the sacred fire is dead,
The gods deny our prayers! fly to your homes!”
From the Pantheon struggled the vast throng,
And rushed dismayed unto their household hearths,
While from Vesuvius swelled a pyramid
Of smoke streaked o'er with gory flame, and sounds,
Like voices howling curses deep in earth,
From its abysses rose, and ashes fell
Through the thick panting air in burning clouds.
All, save the haughty Pontiff, mocking fear,
The Temple had abandoned, but he sate
On the high altar, 'mid the trophied pomp
Of vain oblations to the sculptured gods,

Breathing his scorn and imprecations on
The dastard people and the blasted rites,
When, heaving as on billows, while a moan
Passed o'er the statues, the proud temple swayed,
As 't were an evening cloud, from side to side,
Rocking beneath the earthquake that convulsed
Sea, shore and mountain, at its hollow voice,
Hurled into ruin; and his lips yet glowed
With execrations on the sacrifice,
When from its pedestal, bending with brow
Of vengeance and fixed lips that almost spake,
Jove's giant image fell and crushed to earth
The Thunderer's mocker in his temple home?

A peculiar sort of sacrificial cakes.

It was held unholy to offer up any maimed or imperfect creature, and herein the Judean ecclesiastical enactments agreed with those of the Greeks and Romans. All their animal sacrifices were “chosen for beauty and young quickening life.”

Any blemish inflicted by the Huntress or Pythius, by Sun or Moon namely, was deemed a particular offence to the deity.

Lituus.

Like an earth-shadowing cypress, o'er the skies
Lifting its labyrinth of leaves, the boughs
Of molten brass, the giant trunk of flame,
The breath of the volcano's Titan heart
Hung in the heavens; and every maddened pulse
Of the vast mountain's earthquake bosom hurled
Its vengeance on the earth that gasped beneath.
Yet mortals, then, the adored Immortals deemed
Deified passions, swayed, like summer leaves.
By orison or chanted hymn, from deeds,
Ere time had birth, appointed. So, within
Their secret chambers and the silent groves,
While Ruin's eye glared in the living bolt
With wrath and scorn on their unhallowed rites,
The doomed idolators, abashed yet fain
To win redemption from suspended wrath,
Round their Penates cowered, while magians came,
Sybils and sorcerers, to mock the mind
With mystic divinations, and reveal,
What prophets need not show, folly and guilt.
To avert the doom, now Egypt's muttered spells
And magic incantations summoned up
Earth demons to unfold the future's deeds;
And thus the weird Canidia of the Time
Invoked the Spirits of the Air to aid.

THE SYBIL'S INVOCATION.

From the hill forest's gloom,
Where the Lemures dwell;
From the depth of the tomb,
Whence the soul parts to hell;
From the dim caves of death
Where the coil'd serpent sleeps not,
And the lone deadly heath
Where the night spirit weeps not;
From the shore where the wreck lies,
And the surge o'er the dead;
From the heart of the dark skies,
Where the tempest is bred;
Ye Demigods, hear!
Ye pale shadows, ascend!
And ye demons, appear!
To drink the bann'd cup ere the weird rites shall end!

From the ocean deeps come,
Where the coral groves glimmer,
In your trailed robes of gloom,
Making Terror's face dimmer;
From the crag-pass of slaughter,
On the voiced air of death,
Come, shed o'er your daughter
Your oracle breath!
On the night vapour stealing
From the marsh o'er the mountain;
On the bland air revealing
No doom by the fountain;
Ye Demigods, come!
Ye pale shadows, ascend!
And ye demons, from gloom!
To drink the bann'd cup ere the weird rites shall end!

Be ye bless'd or accursed,
Be ye famished or sated,
In pale Orcus the worst,
In Elysium the fated;
If ye roam by the shore
Which ye never may leave,
Or in nectar adore
Where ye never can grieve;
Be ye gross and malign
Or elysian as air—
Come forth and divine
What the future may bear!
Ye Demigods, come!
Ye pale shadows, ascend!
And ye demons, from gloom!
To drink the bann'd cup ere the weird rites shall end!

But, 'mid the darkened necromantic haunts
Of worse fiends than the evoked, no voice replied.
Then, moulding effigies to suit her hate,
And dropping venom in each pictured pore,
The Sybil, with dishevelled serpent locks
And Lamian features, bade the fiend of fire
Unroll the ritual of hell, and read
Revealings of the Destinies—and then,
She drank from the bann'd skullcup poison draughts,
Pledging the damned! yet Silence looked reply.

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And each Promethean divination brought
Nor shadow nor response; the mirrored glass
Returned no image; the drowned ring sent up
No echo; whirling gusts effaced the forms
Of letters writ in ashes; magic gems
No longer kept their power; the daphne burned
Without a sound; and every poison herb,
Though with unearthly skill distilled, no more,
Like Nessus' robe and wild Medea's gift,
Dispersed the agonies of maniac deaths.

See Potter's Antiquities, Von Hammer, etc. for the various superstitious observances of the Greeks and Romans. In the scene of the sacrifice I have introduced evil omens—such as the Romans feared in their height of power—throughout the ceremonial.

Restless in doubt, the human mind hath sought
Knowledge in every hour of time, through tears,
Want, anguish, madness, solitude and death.
Like the lost bird from its sole refuge sent
Forth o'er the drown'd world, hovering o'er the verge
Of the eternal ocean, from whose depths
Earth's ghastly spectres rise to mock at hope,
The spirit follows through forbidden paths
The meteor of its own vain thought, till Death
Shrouds, palls and sepulchres the throbbing dust.
Vain were petitions murmured to the gods
Priapus and Cunina to dissolve
The spells of Fascinators; the evil eye
Of the Illyrian or Triballi sent
Its wonted glance into the trembling breast,
Possessing, as they feigned, the soul with fiends.
Vainly, they wore baccharis wreaths—in vain,
Their jasper, rhamn or laurel amulets
On brow or bosom hung! The magi dreamed.

The Barbarian inhabitants of Illyricum, Thrace and Mœsia were held, by the common superstition of the age, to be sorcerers and magicians; and various talismans or amulets were worn to ward off the dreadful influences of The Evil Eye. It is humiliating to perceive how little the common minds of our own day are exalted above those of heathen ignorance and irreligion.

Scorned thus by demon and by deity,
Yet by worst means to know the worst resolved,
The priestled multitude, e'er then, as now,

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Slaves to the fears their crimes create, devote
To Isis' shrine of shame and godless priests
Pompeii's loveliest virgin —in the bud
Of innocence and beauty, love and joy,
By men most evil doomed to die, that Fate,
Through her prevailing blood, may speak their doom.
Alas! must Death, from his pale realms of fear,
Breathe on that beautiful and radiant brow
And leave it blasted: on the blossomed lips,
Whence music gushed in streams of rainbow thought,
And chill them into breathlessness and gloom?
That vermil cheek—those eyes, where thoughts repose,
Like clustered stars on the blue autumn skies,
That head of beauty and that heart of love—
Oh, must they languish, moulder, and depart,
Without a sigh, from the sweet earth they loved?
Nought may the grief, wrath, agony, despair
Of friends or kindred—nought the holiest laws
Of Love—avail to shield the victim maid;
The Priest will have his sacrifice, though Earth
And Heaven shriek out—'T is Lust's own sacrilege.’
Ne'er hath the bigot, whatsoe'er his crown
Cidaris, mitre, oak or laurel wreath,
Spared, having power to torture. Ne'er the slave
Of superstition slackened in his zeal
Of loving God by loathing humankind.
Weep with the crocodile—embrace the asp—
Doubt not the avalanche of ages—meet
The famished wolf's sardonic smile—and sleep

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Beneath the upas—but believe not man,
Who clothes the Demon in a seraph's robe.

Human sacrifices were not uncommon during the earlier periods of the Greek and Roman history; and I cast no additional discredit upon the ancient character of heathenism, by representing the disappointed consulters of the gods putting in action their cannibal ferocities. Iphigenia and Jephtha's daughter illustrate Grecian mythology and Jewish vows.

I appeal to all history, civil, ecclesiastical and profane. Persecution is not exclusive; give preponderance to any sect or faction and it will tyrannize; the faggot would be lighted, the dungeon filled, the deathaxe red. The civil power would collude with the church as it has always done, when the latter claimed the prerogatives of heaven to exempt it from human accountability—because superstitious ignorance fears more the anathemas of a priesthood than the agonies and blood of a thousand victims. Representations of eternal punishments due to those who indulge humanity, by sparing the proscribed, the heretics, namely—have influenced mankind far more than the view of nations banished and provinces depopulated by the relentless malignity of some Torquemada of paynimrie or Christendom. Factions and sects, in politics and religion, never yet won anything but ruin and disgrace, yet they are perpetuated and multiplied as the world wears to waste!

With hurried footfalls o'er the lava walks,
Casting quick glances tow'rd the Mount of Flame,
The vassal worshippers of Isis passed,
And the proud temple gates behind them closed.
Then from the altar of the Idol came
The crowned hierophant, in robes o'erwrought
With mystic symbols, emblems of a power
Invisible, yet everywhere supreme,
As the air that shrouds the glaciers, and, like that,
Waked to annihilate, by one low voice.
Lifting his dusky hand, gleaming with gems,
He waved the throng to worship, with hushed lips,
And, with a gesture, bidding neophytes
Come forth, and raise the victim, bound and stretched
On the Mosaic floor, in horror's arms,
With a hyæna's step, through pillar'd aisles,
Dim, still and awful, to the vaulted crypt
Of gloom and most unhallowed sacrifice
He led the bearers of the victim maid.
One shuddering farewell—one wild shriek gushed,
And then in gloom her hyacinthine hair
Vanished—and from the veiled recesses rose
The music of the sistrum, and strange gleams
Of violet and crimson light along
The shrine and statues flitted momently
And faded; and mysterious phantoms glanced
O'er the far skirting corridors, and left
The awed mind wildered with a doubting sense
Of silence broken by what was not sound,
Nor breathings of a living heart—nor tones
Of forest leaves nor lapses of the wind—
But a dread haunting of a sightless fear

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Of unformed peril—a crushed thought, that through
The twilight dimness of the fane o'erhung
Gigantic beings of diluvian realms,
Voiceless and viewless, yet endowed with might
To rend the mortal breather of a sigh.
Down the chill, dusky granite steps the priest
Guided the virgin sacrifice; above,
The massy and barr'd vault door shut; and Night,
Shown in its ghastly terrors by wild rays
Of many tinctured lights, fell on the heart
Of the devoted, desolated maid.
Through still descending labyrinths, where coiled
All loathsome creatures, and dark waters dripped
With a deep, sullen sound like pulses heard
By captives dying in their dungeon tomb,
The Egyptian glided hurriedly and still.
Then o'er a green lagoon, whose festered flood
Flung back a deathsome glare as the lights sunk
On its dead surface, stretching into gloom,
They, in a mouldered barque, went silently.
The plated crocodile, on the earth and pool
Suspended, yawn'd his sluggish jaws and looked
Upon the priest with fawning earnestness;
He gazed upon the victim and passed by
And the loathed reptile dreamed of coming feasts.
Rugged and spiral grew the pathway; bats,
Waving the spectre lights, winged through the vaults,
Startled yet welcoming; and serpents lanced
Their quivering tongues of venom forth and hissed
Their salutations; and the lizards crept
Along the cold, wet ridges of the caves;
And oft the maiden's agonizing eyes
Beheld in niches or sarcophagi
Mortality's abhorred resemblances,
With folded serpents sculptured overhead;
And oft the feet of the familiars struck
Strewn relics of the victims offered here!

The streets of Pompeii were paved with blocks of lava; and the audacious apathy, which the inhabitants manifested amidst the threatenings of Vesuvius, may be ascribed to their familiarity with earthquakes and volcanoes. The wretched inhabitants of Portici, Torre del Greco and other exposed villages are, at this day, as unapprehensive of the peril that has overhung them since their birth, as were the Pompeiians at their death-hour. Cities buried in lava or ashes may lie beneath even Herculaneum and Pompeii.

A stringed instrument peculiar to the mysterious rites of Isis, which, like most other mysteries, concealed the most nefarious practices.

Winding through tangled passages—her brain
O'erfraught with the still horror—for no sound
Lived through the endless caverns—thought and sense

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Of being fled from the doomed maiden's heart;
Time, mystery and darkness and lone death,
Like dim dreams, passed o'er her tranced brain, and earth
And agony and wrong and violence
Were but the shadows childhood sports withal!
She woke amid the gush and hymning voice
Of fountains and the living gleam of fires,
And swell of tenderest music; and beside
The purple perfumed couch, whereon she lay,
In a vast chamber, hung with flowers and gems,
The priest of Isis stood;—his glowing eye
No longer stern and chill, his lips no more
Like sculptured cruelty, but bright and warm
And moist with mellowest wine; and o'er his face,
Late masked in mockeries, the burning light
Of Passion broke, as thus, with wanton smiles,
He breathed his heart upon his victim's ear.
“Thy path to pleasure, like the world's, my love!
Was through the empire of pale doubt and pain,
Where many visions of detested things
Will consummate the rapture deigned thee here.
Oh, didst thou think, my queen of loveliness?
That by Pompeii's dastard crowd of apes
Thou wert borne hither that the sacred lips
Of Isis, parted by thy purest blood,
Might give responses to fiend-loving fools!
The goddess hath a voice—when I ordain—
And, when her mysteries have filled their hearts
With myriad terrors to which death is bliss,
They shall not lack an answer to their quest.
But this is Love's elysium; men may seek
Another by Jove's grace—but this for me!
Be theirs eternities of prayer and hymn!
But Time and Wine and Venus are my gods!”
And thus, unweeting who bent o'er her couch,
The maiden, in delirium, made reply.
“O holy Dian! hath thine Iris come

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To lead me through Elysium's myrtle groves?
Thanks for the briefest pangs of death! my soul
Blends with the radiance, songs and incense here
In rapture, unforgetting earth's dark ills,
The victim bonds, gloom, terror, madness borne
Amid the vaulted corridors—deep thanks,
Chaste Dian! for the dart that winged me here!”
Thus she lay whispering faintly, while the veins,
Again, like violets, began to glow,
And Thought from the elysian portals turned
To shed, once more, its light along her brow.
The lips, like rifted sunset clouds, burned o'er
With beauty, and the sloe-dark eyes, from lids
Of loveliness o'erarched like rainbows, flashed
Upon the luxuries of wantonness
With a delirious radiance; and she pressed
Her fairy hand upon her troubled brain
As dismal memories through all the pomp
Around her thronged. “Do visions o'er me rush
Through the ivory gate? or what is this? methinks
The limbs of Vesta pass not Charon's ward—
Yet bear I them! and I behold no forms
Like the supreme divinities who dwell
Beyond the azure curtains of the skies!

The rainbow, in every mythology, has been beautifully personified. Iris, its goddess, was the messenger of the ancient deities; and though employed by jealous Juno to create “greeneyed monsters,” she was more happily occupied, in general, in separating virtuous souls from feeble frames and escorting them to Elysium. No one is ignorant of the Scandinavian bifrost, and the romantic tales of the Eddas.

“Look on thy suppliant worshipper, my love!”
Said the voluptuous mocker of the gods.
“Thy Saturn, my Osiris, aptly feigned,
With Horus and the laughing Boygod, wreathed
With lotus and charm'd myrtle, must be now
The only Guardians of our paradise—
For thou art the voluptuous Paphian Queen,
And must with kisses be adored! thy breath
Is odour—on that fair full bosom sleep
A thousand loves—those lustrous eyes enchant—
And the limbs moulded by divinest skill”—
“Reveal thy speech! what import bear these words?
Dream I, or art thou the hierophant
Of Isis, who from Misraim's pyramids
Brought'st new gods into Latium? Nay, I skill not,
For thou wear'st not the countenance that chilled

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My soul, and proud Pompeii's crowd o'erawed,
But rather, like earth's faun or satyr fiend,
Gloatest o'er some revenge for sin unknown!”
The maiden's lost mind came in all its strength
And purity, and in the dreadless might
Of thoughts unsoiled by evil, she resolved
To match unfriended virtue with the power
Of Passion, though it wore Religion's mask,
And gloried in No-Hammon's lawless power.
“Simple as Superstition's prostrate prayer!”
With blandishments, said Isis' haughty priest.
“Know'st thou not, loveliest! that holy men
Must never shame their gods by deeds unlike
Their sacred exploits? what were deathlessness
Without delight? eternity, without
The ecstacies of woman's winning smile?
Thy country's hoarest fathers, most for skill
In counsel, and unequal virtue famed,
In canon and enactment of old law,
Did consecrate corruption and commit
Captives to bondage of their tyrant's will,
And build proud temples for the haunt of shame.
We, then, are mimes of the Immortals, Love!
And why should the weak waiter on the rites
Of the Omnipotents refrain from joy?
Folly must feel our masterdom, when words,
Called oracles, are bought, but, in all else,
The priest was framed for pleasure—and thy smile,
Hebe of Beauty! from thy vassal here
Shall win a better augury than all
Campania's hecatombs!—Time wastes, my bliss!
Speak thou the oracle I shall repeat
Through Isis' marble lips!—the answer's thine!”
“Thus, then,” the Maiden cried, by hope inspired
To shun impiety's most loathed caress,
“Thus let the mystic oracle declare,
‘Ye shall pass o'er the Tyrrhene sea in ships
Laden with virgins, gems and gods, and spoils
Of a dismembered empire, and a cloud

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Of light shall radiate your ocean path!”
Breathes not the soul of mystery in this?”

The whole art of uttering oracles consisted in choosing terms capable of any construction. The desires of the consulter determined the meaning; and neither Delphi nor Dodona could commit its credit by the failure of a prophesy which, it might allege, was never properly understood. No one can have forgotten the celebrated response (which illustrates the sophistries and follies of the ancients) “Aio te, Æacide, Romanos vincere posse.”

The maiden now consents to give an Isean response, prefiguring the ruin impending from which all, who escape, must fly by sea, that the absence of the priest may afford her an opportunity to fly from the lascivious temple.

“Ay, love! and after his desire or hope
Each may interpret—veriest oracles
Must have a myriad meanings—and the voice
Of Memphian Isis shall, at once, respond
Unto the drivelling dreamers; then, my life!
While dotards live on riddles and embrace
Shadows as did the Thunderer what time
The oxeyed empress jealoused of his deeds,
We at Love's feast reposing shall regale
And drink the ecstacies of mingled hearts!
—The sistrum sounds! the sculptured lips shall speak!”
Exulting thus, the Idol minister
Disclosed a stairway through the sculptured form
Of Serapis, whose giant head uprose
Beneath the altar of the fane, and thence
Through Isis' sphynxlike statue, from whose mouth
Responses breathed that fitted any deed
Or æra; fable was religion's name.
Up through the hollow bosom of the God,
Saying, “The mocker Momus hath his jest
And more, since e'en the Immortal's breast bears now
A mirror”—passed the priest—and soundlessly
The dædal portal, bossed with vine-wreaths, closed.
That moment, from the flowered and purple couch
The maiden sprung, through any caverned path,—
All peril and loathed sights and awful sounds,

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To fly from pomp, pollution and despair.
Rushing along the tesselated floor,
She passed the beds of banquet, whose perfume
From sightless vases stole, and gained the verge
Of the vast gleaming hall—but now she met
Black, silent, unknown depths that seemed to scowl
On her vain flight! to every side she flew
But to encounter granite battlements,
Coiled serpents, mouldering sepulchres, cold cliffs,
Gigantic sphynxes, towering grim o'er lakes
Of sulphur, or the dreadful shapes of fiends.
The gorgeous lights grew shadowy, and stained clouds
Of vapour floated o'er the pillared roof,
Taking all forms of terror; and low sighs
And muttered dirges from the waters stole
Along the arches; and through all the vaults,
Into a thousand wailing echoes rent,
A shriek, loud, quick and full of agonies,
Burst from the deep foundations of the fane.
With steps like earliest childhood's, to her couch
The maiden faltered back, and there, with soul
Too overfraught for wished unconsciousness,
Gasping her breath, she listened!—Sullen sounds
Wandered along the temple aisles above;
Then came the clang of cymbals and strange words
Uttered amid the faroff music's swell:
And the prostrated multitudes, like woods
Hung with the leaves of autumn, stirred; then fell
A silence when the heart was heard—a pause—
When ardent hope became an agony;
And parted lips and panting pulses—eyes
Wild with their watchings, brows with beaded dews
Of expectation chilled and fevered—all
The shaken and half-lifted frame—declared
The moment of the oracle had come!
A sceptre to the hand of Isis leapt
And waved; and then the deep voice of the priest
Uttered the maiden's answer, and the fall
Of many quickened steps like whispers pass'd
Along the columned aisles and vestibule.
None deemed, the maiden in the earthquake's groan

109

And the volcano's thunder voice, had heard
The hastening doom, and clothed it in dark words
The blinded victims never could discern;
But to the bosom of their guilt again
They passed, dreaming of victories and spoils!
“Gone!” said the priest, descending—“Serapis!
Pardon and thanks I crave and give thee, god!
—Gone to their phantom banquet with glad hearts—
Such is the bliss of superstition's creed!
And they will glory o'er their fellows now,
Deeming themselves the temples of the gods!
Brimmed with revealings of divinity:
But Folly wafts us food, and we should laud
The victim of night visionries who parts
With virgin gold for fabled miracles!
But that thy loveliness might peril prayers
And change the rites to riots ill esteemed,
Thou shouldst have been a pythoness, my love!
What shadow veils thy vestal brow? thou art
My bride, and pleasure waits upon thee here—
Let the pure wine awake thy thoughts to mirth!”

Momus, the Jester of the gods, when Jupiter presented the man whom he had created to his inspection, and asked him how, characteristically, he could find fault with such workmanship, replied with a sneer that the defect was both obvious and incurable—that one so wise as the king of gods and men should have placed a mirror over his heart that all might discern evil purposes in their first conception. The priest, by filling with his person the aperture of the image, pleasantly deems himself the mirror that reveals and directs the minds of men.

“Mirth at the altar which thou mockst with jeers!
Mirth in thy holy ministries, proud priest!
It fits thee not—and less thine evil speech
To Lælius' child, who, while her father waits
On royal Titus in imperial Rome,
Betrayed, it seems, by thy fit parasites,
Was hither borne by doomed Pompeii's throng,
A victim, not to Isis, but to thee!
Beware, thou atheist pontiff! the shocked world
Hath had and shall, through uncreated time,
Have mitred scorners, who blaspheme the heavens,
Mocking the faith with which they manacle
The hearts that would deny yet dare not—like
Thee, mocker of the idol thou dost serve!
Yet doubt not—years are but the viewless path
Of the avenging Deity! the earth,
Elysium, Orcus, the sweet pleiades,
The weeping stars, the depths of ocean swept
By typhon tossing billows to the heavens—
All live but in the will of One Supreme,

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Whose breath inspires the universe—whose soul
Is Immortality! and 'neath His throne
I kneel and wrap around my mortal fears
The robe of His immortal purity,
Bidding thee, Priest! e'en in thy purple home,
Tremble amid thy thoughts of sacrilege!”
“Io Athena! Pallas hath no gift
To rival thine, my loveliest! thy words,
Like pungent herbs before the banquet, give
A charm, a flavour, an Apician zest
To the deferred delight that dawns in tears.
Coy maidenhood! the sage in all his lore
Must learn the science of awaking bliss
From thee, supremely skilled in gibe and taunt,
Which are harsh preludes to long lingering bliss.
But the wine blushes, Love! to meet thy lip—
Lo! how it kisses the crowned cup and smiles!
Thou wouldst not leave me—(though thy free discourse
Argues but ill)—for yon dim vaults, greened o'er
By the dead dampness, where cold serpents trail
And cockatrices brood, and livid asps
Madden with unspent poison! thou hast seen
A portion of the terrors—'t is thy choice
To dwell with love and luxury and joy,
Or have a farther knowledge—come, love! come!
The unfurrowed features of a priest may charm
Thy dainty spirit well as dead men's smiles
Sardonic, and the gleam of breathless flesh!
Are crimson pillows of the cygnet down
Less fitting thy desire than jagged rocks
Beetling o'er naptha fires and festering floods?
Or yon tapestried couch, thou wilt desert,
Less to thy wish than wanderings through the gloom
Of haunted charnel labyrinths beyond?
Come, thou art wiser! Passion is my god
First worshipped—next, Revenge!—my arms are chilled
By cold embraces of the goddess—come!”
“Demon! thy power is o'er me—none behold—
Rome's banded legions could not rescue me—
Yet I scorn, loathe, dare, trample thee, proud priest!

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What art thou but corrupted clay beneath
The furnace? but the loathsome bird that feasts
On desolation's relics?—Oh, there comes
A glad sound on mine ear—a triumph sound—
The deep earth-hymn of ruin! hark! it swirls
Along the abysses of the hills and seas,
Lifting the mountains with its breath—it comes!
Ye manes of mine ancestors! it comes!”
“What, scorner! dost thou think to cheat my skill
With thy Trophonian dreams, when I have clasped
Delusions to my bosom since my birth?
And juggled men by all circean arts?
I woo no longer! thou art in my grasp—
And by the Immortals I disown! thou shalt”—
“It comes! the temple reels and crashes—Jove!
I thank thee! Vesta! let me sleep with thee!”
And on the bosom of the earthquake rocked
The statues and the pillars, and her brain
Whirled with the earth's convulsions, as the maid
Fell by a trembling image and upraised
A prayer of gratitude; while through the vaults,
In fear and ghastly horror, fled the priest,
Breathing quick curses 'mid his warning cries
For succour: and the obscene birds their wings
Flapped o'er his pallid face; and reptiles twined
In folds of knotted venom round his feet.
Yet on he rushed—the blackened walls around
Crashing—the spectral lights hurled hissing down
The cold green waters; and thick darkness came
To bury ruin! Through the arches rent
And falling on he hurried, and a glance
Of sunlight down the granite stairway came,
Like a winged spirit, to direct him on.
The secret door of the adytum swung
Wide, and he hailed the flamens that above
Hastened his flight—when o'er the marble stair
The Nubian pillars of the chancel roof,
Thrown by the earthquake o'er the altar, crashed
Through shrines of gems and gold, mosaic floor
And beams of choicest cedar, and around

112

The priest of Isis piled a sepulchre.
Amid the trophies of his temple, where
His living heart, crushed by despairing thoughts,
Found burial till the hour of havoc came!
Buttress and arch, pillar and image fell,
And the green waters of the gloom were filled
With hoarded treasures—vainly coffered up.
Now rose the maiden on the quaking earth,
And, like the thoughts of parted love in youth,
Rushed from the mitred violator's home,
Through the felt darkness of the labyrinth.
On sculptured capitals and heads of gods
She passed the dismal gulfs, and trident tongues
Hissed after her amid the turbid waves.
Along a gorgeous banquet hall, o'erstrewn
With porphyry tables, alabaster lamps,
Half quenched, and shattered wine cups of gemm'd gold,
With awe and wonder fraught, the victim fled.
And now she grasped a flickering light and on
Hurried, casting on dolesome objects round,
And nameless things of horror, glances wild
With terrour and deep loathing; the death-dews
Upon the walls, green with the deadly moss,
Trailed in thick streams, and o'er her sinking heart
Breathed the cold midnight of the sepulchre;
And from the shapeless shadows growing up,
The startled spirit wrought the forms of fiends,
Or, worse, pursuers charged to hale her back.
The virgin flies along a corridor
Ampler, and living with the daylight air;
And far, upon its boundary, she discerns
An open portal, and a rosebeam gush
Of radiance streams upon the threshold stone.
Like Delphi's Pythia in her maniac mood,
She leaves the vaults of Isis, hurls aside
The tissued curtains o'er the portal hung,
And springs, bewildered yet exulting, through
Voluptuous chambers, frescoed o'er with scenes
Of earthly Passion in its last excess,
Where the mind melts in odour, and the heart

113

Pants in the fever of the earthborn Love.
“Oh, watching Dian! whither am I led?
These mellowed lamps that burn in fragrant nard,
Those violet couches—wanton picturess—hrines
Of chrysolite with myrtle wreathes o'erhung,
And jewelled girdles loosened—what is this
But Paphian Venus' temple! oh, the vaults
Of Isis are elysium to her bowers!”
She turned to hasten, when a strangled shriek
From the recess before her came, and sounds
Of fear and strife, and hate and agony
Rose indistinct yet with intensest strength.
The maiden's only path of flight lay there.
She drew aside the curtain, and with hair
Tangled and drenched with vault dews, haggard face
And eyes dilated, like a sybil stood,
A moment, in the very bower of lust,
Glaring in terror on two forms that strove,
One with the strength of Virtue and deep wrong,
The other with base Passion's baffled wrath.
“No, never shall thy pride the power and love
Of Diomede despise! Here, in the home
Of Isis' own luxurious priests, thou dwell'st
Their slave, till thou art mine!” “No, tyrant, no!”
The lovely victim shrieked, when from the vaults,
In agony of fear, with horror wild,
The Maiden rushed, and, like a spirit armed
With Heaven's own vengeance, stood; then quick as light
While still the violator gazed upon
The sudden vision, hurling him apart,
The feebler being rushed along the aisles,
Through many a crypt and sacrosanct and cell
Of mystery and wantonness and guilt,
With face fearwrought and raiment soiled and torn.
The maiden traced the fugitive, and ere
The blood, now at the heart, might reach the brow,
They stood together 'neath the open skies.
“The Saviour for thy service bless thee maid!”

114

'T was Mariamne—from the loathed embrace
Of Diomede escaped—that quickly spake.
“I cannot ask nor answer now—but fly
With me, for peril's look proclaims thee pure!
Quick, maiden! Diomede will never spare—
Yet Mariamne once again is free!
It should be noontide; but a livid gloom
Palls all things, and a ghastliness, nor light
Nor darkness, wraps our flight and bodes an eve
The workers of all evil, in their pride,
Dread not, nor dream of! Pansa! heaven in love
Keep thy unfaltering thoughts beneath the wings
Of cherubim, and clothe thy heart with strength
To foil the fiend that dares or tempts to sin!
Where'er thou art! we shall not fail to meet,
For all shall be abroad, and earth and air
And fire and flood shall mingle ere sun sinks.
Away! sweet maiden!—now the Cyprian's fane—
The equestrian Forum—the Prætorians' tower—
Are passed; and 'mid the crowded huts, that lie
Beneath the amphitheatre, we rest
Till the deep justice of Jehovah comes!”

The Pompeiian temple of Isis was connected by subterranean passages with the luxurious abodes of the Egyptian priests or pastophori, who were the supporters of proconsular tyranny. Here Anteros reigned supreme, and wantonness was truly Pan, or everything.

“Art thou a Nazarene?” the Maiden said.
“A convert of the Crucified, whose fame
Hath filled and overawed the Roman World?”
“I was a Hebrew and a princess—now
I am a Christian and a captive! Come!
This garb and guise of thine declares, methinks,
Some mysteries of thy country's deities—
This day, thou shalt not fail to learn of mine!”
She breathed a strange word and a shrivelled hand
Unbarred a low dark postern, and a face,
Darkened and harrowed by the toils and thoughts
And changes of exceeding years, looked forth.
The melancholy shadow of a smile
And the sad echo of a broken voice
Gave welcome to the wanderers; and amid
The solemn stillness of their refuge fell,
From the pale lips of persecuted faith,
Full many a history of the martyrdoms.

115

The games of life go on! Madness and mirth,
Triumph and tears, the holydays of youth,
The winter of hoar, stricken age, the pride
Of mind and meekness of a heart sore tried,
Rapture and anguish, poverty and pomp,
And glory and the tomb—like rivals, crowd
Along the isthmus of our being, doomed
To vanish momently in billowy gloom!
The dewlight of the morn in storm departs;
The moonbeams strewing rifted clouds, like smiles
Breathed from the bosom of Divinity,
Sink, ere the daydawn, in the tempest's rack;
Yet on o'er buried centuries—the dead dust
Of ages—once like the starr'd heavens inspired
By myriad passions, dreaming miracles,
And winged conceptions infinite as air—
Time, the triumphant, in his trophied car,
Moves sternly, trampling ardent hearts to earth.
Oh, diademed Hypocrisies! budding Bliss,
The mildew sears—sky-soaring Hope, that dies
In its birth moment—Love, which on its shrine
Of incense perishes—and Fame, that drinks
The bane of human breath and falls alone!
The same arena, judges, wrestlers, crown—
The same brief transport and unsolaced doom—
First, madness, and then vanity—the world
Must be, till time is quenched, what it hath been,
The bounded circle of chained thought, trod down
By nations hastening into nothingness,
Echoing the groans of Pain's ten thousand years,
And drenched by tears that find no comforter!
With livid clouds of ashes, lava hail,
And Volcan cinders all the air was filled;
And through the bosom of Vesuvius passed
Groans as of earth-gods in their endless death,
And giant writhings, crushing the earth's heart;
As through the tossing vapours, mingling flame
And gloom, toward the Evening Isles so loved
By ancient sage, philosopher and bard,
From the dark zenith rolled the gory sun.

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Like the ailanthus tree of old Cathay,
Whose boughs, old legends say, bloom in the stars,
The deep smoke of o'erhanging ruin whirled
From the volcano's pinnacle, and flung
Its branches over nations, scattering death.
The Apennines, looking the wild wrath and awe
That clothed wood, waste and precipice, upraised
Their brows of terror and magnificence,
On their eternal thrones watching the throes
Of the convulsed abysses; from the crags
The seared and shivering forests bent and moaned,
As o'er them flew the torrid blast of fate;
And, as the molten rocks and mines began
To pour their broad deep masses from the height,
Vast trunks of sycamore and cypress stood
Charred, stark and trembling, and the castled cliffs
Burst like a myriad thunders, while the flood
Of desolation, o'er their crashing wrecks,
Tow'rd Herculaneum, gleaming horror, rolled.

As Herculaneum was buried beneath vast masses of solid lava, but Pompeii beneath scoriæ, ashes and cinders, I have, with probable reason, supposed that the former was destroyed before ruin fell upon the latter.

Yet men repented not of foregone crime,
Denied them not their wonted festivals,
Their pomp of garniture and banquet mirth.
Tornado, pestilence, earthquake and war
Awe not the criminal inured to guilt;
So the barbed poison arrow flies his heart,
His pageants and night orgies brighter glow—
Though death sighs float along the winecups, brimmed
With nectar, mocking all calamities.
From the Basilicæ the Prætor passed,
(Thither when foiled in lust, to wreak his wrath
On guiltlessness and guilt alike, he went,)
Leaving his tyrant judgments, in a voice
Of jeering merriment pronounced, to fall
On less offending breakers of the law.
Prostrate upon his path, a mother cried,

117

“Spare, Oh Proprætor! spare my guiltless child!
He walked not with conspirators—spake not
To leaders of sedition—spare him, judge!
He hath no father—and is all to me!”

Spacious and beautiful edifices appropriated to the Centumviri, the judges of the Roman Empire, over whom, by right of station, the Prætor always presided.

Diomede paused not in his stern reply:
“The hordes of Hæmus may learn wisdom, then,
And virtue and refinement from his speech—
For he is banished—I reverse no doom!”
The lictors' fasces o'er the supplicant
In haughty scorn went on.—Another voice
Assailed the Prætor: “To a cruel lord
The quæstor sold my husband for the tax
Ye laid upon our hut—and now he groans
In bondage, while his famished children die!”
“Why am I thus benetted on my way?
I serve the senate and inflict their laws.
What is 't to me who thralls or suffers thrall?
Let him atone! why should he scorn to toil?”
“Justice, Lord Governor!” a third implored.
“Thy favourite Vibius hath cast deep shame
Upon my household, and my daughter's wrongs
Exact redress; not more than this from Rome
Banished the Tarquins and decemviri!”
“Ha! dost thou threat, Plebeian? Vibius hears
Thy fierce arraignments with a smile—no doubt,
Some twilight kisses in the summer glade—
Pressed palms—clasped bosoms—dewy lips—no more!
And thou wouldst mock the majesty of law,
And wed thy base condition with the blood
Of my Patrician friend! away with thee!
Methinks, Vesuvian fume hath filled the brains
Of all the city—and the boiling earth
Bubbled its yeast into your grovelling hearts.
On, Lictors! on—we tarry from the feast!”
In robes of white, festooned by mingled flowers,
And ivy wreaths or crowns of amethyst,
The Prætor's guests, on crimson couches, lay

118

Around the ivory tables, on which stood,
'Mid choicest viands and the costliest wines,
A silver shrine and images of gods.
Pictures—the prodigies of perfect skill—
Hung round the hall of banquet, and to men,
The imitators of divinities,
Made venial every vice. In plenitude
Of power and treachery, their holiest Jove,
Masked to dishonour and betray, achieved
Shame's triumph, and the wanton canvas lived
With Mycon's impure thought; there Bacchus stood,
Gloating o'er lozelries and revel routs,
As Zeuxis drew the king of catamites;
Venus, the earthborn, 'mid voluptuous nymphs,
Reclined on myrtle beds with swimming eyes,
And sunbeam lips dewmoist, and wanton swell
Of bosom far too beautiful, and limbs
Half hid in amorous flowers! and ancient fame
For matchless charm of genius here had shrined
Parrhasius' name! while Passion's maddening heart
Burned o'er the walls, and rival statues stood
Beneath; and there the last wild feast was held
Pompeii's toil and tears e'er gave to Guilt.

All the ancient sculptors and painters, inimitable as they were in the execution of their conceptions, faithfully followed, perhaps led the blush-disowning taste of the times; and every banquet-hall and chamber exhibited indubitable testimonials of their uses.—Mycon, Xeuxis and Parrhasius, it is hardly necessary to say, were gifted and celebrated artists.

The knelling slaves in goblets wrought from gems
Served acrid wine—on gold plate, bitter herbs
To zest the appetite; and, glancing up
His haughty eyes, burning with hate and scorn,
Chafed Diomede upon his vassals flung
The venom of his darkly brooding mind.
“Be thy locks shorn as fits thine office, slave!
Or I may brand the theta on thy brow
Less undefined, and make the dust thy food!
Companian servitude, methinks, outgrows
All wantonness. Ho, Midas! thou art skilled,

119

I hear, in tintinnaculating verse,
And lispest snatches of philosophy!
Be master of thy safety! I may lose
A pampered slave erelong—or, at the best,
The tintinnaculus may shame thy clink! —
—Be merry, friends!—what tidings from the throne?
Ye have beheld the Temple of the Peace
Filled with the spoils of rebel Jews, where all
Treasure their gold and gems—a trophied fame!
The gorgeous fabric is a coffer! Rome
Wears all earth's glories in her mighty Crown.
What think ye, then? a sackcloth skeleton
Wanders and mutters on the Palatine
That what he calls Jehovah's wrath will burst,
And in thick blackness bury all this pomp,—
Making Earth's Mistress a stark mendicant!”
Loud laughed the parasites, and wanton gibes
Were cast on Jew and Gentile; then the feast
Of rarest luxuries before them glowed,
And, (bright libations poured to Vesta first)
The beaded wine was quaffed from goblets brimm'd.
“Oh, I forget!” said Diomede, the light
Of the delirious revel in his eyes,
As in the opal radiance of the cup
They glowed, and glanced, with an exulting pride,
'Mid costliest viands from the mead and main—
“The fairest sport awaits us ere the games!
In the Campanian legion, at the siege
Of that black Golgotha the traitors called
Jerusalem, a soldier served with skill
Whom Titus made Decurion: him the plague
Of the new Heresey, and Love, at once,
Infected; and, abandoning the host,
He sought elysium in the caverns here,
Till Thraso found his philosophic haunt,
Where with his Hebrew Paphian he was wont
In hermit guise to play the liberal.

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He dies today; but for the present mirth
His tongue may vibrate.—Ho!—The Nazarene!”

The Greek letter θ (theta) was burned upon the foreheads of slaves as an indelible sign of proprietorship; hence they were called literati—a term strictly applicable to some less ancient and better conditioned persons than the captive barbarians of buried times.

The Prætor may, perhaps, be allowed a pun. Tintinnaculus may mean a public whipper—an inflictor of the bastinado—and jingling rhymer; lashes and verses both may be melodious.

The slaves led Pansa from the portico
Fettered yet fearless, for the time of dread
Had passed from him, and in his hopeless cell
The Paraclete illumed his darkened soul,
And panoplied his heart to dare his doom.
Thus, as he entered, loud the Prætor spake:
“Hail, Gladiator! did thy felon god,
Thy scourged and crucified divinity,
Instruct thee in the sabre's use against
The shaggy monarch of Numidian hills?
Art thou argute and apt to lunge and fence
Adroit and firm of nerve to meet or shun
The salutations of the Desert King?
Lucania and Calabria have poured out
Their thousands to behold thy feats to day;
And, gay as bridal banqueters, they throng
The arcades and the vomitories now
To weep the Mauretanian's martyrdom—
For thou, no doubt, wilt triumph and receive
The twice ten thousand acclamations sent
To honour thy proud valour, as is meet.
Oh, thou shalt be anointed like thy Christ,
And not with vulgar nard by courtesans,
But ceroma and myron! owest thou not
Thanks to the Roman Mercy for this care?”
“A Roman's Mercy! every spot of earth,
Your banners have shed plagues on, can attest
With shrieks what mercy Rome has given earth,”
Said Pansa, dauntless in the cause of Truth.
“Yet ye shall never feel the love ye boast
Until the slaves ye trample, torture, slay,
After the unanswered vengeance of your will,
Shall learn that they are human and awake
To imitate the mercy of their lords!
Perchance—'twas in my native land—I know
Thee and thy fathers, Prætor! though thou sitst
In pride of judgment now—thine ancestors

121

Were suttlers of the Carthagenian camp,
When mine called freedom to the Sacred Mount;—
Thou mayst have heard the tale of Sicily,
Or read that Spartacus withstood the hosts—”
“Ay, traitor and apostate! ere an hour
To gnash thy perjured tongue!” said Diomede,
Dreading his victim's speech, for he had lived
In terror of the knowledge of his birth,
Yet howling curses. “Ay, a million died
In fit atonement of their rebel crime.”
“Crime? that the name of Liberty should be
The burning heart's perpetuated curse!
Oh, what can thrive in thraldom but revenge!
The thong, the goad, the brand of shame—the sense
Of ignominy, dreading to uplift
Its startled eye—what should they bring? and what
Must be the fruits of such a poison tree?
Condition is but chance, and none are born
With manacles upon their limbs! most crimes
Corrupted power makes such, and men submit
Because Despair hath forged the tyrant's chain.
The unjust laws of violent men are crimes,
Treasons to kingdoms, blasphemies to heaven;
And they, who willingly obey such laws,
Should share the punishment of them that made
God's creatures slaves to Devils. This is crime!”
“Now by the sceptred Three who rule the shades!
Can his own heretics arraign his doom?
Such uttered doctrines would convulse the world,
And even here shall not be spoken—cease!
Thou cursed Christian! wouldst thou rouse my slaves?”
“Thy slaves! thou slaveborn tyrant!” Pansa cried.
“No realm of earth is slavery's; I would bid
The dust be spirit, and the brute be man!
I came not hither by my will—I am
Thy victim, not thy vassal—and if Truth
Offends, command me hence, or argue here!
But in prætorium, dungeon Mamertine,

122

Chains, exile or the arena—thought and speech
Are mine; and from my country and my faith
I have not failed to learn the rights of man!
From the far hour when vestal Ilia sinned
And suffered, and Rome's walls were laid in blood,
Have human hearts had peace, whether among
Helvetian icehills or the Lybian wastes?
Conquest was born of carnage and the spoil
Of kingdoms to a hydra faction given,
While sybilline revealments—Numa's thoughts—
With old religion sanctified the deeds
Of desolators of the shuddering earth.
Scarce e'en for hours through all Rome's centuries
Hath the caduceus met the eye of day,
Or the ancilia idle in the fane
Of Rome's Wargod, whose herald is despair,
Hung: but far gleaming in the torrid sun,
'Mid standards floating to the winds of heaven,
On all the earth have cast the plagues of hell.
Boundless, perpetual and almighty Fear
Hath ever been your God of gods—rocks, caves,
Woods, grottoes, lakes and mountains are the realms
Of Dis or Jupiter's elysian fields.
And wisely named the sophist and the bard
The floods of fabled Erebus—for Rome
Baptized her sons in Phlegethons of blood,
Cheering war vigils with Cocyti songs.
Yon, by the Tyrrhene waters, on whose shores
The banished Scipio died in solitude:
The tyrant raised his hundred banquet halls,
Tritoli's stews and Baiæ's palaces;
The cannibal patrician daily slew
Captives to feed the lampreys of his lake;
And Rome's all-daring Orator, proscribed
By princely friendship in his peril, 'neath

123

Antony's vengeance fell, a martyr;—there,
The astute creators of your creed have feigned
Your mortal hell and heaven—in Cumæ's caves,
And Puteoli's naptha mines—amid
The beautiful Pausylipo, whose waves
And woods in sweet airs and fair suns rejoice.
And maniac yells of gorgon sybils are
Elysium's oracles, and Zephyr's voice
The music of the blest; and loftiest minds
Worship, in show, impostures they disdain,
The phantoms of the fashion, that their spoil
May be the richer booty. What reck they,
The masters of men's minds, who guides the spheres?
A myriad gods or none to them are one,
For all are nothing but fear's phantasies.
Sinris or Sciron less obeyed earth's laws
Than they the edicts of almighty Jove.
They blaspheme heaven to win the fame of earth.
The all-believing, as their priests ordain,
Adore the Demon through his daughter—Sin.
Ye know not Truth in fealty or faith—
And seas of lustral waters could not cleanse
Your tearstained and bloodsprinkled robes of guilt!”

The wand of Mercury was the sign of peace; the caduceus was, therefore, seldom out of the hand of the lord of larceny.

The Cento Camarelle of Nero and Piscina Mirabile (wonderful fishpond) of Lucullus, even in ruins, are objects of amazement to less abominable despots of modern times. Baiæ was the most voluptuous of all the voluptuous resorts of the Romans, and the baths of Tritoli were necessary to restore the patricians after Falernian excesses. Here Lucullus fed his fish on human flesh—here Cicero perished—by the permission of his friend Octavius.

“By Hercules, the earth-cleaver! thy bold speech,
Decurion once, but now demoniac Jew!
Forebodes disaster to my king of beasts!”
Said Diomede, beneath a mocking scorn
Veiling the wrath he could not quell nor speak.
“Am I the patron of thy sole renown?
And doth thine evil creed teach thanklessness?
I do immortalize thy robber skill,
Learned in meet skirmishes with vulture flocks
And hordes of wolves to win the dead man's gold,
And, with barbaric rivals, to the knights
Of Latium and Apulia thee present.
Thou art a lion-darer, and needst not
The famed Lanista's discipline to lift
The woodking's heart upon thy sabre point,
For thou hast learned the sleight of fence, no fear,
From Galilean trainers, and hast wrought,

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In thy maraudings, miracles of skill!
Rejoice in thine ovation, Nazarene!
Thou art the Sylla of the games today;
The Samnite mockfight and the chariot race,
Myrmillo and the Gaul, the net and mail—
All shall give place to thee and Nubia's beast.
And while thy glory soars, sweet Venus wraps
Her arms around thy love, and sunset melts
On the pavilion of her soft delight,
Where she doth wanton in Love's revelries,
And kisses from her roselight lips reward
My service in the honour of thy name—
Be grateful, renegade! thy bride is so!”
“Mock on, Blood Drinker! Mariamne mocks
Thee and thy wanton minions, wheresoe'er
Beneath the Orcus of your power she dwells.
Seek not through her dominion o'er my heart!
She hears a voice sweeter than Memnon's, feigned
To breathe daybreak farewells when o'er the blue
Of lustrous morn Aurora's roselights gushed;
She feels the viewless presence of her God—
Earth has no power upon her stainless soul!
Therefore, again, I tell thee, Rome shall wail
For all her havocs, treasons, spoils and plagues.
Oh, every empire of her vast domains
Hath its aceldama, where voices howl
Anathemas the future shall fulfil.
All power is venal through her fated realms.
The rebel's Rubicon o'ersweeps the land,
And all its waves are blood! proscription's code,
Taught by the triumvir, is the only law
Left by unanswering Cæsar unannulled.
How many ages with their agonies
Have perished since the people had a choice
Of their oppressors? What's the ordeal, now,
Censors and consuls must endure? and where
The simple wreath that stories tested deeds?
All the sweet shadowings of old phantasie,
The enchantments of religion, false and vain,
But glowing, in its earliest dreams, with love—

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Arion and the dolphin, Orpheus
And hymning groves and awful Dis defied
By passion in bereavement, daring death;
The sungod's pæans o'er the Cyclades,
The charmed illusions of the Blessed Isles,
The mystery and rapture of high thought,
That from the sacred porticoes and banks
Of beautiful Ilissus poured its light
O'er Tyber and the haunts of Tusculum—
All, now, have vanished—and the powers of air,
Your fathers deemed their seraphim, receive
From atheist scoffers of the time defiled
Derision; and emasculated vice
Gloats over memories e'en Pan might loathe.
—Breathe not a hope that vengeance will forget!
A darker doom than his, whose savage eyes
Glared from the marshes of Minturnæ —comes;
A destiny more terrible than his
Who died blaspheming in corruption's arms,
Shameless in shame, at Puteoli—lours!
The voice of judgment hath pronounced on sin
Extinction—and the Avengers are abroad!
From the Ister and the Rha, the stormlashed shores
Of the Codanus and Verginian sea—
From glacier steep and torrid crag—from vale
And wilderness—city and waste—shall rush
Devourers; and a thousand years shall weep
In darkness o'er her desolated pomp,
And thousand times ten thousand vassal hearts
Live without love and die without regret,
Boasting their bondage, and in titles won
By pandering to an earth-fiend's lust, exult,
And call their shame patrician privilege!
The Goth hath trod the citadel; the Gaul,
The Scythian, Vandal, Ostrogoth and Hun,
Shall reap the harvest of her ruin! Time
Wafts on the terrible revenge—the doom
Challenged by centuries of guilt!—I hear
The tocsin and the gong—the clarion blast,

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The roar of savage millions in their wrath—
Barbarian yells like billows hurled o'er rocks—
And where the Labarum of glory floats
Triumphant now—I see a hoar head crowned
By the three diadems of earth, hell, heaven—
And the bright land of plenty trod by hordes
Of bandits, famished peasants, coward chiefs—
All of Rome buried save the tyranny!”

Marius. Sylla died at Puteoli, as Herod afterwards perished, of a most loathesome disease and in the midst of debaucheries.

“Well done, apostate! if thy sword rains blows
As doth thy tongue, words—woe—woe to my beast!
Oh, thou with the Cumæan prophetess
Hast hiddenly consorted and pored on
The almagest of Ptolemy till stars
And meteors have become the ministers
Of thy distempered fashioning of fate!”
Sardonic smiles o'er revel's swollen lips
Passed slowly, and the Prætor's jest had now
E'en from the venal sycophants small praise;
For crime in common natures, once unveiled,
Startles the practiser, and fear becomes
His hell, o'ermastering his daunted heart.
“And thou art thrilled by the sublime, and all
The grandeur of thy destiny o'ercomes
Thy sense with its vast radiance! yet shrink not—
Thou with the wretch that fired the Ephesian fane,
Empedocles and Barcochab, shalt live
In the wild tale of endless infamy,
Drawn in a prophet's robes and mural crown!
And my embraces shall solace the grief
Of thy rare Hebrew Venus, though thou diest,
And, if in dungeon thou art yet reserved,
A conqueror now, to grace the future games,
To her I will rehearse the tale and laud
Thy victory—and 't is hard but beauty sheds
A guerdon on my service!—Dost thou smile?”

Eratostratus, to immortalize himself, set fire to the temple of Ephesian Diana on the night Macedonian Alexander was born; Empedocles, to persuade men he was a god, threw himself into Mount Ætna, but the volcano cast out his slipper and betrayed him; Barcochab, who called himself the Son of a Star, but whom his countrymen named the Son of a Lie, was one of the innumerable false prophets of that strange, rebellious and guilty people—the Jews.

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“Ay, that thou talk'st of future games, doomed lord!
And utterest thy revenge in mockeries!
Yon sun, 'mid brazen heavens and sulphur clouds,
Now hastening to the horizon, ne'er shall rise
On the Campanian cities; palace and shrine,
The battlemented fortress, festive dome,
Palæstra, amphitheatre, and hall
Of judgment wrested to the despot's ends—
The household hearth—the stores of merchandise—
And many a lofty impious heart shall lie,
Shrouded and sepulchred in seas of flame,
Ere morrow breaks, beneath the burning deep.
And ages shall depart—and meteors glare.
And constellations vanish in the void
Of the pale azure—and a thousand times
Earth's generations perish—ere the beams
Of morn shall light the cities of the Dead!
Quaff, feast, sing, laugh, exult and mock! ye eat
The Lectisternian banquet —to the dead
Pour out libations—gorge the appetite—
Madden the brain—let Phrygian flutes inspire
Your latest joys—be merry with the storm
That howls e'en now along the Fire-Mount's depths!
For me, the martyr trusts his martyred God!
And not for all your grandeur—nor for earth's,
Would he partake your banquet and your doom!”

The funeral festival, the last of all earthly indulgencies.

“Away! away! slaves! drag the traitor hence!
And, with the gladiators in the cells,
Let him await the combat of the beast!
My spirit wearies of his raven croak.
—So, now for better mirth! and yet the shouts
Of hurrying multitudes unto the games
Invoke my presence and the dial marks
The hour of carnage—do ye cry for blood?
By Jove! ye shall not lack, for never gazed
Imperial Nero on the sea of flame,
That surged along the shrieking capital,
With such a rapture as my soul shall feel
To watch the lingering agonies and breathe

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The last deep death-sighs and slow muttered groans
Of that accursed despiser of my power!
Come, friends! the people shall be pampered now.
One cordial cup to vengeance—then away!
The chariot races wait my word—and shouts
Rise like the roar of ocean o'er the hills,
While in the ghastly hell light of the mount,
Beneath whose deeps the Titans groan, the steeds
Caparisoned upon the towers uprear
Their heads, struggling to spring upon their course;
And yon vast cloud of faces through the gloom
Looks with a ruthlessness that fits my mood.
—Break up the banquet! let the games begin!”

It was the office of the Ædile to superintend the erection of the public buildings and to supervise all public entertainments; but it was the prerogative of the Prætor to preside, if he pleased, on all memorable and solemn occasions. Although it was customary for an inferior officer to direct the gladiatorial combats, yet, in this instance, the tumultuary passions of the Prætor led him to assume a station which would enable him, at least, to insure the death of Pansa whom he had so much reason to envy and hate.

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CANTO III.

ARGUMENT.

The Pompeiians prepare to attend the games of the amphitheatre. Cruelty has become universal custom. Chariot races. The trumpet sounds, the athlete and agonistes enter, and the gladiatorial games begin. The first fatal combat. The second combat between a Briton and a Gaul. The summons for the Christians. Procession of the Heathen Priests around the arena. Adoration rendered to the Phidian Statue of Jove. A Christian, overwhelmed by mortal terror, apostatizes, and is reserved to endure the contempt of the Paynims, whom in his soul he abhorred. Pansa brought forth from the dungeon to contend with the African Lion. His appearance in the arena. His apostrophe to the Statue of Jove. The ejaculations of the audience, who denounce the vengeance of the gods on the blasphemer of their power. Pansa's reply. The volcano begins its ravages. The famished lion let loose upon Pansa. His speech over the crouching and fearful beast. Torrents of lava rush down the sides of Vesuvius and the ampitheatre is strewn with ashes, cinders, and fiery hail. The shrieks of multitudes rushing from Herculaneum destroyed by deluges of burning lava. Pansa's warning. The escape of the many thousand spectators of the games through the vomitories of the ampitheatre. Instinctive flight of the fearstruck lion. The action of the volcano described. Dialogue between the Prætor and Pansa alone in the ampitheatre. The tyrant and the intended victim fly forth along the desolated streets of Pompeii, the one to secure his treasures, the other to seek Mariamne. The Christians meet and fly towards the sea. The vision of the Flamen. Pansa, Mariamne, the Virgin of Pompeii, and the Aged Christian embark upon the agitated and discolored sea. The Death Cries of Pompeii. The ruin consummated. Farewell of the Christians. Description of their refuge among the mountains of Switzerland. The martyrs of Paganism become the Patriots of Christendom.

Thou Giant Phantom of the Old Renown!
Oh, mightiest spirit of the merciless!
How like a Demon from hell's lava throne,
Thou risest on my eye, as I behold
The spectres of the Past, and paint their deeds!
Up from the abyss of ages—from the Night
Of Earth's extinguished generations—rise
The beings of an elder world to be
The theme in song of one whom all the earth,
And all it hath or ever can inherit,
Ne'er can solace for all the woes of Time.

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Now o'er the heaven of Thought the glimmering forms
Of empires rent and centuries past career—
Now giant Shadows of the Buried move
Around me—beautiful and haughty forms—
Waked from the dust of ages to endure,
Again, the vanities of earth's best joys,
The certainties of evil—(mind restores
The dead)—and havoc cries ascend the heavens
While to Pompeii's waiting thousands, groans
Of the convulsed volcano give reply.
The feeble and the famishing and slaves,
Whose toil a thousand years will not reveal,
Alone are seen upon the public ways;
And every face is chronicled with care,
Loathing the lingering lapse of wasted breath,
The purposeless continuance of low toil
And want and thankless servitude, amid
The meshes of a wan and dim despair.
All else find pastime in the savageness
Of games where smiles and shouts are bought with blood.
Quæstor, ædile, senator and knight,
Censor and flamen, vestal and courtesan,
Noble and commoner, commingling, meet
Amid the horrors of that final day,
Whose shuddering sunlight to Pompeii bids
Farewell—through centuries of Night interred,—
In torture to seek rapture, in the pangs
Of gladiators gored and Christians gashed
And mangled to proclaim their ecstacies!
The dicer in the midst suspends his skill,
Tested by spoil wrung from the heart of want,
To witness and applaud the guiltier tests
Of science; and the banqueter forsakes
The wanton wassail of the flesh to seek
The richer revel of the bandit mind;
And spotless vestals the electric fire
Of Vesta's shrine desert and through their veils
Gaze, from the podium of patrician pride,

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On sinless blood poured o'er the trampled sand
From the hot veins of causeless strife; the judge
Bears from the Forum the remorseless thoughts,
Which, petrified by usage, have become
His Nature, never thrilled by mercy's voice.
The matron, whom dishonour dares not name;
The virgin in her beauty angel pure;
The warrior, who, amid the Torrid Zone
Or icehills of Helvetia, ne'er had learned
The strategy of pale retreat, nor paused
In the swift triumph of his bannered march;
The merchant, whose integrity no thought
Assails; the poet from his dreams of eld,
Elfland and wizardry and fabled gods;
Sages, by their disciples canonized,
Who from Saturnian visions, feigning power
Without oppression and republics stained
By no corruptions, bosomed 'mid the bowers
Of the Evening Isles or Orcades—arise
To look upon the agonistes' face
Imaging hell, and with the circus' shouts
Mingle the fiats of philosophy!
And augurs to perfect their oracles
Come now to gaze upon the cloven heart
And watch the spasms of Nature's utter throes.
Pompeii's might and affluence await
The Prætor's voice, and the vast fabric gleams
With million glances and with million cries
Echoes, as from the Podium now the word
Of Power commands—“Lo! let the games begin!”

What is now the orchestra—then, the envied place of power and privilege.

However the sages of antiquity condemned the cruel sports of their countrymen, they seldom hesitated to witness and thereby sanction the atrocities which were perpetrated in every amphitheatre. Like the bullfights of modern Spain, the gladiatorial contests (the death struggle of the agonistes and athlete) always attracted the presence and enjoyment of the most learned, opulent and famed of the Romans.

Cheered by the charioteers, who proudly stand,
Reining their fury, round the battlement
Rush the barbed chargers, like the samiel cloud
O'er Zara when the tropic burns with death;

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And breathless watchers, who, upon the race,
Risk many a talent, when they would deny
The alms of one poor obolus to woe,
Hang waiting sudden triumph or despair.
One wins, the prelude closes, and the host,
Like winds amid a wilderness of leaves,
Sink down and to the dread arena turn.
The trumpet summons—awful silence floats
Over the multitudes who fix their gaze
Upon the portals of the cells beneath.
They open, and the gladiators move
Round the thronged circle to display their forms,
Athlete and strong, and with the voice of death
Salute the ruthless Genius of the Games.
From many a kingdom thralled they come—from realms
Spoiled by the locust hordes of Rome; the Gaul,
The Briton and the Thracian and the Frank,
The Wehrmanne and the Hebrew and the Celt,
Every clime's vanquished—every age's wreck,
All codes and creeds, strangers or friends, contend
Here in assassin strife to please their lords.
One deep wild shout like breaking billows swells,
Hailing the victims of the carnage fiend,
And on the sands two stalwart forms alone
Remain; and now Sigalion, voiceless god
Of Memphian mysteries, of all the host
Seems sovereign, such a quivering stillness hangs
Over the thousands, who await the fray
With eyes electric as the ether fires,
Lips sealed by passion, hearts, like lava, still
In their intensest rapture! Bickering swords
Clash quickly, yet, with matchless skill, each blow
Or thrust falls on the flashing steel; and long,
With fixed eyes dropping not their folded lids,
And marble lips, and brows whereon the veins
Burn like the stormbolt o'er ice pinnacles,
And heaving bosoms, naked in their strength,

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And limbs in every attitude of grace
And power—they struggle, not in hope of fame,
To win dominion, or achieve revenge;
But by their toil and agony and blood
To amuse the languid masters of the world.
From the free forest where he walked a king,
From his hearth's altar where he stood a priest,
Hither, in manacles, was guiltless man
Dragged for a mockery and gory show!
An erring glance—and o'er a prostrate form
Of beauty stands the unrejoicing foe,
Sternly receiving from the merciless
The still command to slay! and now he lifts
His serried sabre purpled to the hilt
With that heart's blood he might have deeply loved;
One groan—a gasp—a shudder—and a soul
Hath gone to join the myriad witnesses
Who in the winds of northern wilds invoke
The Desolators to avenge their doom.
The Avengers hear, and cry aloud ‘Revenge!’

Morituri te salutant! (the dead salute thee) were the melancholy words of prophecy uttered by all condemned to fight in the arena.

While o'er the sands they drag the dead, and strew
The place of carnage with uncrimsoned dust,
Mirth reigns and voices mingle everywhere,
Lauding the skill of the barbarian's strife,
The picturesque agony—the lingering gasp—
And awful struggle of the dying slave.
Some talk of Titus, deeming him too just,
Gentle and generous, while conspiracy
Mutters Domitian and Locasta's cup.
And some relate, looking upon the mount,
Traditions of volcanoes direr far
Than ought that menace men in latter days;
The depths of mountains boiling—valleys filled
With o'erthrown hills—and islands through the floods
Of ocean, apparitions, to the stars
Casting the torrid terrors of their birth.
Some say, the Prætor, when the lustrum ends,

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Will govern Syria, and the sage surmise
That confiscation in Campania bought
The Senate's will that he should rule the East.
Wine, love, the dance, war, wealth, ambition, hate,
Earthquake, plague, priesthood, revel, rival sects
In faith or knowledge, yesterday's delights,
Tomorrow's deeds—each, all, in various speech,
Absorb the mind until the trumpet sounds.

Titus is supposed to have been poisoned by his brother Domitian—who was himself finally assassinated. Locasta was the female fiend of Colchian drugs.

Again, scarce breathing stillness falls—again
The gladiators enter, and the strife,
Protracted but to close in death, goes on.
A Briton, from the land of Caradoc,
Whose daily breath had been Plinlimmon's breeze,
Beneath the weapon of the Gaul pours out
Blood glowing with the soul of liberty,
And dies, to Druid altars in the realm
Of Mona, breathing back his heart, whose voice
Andraste in her home of vengeance, hears.
Triumphant shouts and quick expiring shrieks,
Dread silence and hurrahs and agonies
Succeed each mortal fray; and oft the sands,
Dabbled by gory fingers, trampled o'er
By feet that fail beneath the crushing strength
Of the grim victors—freshly again are strewn
To bury blood which sunk not into earth,
But from beholding heaven drew down the wrath
That made almighty Rome, to every land,
A curse, a mockery and a shuddering jest.
“Three spirits wander by the spectre stream!
Are the great people glutted with the gore?”
Said Diomede, for Pansa's trial hour
With an exulting patience waiting long.
“Sound for the Christians and the desert king!
It darkens hurriedly and lava hail
Hurtles amid the ashes! we may rob
The God of Triumph of the Apostates' blood,

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Or lose the rapture of their agonies.
Throw wide the portals! let the Christians come!”

Or Andate, the British goddess of victory and retribution; to whom sacrifices were offered amid the Llwyn and on the cromleche of the Druids.

The mitred ministers of idol rites
Come on in bannered pomp and conscious power,
Circling the arena; and the lictor guard
Followed with Pansa, and another form
That shrunk and faltered as ten thousand eyes
Searched out the fear that harrowed his pale heart.
Slow to the wail of Lydian flutes and blast
Of clarions breathing death, with looks of awe
Feigned and drooped eyes of mystery, around
Moved the procession; and the Præsul's gaze
Wandered, in haughty majesty, along
The risen and revering host he blessed.
Few think, for thought is born of pain, and night
Hath not repose, nor day, free bliss to him
Whose spirit 's rapt; yet all can feel and fear,—
For that is flesh—the earthborn shadows cast
Around them by their destinies; and they,
Who dwell in earth's abundance and from domes,
Stately and glistering, issue to receive
Guerdons of gold for oracles of wrath,
Illume not, save with fires of hell, the gloom
That curtains the black portal of the grave.
Virtue needs no interpreter, and vice,
Like palace tombs, mocks its own turpitude,
When painted o'er with saintly imageries;
But Faith, that searches not, dreads every dream,
Becoming to itself a hell, and seeks
Heaven through the pontiff, who, in secret doubt
Of joys elysian, craves earth's richest gifts,
And at his votary's phantom banquet smiles.

The chief priest of the Salii—ecclesiastical guardians of the Ancylia.

Before the image—(wrought by Phidias, when
His faithless country unto rival realms
Banished his genius)—of the supreme Jove,
The Præsul paused, and with adoring zeal

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Cast incense on the altar; and soft wreaths
Of perfumed vapour round the eagle's beak,
The lifted sceptre and most godlike brow,
(The artist's mind was the sole deity)
Curled as in homage, and one blended voice
Burst from the thousands—“Supreme Jove is God!”
Then all the priests from every fane and all
The acolytes and soldiers incense flung,
And the proud statue proudly seemed to smile.
Next, bent and trembling, blind and dumb with fear,
A Christian came (from noisome catacombs
Dragged forth to prove his feebleness of faith,)
Like the great Pisan, who from midnight heavens
Could summon the eternal stars and fill
His angel spirit with their glories, yet
Abjured, in fear, before his bigot foes,
All the magnificence of thought, and knelt,
A hoar apostate, in the dust, to win
The lingering torture of a few sad hours,
And live—a monument of mind dethroned!
Onward he came with tottering childhood's step,
And with a face to all but terror dead.
He loved the light, adored the truth, yet dared
Meet not the perils it revealed; and now
He clung unto the altar and gasped out
His panic breath, and gazed beseeching round
In utter horror's wilderment, and groped
Amid the shrine lights for the frankincense,
With quivering fingers hurriedly; but Fear
Had quenched soul, feeling, sense—and, as his hand
Moved o'er the marble with a mindless aim,
And the wild pantings of his bosom spread
Hues ghastlier than death's along his cheek,
A stern centurion, with a frown of scorn
And sickened pity, from the censer took
The idol's odour and upon the palm
Of the apostate threw it with a curse;
And ere the lapse of thought, his worship flashed

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On the stern aspect of the demon god!
And, onward borne triumphantly, he passed
To meet, through every hour of haunted time,
Derision for denial of his Lord!

Galileo. See Brewster's life of that great and weak man, for an account of his sad recantation of his magnificent doctrines and discoveries.

Hate on his brow and in his heart revenge,
Diomede glared upon the lofty form
That now before the awful statue stood.
No pride, lightening defiance, in his eye,
Dared the despair of fortune; no wild faith
Waited for miracles; but there he stood,
Beautiful in the magnificence of Truth,
Before the haughty scorners of chained kings,
The mightiest and most merciless of earth,
His thought above the proudest of them all,
And on the countless eyes, that watched him, looked
With the sublime serenity unknown
To natures weak or terrible as hours
And their events decree. No joy, no pain
Changed the fixed features of a calm resolve;
No glance betrayed a triumph in his fate,
Or doubt that might avert his martyrdom.
Upon the still crowd rose his gentle eyes
Blue and translucent as the heaven, as erst
The sungod, gliding up the glacier steeps
Of Hæmus, o'er the tossed Ægean cast
His deathless smile among the Cyclades.
Pure in his faith and passionless in truth,
He never sought to seal with agony
The creed of the Anointed, but, instead,
Shunned Paynimrie's resort and dwelt in wilds,
Distrusting the infirmities that oft
O'ersway the spirit; but the fated hour
Had not passed by—the one deep love, that chained
His heart to earth, was parted, it might be
To welcome him to paradise, if not,
To meet his welcome there; and now, beyond
The tyrant passions of the world, he stood
Dauntless 'mid heathendom, and thus, in tones
Strong as the ocean's, in whose utter deeps

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The Alps may sink, yet leave vast deeps above,
He to the image of the Thunderer spake.
“Thou breathless Mocker of the humble mind!
Thou Idol Image of remorseless power!
Shall being, quickened by the glowing blood,
In worship bow to thee, a sculptured block?
Shall intellect, illumed and magnified,
Whose home is ether, whose immortal hope
Is deathless glory, render unto thee
The adoration of the Deity?
Oh, how should men be just when they have throned
Amid the universe, o'erswaying all,
A supreme vengeance—demon deified?
Whose common and commended deeds would crown
A mortal with the curses of the world,
And round him spread a solitude of hate
Haunted alone by grovelling infamies!
Well wast thou fabled—son of Earth and Time!
For all impurities and ills are thine,
Transformed despoiler! e'en thy votaries mock
Yet mimic thee, as well they may, the work
Of their own lusts! Canst thou call forth one star
Of all that blossom in the boundlessness
Of that undying heaven unknown to thee?
Will Mazzaroth or Mythra soar or sink?
Or terrible behemoth leave his depths?
Or the proud desert bird feel nature's love?
Because thou bidst? doth thine own eagle fear
The power men quail at? or the tempest float
Along Olympus, hurling arrowy fires,
In reverence to thy hest? yet why is this?
Methinks, I wander back to Pagan faith,
Thus questioning the hewn marble, which portrays
The apotheosis of man's worst revenge!
Beneath the unimaged, unimagined God,
Who hath no temple but infinity,
Where the great multitude of stars adore,
Flying along their glorious spheres—I stand
Here in thy home, (it fits thy nature well,)

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And, without awe or exultation, dare
Deny thee incense, prayer, love, fear and faith!”
Not louder in its burning temple roared
The dread volcano when the firestorm came,
And earth's abysses quivered in their wrath,
Than now the voices of the phrenzied host.
“Tear the blasphemer! let the wild beasts forth
To rend his limbs and gnash his living heart!
Impale the accursed! chain him within the fire!
Saw him asunder! cast his viper tongue
Into the serpents' den to poison them!”
Thus thousands shrieked—yet now the shoutings changed.
“Hark! Jove the Avenger answers! lo! the heavens
With shuddering clouds are filled, and lightnings leap
Through their gored bosoms, and the thunder shaft
Bickers along the air! great Jove beholds
And hears—now wither, thou blaspheming slave!”
Awed yet untrembling, Pansa calm replied.
“Ye hear no thunder—but Destruction's howl!
Ye see no lightning—but the lava glare
Of desolation sweeping o'er your pride!
Death is beneath, around, above, within
All who exult to inflict it on my heart,
And ye must meet it, fly when, where ye will,
For in the madness of your cruelties
Ye have delayed till every hope is dead.
Let the doom come! our faiths will soon be tried.
Gigantic spectres from their shadowy thrones,
With ghastly smiles to welcome ye, arise.
The Pharaohs and Ptolemies uplift
Their glimmering sceptres o'er thee—bidding all
Bare their dark bosoms to the Omniscient God:
And every strange and horrid mythos waits
To fold ye in the terrors of its dreams.
—For thee, proud Prætor! throned on human hearts
And warded by thy cohorts from the arm
Of violated virtue and spurned Right,
And suffering's madness—though thy regal tomb

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Cepolline proudly stand, thy scattered dust
Shall never sleep within it; years shall fade
And nations perish and ten thousand kings,
With all their thrice ten thousand victories,
Rest in oblivion, and the very earth
Change with the changes of her children, yet
The empty mansion of thy vain renown
Shall stand that generations unconceived
May ask the deeds of him who was cast out
By vengeance from his father's sepulchres!”
Diomede's voice, like a wild blast, went forth.
“Let loose the wild beasts on him! why are we
Thus left to bear the traitor's arrogance?
The convict's scorn? the gladiator's speech?
Let loose the only foe that fits his faith;
The Mauretanian's arguments are meet
And suit his mystic cabala. Throw wide
The cells and let the lion make reply.”
“The outer corridors,” the Lanista said,
“Are filled with ashes, and within the vaults
Arches have fallen and no power can ope
The portal of the Atlas beast, my lord!”
“Bring a ballista, then, and shatter it!
For by the eternal Fates and all the Gods!
This darer and blasphemer shall not scape.
Let none depart! why, would the people shun
The luxury of this despiser's pangs,
Or doth his airy talk infect your souls
And sway your thoughts by oracles of woe?
Spare Nazarenes! who would o'erturn the creed
And code of Rome, and on the throne of earth
Exalt the image of a felon God!
Be wise, stern, ruthless, men!—so, dash to earth
The portal and goad on the savage king!”
Still by Jove's altar standing, Pansa looked
Upon the fluctuating host around,

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Some with fear trembling, some with baffled hate,
Some silent in excess of passion, some
Most earnest to behold the game of death,
And thus, like a cathedral knell, he spake.
“I show ye mercy none will show to me!
Fly! ere the banners of the galleys wave
Beyond the cape! fly, ere the earth and air
Become the hell that fiction fables! fly
Ere carnage shrieks amid the torrent fire!
For me 't is nought—for you, 't is all—away!”
Yet, mocking truth and justice, all from flight
Turned back, and in the joy of shedded blood
Leaned o'er the arena. From the shattered cell
The famished lion sprung, with coiling mane
And fiendish eyes and jaws that clashed for gore.
“Take thy sword, Christian! at thy foot it lies—
And let the heathen, as thou callest them, mark
And laud thy skill in combat! take thy sword!”
A demon smile convulsed the Prætor's lip,
Yet Pansa, in the deep unshaken voice
Of Truth's immortal sanctity replied.
“The Martyr needs no weapon: his defence,
Shield, sabre, helm, spear, banner, all are one.
A breath from the Eternal—a quick ray
From the immortality of God—he lives
But in His mercy, dies but when He wills.
—Thou mightiest monarch of the forest beasts!
Who, from the heights of Atlas, on the brow
Of perpendicular precipice, alone,
Planting thine armed foot, hast looked o'er sea
And waste, fearing no equal; or among
The haunted wrecks of Carthage, in the pangs
Of hunger ravining, hast found no food
Where a great nation died that Rome might reign.
Thou fiercest terror of the wilderness!
Who, without contest, dost consume thy foe,
And walkst the earth a conqueror and a king!
Upon thee—though the extreme of famine gnaws
Thy vitals now—and thy flesh burns with stripes

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Given to madden thee, and round and round
With Titan limbs thou leapst in bitter joy
Of human banquet, watching with fierce eyes,
Terrible as is the simoom of thy clime,
The moment of thy certain victory—
Upon thee now I fix the eye, whose light
Was born of God's Eternity, and while
Destruction from the face of Deity
Lours o'er creation, I do bid thee kneel
There in the gory dust! ay, by the Power
Of Him who made thee, monster! I command.”
A roar, as if a myriad thunders burst,
Now hurtled o'er the heavens, and the deep earth
Shuddered, and a thick storm of lava hail
Rushed into air to fall upon the world.
And low the lion cowered, with fearful moans
And upturned eyes, and quivering limbs, and clutched
The gory sand instinctively in fear.
The very soul of silence died, and breath
Through the ten thousand pallid lips unfelt
Stole from the stricken bosoms; and there stood
With face uplifted and eyes fixed on air,
(Which unto him was thronged with angel forms)
The Christian—waiting the high will of heaven.

A scene somewhat like this is depicted in “The Vestal,” a little work published, a few years since, and written by Dr Gray, then of Boston. But, while I am happy to acknowledge the pleasure I have derived from that elegant story, I must be allowed to say that the causes of the lion's submission are unlike. He cowers at the feet of the aged Christian in that work, because he sees an old master; here, he is made to submit on the well known principle familiar to naturalists, that, during any great convulsion of nature, the most savage animals forget their common animosities, and that the lion will not attack a man who steadily fixes his eyes upon him. Having formed the plan of the whole poem and finished a considerable portion of it previous to my first perusal of the “Tale of Pompeii,” I was unwilling to forego the scene I had conceived previous to even the knowledge of the publication of Dr Gray.

A wandering sound of wailing agony,
A cry of coming horror o'er the street
Of Tombs arose, and all the lurid air
Echoed the shrieks of hopelessness and death.

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Then through the gates and o'er the city rushed
A ghastly multitude, naked and black
With sulphur fumes and spotted o'er with marl
That clung unto the agonizing flesh
Like a wronged orphan's curse. In terror blind,
They rushed, in dreadful companies, along
The quaking earth, 'neath darkened heavens, and e'er
Their awful voices howled the horrors forth.
“Destroyed! wrecked in its beauty—all destroyed!
Billows of lava boil above the towers
Of Herculaneum! we alone are left!
The lovely city! all our happy homes!
Buried in blackness 'neath a sea of fire!
The deluge came along the shattering rocks—
We fled and met another—yet again
We turned dismayed and a third fiery flood
Came down in ruin's grandeur on our path!
Between the mountain and the sea we scaped.
Oh, many a corse beneath the depths hath sunk
In seas of fire, that o'er our city roll,
Boiling in deeps of blackness! on!—away!
What fated madness holds the death-games now?
Pompeii! fly, the Fates delay not here!”
Down to the dark convulsive sea they rushed,
O'er them the volcano, and beneath,
The earthquake, and around, ruin and death.
“Hear ye not now?” said Pansa. “Death is here!
Ye saw the avalanche of fire descend
Vesuvian steeps, and in its giant strength
Sweep on to Herculaneum; and ye cried,
‘It threats not us, why should we lose the sport?
Though thousands perish, why should we refrain?’
Your sister city—the most beautiful—
Gasps in the burning ocean—from her domes
Fly the survivors of her people, driven
Before the torrent floods of molten earth
With desolation red—and o'er her grave
Unearthly voices raise the heart's last cries—
‘Fly, fly! O horror! O my son! my sire!’

144

The hoarse shouts multiply; without the mount
Are agony and death—within, such rage
Of fossil fire as man may not behold!
Hark! the Destroyer slumbers not—and now,
Be your theologies but true, your Jove,
'Mid all his thunders, would shrink back aghast,
Listening the horrors of the Titans' strife.
The lion trembles; will ye have my blood?
Or flee, ere Herculaneum's fate is yours?”
Vesuvius answered: from its pinnacles
Clouds of far-flashing cinders, lava showers,
And seas, drank up by the abyss of fire
To be hurled forth in boiling cataracts,
Like midnight mountains, wrapt in lightnings, fell.
Oh, then, the love of life! the struggling rush,
The crushing conflict of escape! few, brief,
And dire the words delirious fear spake now—
One thought, one action swayed the tossing crowd.
All through the vomitories madly sprung,
And mass on mass of trembling beings pressed,
Gasping and goading, with the savageness
That is the child of danger, like the waves
Charybdis from his jagged rocks throws down,
Mingled in madness—warring in their wrath.
Some swooned and were trod down by legion feet;
Some cried for mercy to the unanswering gods;
Some shrieked for parted friends forever lost;
And some, in passion's chaos, with the yells
Of desperation did blaspheme the heavens;
And some were still in utterness of woe.
Yet all toiled on in trembling waves of life
Along the subterranean corridors.
Moments were centuries of doubt and dread;
Each breathing obstacle a hated thing:
Each trampled wretch, a footstool to o'erlook
The foremost multitudes; and terror, now,
Begat in all a maniac ruthlessness,
For in the madness of their agonies

145

Strong men cast down the feeble, who delayed
Their flight, and maidens on the stones were crushed,
And mothers maddened when the warrior's heel
Passed o'er the faces of their sons!—The throng
Pressed on, and in the ampler arcades now
Beheld, as floods of human life rolled by,
The uttermost terrors of the destined hour.
In gory vapours the great sun went down;
The broad dark sea heaved like the dying heart,
'Tween earth and heaven hovering o'er the grave,
And moaned through all its waters; every dome
And temple, charred and choked with ceaseless showers
Of suffocating cinders, seemed the home
Of the triumphant desolator, Death.
One dreadful glance sufficed—and to the sea,
Like Lybian winds, breathing despair, they fled.
Nature's quick instinct, in most savage beasts,
Prophesies danger ere man's thought awakes,
And shrinks in fear from common savageness,
Made gentle by its terror; thus, o'erawed
E'en in his famine's fury by a Power
Brute beings more than human oft adore,
The Lion lay, his quivering paws outspread,
His white teeth gnashing, till the crushing throngs
Had passed the corridors; then, glaring up
His eyes imbued with samiel light, he saw
The crags and forests of the Apennines
Gleaming far off, and with the exulting sense
Of home and lone dominion, at a bound,
He leapt the lofty palisades and sprung
Along the spiral passages, with howls
Of horror through the flying multitudes
Flying to seek his lonely mountain lair.
From every cell shrieks burst; hyænas cried
Like lost child, wandering o'er the wilderness,
That, in deep loneliness, mingles its voice
With wailing winds and stunning waterfalls;
The giant elephant with matchless strength

146

Struggled against the portal of his tomb,
And groaned and panted; and the leopard's yell
And tiger's growl with all surrounding cries
Of human horror mingled; and in air,
Spotting the lurid heavens and waiting prey,
The evil birds of carnage hung and watched,
As ravening heirs watch o'er the miser's couch.
All awful sounds of heaven and earth met now;
Darkness behind the sungod's chariot rolled,
Shrouding destruction, save when volcan fires
Lifted the folds to glare on agony;
And when a moment's terrible repose
Fell on the deep convulsions, all could hear
The toppling cliffs explode and crash below,
While multitudinous waters from the sea
In whirlpools through the channelled mountain rocks
Rushed, and, with hisses like the damned's speech,
Fell in the mighty furnace of the mount.
Tyrant not dastard, daring in his guilt
And fearless of its issues, Diomede
Frowned on the panic flight, and, in his wrath,
Man, earth and heaven, demons and gods defied.
“The craven people—e'en my very slaves
Have fled as dustborn vassals ever flee,
And I am left alone with marble gods
And howling savageness, 'mid showers of flame.
Gods! I trust not elysium feigned by them
Who make the earth a very mock of hell.
Ay, roar, yell, struggle till your fierce hearts burst!
And with thy thousand thunders shake the throne
Of Jove, Vesuvius! and the world confound!
I have not loved nor sought the love of man,
And higher than his nature I know not,
Nor lower; and alone I sit to laugh
At mortal fear and dare immortal hate,
For, if ought die not, 't is revenge and pain.”
“Hath memory wed with madness that thou sayst
‘Alone,’ proud Prætor? one yet looks on Jove

147

And sees no deity; one yet awaits
The pleasure of Campania's haughty lord.
The hour and scene fit well the deadly fight,
Yet I behold no foe; what wouldst thou more?”
Pansa stood motionless and spake in scorn.
“Thou damned Nazarene! the imperial law
Shall forge new tortures for thy treacheries,
Thy necromancies and apostate deeds.
Meantime, exult, thank, praise and bless thy God,
Convict redeemer, buried deity,
That my condition fits not contest now
With thine, or wolves should gash and gnaw thy limbs,
And eagles' talons bear to mountain cliffs
Thy heart yet quivering with the pulse of fear.
Some fiendish potence foils me now; again
Thou shalt not win fire-fiends unto thy aid:
Pompeii yet shall celebrate thy death—
Again, thou shalt not scape though hell arise!”
Like the last echo of a trumpet's blast,
Thus, in his last reply, rose Pansa's voice.
“Again we shall not meet in all the realms
Of universal being—all the hours
That linger o'er eternity! we part
Forever, now, each to his deathless doom.
But had not other creed than vengeance filled
A Roman's mind with mercy, words like thine,
(Now thy prætorians leave us twain, the one
With all to lose, the other, all to gain,)
Would bring a direr parting hour, howe'er
Thy Punic blood and Volscian pride revolt.
Oh, thou may'st scoff! thou wouldst outdare the fiends
And mock in Orcus sin's undying moans;
But here we part, proud victim! so, farewell!
Jehovah's wrath is o'er thee—o'er us all—
The shocked earth cries unto the blackened heavens,
The mighty heart of earthly being bursts.
And thou shalt quickly know what Hebrew awe
Trembled to hear—El Shaddai! 't is a name

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The phantoms ye adore and curse have borne
Vainly—yon mount is its interpreter—
The Almighty looks in lightning from His throne.
Jove's shrine is covered with the lava shower,
The ashes gather round me! oh, farewell!”
Through deepening cinders, tossing sulphur clouds,
And victims shrieking in their agonies,
The Prætor sought his way. His harnessed steeds,
Maddened by fear, had with his chariot flown,—
The charioteer had perished 'neath the wheels:
And haughtily through all the Street of Tombs,
Among the whirlpool waves of human life,
And lighted by destruction's breath of flame,
He struggled tow'rd his palace, to the wrath
Of heaven fronting defiance, e'en while Death
Dwelt in the bosom of all elements
And the world trembled! Hastening to his home,
Of power mid Syrian splendors and a fame
Immortal as the flatterer's pander verse,
He dreamed; and bearing to the vaulted crypt,
Whose labyrinths wandered far beneath the hills,
His gold and gems, he on his household closed
The marble door, deeming their safety won,
Whose strangled death cries rose unheard—whose bones
The daily sunlight of a thousand years
Ne'er visited beneath the deeps of death.
Pansa, meantime, in gladiator guise,
By other paths had hurried from the scene;
And though the shuddering earth, and lurid heavens
Writhed as in immortal agonies, and shrieks
And death groans rose through all Pompeii's bounds,
Yet on he rushed—fearless though fraught with fear.
Vesuvius poured its deluge forth, the sea
Shuddered and sent unearthly voices up,
The isles of beauty, by the fire and surge
Shaken and withered, on the troubled waves
Looked down like spirits blasted; and the land
Of Italy's one paradise became

149

The home of ruin—vineyard, grove and bower,
Tree, shrub, fruit, blossom—love, life, light, and hope,
All vanishing beneath the fossil flood
And storm of ashes from the cloven brow
Of the dread mountain hurled in horror down.
The echoes of ten thousand agonies
Arose from mount and shore, and some looked back
Cursing, and more bewailing as they fled,
With glowing marl or ashes on their heads.
“Thou one great Spirit of all being! here,
Where power is helplessness, and hope, a dream,
Here 'mid the horror of the havoc, breathe
Thy smile upon my soul; and time and death,
With all their anguish, shall o'erawe me not!”
Imploring thus, the Christian held his way
Through the wild scene, with undefined impulse,
Nor shunning death, nor daring it, but filled
With emanations of undying faith.
A voice, whose tones, like music heard when youth
Lives in the visions of the blue blest heaven,
Thrilled the quick heart of Pansa, from the gloom
Of a lone street came forth, and bended forms
Stole from the hutted refuge of despair,
And tow'rd the Appian by the Forum fled.
And through the night the voice of age went up.

That is, of the aged Christian with whom Mariamne had taken refuge on her escape from the temple of Venus.

“Tarry not, daughter, for these aged limbs!
Dust they soon must be—though the world revered—
And, if my hour be come, the woe is past.
But hasten, daughter! moments have become
Ages—the air, the earth, the ocean blend
Their agonizing energies—away!
Beneath the o'erhung rocks—where fishers wont
To moor their boats, now stranded on the beach,
The pinnace lies I spake of—and the word
Is Marcion! Thither, without let or fear,

150

Hasten: a Christian from Tergeste holds
Command, and, ere an hour, its oars and sails
Shall waft you far from ruin round us now.”

Trieste.

“Nay, father! to the shadow of your roof
I hurried when the violator's wrath
Hung o'er me—and thine own familiar fears
Denied me not a refuge! we shall sleep
Mid fire together or together flee.
Yet more—no barque shall bear me from the beach
Till the last hope expires that from his bonds
Pansa may burst to bear us company.
Perchance, among the fugitives, e'en now,
He flies, and wanders by the ocean marge”—
On through the death-storm the Decurion sprung.
“No, Mariamne! my beloved restored!
Here, in the home of desolation, here,
I fold thee spotless to my happy heart!
And find my paradise in ruin's arms!
But here we pause not to pour out our souls.
A pinnace lies beneath the cliffs, sayst thou?
Thy hoary wisdom hath redeemed us, sage!
Stay thy weak limbs upon my strength! on! on!
I snatched the slaughtered gladiator's helm—
Cast o'er your heads your mantles—so, away!”
Down the steep path unto the moaning sea
They passed with quickened steps, and upward glanced
The maiden of the vaults of Isis, once,
Eyes floating in the farewell tears of love,
As by the black and desolated home
Of all her childhood's innocence and bliss,
They fled like shades and to the ramparts came.
Upon them, by the volcan glare revealed,
Wandered the hoary idol priest of Jove
In maniac horror; and amidst the roar,
The riot and the wreck of earth and heaven,
Thus rose his awful voice in prophecies.

151

THE VISION OF THE FLAMAN.

Call in thy cohorts Rome! from every land
Thy power hath deluged with unsinning blood!
Call in thy legions from Iberia's strand,
From Albion's rocks, and Rhætia's mountain wood!
The foe, like glaciers hurled
Through darkness on the trembling world,
Springs from his forest in the wildest north,
Scenting his prey afar:
And, like the samiel, from the waste comes forth
To steep your glories in the gore of war.
Hark! the whole earth rejoices!
Sea shouts to isle and mountain unto main,
And ocean to the heaven, with myriad voices—
Rome's sepulchre shall be amid her slain,
And as she spared not, none shall spare her now,
But Hun, Goth, Vandal, Alemanne and Frank
Shall lift the poison cup all earth hath drank,
And steep her shuddering lips, and on her brow
Pour blood for ointment, and upon her head,
Till thousand ages have in darkness fled,
Mocking, press down
The accursed crown
Which shall not cease to bleed as conquered men have bled!

Thy monarchs, slaves to every lust and crime,
Shall fall, as they have fallen, by the sword,
Or Colchian chalice, and unweeping time
O'erthrow the deities by dust adored,
And leave but ruin to lament
O'er pillar, shrine and battlement,
And solitude o'er desert realms to moan,
Where warriors mocked chained kings and called the world their own!
The coalblack petrel and the grey curlew
Shall wing thy waters and see not thy sail;
From trembling towers the stork shall watch the blue
Of the lone heavens and hear no human hail:
For in the vales that bask in bloom,
The Pontine's flowers, the bright Maremma's green.

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Shall dwell the shadow of the tomb,
In Love's voluptuous arms, the tyrant death unseen!
And Nero's golden house shall be
The pallid serf's abode,
And tombs imperial, soaring from the sea,
Shall guide the corsair through his night of blood.
Despair with folded wings,
Where the Eagle's pinions hung,
Shall cower beneath the throne of kings,
Who o'er the Alps the curse of hell have flung.

Woe to the beautiful! the barbarian comes!
Woe to the proud! the peasant lays thee low!
Woe to the mighty! o'er your kingly domes
The savage banner soars—the watchfires glow;
Triumph and terror through the Forum rush,
Art's trophies vanish—learning's holy lore,—
Alaric banquets while red torrents gush,
Attila slumbers on his couch of gore!
And there the eye of ruin roams
O'er guilt and grief and desolation;
And there above a thousand homes
The voice of Ruin mourns a buried nation.
Buried, O Rome! not like Campania's cities,
To wake in beauty when the centuries flee,
But in the guilt and grief and shame none pities,
The living grave of guilt and agony!
Alas! for Glory that must close in gloom!
Alas! for Pride that loves the tyrant's scorn!
Alas! for Fame that from the Scipio's tomb
Rises to look on infamy and mourn!
But Vengeance, wandering long,
With many a battle hymn and funeral song,
Shakes Fear's pale slumber from earth's awestruck eyes,
And bids Sarmatia's hordes redeem her agonies!

Yet not alone the civic wreath,
The conqueror's laurel, the triumpher's pride,
Shall wither 'neath the samiel eye of Death;
On Rome's old mount of glory shall abide,

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Tiar'd and robed like the Orient's vainest kings,
The hoar devoter of earth's diadems;
His glance shall haunt the heart's imaginings—
His footfall shall be felt where misers hoard their gems!
And from the palace of the Sacred Hill
The thrice crown'd pontiff shall to earth dispense
The awful edict of his mighty will,
And reign o'er mind in Fear's magnificence.
Prince, peasant, bandit, slave shall bow
Beneath his throne in voiceless adoration,
And years of crime redeem by one wrung vow;
And age on age shall die—and many a nation
Sink in the shadow of the tyrant's frown
And disappear,
Without a song or tear,
While clarion'd conquerors tread
In hymned triumph o'er the dead;
And wild barbarian hordes,
Whose faith and fealty hang upon their swords,
Shall feel the mellowing breath of human love,
And dwell entranced amid romance and lore;
Yet from the awful Vatican no dove
Shall bear freewill to any earthly shore!
But he, the Rock amid the ruins old
Of mythologic temples, shall o'ersway
The very earth, till thrones and kingdoms sold—
And empires blasted in the blaze of day—
Awake the world—and from the human heart
The crushing mountain of Oppression cast;
Then man shall bid all tyrannies depart,
And from the blue blest heavens elysium dawn at last!”

The allusion throughout is to what was, for a long time, an almost omnipotent sovereignty—the Popedom; and even the very strictest disciple of papal supremacy must lament the desecration of almost unlimited power in the hands of many who better understood the law of might, the pageantries of the tournament, the forms of the duello, the intrigues of diplomacy, and the dominion of the castle, than the edicts and ceremonies and devotions of the pontificate. The “Rock amid the ruins” alludes to Peter,—in the Greek, Πετρος.

“How like the gusty moans of tempest nights
O'er the broad winter wilderness, that voice
Ascends; and what a horrid gleam is flung

154

Along that face of madness, as it turns
From sea to mountain, and the wild eyes burn
With revelations of the unborn time!
We may not linger—shelter earth denies—
The very heavens like a gehenna lour—
And ocean is our refuge—on—on—on!
Yet hark! the wildest shriek of death! and lo!
The priest falls gasping from the ramparts now—
The breath of oracles upon his lips,
The Future's knowledge in his dying heart.
He reels—pants—gazes on the sulphur light—
(How like the glare of hell it wraps his form!)
Expiring, mutters woe—and falls to sleep
Shroudless in the red burial of the doomed!
—On to the ocean! and, far o'er its waves,
To Rhætia's home of glaciers—if God wills!
Look not behind! a moment gains the shore!”
So Pansa cried, and windlike was their flight.
The pinnace cleaves the waters; heaving, black
And desolate, the dismal billows groan
And swell the dirges of the earth and sky.
Upon the bosom of the sea, the barque
Sweeps on in darkness, save when furnace light
Flares o'er the upturned floods; and now they pass
The promontory's cliffs, and o'er the deeps
Fly like a midnight vision.—From the shores
Voices in terror cry, and countless shapes
Now in the lava blaze appear—and now
Vanish in the fell night, and far away,
Pliny's lone galleys, dimly from their prows
Casting their watchlights through the fitful gloom,
Hear not the implorings of the fugitives.

THE DEATH-CRIES OF POMPEII.

FIRST VOICE.
Hear us! oh, hear us! will no God reply?
No ear of mercy open to our prayer?
Hath utter vengeance throned the accursed sky?
And must we perish in this wild despair?

155

Hear us! oh, hear us! will no mortal hand
Succour in horror—pity in our dread?
Woe! Desolation sweeps o'er all the land!
Woe! woe! earth trembles 'neath the Death-King's tread!

SECOND VOICE.
Oh, Fear and Gloom and Madness are around,
And hope from earth is vain;
The sky is blackness—waves of fire, the ground—
And every bosom's breath—the pulse of pain.
Yet let us not deny,
In shuddering nature's agony,
The universal and immortal King!
But rather, while we gasp,
Our dying children closer clasp,
And pass, with them, the deep where blossoms deathless spring!

THIRD VOICE.
Who bids us sink resigned?
Who bids us bless the Slayer?
And mid the storm of ruin, blind,
Scorched—blasted—dying—breathe again the spurned-back prayer?
Let the Creator in his vengeance take
The life he heaped on men!
No sigh—no voice—no tear shall slake
The almighty hatred that could thus condemn!
He made us but to die—
To die yet see our city's burial first—
And he shall feast upon no wailing cry
From me:—take what thy wrath has cursed!
I yet have power to hate and scorn the might
That strews the earth with dead in Desolation's night!

FOURTH VOICE.
Blaspheme not in thine anguish!
We may not hope to linger—
Yet, quickly quenched, we shall not moan and languish
In wan disease—emaciating pain—

156

And living death—when e'en an infant finger
Would be a burden!—Oh, the fiery rain
Comes down and withers and consumes
The mighty and the weak,
And not a voice from out yon horrid glooms,
That shroud the Sarnus and the sea,
Replies to hearts that break
In the last agony.
Yet shut not out the hope elysian,
And fold not darkness to thy breast!—
—My babe! oh, sweet, most blest and briefest vision!
As at thy birthhour, here 's thy home of rest—
My bosom was thy pillow—'t is thy tomb—
It gave thee life—and, in thine early death,
Thy latest throbs to mine—
—Oh, like harp thrillings in thy bliss and bloom,
While o'er my face stole soft thy odorous breath,
They touched my spirit with a joy divine!—
Thy latest throbs shall be
The warning that shall waft
My soul up through the starr'd infinity,
E'en where the nectar cup is by the I mortals quaff'd.

FIFTH VOICE.

And must we die?
In being's brightness and the bloom of thought!
Sepulchred beneath a sunless sky!
And all the spirit's godlike powers be—nought!
Wail o'er thy doom, fair boy!
Shriek thy last sorrow, maiden! for the doom,
That o'er earth's tearless joy
Rolls gory mid the shadows of the tomb!
The tomb! there shall be none
Save dark-red shroudings of the lava sea—
The fire shall quench the agonizing groan—
Moments become—eternity!
And must we perish so?
Sink, shuddering, thus and gasp our breath in flame?
And o'er our unremembered burial flow
The pomps and pageants of a worthless name?

157

At wonted feasts, no voices shall salute—
In temple hymns, no soul-breathed strain awake
Our memories from the realms forever mute—
But o'er our graves barbarian kings shall slake
Their demon thirst of gore—
And redcross slayers march in bandit ranks,
From Alp and sea and shore,
To heap the Asian sands with hordes of slaughtered Franks!
Wail for the joy that never more shall breathe!
Wail for the lore and love, the bloom and bliss
That to the ocean world of fire bequeathe
Their paradise of hope! and this
Must be our only trust—to quickly die—
And leave the pleasant things of earth behind;
Through thousand ages unremembered lie
Unknown to sunbeam smile or breath of summer wind!—

DIOMEDE,
(rushing in.)

Away! bewailers of decrees that bring
Rest to the grief and restlessness of earth!
Away! pale tremblers mid the dawn of spring
That o'er the winter of your fate comes forth!
What are your woes to his,
Who from the throne of power beheld the glory—
Ambition's grandeur, pleasure's bliss,—
Gleam on the Syrian towers like gods in minstrel story!
Gone! gone! why, see ye not the eyes
Of hell's own Furies glaring through the flame?
And hear ye not the wild, deep, dreadful cries
That call in curses on the Avenger's name?
No barque to bear us o'er the sea!
No refuge on the mountain's breast!
Earth, time, and hope like unblest shadows flee,
And death and darkness pall our everlasting rest!

What spectre sail sweeps yon?
Now in the black night buried—now upon
The billow in the horrid light careering,
Like a spirit that hath passed
The glacier and the Lybian blast,
It feels not human fearing!

158

It flies toward the promontory now—
The torrent fire of ruin hangs above—
And earthly forms are standing by the prow,
Clasped in the arms of love!
O Hell of Thought! and must I—in the fame
Of sumless wealth and power—sink down and die,
And, helpless, hopeless, leave the Prætor's name
To moulder with the herd's beneath
The mountain monument of death,
And be a doubt, or mock and scorn
To fierce barbarians, yet unborn,
When in the spoiler's lust, they seek the Italian sky?

Ay, curse the gods who in their hate created
The serpent death that gnaws your core of life!
E'en in your childhood's beauty, ye were fated
To writhe, howl, shudder, perish in the strife
Of elemental agonies,
As were your sires by ghastly wan disease;
And wrath, shame, guilt, despair, remorse and pain,
Their heritage and testament, have swept
Your hearts as vultures sweep the battle plain!
Then by the tears unpitied grief hath wept,
By lone bereavement's wail,
And Evil's dark ovations,
Bid universal ruin hail!
And swell Death's monarch march o'er buried nations!

For me—as fits the Roman lord,
When hopeless peril darkens on his way,
I crave no lingering tortures with the horde
Who gasp and grovel in the slave's dismay,
And to the sick and sulphurous air,
Where Gloom and Fire and Horror dwell,
Pour out to fiction's gods the unheard prayer,
And seek in clouds a heaven, to find on earth a hell!
Thou one omnipotent Despair!
Whose shadow awes the prostrate world,
Thou kingly Queller of lamenting care!
Oblivion's voiceless home prepare,
And let Extinction's lightning bolt be hurled!

159

Banished, yet dauntless, doomed but undismayed,
Least willing, yet without a groan or sigh,
I go—dark Nemesis! thou art obeyed!
Thou awful cliff! the billow's funeral cry
Thrills through my quickened sense,
That feels with life intense,
Yet, ere a moment's lapse, this soul shall sleep—
This form, a sweltering corse, beneath the unsounded deep!”

Thus to the proud heart's last throb breathing out
Defiance and blaspheming wrath—though wrecked
And ruined, hurling his terrific thoughts
Of baffled vengeance to the shuddering heavens—
A monumental Memnon, sending up
Death's music to the burning hills of death—
Upon the extremest edge of awful cliffs,
That beetled o'er the blackened billows now
Howling their dirges o'er the expected dead,
The haughty Prætor stood alone, and flung
His agonizing spirit's deadliest glance,
The farewell execrating look of pride,
Unquenched by horror, unsubdued by death,
O'er hill, shore, forest, ocean—earth and heaven;
Then, towering like a rebel demigod,
And to the fierce volcano turning quick
His brow of fearful beauty, while his lips
Curved with convulsive curses, o'er the rocks—
Down—down the void, black depths, like a bann'd star,
Or demon from a meteor mountain's brow,
He plunged and o'er him curled the shivering floods!

Meantime, charred corses in one sepulchre
Of withering ashes lay, and voices rose,
Fewer and fainter, and, each moment, groans
Were hushed, and dead babes on dead bosoms lay,
And lips were blasted into breathlessness
Ere the death kiss was given, and spirits passed
The ebbless, dark, mysterious waves, where dreams
Hover and pulses throb and many a brain
Swims wild with terrible desires to know

160

The destinies of worlds that lie beyond.
The thick air panted as in nature's death,
And every breath was anguish; every face
Was terror's image, where the soul looked forth,
As looked, sometimes, far on the edge of heaven,
A momentary star the tempest palled.
From ghastlier lips now rose a wilder voice,
As from a ruined sanctuary's gloom,
Like savage winds from the Chorasmian waste
Rushing, with sobs and suffocating screams:
And thus the last despair found utterance.

SIXTH VOICE.

“It bursts! it bursts! and thousand thunders blent,
From the deep heart of agonizing earth,
Knell, shatter, crash along the firmament,
And new hells peopled startle into birth.
Vesuvius sunders! pyramids of fire
From fathomless abysses blast the sky;
E'en desolating Ruin doth expire,
And mortal Death in woe immortal die.
Torrents, like lurid gore,
Hurled from the gulf of horror, pour,
Like legion fiends embattled to the spoil,
And o'er the temple domes,
And joy's ten thousand homes,
Beneath the whirlwind hail and storm of ashes boil.

The surges, like coil'd serpents, rise
From midnight caverns of the deep,
And writhe around the rocks,
That shiver in the earthquake shocks”
And through the blackness of fear's mysteries,
Chained Titans from their beds of torture leap,
And o'er the heavens, Eumenides
Seek parting souls for prey.
Oh, God! that on those dark and groaning seas
Would soar one other day!
Vain is the mad desire,
Darkness, convulsion, fire,

161

Infernal floods, dissolving mountains, fold
The helpless children of woe, sin and Time—
O'er fiery wrecks has Desolation rolled,
The Infinite Curse attends the finite crime!

No melancholy moon to gaze
With dim, cold light remote!
No star, through stormy sphere, with holy rays,
O'er dying eyes, like hope of heaven, to float!
No spot—the oasis of the waste above—
Whose still, sweet beauty glistens
Through clouds that heave and riot in wild masses,
Breaks on the breaking heart! no seraph listens
In blue pavilions, while the spirit passes,
And o'er the dreariest waters bears,
Beyond the unburied's desert shore,
To skies ambrosial and elysian airs,
Where e'en the awful Destinies adore!
No tenderness from lips,
Blackened and swoln and gasping, steals
Amid the soul's eclipse:
Each, in the solitude of misery, feels,
Ineffable, his own despair,
And sinks unsolaced, unsolacing, down,
O'ercanopied by sulphurous air,
Palled, tombed by seas that terror's last cry drown!

Oh, still the piteous cry
Mounts up the heavens—“fly! fly!”
“Whither?” the billows roar
Among the wrecks and rent crags of the shore.
“Whither?” the Volcano's voice
Repeats, bidding pale death rejoice.
Oh, Hope with madness dwells,
And love of life creates the worst of deaths;
Hark! world to world ten thousand voices swells—
‘Resign your breaths!’
We die; the sinner with the sinless dies,
The bud, the flower, the fruit, corruption wastes,
Childhood and hoar age blend their agonies,
Destruction o'er the earth—the missioned slayer hastes.

162

Swiftly along the Pæstan gulf before
The Alpine gale, scudded the Christians' barque;
Night veiled Lucania's rugged shore, but oft
The dreadful radiance of the firemount hung
Upon the mightiest Apennines, and there
The giant cliffs, hoar forest trees, and glens
Haunted by endless midnight, and the foam
Of cataracts—glared upon the fear-charmed eye,
Distinct though distant; and Salernum's crags
Spurned the chafed sea that rushed before the prow.
“Lo! Pliny's galleys speed to aid at last!”
Said Pansa, gazing through the meteor light,
Towards the Sarnus and the victim host.
“All shall not perish; oars and sails bear on
The Roman armament—and now, in hope
Renewed exulting, from the dust upspring
A thousand prostrate shapes, and from the rocks
Lift their scorched hands, and shout (though we hear not)
The late rescuers on! yet many a heart
Will throb and thrill no more, but buried lie,
Like its own birthplace, till oblivion rests
On the Campanian cities and their guilt.
Salernum's rocks forever from our gaze
Hide the dark scene of trial, and we leave,
With swelling canvas, Rome's imperial realm,
Where Christian faith shall, like the sandal tree,
Impart its odour to the feller's axe,
To seek a heritage in wilds afar.
—Now, as we hasten, let our spirits soar
To Him who shelters when the Avenger slays!”

THE FAREWELL OF THE CHRISTIANS.

PANSA.
Alone, on darkness, on the deep,
Spirit of Love! redeemed by thee,
While fear its watch o'er ruin keeps,
Thy grace our sign and shield, we flee
The billows burst around our barque,
The death streams roll and burn behind—
Thy mercy guides our little ark,
Thy breath can swell or hush the wind.

163

Thy footsteps ruffled not the wave
When drowning voices shrieked for aid—
The cavern'd billow yawn'd—a grave—
“Be still!” it heard Thee and obeyed!
From idol rites and tyrant power,
Now o'er the midnight sea we fly—
Be with us through our peril's hour!
Saviour! with Thee we cannot die!

MARIAMNE.
To men a mocked and homeless stranger,
Thy truth, love, grace and goodness blest
The world, whose first gift was a manger,
Whose last, the Cross! no down of rest
Pillowed, O Christ! thy holy head,
No crown, but thorns, Thy temples wreathed,
Yet Thou the Death King captive led,
And through the tomb a glory breathed!
The scorner all thy love reviled,
Thy path was pain, thy kingdom shame,
Yet sorrow on thine aspect smiled,
E'en Death revered Thy deathless name!
The bittern moans where Zion stood,
The serpent crawls where nations trod—
Be with us on the mountain flood!
Fill our dim hearts with light from God!

THE MAIDEN OF POMPEII.
The flame, that wrapt my childhood's bowers,
Revealed Thee to my darkened mind;
Thee whom e'en sybils, seers and powers
Of Night in Delphi's grove divined;
With the dim glimpse of shadowed thought,
They saw the Atoner's form of light,
Yet pale doubt sighed o'er visions wrought,
The idol world still walked in night.
Now paynim dreams of dread no more,
The feigned response, the magi's charms,
O'erawe and on my spirit pour
The torturer's spells, the tomb's alarms.

164

On starless wings, through blooming air,
Hope unto heaven bears human love;
Doubt, grief, lone tears, remorse, despair
Haunt not the soul's own home above.
My chill heart cheered by thoughts like these,
Far from my ruined bowers I roam;
Thy love lights up the midnight seas,
Thy smile is earth's most heavenly home!

THE OLD CHRISTIAN.
Dimmer, like hoary years that bring
Life's winter, wanes the volcan's glare;
Destruction furls his meteor wing,
Watching the desert of despair!
Now far before, the Æolian Isles
Send up their vassal fires, but still,
Where fair Trinacria's Hybla smiles,
Darkness sits throned on Ætna's hill.
Soon, by Sicilia's whirlpool streight,
Our barque shall seek the Ionian sea,
And o'er the Adria, pagan hate
To Rhætian hills hunt not the free!
The sun, with beams that bloom, shall soar,
And vineyard, vale, hillside and grove,
Sea, mountain, meadow, isle and shore
Bask in voluptuous light of love.
Yet darker Ruin still must come
O'er midnight minds and hearts defiled—
A direr storm, a deadlier doom—
Where Glory stood, and Beauty smiled.
Away! the grave's wild shadows swim
O'er my pale eve of autumn days;
Away! the wild to harp and hymn,
Like sphere-voiced choirs, shall breathe, O Christ! Thy love and praise!

* * * * * * * * * *
'T is summer's tenderest twilight, and the woods
Glow like an inner glory of the mind,
And rills, veining the verdure, and among

165

Vines, rose-lipp'd flowers and odorous shrubs in mirth
And music dancing, purl from fountains known
But to the gnomes and kobalds of the Alps—
Mysterious springs, o'er which eternal Night
Watches and weeps in solitude, her tears
Mingling, at last, with the green ocean deeps.
Brightness and beauty, love and blessedness
Breathe on each other's bosoms, while afar,
From jagged cliffs the torrent cataract
Hymns the Omnipotent; and from the brows
Of desolate peaks ice-diademed, which thought
Alone may climb, the mountain avalanche,
Vast Ruin, falls and with it ruin bears.
All else is loneliness, beauty and love,
Peace and a hallowed stillness, and the souls
Of the lone mountain dwellers, in the hush
Of solitude and nature's majesty,
Partake the sanctity and power around.
The sunbow o'er precipitated floods—
The ice-lakes, and ravines where chaos dwells,
And desolation; flowers beneath snow-hills,
Where the great sun looks wan—the mightiest pines,
Rooted in chasms, that o'er the unfathomed gorge
Hang, wave and murmur—vales of paradise,
That smile upon suspended horror—all
With memories and oracles and dreams,
Time's hopes, eternity's imaginings,
Infinity's vast grandeur, the meek love
Of birthplace home,—the boundlessness of power,
The holiness of earth's reliance—fill
The awed and yet exultant intellect!
Flowered fields and harvests bloom around the door
Of a lone forest cottage, and amidst
The Eden of the wild a hoary head
Is lifted and the wan lips move in prayer.
Around, three beings kneel in thought o'erawed,
Vesper responses breathing from high hearts,
And Echo whispers in the clefted rocks.

166

From meek adorings and communing love,
Then rose they, not as worshippers arise
In latter days of evil, with proud eyes
And minds revenge corrodes, but violet-like,
And gentle as the dawn breath of sweet May,
Patient, serene and robed in holy thoughts.
Dayspring and evelight, thus, year after year,
Dawned and departed, and the seasons had
Their own peculiar joys in Pansa's home.
And there—the Roman Convert's testament—
The storm-nursed heritors of Faith, blasphemed,
Throned Liberty on Alpine pinnacles,
And bade her temple be the Switzer hills.
There in love worshipped, there with hoar hairs died
The Christians, but their deathless spirits lived
In the high thoughts of many a patriot heart,
Which, thrilled with Freedom and God's holy Law,
With tyrant Wrong warred through Guilt's thousand years.

167

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

What awful images of ancient days,
What high and hallowed thoughts rush o'er my brain,
While I behold and tremble and adore
Thy melancholy pomp of sculptured Mind,
Thou Temple of the deathless! Pantheon
Of Genius deified!—Amid thy vaults,
Thy lone religious passages and aisles,
Thy pillar'd arches gray and antique shrines,
The spirit pants for breath and the heart holds
Its lifepulse silent for the undying Dead
Pour forth their glories here and all the air
Breathes of their immortality! We gaze
And gaze, and turn away, o'erpowered by thoughts
Vast as the blended intellects that float
Through the far cloisters of monastic gloom,
And high and holy as the eternal thrones,
Their seats of Power amid Earth's majesty!
How soars and shudders the astonished soul
Among the great assembly of the pride
And glory of the earth! the canonized
Of countless generations!—Here they dwell
Together—all the Majesty of Mind!
Bards of high mysteries! and warriors crowned
With gory glories! and wise statesmen skilled
To guide the golden argosy through storms
And tempests o'er a darkly swirling sea;
And orators, whose words of wisdom fell,
(Like the Athenian's eloquence among
The gurgling shores of rocky Salamis,)
Unheeded till too late! and here they sleep,
The mitred prelates of the land, whose ban
Was blight and blasting in the olden days,

168

When bondmen spirits, smitten to the dust,
Bowed down before the Dagon of their Faith,
Grasped the red cross, embraced a life of woe,
Adored a dream, and, like a vision, passed
To meet the doom of deeds before THE JUST,
Whom priestcraft never knew, or scorned, if known.
Beside the bold crusader sleeps the monk
Whose voice was like a trumpet, when he raised
The nations, and to the desert led them forth
To perish, like a herd on naked sands.
Here monarchs slumber—but unlawful hands
Have ceased to reverence the anointed head,
And crowns are crushed and sceptres broken now,
And not a voice cries Traitor! All is lost,
The pomp, the pageant and the banner'd pride,
The warrior's glory and the sovereign's power,
The churchman's bigot pride, the lady's charms!
St. Edward's crown hath mouldered into dust;
The ancient chair for the anointing hour
Rests on the crumbled clay of those who, erst,
Sate proudest there—the Dagons of their day!
—Oh! nought is left but tombs and trophies now,
Dark mausolea, where no empress weeps,
Shrines overthrown, where not a shadow steals
To worship—cenotaphs without a corse,
And monuments without memorial!

Oh! as I wander mid the holy light
Thrown from the pictured windows high aloft,
While every footfall, o'er the sculptured stones
Beneath, wakes ghostlike echoes, that along
The ancient walls steal with a low faint sound,
Like dim revealings of another world,
Each effigy dilates and glows with life
Around me, and the dusky light reveals
Their features like the faces we behold
In troubled visions, or the shadows seen
Gliding amid the gloamin, when the sound
Of flowing waters riseth on the soul
Like blessed music.—Ere they fade away,
Thus let me catch their wavering lineaments:—

169

Full in the sunset light far distant thrown
From yon stained window—lo! the Hero stands,
Whose voice shook empires! girt in iron mail,
With shivered shield and dinted sword, he stands,
And through the bars of his closed visor glare
His searching eyes like stars amid the storm.
His Anak form moves on—his armed tread
Tends to the battle or the tournament,
The foray or the joust—and hark! the shout,
The bugleblast of onset!—All is still.
Behold again! where wars the giant chief?
—There—cold and motionless, the Statue stands.

Yon poet's marble brow breathes thought; his eyes,
To all the wonted wildness of their light,
Wake from the sleep of ages, and the love,
The passion of his spirit wakes again.
Lo! now he grasps his long neglected lyre,
And inspiration in his cold heart burns;
Memory, the seraph, from her pictured wings
Scatters gay visions o'er his wasted heart,
And Fancy, beautiful spirit! o'er him bends
With looks of light, and Forms, in robes of pearl
And green and gold, hover around his harp,
Redolent of joy and perfect blessedness.
—Alas! the golden chords melt 'neath his touch,
And the dust eddies in the troubled air—
Dust! nought but dust all that we love in life,
Like our own hearts, a dewdrop and a dream!

From his cold couch in yonder cloister's cell
The monk starts up, as he were loitering late
From vesper hymn and hurries to his shrine
In the dark ruin of the chapelry.
Amazed, he stands; and, with a dreamy eye,
Like a delirious sleeper, gazes round;
The illumined missal and tall crucifix,
The waxlights and the censers, all have gone!
The altar-fire hath ceased! the worshippers
No more approach for earthly sacrifice;

170

The glorious beauty and high sanctitude
Of that fair church he served, e'en while he slept,
Hath passed away, like a bright evening cloud!

The Orator's pale lips, in quivering play,
Reveal the awful eloquence, that once
Shook thrones and sundered monarchies, but none
Heed now the voice, whose living magic held
The breathless heart submissive to its charm.
The strong delirious passions slumber on;
Hope dwells not here; Ambition hath forgot
His earth-o'ershadowing purposes; the spell
Of Praise, the fever of eternal Fame
Thrills not the silent soul—and hoary guilt
Hath passed the ordeal of its earthly doom.
How deadly still the Sepulchre of Pride!
The distant verger's faintest step o'ercomes
The spirit like the whisper of the Dead!
'T is a sage homily—that slow light fall
Of living foot in this cold world of Death.

Why burns thine eye with such triumphant light,
O proud Elizabeth? Lo! there the shrine
Where worship now the people of the earth,
Scotia's lost Mary—beauty's loveliest queen—
A sacrifice, if innocent, and thrice
A sacrifice if guilt confirmed her doom.
Leman of Essex! Tyrant Henry's child,
Meet daughter of thy sire! bend that proud head
And look beneath thy foot, O haughty Bess!
Thy broken sceptre lies by Mary's tomb!
Grandeur! thou hadst thy crown. Misfortune now
Hath her reward—the tears of half the world.

The features fade to duskier lineaments,
The spell hath passed—and all becomes again
A monumental mockery—but oh!
'T is a dread thing for living man to hold
Communion with this empire of the dead;
To think, to feel, to breathe a vivid life.

171

And know that every atom of the dust,
That mingles with the air, had thought and power,
And pillowed the same hopes on the same fears,
And toiled and struggled in the waves of woe,
Like the worn heart, that, old in early youth,
Poureth this dirge above the unanswering dead!
I hear the rush of countless wings; and now,
In solemn train and proud array, they pass,
The Great, the Wise, the Mighty and the Good,
Through the lone cloisters, and around the vaults
Spread the elysian vision of their pomp.
O'er hearts that quail and quiver, here they reign;
Throned on the majesty of ages here,
Triumphant Genius, from the thick pale dust
Invoking deities, eternal reigns,
While the bright suns, that lightened lower worlds,
Forever burn amid the heaven of heavens.

The old Cathedral clock tolls out the hour.
How solemnly each lone deep echo rolls
Through the cold World of Tombs! yet none awakes.
Ye effigies of glory and renown! ye shades
Of Mind! ye pictured palaces of Thought!
Hear ye that lingering knell?—'T is not for you!
Listen, all ye who wander here! each note
Of that old prophet is the voice of death
Sounding—Ye are the dust ye tread upon!
For him, who, far from country, friends and home,
With a quick heart and a wrought spirit, roams,
O Ancient Abbey! through thy pillar'd vaults,
When the mad fever of this life is o'er,
Far happier were the dying thought (as sweet
As breath of moonlight roses bathed in dew)
That he should lay his weary head to rest
On earth's green bosom, 'neath the smile of heaven,
Where sunlight and the beams of summer stars,
And the soft glory of the autumnal moon
And vernal showers and diamond dews would come,
And youths and maidens meet in joy and love,
Beneath the trailing willow and beside

172

The shorn turf of his nameless sepulchre,
Low in the violet vale, where mountains spread
The shadows of the eve—than that his corse
Should moulder in thy melancholy vaults,
Thou Sepulchre of Grandeur! where the sounds
Of multitudes commercing through the ways
Of Earth's one City-World re-echo harsh
Along thy mouldering shrines and cloisters dim.

173

PERE LA CHAISE.

Beautiful city of the dead! thou stand'st
Ever amid the bloom of sunny skies
And blush of odours, and the stars of heaven
Look, with a mild and holy eloquence,
Upon thee, realm of silence! Diamond dew
And vernal rain and sunlight and sweet airs
Forever visit thee; and morn and eve
Dawn first and linger longest on thy tombs
Crown'd with their wreaths of love and rendering back
From their wrought columns all the glorious beams,
That herald morn or bathe in trembling light
The calm and holy brow of shadowy eve.
Empire of pallid shades! though thou art near
The noisy traffic and thronged intercourse
Of man, yet stillness sleeps, with drooping eyes
And meditative brow, forever round
Thy bright and sunny borders; and the trees,
That shadow thy fair monuments, are green
Like hope that watches o'er the dead, or love
That crowns their memories; and lonely birds
Lift up their simple songs amid the boughs,
And with a gentle voice, wail o'er the lost,
The gifted and the beautiful, as they
Were parted spirits hovering o'er dead forms
Till judgment summons earth to its account.

Here 't is a bliss to wander when the clouds
Paint the pale azure, scattering o'er the scene
Sunlight and shadow, mingled yet distinct,
And the broad olive leaves, like human sighs,
Answer the whispering zephyr, and soft buds

174

Unfold their hearts to the sweet west wind's kiss,
And Nature dwells in solitude, like all
Who sleep in silence here, their names and deeds
Living in sorrow's verdant memory.
Let me forsake the cold and crushing world
And hold communion with the dead! then thought,
The silent angel language heaven doth hear,
Pervades the universe of things and gives
To earth the deathless hues of happier climes.

All, who repose undreaming here, were laid
In their last rest with many prayers and tears,
The humblest as the proudest was bewailed,
Though few were near to give the burial pomp.
Lone watchings have been here, and sighs have risen
Oft o'er the grave of love, and many hearts
Gone forth to meet the world's smile desolate.

The saint, with scrip and staff, and scallop shell
And crucifix, hath closed his wanderings here;
The subtle schoolman, weighing thistle down
In the great balance of the universe,
Sleeps in the oblivion which his folios earned;
The sage, to whom the earth, the sea and sky
Revealed their sacred secrets, in the dust,
Unknown unto himself, lies cold and still;
The dark eyes and the rosy lips of love,
That basked in passion's blaze till madness came,
Have mouldered in the darkness of the ground;
The lover, and the soldier, and the bard—
The brightness, and the beauty, and the pride
Have vanished—and the grave's great heart is still!

Alas, that sculptured pyramid outlives
The name it should perpetuate! alas!
That obelisk and temple should but mock
With effigies the form that breathes no more.
The cypress, the acacia, and the yew
Mourn with a deep low sigh o'er buried power
And mouldered loveliness and soaring mind,
Yet whisper “Faith surmounts the storm of death.”

175

Beautiful city of the dead! to sleep
Amid thy shadowed solitudes, thy flowers.
Thy greenness and thy beauty, where the voice,
Alone heard, whispers love—and greenwood choirs
Sing 'mid the stirring leaves—were very bliss
Unto the weary heart and wasted mind,
Broken in the world's warfare, yet still doomed
To bear a brow undaunted! Oh, it were
A tranquil and a holy dwelling-place
To those who deeply love but love in vain,
To disappointed hopes and baffled aims
And persecuted youth. How sweet the sleep
Of such as dream not—wake not—feel not here,
Beneath the starlight skies and flowery earth,
'Mid the green solitudes of Pere La Chaise!

The Cemetery of Paris.

176

AN EVENING SONG OF PIEDMONT.

Ave Maria! 'tis life's holiest hour,
The starlight wedding of the earth and heaven,
When music breathes its perfume from the flower,
And high revealings to the heart are given;
Soft o'er the meadows steals the dewy air,
Like dreams of bliss, the deep blue ether glows,
And the stream murmurs round its islets fair
The tender nightsong of a charmed repose.

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of love,
The kiss of rapture and the linked embrace,
The hallowed converse in the dim still grove,
The elysium of a heart-revealing face,
When all is beautiful—for we are blest,
When all is lovely—for we are beloved,
When all is silent—for our passions rest,
When all is faithful—for our hopes are proved.

Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer,
Of hushed communion with ourselves and heaven,
When our waked hearts their inmost thoughts declare,
High, pure, far searching, like the light of even;
When hope becomes fruition and we feel
The holy earnest of eternal peace,
That bids our pride before the Omniscient kneel,
That bids our wild and warring passions cease.

Ave Maria! soft the vesper hymn
Floats through the cloisters of yon holy pile,
And 'mid the stillness of the nightwatch dim
Attendant spirits seem to hear and smile!
Hark! hath it ceased? The vestal seeks her cell,

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And reads her heart—a melancholy tale!
A song of happier years, whose echoes swell
O'er her lost love mid pale bereavement's wail.

Ave Maria! let our prayers ascend
For them whose holy offices afford
No joy in heaven—on earth without a friend—
That true though faded image of the Lord!
For them in vain the face of nature glows,
For them in vain the sun in glory burns,
The harrow'd heart consumes in fiery woes,
And meets despair and death where'er it turns.

Ave Maria! in the deep pine wood,
On the clear stream and o'er the azure sky
Bland twilight smiles, and starry solitude
Breathes hope in every breeze that wanders by.
Ave Maria! may our last hour come
As bright, as pure, as gentle, heaven! as this!
Let faith attend us smiling to the tomb,
And life and death are both the heirs of bliss!

178

THE COURTEZAN.

The brand of shame is on thy brow,
The fire of death is in thy heart,
And infamy hath made thee now
From human things a thing apart:
An outcast from all social ties,
Proud conscious virtue's mock and scorn,
Victim of guilt that never dies—
Oh, better thou hadst ne'er been born.

The cold smile, that distorts thy cheek,
Only reveals thy darker ruin,
The guilt-seared heart that will not break,
The damned despair of thy undoing:
Like meteor lights in midnight gloom,
Deepening the darkness vainly hid
Within a foul but painted tomb—
A proud but mouldering pyramid.

The purple robes that round thee wave,
Mocking the form they veil, reveal
The riot of a living grave,
The heart that loathes what it must feel;
Remorse that feeds on deep disgrace,
Despair that spurns atonement's power,
Hell pictured in a laughing face,—
All—all the work of one dread hour!

Thou wanderest in the world's highway
With a bold brow, and lip profane,
Yet dim views of a brighter day
Light up thy bosom's realm of pain;

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The painted pallor of thy cheek,
The wasting of thy wanton form,
Tell agony no words can speak,
The gnawing of the poison worm.

Barred from the hope that points our way
To happier realms and purer skies,
Thou ever lingerest o'er the day
That sealed thy hopeless agonies,
And as the thought of what thou art
Comes o'er the memory of thy fame,
It leaves a hell within thy heart,
And infamy upon thy name.

Thy wanton eye—poor child of woe!
Seems lighted at the dæmon's shrine;
It lures to doom—to madness—oh!
To doom and madness such as thine!
Thou art a woman—banned and lost
To all the hopes of woman's fame!
Alas! not hell itself can boast
A fiend like woman doomed to shame.

They mock and scorn—I pity thee,
Poor victim of confiding faith!
Affection's martyr—yet not free
To meet the martyr's blessed death!
When in deep anguish thou dost think
Of her that bore, that blessed, that nursed thee,
Oh, can we marvel thou shouldst drink
Oblivion of the hour that cursed thee?

When driven forth from heart and home
By thine unfeeling father's curse,
What but despair could seal thy doom?
Could want atone or make thee worse?
—Frail woman! in thy best estate
Too prone to err—to doubt too true,
On whom shall rest thy penal fate
When in the awful judgement due?

180

Oh! 't is a fearful thing to view
The dark blight of Love's virgin bloom—
The pale brow wet with death's cold dew—
The warm heart shrouded in the tomb!
Not thy guilt only cast thee forth
A houseless stranger in the world—
But the Fiend's minions—men of Earth
Thee from thy throne of honour hurl'd!

They cast thee out—a Magdalen,
Without a hope, without a home,
A scorn and blot till death, and then
A dæmon in the world to come!
—Veiled hypocrites! beware the hour
When ye shall bear the doom ye brand,
The heart, a lyre of godlike power,
Is judged but by a godlike hand.

Thy face is gay—thy form is fair,
Thy voice sounds light and cheerful now.
But I read shuddering horror there,
And loathing branded on thy brow.
—Go, go thy ways! nought can redeem
With men the heart that errs like thine;
Lost to earth's heaven—thine own esteem,
—Poor victim to the dæmon's shrine!

Yet, e'en for thee, in all thy shame,
There's cheering hope still left in heaven,
And in THE Atonement's holy name
Thy years of sin may be forgiven!
E'en when thy heart is breaking—when
Thy hunger loathes the bread of lust,
Though scoffed, and scorned, and cursed by men,
Kneel to thy God! repent and trust!

181

THE LOZEL.

With a cold brow unblanched by shame,
A silent triumph of the eye,
A heart that spurns all honest fame,
And glories in its infamy,
Thou hurriest to the work of death,
The deeds that damn the soul the deepest,
And, coiling torture's serpent wreath,
Unstarting from thy visions, sleepest.

Thy demon arts—thy smile that wears
The mask of love but to betray,
Thy crocodile, thy tyrant tears,
That gem thy victim's burning way,
Thy guarded glance, thy watchful care,
Thy passion shrinking at a word,—
All verge to one dark close—despair,
And ruin—destined though deferred.

And thou canst sit by beauty's side,
And gaze on heaven's best image there,
And glut the rancour of thy pride
In thoughts that have no hope in prayer;
While she—her fair face lightened up
By Love that blooms like Eden's isle,
Drinks madness from thy poison cup,
And greets thee with a seraph smile.

Yes, thou canst blanch the virgin brow,
And dim the eye whose glance is bliss,
And steal what worlds cannot bestow—
Ay—steal with an Iscariot kiss!

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And o'er thy blasted spirit breathe
No thoughts that would the wretch revive—
No pulse thrills through thy heart of death,
Whose throb would bid the ruined live!

But, like the samiel o'er the waste,
Thou leav'st a desert heart behind,
While scorn smiles darkly o'er the Past—
The haunted ruins of the Mind!
And men will hear thee tell of deeds,
Whose lightest meed is years of pain—
A blighted heart that breaks and bleeds,
That ne'er can hope on earth again.

Amid the maddened revel's mirth,
When ribald tongues and maudlin eyes
Teach apes to scorn the sons of earth
Lost to their birthright in the skies,
Thy guilt becomes a deed of pride,
Thy victim's woe, a theme of jest,
And thou canst woman's love deride,
Who art in woman's ruin blest.

Dishonoured and forsaken now
By all she loved in years gone by,
Gloom in her heart, guilt on her brow,
And darkness in her leaden eye,
She can but tread the appointed way
That all must tread on whom the world
Lays its forbidding curse foraye—
From love, hope, heaven and glory hurled.

Deserted by the righteous throng,
Whose hearts are not so wholly changed
That they would shun the winning wrong,
If, unknown, from the fold they range,
Oh! what is left the victim maid,
Mocked by the vile, shunned by the good,
But sin continued—death delayed—
Blurr'd shame and awful solitude?

183

Ere life became a bliss to her,
Ere fragrance followed on the flower,
The spoiler came—the branded slur—
The deathless doom of frailty's dower!
And thus, Dark Lozel! thou canst blight
The beautiful—and stain the fair—
And on her bosom pour the night
Of desolation and despair.

By all the sorrows of thy lot,
By all thy wrongs in ruin borne,
By all heaven hath and earth has not,
By all thy utter woe and scorn,
The Traitor yet shall feel the force
Of all that long hath tortured thee,
The conscious horror of remorse,
The Ætna of life's agony!

Yes, he shall feel and thou shalt know,
In realms where guilt shall find no gloom,
The peril of inflicted woe,
The anguish of the Liar's doom!
—Thou hearst a voice none else may hear,
It bids thy burning spirit pause;
It bids thee, Infidel! appear
Where angels plead the Victim's cause!

184

LINES COMPOSED WHILE ASCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI.

Oh, give me back my native hills,
The rockgirt woods that wave in heaven,
The music of a myriad rills,
That purl beneath the light of even!
Oh, give me back the winter wind,
That o'er the northern mountain howls!
The burning clime I leave behind,—
The sensual feast, the mantling bowls.

Let all who, born for better things,
Would chain the heart to Mammon's car,
Fly on the north wind's fleetest wings,
And hail the tropic's loveliest star!
To me more lovely is the home,
Where kindred hearts at evening meet,
While shrieking blasts, like demons, roam,
And minds, long tried, each other greet.

I would not mount the vassal's throne
To find a felon's damned grave;
I would not do to be undone,
Nor, born Mind's monarch, be a slave!
Corruption lurks in all the bowers
Of that soft, sunny, sensual clime,
Where Sin's dark pinions gloom the hours,
And, giantlike, stalks forth dark Crime.

Let not the Spirit, God decreed
Should range at will through earth and heaven,
Descend to be, in thought or deed,
The creature of Time's festering leaven!

185

Let not the light that God breathed in,
From his own soul, the unborn child,
Be dimmed by doubt or gloomed by sin,
Or perish on earth's dreariest wild.

Oft we become the things we hate,
Led on by those who ne'er relent,
And thus we raise a tomb to Fate,
And build o'er hope a monument.
Evil becomes the guest of all
Whom conscience guards not through the ills,
That darken round us from the Fall,
Like cataracts formed by mountain rills.

Plague breathes through all the gleaming air,
That floats o'er Heaven as if it thought;
In gilded cups lurks man's despair,
And all that woe hath ever wrought.
If, in this world, we would be wise,
Shun we the guilt that is unblest,
For in the far, far unknown skies,
There is for sin no realm of rest.

Then give me back my native hills,
Though rude the men and rough the soil,
And scant the harvest that ne'er fills
The granary,—won by hardest toil;
If no high, proud, and generous spirit
Flashes like light from northern hearts,
They from their sires a God inherit,
And God's own VOICE that ne'er departs.

186

THE HOUR OF DEATH.

When, wrapt in dreams that throng the twilight hour,
I roam alone o'er Nature's fair domain,
Mid the hushed shadows of the wildwood bower,
Or o'er the shellstrewn margin of the main,
Or upland green, or lovely lawn,
Where dewdrops kiss the breathing flowers,
And summer smiles, at rosy dawn,
Like Memory o'er unsinning hours,
I think that soon—how soon! the Night will come
When I shall leave this bright world for the tomb.

I think—and frailty dims the drooping eye—
That Spring will perfume all the inspiring air,
And Summer's smile illume earth, sea, and sky,
And Autumn, heaven's own robe of glory wear;
That silvery voices, low and sweet,
Will breathe the heart's own music forth,
And plighted youth 'trothed maidens meet,
Where now I roam o'er darkening earth;
But when all seasons with their treasures teem,
Where shall I wander? victim of a dream!

Through thousand years the glorious sun shall rise,
And myriad songbirds thrilling anthems sing:
Soft shall the moonbeams fall from midnight skies,
And groves breathed music o'er the gushing spring;
But where will be the lonely one
Who swept his lyre in wayward mood,
And dreamed, sung, wept o'er charms unwon,
In holy Nature's solitude?
In what far realm of shoreless space shall roam
The soul that e'en on earth made Heaven its home?

The paths I wear, the stranger's foot will tread,
The trees I plant, will yield no fruit to me;

187

The flowers I cherish, bloom not for the dead;
The name I nourish—what is that to thee,
Fame! phantom of the wildered brain?
Love's tears should hallow life's last hour,
For pomp, and praise, and crowns, are vain—
Death is the spirit's only dower!
Alone, the hermit of a broken heart,
My Mind hath dwelt—even so let it depart!

To think—alas! to feel and know that we,
Sons of the sun, the heirs of thought and light,
Must perish sooner than the windtossed tree
Our hands have planted, and unending night
Close o'er our buried memories!
Our sphere of starry thought—our sun
Of glory quenched in morning skies,
Our sceptre broken—empire gone—
The voice, that bade creation spring to birth,
Too weak to awe the worm from human earth!

I know not where this heart will sigh its last,
I cannot tell what shaft will lay me low,
Nor, when the mortal agony hath passed,
Whither my spirit through the heavens will go.
It will not sleep, it cannot die,
It is too proud to grovel here,
For even now it mounts the sky,
And leaves behind earth's hope and fear!
O may it dwell, when cleansed from sin and blight,
Shrined in God's temple of eternal light!

Where'er the spirit roams, howe'er it lives,
I cannot doubt it sometimes looks below,
And from the scenes of mortal love derives
Much to enhance its rapture or its woe;
And when I muse on death and gloom,
And all that saints or sages tell,
I pause not at the midnight tomb,
Nor listen to the funeral knell,
But think how dear the scenes I loved will be
When I gaze on them from eternity!

188

TO MY SON IN HEAVEN.

Ere the cloud was on thy spirit,
Or the blight upon thy bosom,
Thou wert summoned to inherit
The realms of bliss and blossom.
With a bounding soul and limb,
Thou didst tread Earth undefiled—
Now thy song is with the cherubim,
My bless'd and gifted child!

In bereavement's lonely hours,
In the morn and evening prayer,
In the summer's twilight bowers,
And the autumn's sweetest air;
By the bed, the board, the hearth,
And in every scene I sigh—
Yet could I bring thee back to earth?
My angel son on high!

In my heart and brain are bitter throes,
And my eyes are dim with tears,
While I think that, mid my thousand woes,
I joyed in thy infant years:
And the hopes, the pride, the love,
That I shrined in thee, my son!
But thy spirit is above
With the High and Holy One!

Thou canst never feel, like me,
The stings of man and time,
Nor turn from woe and sin to flee
But to meet despair and crime!

189

From the fount of Thought Divine,
Thou didst rise, a seraph, here—
And I bless my God that ought of mine
Can know no grief or fear.

Thou hast gone to wing the glorious spheres
Mid the train of cherub choirs,
And thy voice shall swell, through deathless years,
To the hymns of archangel lyres:
But I, as my weary steps wend on,
And my lonely heart deplores,
Shall never—never hear, my son!
Its tones from the distant shores.

The lingering seasons will pass away,
And the years of my mourning fly,
Yet never will break again the day
That wakes the light of thy glistening eye!
With a heart convulsed and a brain distraught,
And a quivering hand, I pressed
The death-weights on those orbs of thought,
And bore thee to thy rest.

Oh, the last words on thy dying lips,
Ere thy voice in spasms died,
And thy thoughts ran wild in thy brain's eclipse,
As I left thy death-bed's side!
“Oh, my dear father! where I am
I would you were!”—but, alas! my child!
Thou standest in glory before The Lamb—
I here by the dust defiled!

While the struggling soul yet stayed
Within thy darkened brain;
While the faintest hope in shadows played,
As thou lingeredst in thy pain;
In the midnight gloom and the midday light,
I watched thee, oh, my son!
And slept not till the world was night
Round thee, my blessed one!

190

Then by thy breathless—cold, cold breast
I laid my head to sleep,
And I found with the dead the only rest
That o'er my heart could creep!
Oh, countless times, that head had hung
In slumber on my bosom—now
My arms around my lost one clung,
And death was on his brow!

Mid sorrows and foes, and chilling throngs,
Though 't was my doom to roam,
My spirit was glad to hear thy songs
Hail thy wronged father home;
My pride, my joy, and the loveliest flower
That here shed the odour of heaven—
The pall of death is on the hour
When thy love to my grief was given.

Thou wilt come no more, with thy soul-lit eye,
Bright brow and pleasant voice—
With thy smile like the starlight of autumn's sky,
And thy step that said ‘rejoice;’
Dayspring and sunset—the springtime bloom,
And the winter's household hearth—
Hues, odours and smiles are in thy tomb,
And why should I roam the earth?

Oh, one is left, on whose natal hour
Thy spirit smiled in bliss,
And there's another in the nuptial bower
That never felt thy kiss;
The first in her soul thine image bears,
And Gertrude's face is thine,
And both, through the lapse of earthly years,
Shall make thy tomb their shrine.

And she, who bore thee, her firstborn pride,
In the bloom of her spring of love,
And she who clasped thee to her side,
And called thee her wreck'd ark's dove,

191

By twilight and daybeam will kneel in prayer
By the grave of my only son,
And the breeze that fans his dust, shall bear
Our love to his heavenly throne!

SONNET.

Ye eyes of Heaven! what forms behind you wear
Such radiant glories as ye shed on earth?
Where is the Eden of their heavenly birth,
Oh, where the dwellings of those shapes of air?
Perchance, loved ones who felt like us despair,
And all the sickening ills of this world's dearth,
Franchised from clay, may now come hurrying forth,
To waft above each heart-revealing prayer,
To listen to each sorrow of our lot,
And tell earth's children, with a voice of light,
They dwell forever in their holy sight,
And never can in glory be forgot!
Love, the pure fountain of all mind, imparts
Its bliss and beauty to the heaven of hearts.

192

TO MY DAUGHTER GENEVIEVE.

Star of my being's early night!
Tender but most triumphant flower!
Frail form of dust and heavenly light!
Rainbow of storms that round me lour!
Of tested love the pledge renewed,
The milder luminary given
To guide me through earth's solitude,
To Love's own home of bliss in heaven.

Heiress of Fate! thy soft blue eye
Throws o'er the earth its brightness now,
As sunlight gushes from the sky
In glory o'er the far hill's brow;
And light from thine ethereal home
On every sinless moment lingers,
As hope, o'er happier days to come,
Thrills the heart's harp with viewless fingers.

For, from the fount of Godhead, thou,
A ray midst myriads wandering down,
Still wear'st upon that stainless brow
The seraph's pure and glorious crown;
Still—from thy Maker's bosom taken
To bear thy trial time below,
Like sunlight flowers, by winds unshaken,
The dews of heaven around thee glow.

Hours o'er thy placid spirit pass
Like forest streams that glide and sing,
As through the fresh and fragrant grass
Breathes the immortal soul of spring;

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And through the realms of thy blest dreams,
Thy high mysterious thoughts of Time,
Heaven's watchers roam by Eden streams,
And hail thee, Love! in hymns sublime.

But these bright days will vanish, Love!
And thou wilt learn to weep o'er truth,
And with a saddened spirit prove
That bliss abides alone with youth.
Cares may corrode that lovely cheek,
And fears convulse that gentle heart,
And agonies, thou dar'st not speak,
Deepen as childhood's hours depart.

And thou, fair child! as years descend
In darkness on thy desert track,
May'st tread thy path without a friend,
Gaze on through tears, through shadows back,
And sigh unheard by all who stood
Around thee on a happier day,
And struggle with the torrent flood,
That sweeps thy last pale hope away.

O'er the soft light of that blue eye
Clouds of wild gloom may quickly gather,
As, ere the sunburst of his sky,
The tempest fell around thy father;
And mid the cold world's wealth and pride,
The chill of crowds, life's restless stir,
Thou mayst unknown with grief abide,
Lone as the sea of Anadir.

And thou wilt grow in beauty, love!
While I am mouldering in the gloom,
And like the summer rill and grove,
Sigh a brief sorrow o'er my tomb;
And thou wilt tread the same wild path
Of mirth and madness all have trod
Since time gave birth to sin and wrath—
Till from the dust thou soar to God!

194

Doubt may assail thy soul, and woes
Gather into a burning chain,
And round thy darkened spirit close
Mid loneliness, disease and pain,
When I no more can watch and guard
Thy daily steps, thy nightly rest,
Nor, with the strength of sorrow, ward
Earth's evil from thy spotless breast.

Fed by the dust that gave thee breath,
Wild flowers may bloom above my grave,
And sigh in every night breeze, Death,
When thou shalt shriek for me to save!
The bosom, from whose fount thy lips
The nectar drew of bliss below,
May moulder in the soul's eclipse,
And leave thee to thy friendless woe.

E'en in the dawn of Time, thy heart
Hath felt bereavement's chill and blight;
For thou hast seen the soul depart
That would have clothed thy path with light;
And now, my beautiful—my blest!
Where on earth's desert wilt thou find
A guide—a friend—a home of rest
For the bruised heart and troubled mind!

Dark wiles and snares and sorceries
Will spread beneath thy feet, and stain
Thy spirit with their glittering lies,
Till phantom bliss doth end in pain;
And thou must feel, and fear, and hide
The doubts that gloom, the pangs that gnaw,
And o'er a wreck'd heart wear the pride,
That by its gloom doth guilt o'erawe.

Yet dread not thou, my Genevieve!
The ills, allowed, allotted here—
Nor waste thy soul in thoughts that grieve—
The trembling sigh, the burning tear!

195

Mind builds its empire on the waste,
And virtue triumphs in despair—
The guiltless woe of being past
Is future glory's deathless heir.

Beware the soil of thoughts profane,
The fluent speech of skill'd design,
Passion that ends in nameless pain,
And fiction drawn from fashion's mine!
He, who so wildly shadows out
The darkest passions of our sin,
Draws the dark bane, he strews about,
From the deep fount of guilt within.

The Anointed keep thee, sinless child!
Be on thy path the Paraclete!
Through dreary wold and desert wild
The Giver guide thy little feet!
Like buds that bloom as blown flowers fall,
New hopes wave o'er thee angel pinions,
Till thou with them who loved thee—all—
Blend round the smile of God in glory's high dominions.

196

SONGS TO CLARA.

1. PART I.

The robe, that, like the shroud, when once put on,
Leaves the wild heart no more to hope or fear.
Croly.

When from the southern land I came,
Pale as the lips I kissed in death,
A stranger to the voice of fame,
The spell of praise, the laurel wreath,
With my heart's sorrows on my brow,
And desolation in my soul,
While backward lay a waste of woe,
And fear before, to read the scroll
The spirit of my doom unfolded
With calm despair, that recks not how
The features of our fate are moulded,
So he fulfil his awful vow;—
I dreamed not then, thou gentle one!
That ever earthly shape again
Could charm a heart so long undone,
And picture on the brow of pain
The bright, though shadowy form of bliss,
That changeful as the rainbow's hues,
Or April green, hath come to this
Outbreathing of the heart's cold dews;
The overflow of feelings wrought
Up to the madness of delight—
The torrent of long gathered thought,
The meteor of fate's darkest night.

But when we met, thy nameless grace,
Thine eye, that floated in its light,
The heart's high heaven in thy sweet face,
Thy voice, that came like sounds by night,

197

O'er the blue waters faintly gleaming,
When earth is green, and soft, and still,
And heaven above serenely dreaming,
Each angel on his own star-hill—
All that clung round thee at that hour,
(Alas! they cling around thee yet!)
When all the thoughts of years have power,
And we can ne'er in life forget—
Far backward as I trace the scene,
They rise before my heart and eye,
To tell how blest I might have been—
Now, 't were a blessed boon to die.

Why was I born to be the bane
Of all I love as genius loves?
Ah! 't is enough, my own heart's pain,
That seeks the lonesome hilly groves,
And finds a solace and a joy,
Revealments of a happier lot,
While musing, 'neath the deep blue sky,
On all that have been, but are not.
But, 't is my evil fate to link
Spirits with mine, for woe alone,
And bid the holy-hearted drink
The bann'd cup of enjoyment gone;
As the dark nightshade from the sun
Drinks light to feed its poison leaves,
So my heart looks on all that's done,
With that strange passion which bereaves
The hearts of others of their mirth—
To them, however vain, a wreath
Of joy—their sole reward on earth—
Though unto me the masque of death.
And thus it hath been from the time
My foot hath trod this desert land,
Though not a tinge of all earth's crimes
Hath soiled my heart, or stained my hand.
I know not why it thus should be;
My heart loves peace and gentle things,
And oft, in days when life was free,
I prayed some spirit would give me wings,

198

That I might look on every land,
And love each thing I looked upon.
My soul was pure, my feelings bland—
Alas for me! that time hath gone.
Yet—even yet—I bear not hate
To ought that breathes the breath of heaven;
But there 's with me an evil fate,
To which my spirit hath been given,
And 't is unmeet that I should love,
Since all I love death garners up;
No! be it mine alone to prove
The dregs of fate's unhallowed cup.

My father died ere I could tell
The love my young heart felt for him:
My sister like a blossom fell;
Her cheek grew cold, her blue eyes dim,
Just as the hallowed hours came by,
When she was dearest unto me;
And vale and stream and hill and sky
Were beautiful as Araby.
And, one by one, the friends of youth
Departed to the land of dreams;
And soon I felt that friends, in sooth,
Were few as flowers by mountain streams;
And solitude came o'er me then,
And early I was taught to treasure
Lone thoughts in glimmering wood and glen,—
Now they are mine in utmost measure.
But boyhood's sorrows, though they leave
Their shadows on the spirit's dial,
Cannot by their deep spell bereave—
They herald but a darker trial:
And such 't is mine e'en now to bear
In the sweet radiance of thine eye,
And 't is the wildness of despair
To paint vain love, that cannot die.
Yet thus it must be—like the flower,
That sheds amid the dusky night
The rays it drank at midday hour,
My spirit pours abroad its light,

199

When all the beauty and the bloom,
The blessedness of love have gone,
And left the darkness of the tomb
Upon the glory of its throne.
The hour hath come—it cannot part—
Deterring pride—one hurried deed
Hath fixed its seal upon my heart,
And ever it must throb and bleed,
Till life, and love, and anguish o'er,
The spirit soars to its first birth,
And meets on heaven's own peaceful shore
The heart it loved too well on earth.

Clara! I never named to thee
The thoughts that thronged my bosom erst,
Though, with a wild idolatry,
I loved thee, lost one! from the first;
And now it were a deadly wrong
To thee, and to thy honest fame,
Save in a sad and dirgelike song,
To speak in love thy cherished name;
But here—as from my bosom flow
Tears of despair o'er what is gone,
Thou canst but listen to such woe,
As be not thine, beloved one!
For thou canst feel the burning power
Of passion baffled in its range,
And know that hearts, in one brief hour,
Meet—blend beyond all hope of change.
Adieu! be thine the seraph's task,
To hush the murmurings of despair,
But Clara! never, never ask,
What are the sorrows that I bear.
It were unholy now to tell—
It were a blight—a blasting curse—
To thee a mockery—me a hell—
Content thee—earth could bring nought worse:
Lips sealed, when the full heart is breaking—
Eyes never closed on heaven denied—
The lingering pause—the last forsaking—
These are thy triumphs—sceptred Pride!

200

2. PART II.

Woe to the heart where passion pours its tide!
Soon sinks the flood to leave the desert there.
Croly.

The sobbings of the midnight sea,
The moan of winds through vaults of death,
The wail that warns events to be,
The awful voice that has no breath—
Such sounds come o'er the quailing bosom
When other years recur, and bring
The incense of each faded blossom
That wreathed the glowing brow of spring;
Such sounds come o'er us when we turn
To sunnier spots and happier hours,
And brightly buried feelings burn
Amid young Love's deserted bowers.

Between the hearts, whose feelings rise,
Like incense from an angel's shrine,
Before the throne of paradise,
Meet offering to the Power Divine,
There lies a gulf of boundless gloom,
Which none may pass till Fate decrees,
Till death unlocks the hollow tomb,
Revealing awful mysteries!
Doomed at their birth, in other spheres,
To sigh o'er pictures of the mind,
Through all the woes of lingering years,
That leave a burning waste behind,
Our tortured hearts too quickly feel,
Too deeply for this mortal lot,
Too lastingly for human weal—
All unforgetting—unforgot!

Time speedeth on with hurried pace,
And love and joy are left behind—
But where will close the doubtful race
Ne'er cometh into human mind.

201

We all must die—'t is all we know;
We all must go—we know not where;
Perchance, to skies that ever glow,
Perchance, to realms of quick despair!
It may be so—it may be not—
Doubt circles all and all must die,
Loved, hated, scorned, avenged, forgot—
Oh! what art thou, Eternity?

Our lot is low—our pride is high—
We are not what our minds create;
The elements of earth and sky
Are mingled in our web of fate.
Like sunbows thrown o'er torrents, come
Wild thoughts o'er hearts that bleed to death—
Thoughts whose wild light illumes the tomb,
When the blue sky resumes our breath.
Oh! while our burning spirits soar,
Woe binds us to our weary clay,
Till all things fade, and pain is o'er,
And forth we pass—away—away!

How thou hast felt through seasons gone,
My own despairing heart would tell,
In the low, deep, unearthly moan,
That oft hath bade thee, Love, farewell!
But I, perchance, may throw the hues
Of my own feelings over thee,
Like shadows cast o'er moonlight dews,
Or dark clouds o'er the gleaming sea;
And yet for all my heart hath known
Of anguish in the days gone by,
Thou mayst be blest as flowers just blown
Beneath the spring's transparent sky;
And few the thoughts and faint the prayers
That yet have followed me along
A path beset with many cares—
The heritage of sons of song!

202

I will not wrong thee, gentle one!
Thy heart hath heard the voice of woe,
And I should rue unkindness done
To part aggrieved, and leave thee so;
For thou hast rendered unto me
Such solace in my wildest mood,
That thou art now my destiny—
The charm of my lone solitude!
Thine eye is bright as flowers that blow
Upon the holy Hydrasil,
And beauty beams upon thy brow
Like Odin's throne on Asgard Hill;
And life and love around thee bloom
Like Heimdaller's gorgeous bow,
That guides the wanderer, through the tomb,
To realms beyond all earthly woe.

But worse than vain my love for thee,
Beautiful Spirit, fancy-free!
And I must quench the light that threw
Its radiance o'er my morning skies,
And dwell no longer in the view
Of my forbidden paradise;
For what thou wert thou art not now,
And I am changed in heart and mind,—
And—thus I break my plighted vow—
And pass away like autumn's wind.

3. PART III.

Woes of weak hearts that never should be won,
Wrongs of deluders by themselves undone.
Croly.

'Would the green curtain of the grave
Were drawn around my last cold rest,
As softly as yon shadows wave
Around the far blue mountain's breast;

203

For length of life is length of woe,
And human love at best deceit;
All we have known—we still shall know,
All we have met—we still must meet:
And weary grows our desert way
While every light, save Hope's, hath fled,
And that is dim as winter's day
With vainly watching o'er the dead!
Here we must mingle with the low,
And half forget our spirits' power,
And feel our burning bosoms grow
Cold as their own with every hour;
And we must watch and weep and pray
To shun the death that would be kind,
And for the need of one poor day
Wreck all the glories of the mind!
None think as we have ever thought,
Chained vassals to their daily bread;
None know the feelings that have wrought
Such triumph o'er the heart and head!
They hear a voice—they see a form,
'T is all they think—and all they care—
They cannot catch the feelings warm,
The pride, the glory, the despair,
That pass, like evening lights, o'er all
The moments of a spirit's life,
Wrapping the heart within a pall
Whose dark folds tremble in the strife!
Dark—dark hath been, through many a scene,
My wayward lot of varied woe,
And settled gloom doth lour between
Hope and ought better here below;
For friends forsake and foes wax strong,
And e'en the rabble bow to me—
Hatred, disgrace, oppression, wrong,
Have sealed my utter destiny.
I feel not now as once I felt—
The thrilling throb, the unbending brow,
The unfaltering knee that never bent,
The heart, the soul, have left me now;

204

And I am doomed to wear away
The gifts once honoured by thy praise,
And far—how far!—from bliss astray,
To end unknown my cheerless days.

Well, be it so!—I would not be
One of the herd I loathe and scorn,
For all the wealth of land and sea,
Though 't were as glorious as the morn.
I would not deign to dwell in guile,
To damn my neighbour with a lie,
To sack and plunder with a smile,
And follow pious infamy,
Though Eos were a world of gems,
And I were monarch of the whole—
Though forest leaves were diadems,
And I God's image with a soul!—
I have an eye, a spirit still
For Nature in her sweetest moods;
The silvery stream, the sunny hill,
The majesty of solitudes;
The music of the waterfall,
The vesper hymn at daylight's close,
The ragged rocks that tower o'er all,
While the grass springs, the blue sky glows.
Mid these fair scenes I half forget
The wrongs, the woes, that I have borne,
And, though my brightest star hath set,
Stretched on the cliff, I cease to mourn.
There 's sweetness in the flowering grove,
There 's beauty in the waveless river,
And, while I gaze abroad, I love,
Adore, and bless the mighty Giver,
And feel my spirit borne away
Beyond the things of common note,
Forgetful of my dust and clay,
On which the herd of mortals dote.
In the old days of wisdom, when
A child was born, the father wept:
He knew his soul would turn again
Back to the fount where it had slept.

205

When years had ta'en away his strength,
And cares had clouded his bright brow,
And he had found that all, at length,
Verged into woe—an endless Now!
So they wailed o'er the birth of one
Whose death-hour would bring joy to all
Who loved him ere his race begun,
But loved him more beneath the pall!

Clara! my strain is closing now!
'T is the last sweep of breaking chords—
'T is the last pulse—the last dark flow
Of the wild heart's mysterious words!
I 've seen thee when thy heart was gay,
When sadness flitted o'er thy face,
In merry crowds by night and day,
And kneeling in the holy place;
And I have loved as few can love,
Without a hope, without a fear,
As the heart gushes forth above,
With the quick pulse and starting tear;
And now—(my spirit quails to think
I ne'er shall speak thy name again!)
I stand upon the utmost brink
That bounds the path of human pain.
The chain is forged—the doom is sealed—
The knell hath tolled—the hour is come!
A guiding light hath been revealed
Through the dark mazes of earth's gloom;
And I will follow on my way,
Like one whose task is finished here—
The unknown being of a day,
Whose highest rapture was a tear.
Clara! farewell! the time hath been
When I could sigh that lovely name,
But that hath passed—and every scene
That led me on to love and fame.
The woes I bear 't were vain to tell—
Hear all in—Love! farewell! farewell!

206

4. PART IV.

Oh! wilt thou come at evening hour to shed
The tears of Memory o'er my narrow bed?
Campbell.

These were the last—last words from thee
When midnight on life's sunshine fell,
And love's immortal deity
Wailed on the breeze a wild farewell;
And, as I trace them, still I hear
The elysian music of thy voice,
And see the scene where hope and fear
Bade mingled hearts despair—rejoice—
Exult—despond—on sunbeams fly,
Or sink in sorrow's darken'd sea—
Prone on the earth—throned in the sky—
Victims and slaves of destiny!

Where art thou now?—where art thou now?
Not where the broken heart should rest,
Not where it scorns despair's wild vow,
Bosomed on heaven's unchanging breast,
Beyond the woes and wants and fears,
The meteor passions of lost earth,
The wreck and ruin of long years
Dark from their first and fatal birth;
But tried by time, beset by woe,
Yet doomed to crush its least revealing,
Lest he, thy tyrant lord, should throw
Torture o'er quick and wounded feeling;
Guarded, without a ray to guide
Thy mind beyond its hopeless hell,
The spectacle of mammon pride,
That glares within thy lone heart's cell,
'Till, oh! thy pale and awful brow
Reveals to all thy mournful story—
Such is thy fate, sweet Clara! now!
Such the last midnight of thy glory!

207

It was not thus when first we met—
Free as the air, fair as the sky,
And soft as flowers by spring dews wet,
All heaven seemed floating in thine eye,
All earth grew lovelier 'neath thy tread,
And poetry—the soul of heaven—
Crowned with the charm of ages fled,
Went forth with thee at starry even.
And thou wouldst summon round thee, then,
The shades of prophets once adored,
And people every mount and glen
With life—from mind's vast ocean poured;
And thou the priestess, by my side,
Didst walk, meantime, unconscious on,
As God's own stars through stormclouds glide,
And murmur love,—and art thou gone?

From many and dark adversities,
By felon foes and fools oppress'd,
Memory to thee on love's wings flies,
And on thine image sinks to rest;
Like the lone dove, that found no home
In the vast world of waters wild,
I cease in weariness to roam,
And find earth's heaven where thou hast smiled.
Hast smiled! oh, thou wilt smile no more,
No more thy voice harp on the breeze,
For love and love's last hope are o'er—
All—all thy full heart's psalteries!
Brief be my course, if 't is but bright!
I said, even when we were most blest,
And now, the phantom of a night,
I would lie down and be at rest
With all Time's blighted hopes and hearts—
The martyrs of a giant doom,
Where mind from mind no longer parts,
And heart weds heart—their shrine, the tomb!
'T was written! and we could not change
The evil fortune of our love,
And through misfortunes dire and strange
It hath been our's apart to rove,

208

Fulfilling fate and proud despair,
Ay, desolation's matchless pride—
And living mid the things that were—
Are we not blest, my bosom's bride?
Are we not blest, that fiends have done
The deadliest deed that fiends can do;
And that for us, no future sun
Hope's vain to-morrow can renew?
The troubled trance of fear hath gone,
The fever of the sleepless spirit—
Are we not blest—most blest—lost one!
No mightier grief we can inherit!

'T was early June—(how memory clings
To the one charm of glowing youth,
And o'er all time a glory flings
From one quick hour of love and truth!)
When first, by Housatonic's stream,
And 'mid the woods of Ripton's hills,
We met—was 't not a heavenly dream?
We loved! oh, first affection fills
Earth, skies and stars—and soareth up
To Him, whose holiest name is love,
And drinketh at the kindling cup
By seraphs given in bowers above!
We met—we loved—and we forgot
That hate and danger and despair
Watched o'er our young unguarded lot,
Like Python in his festering lair;
That tortur'd vows pale lips had pass'd,
That persecution had pursued
The heart, that loves thee to the last,
E'en to remotest solitude—
And that we never could be one,
Till lust of gold had ceased to reign,
Till, by the waste of years undone,
We clasped—and died in age and pain!

This we forgot while far away
From hordes of slaves, who delve and grovel,

209

And deem'd us far more blest than they,
Though doomed to share a forest hovel;
And with a playful earnestness,
A melancholy mirth, that hid
The thoughts it could not all suppress,
And raised, as 't were, the coffin-lid
From hope's pale face to gaze farewell,
Thou badst me sing a cottage song,
Mid the dark ledges of the dell,
And thou wouldst sound the notes along
The wildwood glades when I had gone,
And cheer the gloom by thoughts of me!
Thus dream'd we once, beloved one!
No more such hours in days to be!
No more in gentle phantasies,
Imagination's robe of light,
We wrap our souls and breathe the breeze
Whose music spirits love at night!
Reason and custom, duties cold,
Harsh interests and fashions claim
Two burning hearts in sorrow old—
Two minds, that loved the flight of fame;
And we must sleep to dream of love,
And wake to mask our hearts from men,
And smile in bitter grief to prove
Earth is elysium—when, oh, when
In this cold world shall love be crown'd?
When shall the soul, that basks in bliss,
To holier worlds, from earth's dark mound,
Rise to love's throne, denied in this?
O Clara! Clara! wert thou blest,
No song of grief from me should swell,
For in this young but troubled breast
An image fair as thine doth dwell.
But thou art lost—and I must feel
The fearful fate that shadows thee,
And oft in secret places kneel
And pray for thy deep misery.

210

Assassin husband! felon son!
A MOTHER'S bribe, thy victim bride!
Lo, sacrilege and ruin done!
Go! triumph in thy demon pride!

5. PART V.

When grief, that well might humble, swells our pride,
And pride, increasing, aggravates our grief,
The tempest must prevail till we are lost.
The Fatal Curiosity.

Ages of thought—long lingering years
Shadow the bloom of pleasures fled,
Unnumbered hours of secret tears
In Death's cold valley vainly shed;
Yet, not the less, in voiceless grief,
I turn from cold and selfish men,
And in the song of every leaf
Hear the same tones of love, as when,
In happier hours, o'er earth and sky
Together flew our spirits blended,
Each, while it knew the other nigh,
Not recking where or how it wended,
Wishing the clasp'd flight never ended.

I wander silent and alone,
While tears lie frozen in their fountain,
Down the wild glen, where gloom is thrown
From the cold bosom of the mountain;
And every rock, and shrub, and tree
Meet me like friends whose faces speak,
In sadness and solemnity,
Dark deeds o'er which young hearts must break;
For here we met when both were young,
Though thought had shadowed thy pale brow,
And evil o'er my soul had flung
Gloom that is lost in darkness now;

211

And here—devoting and devoted,
When twilight came on dusky wings,
And stars in seas of azure floated,
And the pure mind's imaginings
Rested, like spirits in the air,
O'er the blest bowers of days to be,
And hope prepared her banquet there
Amid her fairy imagery—
Often we roamed in silent bliss
Lovers—young lovers only know,
And pictured other worlds as this
Seemed in its soft and sunny glow;
For never yet did bigot creed
Or vaunted faith by priest belied,
Or outward forms for hearts that bleed,
Unmask deceit and vanquish pride,
And fill the conscious soul with heaven,
Like early, pure, all-trusting Love,
Whose whisper'd prayers at morn and even,
Mingle with glorious strains above.

I wander now unseen, unknown,
Save by The Eye, whose glorious light
Descends from heaven's immortal throne,
O'er early troubled being's night.
The charm of other years yet lingers
Around the solitary scene,
But Memory, with a spectre's fingers,
Scatters torn flowers o'er what hath been;
And Echo, from the rock-barr'd dell,
Whene'er my voice in anguish calls,
Sighs in the breeze—‘farewell! farewell!’
—Then silence on the desert falls!
Though I have roamed o'er land and sea,
And lonely wastes of troubled years,
I cannot part, lost one! from thee,
Pale statue by a fount of tears!
Upward I cast my soul, and breathe
The light and bliss thy name inspires,
And from the realm of doubt and death,
Like music from a thousand lyres,

212

Thine image comes, and o'er me throws
A sadness happier far than mirth,
A holiness, that round me flows,
Like Heaven's own worship heard on earth—
Heard, too, when scorpion foes assail,
And tempests gather vast and wild,
And Hope, and Truth, and Mercy fail
To cheer Earth's lone and friendless child.

E'en in the glory of my youth,
Earth entered dreadless my pure heaven,
And the world mocked my spirit's truth,
And left me by the lightning riven;
And I was doomed, when midnight fell,
To wander by the lonesome river,
And gaze my bosom's last farewell—
And hear alone the spread sails quiver!
Then came the burning wish to die,
For I had loved—and time could bring
No happier hour beneath the sky—
No purer draught from rapture's spring;
The world, with all its passions, seem'd
A shoreless waste where phantoms roam,
Yet well I knew e'en while I dreamed,
The stranger hath no hope or home.
Stranger! oh, what a dreary knell
In one's own glorious land of birth,
Where Briton hangmen come to sell
Blood they betrayed on tyrant Earth!
These thoughts and memories can but haunt
The heart that knows few lovely isles
In the vast sea where storm and want
Pursue with dark satanic smiles.
But now a melancholy gush
Of limpid light comes o'er my bosom,
And its soft beams of beauty flush
The withered leaves of Love's pale blossom.
I stand upon the same wild spot
Where, on the parting eve, we stood,
And, Clara! I have not forgot
The aspect of yon moonlight wood,

213

And wooded stream, and mountain hoary,
Nor how we trod the midnight waste,
Like them who live in deathless story,
And clasped and kissed—where is the past?
Come back, pale shadow! can it be
The enchantment lives—the enchantress fled?
—But what have I to do with thee?
The shrine 's profaned—the prophet dead!

I did not think to unseal again
The viewless fountain of my sorrow,
For while we writhe in bitter pain,
Wisdom forbids a sigh to borrow;
But one my heart holds dear hath said
“Where is she now?” and yet once more,
Lost Clara! oh, far worse than dead!
I unto thee my spirit pour.
Sever'd below by hands malign,
Our mutual woes, our mutual tears
Can mingle at Religion's shrine,
Undaunted by Earth's deepest fears;
And while, beside our hearths, arise
Our saddened prayers for one another,
Thou wilt invoke, from purest skies,
Blessings to crown thy more than brother.
And I, blest Clara! while the cloud
Of envy, hate and trial gathers,
Will utter thy sweet name aloud,
As did my bold chivalric fathers,
And that shall be my watching word,
The spell, once touched, that will disclose
Treasures unknown to haughty lord,
Or unto all my fiendish foes.
Though I no more shall see thy face—
How could I look on ruin, Love?—
Thine image hath its idol place,
And wafts my stricken heart above,
Where Mind shall wander as it wills,
Unawed by guile or mammon's wrath,
And hold discourse by silvery rills,
Or on its bright and glorious path,

214

While spirits blest shall gaze upon us,
And murmur—“have we loved like this?”
And we shall think on evil done us,
But to perfect our endless bliss.

6. PART VI.

Let no man seek
Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall
Him or his children.—
Milton.

“Wreathe thou the laurel with the bay,
And let the Poet's triumph be
The prelude of a lovelier day,
The seal of immortality!
Crown thou the brow of thought divine
With glory born of mind below,
And fill with gifts the holy shrine
Where hopeless spirits kneel and glow,
Not with the light of joy to come,
But in the lurid splendour cast
O'er the wild story of their doom
From the soul's morning beauty past!
So to lorn love thou wilt fulfil
The fate denied in mortal days,
And bear affection's harplike thrill
Through all hearts in thy living lays!”
Thus, as beside the tomb of love,
The monument of Heloise,
When seraphs from air thrones above
Leaned and sighed music on the breeze,
I stood in that lone hour of thought,
Which wafts time's shrouded memories on,
And pours upon the waste of nought
The loveliness of rapture flown,
I drank from spring's all spirit air
The accents of a voice unheard,
And clasped one bliss in life's despair,
One thought of joy that in me stirred.

215

“Thou of the bigot's darkened time!”
(I murmured out a faint reply,)
“Wert doomed to bear the brand of crime
In the heart's home of ecstasy;
Martyr and mission'd spirit, sent
From throbbing depths of holiest skies,
To bless earth's love in banishment,
And gladden loneliest destinies;
Come from the fountain home of heaven,
Come from the mountain haunts of youth,
And o'er me shed the rapture given
To first love in the years of truth!
Give to the glance of memory's eye
The flight of hope o'er future good,
And to thy temple in the sky
Summon dark thoughts from wave and wood!
I oft have bled in bitter strife,
I oft have dwelt in lady's bower,
But for this fated gift, earth's life,
'T is time's worst mock and hate's worst dower;
Nought in its heart but care and sorrow,
In anguish born, in darkness ending,
Haunting the footprints of to-morrow,
For hope towards joy in shadows tending!
The world can talk, but I must feel,
And men can counsel while I sigh,
Wealth crowns the spirit that can kneel,
But genius heralds destiny.
They murmur error past—but how?
I was not born to bend and bow,
God made me free and proud and just,
Man, this dark thing of fire and dust
Thought comes not from the mould of earth,
Nor feeling from the merchant's mart,
And Glory, wed to Mind, has birth
Alone in grief's mausoleum heart.
Would'st thou know more? go ask the fiend
Why he veiled not his seraph head,
Why unto man he scorned to bend
The brow that heaven's own glory shed!

216

From thy shrined tomb in Paraclete
Breathe yet again thy spirit o'er me,
And I may better learn to meet
The storms and strife that gloom before me!
Thy cloistered wisdom, vesper prayers,
And matin hymns of hallowed love,
Shed o'er these soft translucent airs,
And fill me with the bliss above!
Tell me once more thy pillow now
Is Abelard's long widowed bosom,
And smiles may light my clouded brow,
And hope breathe life o'er youth's dead blossom!”

Doomed 'mid a selfish herd to tread,
To loathe yet leave not life's lone way,
To breathe despair among the dead,
And seek the warmth, yet curse the day,
To stand on midnight hills, and grasp
At glory's shapes, and find them madness—
This, Clara, since our last wild clasp,
Hath been my fate in silent sadness.
And as the Meccan pilgrim wends
Alone along the waste of death,
And cheers him, when the sand storm ends,
With the blest hope of Houri wreath,
So I through living solitude
Thine image bear with lonely joy,
And, shadowed by the ancient wood,
Paint thy bright features on the sky.
Then should I not invoke the past
To counsel and console my doom,
And deem I meet thee on the waste
Where towers sublime love's lonely tomb?
Shall not my spirit hover o'er
Thy slumbering brow and bless thee there?
And on thy children's bosoms pour
The incense of a holy prayer?
Sweet Clara! let me breathe my heart
Upon those amulets of bliss,
And, through their lips, to thee impart
The rapture of a farewell kiss!

217

I seek not wisdom from the crowd
Who laugh in woe to worship pride;
With the world's men I can be proud,
And king with king stand side by side.
I gaze upon the stars of God,
And deem my soul hath lost its sphere,
For some strange crime doomed to this sod,
Buried in doubt and darkness here;
I sink my soul within the soul
That lights, with heaven's revealings, earth,
And in the dust before The Whole
Drop prostrate into deathless birth!

But, Clara! in the dawn of mind,
In the young glow, the gush of heart,
Like music linked to autumn wind,
Our spirits wed—and can we part?
Can time's mildew or fading flight
Ruin the home of hope we built,
And, as we roam through storm and night,
Our meeting bear the curse of guilt?
Can we forget how oft we met,
How deeply loved, how wildly mourned,
When tearless grief and vain regret
Before love's shrine their offering burned?
Can we forget the sacred charm,
The midnight hush of still commune,
While the heart thrilled each folded arm,
And hope soared up beside the moon?
Can we forget the starlight sail
On Housatonic's azure breast?
Can memory, mind, and love, all fail
To tell us that we have been blest?
There 's not a grove in Ripton's vale,
There 's not a flower beside the river,
That breathes not out Love's mournful tale,
When pale leaves in the cold winds quiver—
And shall we blot from life the hour
That sealed us for undying fate,

218

And o'er the bloom of young Love's bower
Cast the world's scorn and bitter hate?
I hear a voice from oceans past,
The heart's knell o'er returnless years;
I stand upon life's shoreless waste,
The haunt and home of buried fears;
And, as pale shades of hope flit by,
And Love in tears slow follows on,
Missioned to one eternity,
That bosoms future, present, gone,
I cast my spirit o'er thy name,
And deem me blest by Love's lone tomb,
For thou to me art hope and fame—
The Pleiad of the world's cold gloom!

SONNET.

Welcome, Angelo! to a world of care!
Fair firstborn of my youth, thou 'rt welcome here!
Thy smile can charm away the world's despair,
And light a rainbow in the heart's wild tear.
Thy quick intelligence, thy winning ways,
Thy deep affection in life's first hours shown,
Thy father's spirit, like a mantle, thrown
About thee, studded by the pearly rays
That float like music round the faery soul
Of thy mild cheerful mother, with her smiles
Beaming like starlight o'er the ocean's isles,
That oft deep sorrow from my heart have stole—
These blend, my boy! in thy dark ardent eyes
Like zodiacs in the depth of heaven's blue skies!

219

GRAVE WATCHING.

Bring flowers and strew them here,
The loveliest of the year,
Withered, yet fragrant as her virgin fame,
Who slumbers in this sunny spot,
Yet to Love's voice awaketh not,
Nor hears in dreams her lover sigh her name.

Where woods o'er waters wave
She hath her early grave,
And summer breathes lone music o'er the scene;
It is a green and bloomy place,
And smiling like her living face,
Whom memory weeps o'er, sighing “She hath been!”

How sacred silence lies
With dreamy heart-filled eyes,
Shedding its spirit o'er the wanderer's heart,
Beside the mound of dust,
Where, throned, sit hope and trust,
Serenely watching awful death depart.

In sooth, 't were bliss to rest
On nature's rosy breast
'Mid all this sweetness, quiet, faith, and love,
While heaven's soft airs flit round
The still and hallowed ground,
And the blue skies lift the pure soul above.

Albeit, I can but grieve
That thou, pale girl! didst leave
Thy lover lone in such a world as this,
Yet tender is my heart's regret
As the last beam of suns that set
To rise again, like thee, my love! in bliss.

220

Then let me linger here,
Where none of earth appear,
Save gentle spirits, kindred of the skies,
And muse beside the gushing spring,
Where wild birds carol on the wing,
And live as thou didst, love! on harmonies.

O'er this green bank of flowers
Hover the dew-eyed hours,
Blending the incense breath of earth and heaven,
As thou didst hallow time
By thoughts and deeds sublime,
And seal eternal bliss by wrongs forgiven.

Inspire me with thy soul,
And, while the seasons roll,
No evil passion shall corrode my spirit!
I can forgive my fiercest foes,
And think not o'er inflicted woes,
While I thy gentle soul, lost love! inherit.

What holy joy attends
Such commerce with lost friends,
Lost to our eyes but living in our minds!
Their memories breathe elysian bliss
Around e'en such a world as this,
Like Yemen's odours borne on genial winds.

Bring flowers and strew them here,
The loveliest of the year,
And I will watch their spirits as they part;
For in a place so green and still,
'Mid wood and water, vale and hill,
My lost love dwells forever in my heart!

221

THE CONFESSIONAL.

Mordear opprobriis falsis, mutemque colores?

I would not live at outrage with my kind,
Nor mock with moans the flitting mirth of man,
But offer on the altar of my mind
The love that thrilled me when the world began!
I have not struggled with the wave and wind
Vainly, nor sunk beneath the torturer's ban,
And, though the wild storm hath not ceased to roll,
Yet evil passion hath not soiled my soul.

The warlock power of midnight watching thought,
That dwells with spirits as it were their mate,
Abides, bold prophet, by the shrine it wrought,
O'erlooks pale envy and transfixes hate:
And courage, daring wrong, that feareth nought,
So guilt awake no fear of future fate,
Yet waves its banner o'er the trampled field
Where, 'mid a host, one stood and scorned to yield.

Still and deep orisons in my loneliness,
Thanks that God gave what men could not destroy,
Have oft ascended up, nor could I less,
To Him, who guards the widow's friendless boy;
And, in such fervencies, I e'en could bless
The ministers of wrath who taught me joy
In the unseen communion with my God,
Who, than mine own, a darker pathway trod.

And shall I then, in mock'd prostration, crave
Mercy from merciless—from demons grace?
Time roams a desert, but it hath a wave
Well'd from a fount unseen by human face.
Earth hath not yet nor stained man made a slave
Of one whose soul exults to own his race,
And to my foes I shall not render now
The last pale light that wavers round my brow.

222

The solitary mountain when young Light
Came forth to drink the diamond dew of spring;
The voiceless vale, where in still grandeur, Night
Furled, like a thron'd archangel, her vast wing:
The fluctuating wood; the sea in might
And majesty matchless; each, all could bring
O'er me, from earliest hours, the Almighty Form
That grasps Eternities and stills the storm.

And when upon the cataract's quivering verge
Alone, remote, in silence I have stood,
Shook by the roar, bewildered by the surge,
Yet seeking wisdom from the maddened flood;
Oft have I deemed, thus whirlwind passions urge
Their victims o'er the precipice of blood—
Thus, like these waves, hath hate relentless passed
O'er me—yet I and these bold rocks stand fast.

Stand fast in conscious virtue of design,
Though worn and darkened by the wave and cloud,
In injury, thrice blest it is not mine,
In much love, happier than the world's vain crowd;
A hearth and home, though humble, and a shrine
Of hearts exalted, not exulting loud,
I have not failed to find in spite of scorn—
And thus I'm blest in all that I have borne.

As, to the giant minds of ages old,
All hopes, fears, holies thronged around the throne
Of Jove, the Olympian Thunderer, so unfold
The sanctities of nature when alone
I read the volume to my eye unrolled,
And catch the music of her gentle tone,
As she instructs me to forgive—and learn
Wisdom from dial, horoscope, and urn.

Never to court the gladiator's wreath,
Nor crave the inconstant worship of the throng,
Nor seek the fame which hangs on human breath,
Nor stain my spirit by a conscious wrong;

223

Thus I commune with destiny and death,
And pour their spirit o'er my secret song,
Till earth's poor vanities and men's weak praise
Guide not, nor govern my devoted days.

Thus hallowed sympathies with every charm
Of beauty, virtue, knowledge thrill within
The fount of immortality, and arm
The fortitude that faints 'mid human sin;
Thus hopes, that fill us with affections warm,
From every ill delicious pleasures win,
And float like seraphs, o'er the world, to bring
From paradise to earth eternal spring.

From summer greenness bliss, from every flower,
That gems the wood and wold, thought gushes forth,
And every breeze, that wafts the parting hour,
Should breathe our blessings o'er the lovely earth:
All are not evil, though the common dower
Be vanity and darkness and cold dearth;
With the tried chosen, truth, love, honour dwell,
That on them from ascending martyrs fell.

Pure mid corruption and in weakness strong,
True with the treacherous, with the changeling firm,
They soothe the trembler, hush remembered wrong,
And charm the gnawings of the poison-worm;
Blest in high duty that endureth long,
E'en their deep sufferings bless through life's brief term,
Exalt and purify the troubled heart,
And then like rainbows in blue heaven depart.

Then, though my fortune hath been cast mid thorns,
And persecution hath assailed me sore,
With rapture still and radiant as the morn's,
I walk beside ye on this mortal shore,
Pilgrims! whose presence hallows while it warns,
As on to heaven ye tend, like saints of yore.
Ethereal gleams of Good yet flame abroad,
And light our pathway to the throne of God.

224

FANCY'S FAITH.

So false, so frail, and yet so passing fair!
So very beautiful and yet so lost
To every hope that Beauty must inspire!
So blessed in form to be more deeply loathed!
So high in Heaven's best gifts, and yet so low
In their misuse! Shut from the hallowed shrine
Of a pure name, thou standest by the gate
Most like a pillar exquisitely wrought
For an immortal monument of Love,
Tho' there is falsehood in thy smile, and blight
Upon thy lips, and ruin in thy heart,
And every evil passion unsubdued
Rioting in thy dark spirit, and Despair
The tyrant of thy unrepenting soul!
Alas! that hell should wear the form of Heaven!
O that the heart had in itself a power,
Subtle and piercing like the air, to mark
Pernicious purposes, and baffle all
Midnight conspiracies that wait their hour,
Or shun the peril ere the breathless time
When strength draws forth its armory for war!
Weep! that the ancient days have gone when dreams
Oracular, or hoary prophets warned,
Or Urim showed, as in a burning sea,
The winding paths of evil, and the foes
That skulked in hidden refuges for spoil!
Weep! that we wander in uncertain ways,
By certain dangers compassed, unaware
When, how, or where the dark assault may come!
Virtue! in man or woman (most in her,
The angel of his home) supremely fair
In image and in action! why art thou
Austere in thy aspect and chilling oft,

225

Scorning bland courtesies and manners mild,
When high-bred Vice throws o'er her nameless deeds
The mellow shadows of dissembling smiles
And shrewd hypocrisies, that charm away
The fear of sin—and dazzle ere they kill?
Why on thy brow should sorrow hold her throne,
And gloom o'ercome thy spirit, when thou art
The empress of so large a heritage,
A boundless, endless kingdom, fair beyond
The poet's twilight imaging? Blest child
Of the Immaculate! why are thy paths
So perilous and rugged, and thy lot
So lonely, and thy heart so burden-bowed
And broken?—Guilt looks on thy fair domain,
With an inheritor's bold, gloating eye,
And sits, as on the utmost starry top
Of Orizaba, thron'd; the passing world
Look up and wonder—shudder and adore!
'Would that the cynic Heathen's thought were done!
So each would know the other—truly know—
And, knowing, shun his deep intents, ere yet
Born in irrevocable deeds of death!
For why should all be mockery? Why trust
To be deceived forever? Soon the heart,
Purpled by plague-spots—shares the guilt it fears,
And Vice inherits what it first usurped.

A wayworn pilgrim o'er a desert world,
I met thee with an ecstacy of heart
Too high and too intense for Earth—and then,
Even then—though outwardly surpassing fair,
O'ercanopied by floating loveliness,
And moving like a spirit in the light
Of its inspired divinity and love—
While I beheld thee with a saintlike eye,
Like the Madonna's worshipper, and breathed
The air that kissed thee as 't were rare perfume,
Oh! then thou wert sin's victim—frailty's child,
Beyond the imagination of all guilt,
Cast out to scorn and ruin and despair—

226

A tomb o'erblazoned by men's mockery,
An angel form inherited by fiends!
The blossom and the golden fruit were fair,
But, ere the early summer days were past,
The Dead Lake's ashes festered all the core!
Glory was in the rainbow—it dissolved
In darkness, lurid clouds and bitter tears!
Oh! I did love thee with a burning heart,
Triumphant in its deep devotedness
And eloquent aspirings; and thou wert,
For one all-passionate hour, the very dream
Of intellectual Beauty—faery light,
And joy ineffable, that oft had passed
O'er me in earlier days of high romance.
Alas! the doom of knowledge! and alas!
That all the earnest worship and pure love
Of my o'erflowing spirit should be cast
Like shattered wrecks upon a boundless sea,
And all the tender gushings of my heart
Driven back in Alpine torrents—cold as death!
Why didst thou crush the bud ere yet it bloomed?
Or why come o'er my nature with the face
Of a winged seraph, when the Demon's eye
Glared through the soft curls of thy floating hair?
When Beauty smiled in radiant Glory's arms,
My earlier Fancy dreamed of such as thou
Didst seem;—and I have basked in such sweet dreams,
Till the green earth and azure sky appeared
Too lovely—too beloved for this brief hour
Of lingering trial for a happier world.
I once had catholic faith in everything
The spirit pictured in its fairy moods;
But now I'll dream no more, nor longer trust
Extrinsic beauty, foreign ornament,
The garniture of falsehood; for without
The magic of a consecrated mind,
Guarded by cherubim, and inly filled
With images of moral loveliness,
Vain as the bright flamingo's shadow, cast
Upon the running brook, are all the charms
That mask the treachery of an evil heart.

227

THE SUNSET VOICE.

Softly o'er yon far uplands blue
The solemn shades of evening steal,
Like dim still thoughts that would renew
The hopes 't was bliss in youth to feel;
And many a tall outbranching tree
Seems to repose on that pale sky,
Like hearts, from human trial free,
Upon a blest eternity!
Serene as reckless childhood's sleep,
Or souls accepted in their sorrow,
The breeze floats o'er the upper deep
Eastward to hail a fair to-morrow;
And still the hues of sunset dwell
High in the summer vault of heaven,
O'er passionate thoughts to cast a spell,
That seals all earthly wrongs forgiven.
And, oh! how blest, mid every ill,
The spirit that can gently think—
‘Ye did forsake and wrong me—still
‘Drink not the cup ye bade me drink,
‘Feel not the woes ye wrought for me,
‘Bear not the fate that I have borne!
‘But may the voice of Nature be,
(‘At glimmering eve, or glorious morn)
‘The voice that calls ye back once more
‘From the wild maze of evil past;
‘Then gaze on landscape, sea and shore,
‘And weep and be forgiven!’ The last
Of all my thoughts hath ever been
Hate or revenge, for Nature threw
O'er me in early youth serene
A heaven of thought, and, like the dew,

228

I could have kissed each shrub and flower,
And wept upon the fresh green earth,
Till the eternal morning hour
Bore me unto my heavenly birth.
Misfortune called my mind away
From sunny hills and wandering streams,
But yet I drank the light of day,
The morning blaze, the evening gleams,
And saw and felt that Earth was made
For happier hearts than dwell therein,
And grieved that Guilt's funereal shade
Should darken e'en the gloom of Sin.
And I was happy, though my head
Was pillowed in the poor man's shed,
For none but hearts long tried can know
What bliss may mingle with their woe.

So I went forth—the world my home—
My own unshielded destiny,
On a wide, stormy sea to roam,
And only one to care for me.
The flood grew dark—the waters wailed—
The sun went down—I stood alone,
And through the living darkness hailed
A light that bore me cheerly on,
O'er reefs and shoals, by leeward shore,
(Tempests above, and rocks beneath,)
Where stood my foes, with many an oar,
To drown my corse—and deaden death.
On—on I rushed—all sails were spread,
Though wilder grew the storm of wrath,
For still unto myself I said
‘If I must perish—Ocean hath
‘Ten thousand coral tombs prepared,
‘And all shall see, and feel, and know
‘That what I dared in death was dared,
‘And where I triumphed—there was woe!’
My barque flew fast through all that night,
But helm and cord were in my hand,
And still prevailed my guiding light
Along that dark and ruthless strand,

229

And oft my quickened sense could catch
The exulting cry of foes on shore,
As nearer to their demon watch
My bounding vessel madly bore.

This I have borne—and I can bear
More than the fiends of earth can do,
Nor shrink, nor faint in mute despair,
But keep the light of heaven in view;
Liars have shed their venom o'er me,
And barr'd my path and snatched my bread,
And poured their own vile blood before me,
And sworn 't was blood that I had shed;
But, till the moment they can feel
Such gentle thoughts as o'er me flow,
While I behold the shadows steal
O'er hill, and stream, and vale below,
I shall not grieve that they have cast
The world's cold nightshade o'er my heart,
For—dark howe'er the long, lone past—
My own is far the better part.

230

THE SACHEM'S CHANT.

The Mohican-hittuck rolls grandly by,
Mid the bloom of the earth and the beam of the sky,
And its waters are blue and bright and blest
As the realms of the Red Man's god of rest,
And the gentle music, they leave along,
Is an echoed strain of the spirit's song.

The Mohican-hittuck glides softly on,
Like holy thoughts o'er the glorious gone,
And the sign of the stream through forests dim
Blends with the winds in their twilight hymn;
While the shadows are folding round rock and height,
And the dead are abroad on the wings of night.

The Mohican-hittuck sweeps darkly past,
Like the storm of death o'er the Red Man cast;
And the gathering tempest o'er earth and sky
Reveals our doom to the prophet's eye—
The exile's lot—the slave's despair—
The darkened sunbeam and poisoned air!

The Mohican-hittuck's shore replied,
When its sons roamed free in their warrior pride,
To the harvest song, to the seedtime mirth,
And the bridal bliss on the blooming earth;
We breathe not a beam of sun or star,
For dark is the brow of Yohewah!

Where Mohican-hittuck mid isles careers,
And meets with a smile the Salt Lake's tears,
The White Man's barque, like a wind-god hung,
And the powwahs to welcome it danced and sung;—
For the lands we gave to the stranger we reapt
Plague, poison and madness—and warriors wept!

231

The Mohican-hittuck—our own proud river—
The glorious gift of the Spirit Giver,
Bears on its bosom the booty won
From the slaughtered chieftain's banished son,
And the paleface Sage, ere he meets his God,
Would mark with our blood the path he trod.

The Mohican-hittuck's hills have heard
The Indian's thoughts as his spirit stirred,
And, even now, thy waves grow dim,
River! as awful memories swim,
Like the Wielder's bolts on an autumn even,
O'er the billowy clouds of a hurtling heaven.

The Mohican-hittuck's secret dells
Feel the Indian's breath as it pants and swells,
And every wood on its banks returns
The shriek of the heart as it slowly burns!
The ghosts of my fathers like giants appear,
And the shades of the weak ones in sorrow and fear.

Oh, Mohican-hittuck—the wave of my birth!
The loveliest stream that laves the green earth!
Eloha calls me and Rowah replies!
I leave thee, blue stream! for the wild mountain skies.
Yet fast as thy waves to the ocean advance,
Will thy bloom and thy gleam o'er my lone spirit glance.

Oh, Mohican-hittuck! no more by thy stream
Shall the forms of the slain like icy lights gleam;
No longer the voice from the bosom of glory
Gather grandeur and wisdom to learn their proud story.
Twice vanish the Nations from realms of the west,
But Vengeance shall start from our last home of rest!

The aboriginal name of the Hudson river.

232

THE TREASURE OF THE FOREST.

His (the Pequod's) first step towards taking possession of his valuable inheritance was in direct violation of the injunctions of the Indian; and so far did he disregard the fidelity of his ancestors as to consent that a white man should accompany him and share in his discoveries.

Puritan Tradition.

Their path grows dark through the wildwood dell,
And the wolf's long howl and the panther's yell,
And the dusky owlet's crooning cry,
With the wild dove's wail of melody,
And the serpent's hiss in his peopled den,
Alone are heard in the rentrock glen:
And on in silent fear
The wanderers thread their way,
And their daring steps draw near
Where the Forest Treasures lay.

'T is morn on the skycrown'd hills, but dun
And dusk the light of the orient sun;
Night's shadows float o'er the mountain's brow,
And the mist's gray folds still roll below,
And bird and beast from their sleepless lair
In amaze look forth on the strange dim air,
Then quick shrink back again
In trembling awe and dread,
And on the Travellers twain
With hurried footfalls tread.

Their path grows dark through the forest shade,
And the hues of morn begin to fade,
And the lurid light on the stormclouds lies
Like hell in the dying murderer's eyes,
While the thunder's voice peals loud and high
O'er the darkening earth and the lightning sky.
In the pauses of the roar
Long lonesome yells arise,
And from mountain, wood and shore,
Ascend unearthly cries.

233

Look well to thy path, false Oulamar!
Hearst thou those voices that wail afar?
Pale son of white clay! beware—beware!
The bow is bent and the arrow there,
And a stern arm wield's in this dark hour
The deathman's axe with a fearful power!
Pause in thy daring quest
Ere ruthless wrath awake!
Seest thou that dragon crest?
Hearest thou that bickering snake?

The rifted rocks, where the hazel grows,
Whose mystic power will the mine disclose,
They reach unscathed—but the white man there
Is chained in his motionless, mute despair.—
The Chief hath pass'd, and the mountain 's still
As the lucid lapse of a landscape rill;
The white man's heart throbs sound
Like the tramp of many men,
And his brain whirls round and round
As he gazes down the glen.

There 's a rush of wings in the dusky air,
And a lengthening shriek of last despair,
And strange dark forms in a host pass by,
Like midnight shades o'er the fairbrow'd sky,
And a demon laugh from the gloom bursts out,
And a wail of woe and a mournful shout.
The stranger heard no more—
Fear froze his curdling blood;
And the thunder ceased to roar
Through the lone and moaning wood.

Who passes there like the samiel wind,
Or the arrowy flash of the electric mind?
His feathery crest and his quivered bow
And his mantle lie in the dell below,

234

But where, oh, where hath the Pequod gone
Through the pathless woods, like a birdbolt flown?
Hark! 't is the Indian's foot
O'er the rock and chasm bounding?
Or is 't the far owl's hoot
Through mountain passes sounding?

No! 't was a voice like the trumpet's blast,
And thus o'er the hills its wild notes pass'd:
“Woe to the traitor! his days are done!
“His glory 's ended—his race is run!
“His bow 's unbent and his arrows lost,
“And his name struck from the warrior host!
“Woe to the traitor, woe!
“The huntsman's pride is o'er!”
A shout pealed from the mountain's brow—
“Amen! for evermore!”

“On the secret cave where the Treasure lies
“The Pequod looked with a white man's eyes,
“And his soul was seared by the mystic fire
“That withers the heart of curs'd desire,
“And in fear he fled from the holy place,
“The last, the worst of his warrior race.
“Woe to the traitor, woe!
“The Indian's glory 's o'er!”
A wail rolled o'er the mountain's brow,
“Alas! for evermore!”

“Where now is the traitor, Oulamar?”
“His deathsong rolls on the winds afar—
“The Pequod dies, and his bones shall lie
“'Neath the storm and blast of the northern sky,
“And the white man's quest in vain shall be
“For the Forest Gems and the Treasure Tree!
“Woe to the white man, woe!”
Bursts forth the darkened sun—
The mountain woods like magic glow—
And the holy work is done!

235

THE SULIOTE POLEMARQUE.

'T is sunset o'er Oraco's vale
And old Dodona's holy woods,
Where lingers many a glorious tale
Shrined in those holy solitudes;
And through Klissura's dim defile,
As pours Voioussa's mountain flood,
Its dark waves catch a sunlight smile
Along the lonely pass of blood;
And Pindus wears a robe of light
Through all his rugged mountain range,
Like spirits throned where chance and blight
Come not, nor sin nor any change;
And on the Cassopean Height
The Kunghi—fortress of the brave,
Like dark clouds on a lurid night,
Hangs threatening o'er the Ionian wave.

'T is midnight: and a Suliote band
Of faint and famished ones pass on
In silence—exiles from that Land
Where deathless deeds were vainly done,
And through a deep, wild, wooded dell
The last hope of the Suliote name
Tread trembling where their fathers fell,
The eternal heirs of Grecian fame,
And often back their dim eyes turn,
In love yet lingering mid despair,
Where beacon lights of glory burn
Amid proud Freedom's mountain air.
But few can now find free abode
On those wild cliffs where temples erst
Rose, crown'd with glory, to each god,
Whose presence from the starr'd skies burst!

236

They leave their childhood's sunny home,
The birth place of their love and pride,
In utter outcast misery roam
Where food and shelter are denied,
And by the wayside die, or see
Their hearts' fair blossoms torn away,
(The rich buds of a withering tree,)
Too near to death to weep or pray.
Such the dark doom of Freedom's sons—
Such Ali Aslan's tyrant wrath—
And forth the lone despairing ones
Move feebly on their mountain path.

“God of the Brave! they little know,
“Yon heart-sick band, what perils wait,
“What terrors lower from Kunghi's brow,
“Worst than the wildest work of hate.
“Let Ali Aslan tread these towers,
“And dare the doom he taught the slave!
“Few are the turban'd despot's hours—
“'T is Freedom—Glory—or the Grave!”
So spake the high-souled Caloyer,
The Polemarque of Suli's band:
The man whose trumpet voice could stir
The faintest heart in all the land:
As round upon a score of men
Sworn on that gory rock to die,
He glanced in lofty pride and then
Raised unto heaven his warrior eye.
“Lift the Red Banner! by our wrath
“This naked rock shall dearer cost
“Than all Janina's pacha hath;
“Or all we have for ages lost!
“Lift the Red Banner! let him come,
“And brothers! 't will be heaven to die,
“Our birthplace for our trophied tomb,
“Our death, our immortality!
—“Brave Palikars! they come, they come!”
Each in the full heart's silence stood,
Thought of lost hope and ruined home,
And deep revenge in Othman blood.

237

“They come! they come! now stand apart
“With torches in your red right hands,
“And by the wrongs of every heart,
“Where this proud tower on Pindus stands,
“The Suliote's grave shall be—and there
“The victim victors with their foes
“Shall sleep mid their own mountain air
“Free till life's latest heart pulse close!”
They come—the Pacha's Arnaut host,
With gleaming spears and scimitars;
They come—Epirus' warrior boast
To meet the Suliote palikars.
But still as Tadmor's ruined halls
Kiaffa lowers, and one alone
With a deep voice on Ali calls;
“Come, spoiler, tyrant! haste—come on!
“With myrmidon and minstrel come,
“With dagger, sabre, lance and gong,
“With banner wrought in hell's black loom,
“With dark heart drenched in human wrong!
“Come! we will meet thee as the slave
“Meets in despair his tyrant—come!
“Kiaffa is the Suliote's grave,
“Or Ali Aslan's final home!”

Thousands the rocks on thousands climb,
And rush through Suli's silent tower,
And rapture thrills the soul sublime
Of that lone man at life's last hour.
“Yes, I will lead the Conqueror's way,—
“Why loiters now the Conqueror's tread?
“Let Ali mark his brightest day,
“And hear the council of the dead!”
And, driven on by spear and brand,
Through darkened vaults and winding aisles,
He trod like one who held command
O'er vast lands where one summer smiles;
And every solemn step was heard
Mid all the din of wild pursuit,
As if a Hero's Spectre stirred
At every echo of his foot.

238

Onward through mazy paths he trod
And thousands followed hurriedly,
When loudly—“In the name of God!
“Death on the shrine of Liberty!”
The Caloyer's high voice went forth,
“Death to the tyrant and the slave!
“Death on the spot that gave us birth!
“Revenge triumphant o'er the grave!
“Revenge for home, hope, country gone!
“Revenge for bondage borne in vain!
“Revenge for each loved, honoured one!
“Revenge for all!” He fired the train!
The fire ran, leapt and burst and flew
Through all the vaulted magazine,
And dark as fiends the Moslems grew—
The Suliotes knelt and prayed serene.
Each for one moment—seas of flame
Burst through vast rocks that had withstood
The skill of many a vaunted name,
The earthquake and the boundless flood.
The mountain sprang asunder then;
And, mid a storm of shattered rocks,
The arms and limbs of thousand men
Flew through the air in blackened flocks,
And mid the glare and gloom—the roar,
The wreck, the ruin, upward rose,
Like the mind's glance, o'er tower and shore,
A Form that triumphed o'er his foes:
Blackened and rent, with hands outspread,
And blood-shot eyes and lava lips,
And sword and torch, as when he said—
“His hands in blood proud Ali dips—
“Here let us grapple eye to eye!”
O'er the haught Pacha's head he rode
Like a quenched meteor through the sky—
The awful ruin of a god!

239

So Suli's cliffs and crags became
A lurid mass of fire and blood,
The home of havoc and of flame,
Where Freedom in her death hour stood,
Where tyrants ne'er shall dare to stand,
While Suli's sons on earth draw breath,
In that proud, holy, storied Land
Where Glory lights the realms of Death.

Whenever the word God occurs in the author's compositions without a capital and double emphasis, the reader will consider the epithet merely as significant of extraordinary not almighty Power.

SONG.

As blend the hues of earth and heaven,
By fountains hymning Love,
Thy voice and smile, at twilight even,
Haunt every whispering grove;
The clouds, thy throne—the stars, thine eyes,
The diamond vault, thy brow—
Why should I quench these ecstacies
Without a prayer and vow?
Why should the burning glance of mind
On Memory's ruin gleam,
When warcries thrill the morning wind—
Love voices, evening's beam?
Should doubt and gloom pervade the heart
Where Love with Fame reposes?
And Hope, the rainbow seraph, part
From Pleasure's realm of roses?
When Peril round the banner rallies
Of heroes wrapt in war,
Should sighs and tears in woodland vallies
Dim each triumphant star?
No!—Glory is the lord of Love,
His triumph-cries, its pinions;
The palm-crown, borne by Beauty's dove,
Waves o'er the world's dominions!

240

REMEMBERED WRONGS.

Why, what know ye of hearts that mirror Heaven?
Outcast adorers of the dæmon's will!
Have ye not long, hyæna harpies! striven
To awe me from the path I follow still?
Your sacrifice is sacrilege—your oaths
The gamester's oracles; and shall I fear
The hideous-bodied Sin my spirit loathes,
Or gore my heart and lend a suppliant's ear
To treason's counsel shared among the crowd
Of villain-workers who beset my way?
No! better fester in oblivion's shroud,
And shrink, like lazars, from the sun away!
I deem not ill the toil and sorrow past,
For I have found, earth fiends! my strength at last.

And ye shall feel and fear it who have dared
To leprosy my name with your foul breath;
For not in vain have I my bosom bared,
Passed fiery ordeals and confronted death.
Worms of the dust! in amber ye may live,
Who are not worthy of a just man's scorn,
And I will e'en put off my power and give
Your characters unto the light of morn;
For have not altered eyes been on me cast,
And tales of hell against me buffetted?
And friends familiar unsaluting passed
With conscious spirit and averted head?
And shall I bear the scorn of apes, and not,
While in me dwells the power, espouse my just
Well-tested cause?—Ye shall not be forgot,
Artificers of lies! be this your trust.
Well have I read the ritual of your creed,
And if I brand the iron on the brow
With a soft maiden hand—why, let me bleed,
The martyred victim ye would have me now!

241

Meantime, be this the poet's palinode
To all who trampled on his heart in youth,
Barred his lone path, denied his head abode,
Wrung his wrought spirit and blasphemed his truth!
To each and all, who, envy's vassals dared
To mock, howl, yell their lies through woe's midnight,
And 'mong their horde the pangs of suffering shared,
Be this the orison of my wrested Right.

Be thou forever what thou art,
A breathing tomb, a human hell,
A Moloch mind, a dæmon heart,
A thing 't would blast my soul to tell!
Be thou the loathed, the abhorred of Time,
Till age, all hoar with guilt and woe,
Shall quail, cower, drivel—steeped in crime—
In its dark home of hate below!
Be round thee ever shapes of sin,
The images of thine own thought,
Luring thee on at last to win
The myriad woes, thy wiles have wrought!
Scorn, curse, defy, denounce, despair—
Spread miseries round thee, and implore
The fiend-gods of earth, ocean, air,
To aid thee!—thou couldst do no more.
But I have stood beside my hearth,
And heard the torrent rage along,
With nought to cheer me on the earth,
But household love and midnight song.
I shrunk not when the arrows fell—
Fled not the plague thy fangs hissed out,—
But roamed at eve through copse and dell,
And dimm'd no hope of heaven with doubt.
Thy wrath is spent—thy vengeance hurled—
The woe was mine—the power is now,
And thou shalt cower before the world,
A felon with a branded brow.
O, could I speak the withering spell,
That blights the brain, and sears the heart,
Thou tomb of hate, thou human hell,
My spell should doom thee—what thou art!

242

MEMENTO MORI.

Time takes its colouring from the spirit's shrine,
And season sad or gay,
And memory paints, in rainbow hues divine,
Scenes long since pass'd away.

As hours are woven in the web of years,
The mazy threads are dyed
In the deep fountain of our hopes or fears,
Our passions, love and pride.

And oft, while sunny smiles glance o'er the brow,
From the heart's depths will rise
Lone buried grief—as o'er a mount of snow
Clouds fall from winter skies.

Through worlds of shattered thoughts and hopeless loves,
In lonely grandeur on,
The broken spirit uncommuning roves,
And weeps o'er beauty gone.

To the dark land of silence they have passed,
The young, the brave, the fair;
Ten thousand voices swell on every blast,
But voice alone is there!

Where dwell their spirits? In the summer breeze,
Soft sounds are round us swelling,
And a still gladness fills the heart—but these
Can have no earthly dwelling.

Aerial music floats along the sky,
But comes—we know not how;
Wild airs to warn us that we soon must die—
And be what all we loved are now!

243

Dim broken gleams of momentary light
Mysterious glimpses give
Of that strange Realm of Souls, where all is night,
And shadows only live.

Oh! nothing can be known—man breathes and dies,
And nations pass away;
And empires perish—but yon far blue skies
Reveal no brighter day.

Not thus, howe'er, passed human life with thee,
Thou loved and lovely shade!
Thy spirit left dark Earth from sin as free
As when in glory made.

And thou wert taken from the ills to come,
Like dew by morning sun;
And birdlike sung to thine ethereal home,
Ere sorrow had begun.

Oh, when, young orphans in our budding years,
Our world was in each other,
I little dreamed of vain unwitnessed tears—
For thou didst love thy brother!

I could not think, I was so happy then,
Thine eyes would close in death,
And I be left among the sons of men—
A being but in breath.

Yet, oh, I dare not grieve that thou hast gone
From this lone world of wo—
Hadst thou partaken of earth's sin, loved one!
I had not loved thee so!

I bear thine image in my heart, and there
It lives, and breathes, and glows—
And thou shalt be my refuge in despair,
Till life's wild visions close.

244

THE AUSPICES.

I never thought, in my younger years,
When the sky was my spirit's home,
And I drank at the cup of rapture's tears
And longed like a star to roam,
That my brightest hope would fade like dew,
And my proudest dream depart,
And all prove false that seemed most true
To a still and thoughtful heart.

I thought not that blue hill and stream
Could be seen by a reckless eye;
That I should shun the softest gleam
Of the sunny sea and sky;
That the cross of care and the spell of woe
Would change my deepest feeling,
And leave me alone in grief to know
That my spirit is past all healing.

The faces and forms of silent things
Were my bliss in earlier hours,
The dryads that dwell by forest springs,
And the nymphs of wildwood bowers;
But the dreams of morn and sunset dim
Have gone from my spirit now,
And I have chanted my latest hymn
From the mountain's misty brow.

But it recks not what I felt in days
Unblest in their earliest breaking,
For the time hath passed when I sighed for praise,
And I mourn not friends forsaking;

245

They have left me at an early time,
And I wander on untended,
But my heart is free from the stain of crime,
And I pass not on unfriended.

My mind has searched to the depth of things,
And it dwells and toils alone,
Waiting to soar on its tireless wings
To a high and holy throne.
No fruit or flower its toil may crown,
But it hath in itself a power,
That will not sink in sadness down
Till its last departing hour.

For o'er the heart long sternly tried
A sightless spirit throws
The radiant might of a seraph's pride,
And a bliss that ever glows.
Though the mock and scorn and libel low
Of the coward may assail,
Yet the guarded mind can never bow,
Nor the conscious triumph fail.

I had friends once—I have dark foes now—
They wronged me while confiding!
I marvel not at a broken vow—
Their Truth knows not abiding.
But they have not power to dim one ray
Of the soul my God hath given,
And I patiently wait a brighter day
That will dawn in a holy Heaven.

246

THE POET'S NIGHT SOLITUDE.

'Would that I were the spirit of yon star,
That seems a diamond on the throne of heaven!
'Would that my holiest thought could ever dwell
Mid the unsearchable vastness of the sky!
For 't is deep midnight: and bland stillness sleeps
On dewy grove and waveless stream, and airs,
Floating about like heavenly visitants,
Breathe o'er the slumbering flowers, and leafy woods,
Such holy music as the tired heart loves—
Low, murmuring, melancholy strains—so soft
The ear scarce catches sound, though deeply feels
The hushed communing heart the influence
Of their lone oracles!—Departed hours
Of mingled bane and bliss—of hope and fear—
Of faithless friendship—unrequited love—
Unshared misfortune, undeserved reproach—
And humbled pride—and dark despondency—
Hours of high thought and silent intercourse
With the old seers and sages, when the soul
Walked solemnly beside departed bards
And lion-hearted martyrs; and o'erveiled
Forest and hill, and vale, and rivulet,
With the deep glorious majesty of mind!
Shadowing, with a most dainty phantasy,
The cold and harsh realities of things,
With the divine undying dawn of heaven,
Whose beauty blossoms and whose glory burns!

At such a time of thoughtful loneliness
Ye come like seraph shades, and bear me back,
On darkened wings, to earlier passages
Scarce less unblest than present years of grief
I grope through now!—But woes, once borne, become
Strange pleasures to our memory; the Past

247

Hath its romance—its mellow lights and shades,
Soothing deep sadness like the brightest hope
That bursts upon the future. While we gaze
Down the dark vista, where in bitter pain
And weariness and solitude of soul,
We long have roamed forsaken—all the scene
Assumes a calm repose, a verdure mild
As midnight music, and our hearts o'ergush
With tearful tenderness. O, there is bliss
E'en in the darkest memory—a depth
Of passion that now slumbers, and of thought,
Though voiceless, eloquent and full of power,
Which leaves all common hope, in life's routine,
Dim and delusive as the fire-fly's light.

Full orbed in pearly beauty walks the moon,
Flinging on fleecy clouds soft gleams of light,
That silver every fair and floating fold
Mid the blue ether—while her beams below
On slumbering vale and cliff, and haunted wood,
And broad deep stream, an awful wilderness,
Fall at the outskirts of vast shadowings,
Like heaven's great light on wings of angels thrown.
And now the breeze, in music's fitful gush,
Harps mid the osiers and wide harvest lakes
Of grass and grain—and then the voices rise
Of fays and fairies in the fir-wood near.

Now sleepless bard—who never is alone—
May mingle with the harmony of Heaven,
Triumphant o'er the evil of the world;
His heart may banquet on each gentle scene
Of loveliness, and shrink not back aghast
As from the mock and scoff malign of men.
To voices soft as sighs of sleeping flowers
And tender as a fair young mother's kiss,
His spirit listens in its joy. On him
The beauty of the old astrology,
The silent hymn of heaven in starlight falls;

248

And alchemy bestows its choicest lore,
And poetry, with all its holiness,
Sinks gently o'er him like the early dew
On the fair foliage of the Hesperides.

The cricket sings, the aspen twinkles quick
Beneath the moonbeam, and the waters purl
O'er shining pebbles and by wildwood banks
As if blest life in every drop prevailed.
The deep enchanted forests seem to bend,
And make no sound through their vast solitudes,
As if they deeply listened to THE Voice,
Whose whisper fills the universe. O'er all,
Waters and woods, mountains and valleys deep,
A spirit reigns whose secret counsel heals
The goaded mind and wasted heart, and guides
Ill-fortuned dwellers of the earth to peace;
And he is wise, who, in his budding youth,
Casting aside the paltry pride of praise,
In the night season leaveth strife and care
And vain ambition, to go forth and drink
The music and the blessedness of earth,
While man forgets the God he scorns by day.
Reclining on the moonlight rocks, he sees
The proud Orion, the soft Pleiades,
And every glorious constellation move
With light and hymn of worship, and his soul
O'erleaps the feuds and falsehoods of the world,
The trembling and the triumph of an hour,
And mingles with the universal Deity.
The warring passions of the human heart
Sink, then, to rest; bright angel forms repose
By piny woods and shady waterfalls,
And seraph voices sing of heaven and love
In every leaf stirr'd by the vesper airs.
And this communion of upsoaring thought,
This conscious inspiration (holier far
Than Delphic oracles or hermit's dream,)
Becomes our earthly paradise, when gleams
Of worlds inscrutable flash through the gloom

249

Of this our sinning nature, body-bowed,
And the accepted words of ancient men,
Gifted beyond their age and station here,
Become assured revealings of that life
All hope to gain but few dare think upon,
As wisdom thinks, who dwells not with the vain,
The greedy and the proud, but hath her throne
In the pure heart, whose ever-living Hope
Glows like a lone star in the depth of Heaven.

SONNET.

How like Divinity this soft, still eve!
The sun of Autumn, like a god, is setting,
And, oh, the beauty tempts me to forgetting
Those giant ills that long have made me grieve.
Bright angels seem reposing on yon verge
Of billowy light, and from their airy wings,
Fanning infinity, a perfume springs,
Like cherub breathings. The low lulling surge,
Breaking far o'er the shelly beach—the deep
Soft music of the groves—the whirl and rush
Of dropping sere leaves and the trickling gush
Of rivulets that from the brown cliffs leap—
This dying loveliness melts all my woes,
And hallows sorrows death alone can close!

250

THE AUTUMNAL EVE.

Smiles on past Misfortune's brow
Soft Reflection's hand can trace,
And o'er the cheek of sorrow throw
A melancholy grace.
Gray.

How bland and beautiful this stilly Eve!
The Autumnal sun sinks glorious to his rest,
And hearts o'erworn may now in joyance leave
Dark care, and dwell in Nature's blessing blest.
Lo! how the mottled clouds drink in the hues
Of the far sun, while silent shadows wave
O'er wooded vales, as erst the holier muse
O'er Tempé shook her purpled wings and gave
Mysterious glories to the holy few
Who dared to dwell in solitude, and be
Their own one world, creating from the dew
And sun, things beautiful celestially.
And look thou, with a meditative eye,
Where with a slow and solemn motion, glides
The full moon tow'rd her palace in the sky,
Casting her power upon the rushing tides!
With what a softened and serene delight
Up from the blue horizon, meek and pale,
Dian ascends, and at the noon of night
Bends o'er to hear the timid lover's tale!

The deep lone twilight of the soundless woods
Floating below while all is bright above,
Comes o'er the spirit in its dreamy moods,
Like images of blest remembered love—
—Blest in its young fair spring and full of buds,
From whose soft bosoms fragrant flowers looked forth,
Ere came the mildew blight, the waste of floods,
The desolation of the virgin earth!

251

And the deep glory of the pictured skies,
Albeit vanishing as visions are,
Throws o'er the hills the light of angel eyes,
The smile of every seraph from his star.
As memory bears above all earthly woes
The radiant features of a well loved face,
Lost in this life, but waiting, at its close,
To smile above with all Love's matchless grace.
Touched by the molten beams that burst along
Yon glorious company of clouds, each tree
Seems to lift up its sweet but voiceless song,
And bend its crowned head to Deity.
And rivulets, that revel on their way
Through meadows green, and over hanging woods,
Gurgle and gleam their blithe farewell to day,
And onward leap through darkening solitudes.
The leaves grow crisp and sere, and yet they greet
Chill airs that kiss and kill them, as the maid
Rejoices, e'en in death, the smile to meet
Of him who slew her with glozed words, and bade
The tortured and wrecked heart believe and bear,
In silence and good cheer, the last rebuke
Of eyes remorseless over her despair,—
And conscious guilt, that slayeth with a look.
The homilies we read on autumn eves,
Beneath the vast blue vault of yon calm sky,
The eloquent rustle of the blighted leaves,
The universal readiness to die—
The lore of cloisters or of councils far
Transcend, in sight of Him, whose seasons come
Like oracles to warn us what we are,
And, in their lapse, to bear our spirits home.
Who doles out doits to mendicants, and wears
The rough rock in his prayers, contemning men
But where his pride exacts their plaudits, bears,
In convent gloom, or shagged lonely glen,
A haughty heart, which He accepteth not
Who doth rejoice in cheerfulness and mirth
Chastened by love, that from one sacred spot
Pours its soft glory over all the earth.

252

But he, whose spirit holds, through every change,
With sun, moon, stars, hills, vales and shrubs and flowers,
The commune of devotion, ne'er can range
Beyond the guidance of those holy Powers,
Which give to earth its beauty, and to man
His conscious triumph over sin and death,
And unto heaven the glories that began
When from the first heart gushed the vital breath.
The cricket's chirup—I remember well
It was the music of my boyhood, when
My heart o'erflowed with thoughts I could not tell
To worldly wise and world devoted men;
And it comes o'er me like the tones once heard
Breathing affection at a time estranged:
'T is sweeter than the song of any bird—
I heard it ere my wayward fortunes changed!
The whip-poor-will—its slow, unchanging chant,
Its lone, unlistened, melancholy song
Hath sadly cheered me in each woe and want,
And sorrow, and bereavement, and deep wrong;
For I have lived unseen, like that poor thing,
And sung unheard, unsolaced, and in vain
As that doth ever—and I cannot fling
My early thoughts aside, nor rend in twain
The mantle that hath wrapt my silent breast,
To join the revel of the world, and feel
No more as I have felt, when, calmly blest,
That lone bird's notes had power to lull and heal.
No more in plashy brook web-footed fowl
Plunge with their tender brood in moulting glee,—
Wails the wild heron, hoots the cynic owl,
From reedy marsh and thunderstricken tree.
Like summer morning friends, the dryades
No more glide through the shadows of the grove;
Their whispers steal not through the moaning trees:
Their smiles salute not young and holy love.
But by the reeking frith the torpid hind
Weaves wattles mopingly the livelong day;
Throwing all thought upon the whiffling wind,
He whistles time and rankling care away.

253

He knows not mind; its agony and pride;
Its secret rapture and its public woe;
Dull as the dank lagoon, his seasons glide—
He little gains, and nothing can bestow—
No alms to soothe despair or wan disease,
Nor heartfelt words of solace, hope and health;
Like matted weeds on lone, unvoyaged seas,
He breathes and dies—his wherry all his wealth.
Dredging the slimy depth of waters dark,
He marks not nature but to serve his toil;
Hushed Twilight lights and guides his trundling bark;
He gropes and drudges 'neath the morning's smile.

Not thus like hutted peasant, spectre led,
Soulless in sunshine, quaking in the shade,
At morn the living, and at eve the dead,
The bard beholds before his eye arrayed;
In every leaf there's music to his ear,
In every rivulet and every breeze;
He knoweth not the shapes of earthly Fear,
In the deep fear of Heaven, that quelleth these.
To the divinity, that dwells within
And sheds o'er earth and heaven its glorious light,
Nature becomes beloved and akin,
And, as celestials, pure and deeply bright.
Mind wanders forth, and throws o'er every flower,
And lake, and wood, or shaken or serene,
The deathless memory of some hallowed hour,
The deep affection of some trying scene;
And field and forest are companions bound
To gifted hearts, by ties no power can rend;
The soul may mingle with a half heard sound,
And float in raptures that can have no end.

The timid throstle still a few low notes
Pours forth, preluding her farewell to frost;
On sylvan scenes beloved the robin dotes,
Loth to believe his springtime pleasures lost.
Grasshoppers pitter on the mead no more,
The nighthawk's swoop sounds faintly in the air,

254

The twittering swallow mourns the season o'er,
And 'mid her ruins, Nature kneels in prayer
That He whose smile spread beauty o'er her brow,
And clothed with loveliness the cheerful earth,
Will guide wayfaring man through drifted snow,
And pour his peace and love around the household hearth.

SONNET.

What are the Past and Future? Shadows, lit
By the mind's twilight bloom, and all too dim
For clear perception; far and faint they swim
Before the visionary's eye and flit
Away in dusky folds, whose ourskirts wear
A mellow glow awhile and then resume
Oblivion's sable tinges. In the gloom
Of the o'ershadowed Past, with pensive air,
Pale Memory sits beside a sculptured urn,
Chanting the requiem of joys long fled;
And flickering tapers, for the parted dead,
Around her wasted form forever burn;
But Hope, on sunlight pinions, soars on high,
And hath her throne and glory in the sky.

255

THE TRIAL OF THE TROTH.

There is a tale in Scandinavian Legends that a miner, who was betrothed, perished mysteriously on the very eve of his appointed bridal; and that many years afterwards, when she, who should have been his bride, had grown old in holy celibacy, the petrified body of her lover was discovered in the depth of a disused and dilapidated mine. The body was instantly recognized by the bereaved and unblest lady, who died upon its bosom.

Ye high Divinities! who erst abode
Amid the haunted woods of Ida's mount,
Or 'neath Leucadia's brow, when Paris gave
The golden fruit to Venus and the Maid
Sappho, for love of faithless Phaon, sought
The still companionship of seanymphs, crowned
With wreaths of pearl and coral! Sad as words
Of comfort to a sick and wasted heart
Have ever been your oracles; the voice
Of shrined Apollo from his temple comes,
Like winds from the wild heavens when surging seas
Burst o'er the shattered bark. Alas for Love
And Beauty! their torn blossoms strew the waste
Of human life—and Genius is but woe.
Another song of sorrow! mortal bliss,
Is voiceless, echoless, and Love, once crown'd,
No more is left—but grief is eloquent.

Far in that northern land and mid those hills
Where wandering Vasa, among faithful hearts,
Found welcome refuge in his trying hour,
Two Lovers dwelt, of low degree with men,
Of hard conditions and restrained desires,
But gentle hearts and unsoiled consciences.
The waxing and the waning moon on them
Shed her pure pearly light and every star
Listened upon its throne to their discourse

256

Nightly, with smiles that came like music down.
By day, Leoni toiled in darksome mines
With the cheered spirit of prophetic hope,
And as he gazed upon the precious ore
Delved from the depth, he felt how void and vain
Were affluence without the heart's best wealth;
How welcome, with Luzelia a few coins,
How vile, without her, all Golconda's gems!
Thus Love transfuses its own light o'er all
The trials and privations of our lot,
From evil winneth good, from poverty
Wealth unimagined, and from toil repose
Through starry hours beneath green canopies.
Thus Love becomes unto itself a power
Supreme o'er great obstructions, and all things
Of beauty are its household teraphim,—
Sweet images of hopes that rest among
The days of sunny loveliness to come.

So they lived on in unremitted toil
Each for the other, and the lights and shades
Of thought, sequestered to one little spot,
Passed o'er them like the shadows of white clouds,
Breeze wafted, o'er the mirror'd summer stream.
Passion, with all its fears and jealousies,
And fevered aspirations and regrets,
And dark repinings and intense desires,
They knew not, felt not, feared not its power.
Amid the solitude of simple life
Love is a deep conviction of the heart,
A dewy flower, that, circled by green leaves,
Breathes the blest air of heaven, itself as blest;
A still and hidden brook, that glides along,
Known only by the greenness of its banks;
A spirit, like its mountain home of birth,
Mighty though meek, pavilioned in the skies,
Yet all benignant to the smiling earth;
A quiet thought that dwells and works unseen
But in the charm of its accomplishment,
Ever attendant, watchful, true in faith,

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A guide and guard through peril, and in want
A tender solace, as in joy a crown.
The Lovers talked and counselled and communed
Confidingly as wedded hearts should do,
And both together coffer'd up a hoard,
(Scant means are ample where the wants are few,)
To signalize tomorrow's bridal feast.

Tomorrow! 't is the changing dream of hope,
The vision of the weary hearted in the depth
Of solitary suffering, and the crown
Of many a proudly imaged enterprise
That never was accomplished. O Tomorrow!
Crowds of strange deeds and unfulfilled events
Lie unrevealed in thy dark mysteries,
And many an eye desireth to behold
The book of knowledge though 't is written there,
(And prayers the dread decree cannot reverse,)
That death or dread disaster hasteneth on!

* * * * *
—The bridal-banquet waits—hath waited long—
Why cometh not the bridegroom? Up and down
Luzelia wanders, from the window place
Looks forth with restless eyes, and doubtfully
Questions his absence—but none give reply.
Night wears away—the bidden guests depart,
Eloquent in dim surmises and vague fears,
Some scoffing at the lover's faithlessness,
And some repining o'er their lack of cheer,
And some, more thoughtful, (age and trial give
A tone of prophecy to many a mind)
Suggesting sudden danger, lone mishap,
And suffering unadministered—and death.
Discoursing hurriedly, o'er moonlight hills
The bridal guests have passed—and every glen
Echoes with wonderment that one so true
Should break his troth and fail the festival
Of Plighted Love so hardly earned by toil,
And cheered by hopes that sanctify the heart.
“Tomorrow will reveal!”—Tomorrow comes!

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It comes in summer glory, like a bride
In the rich bloom of beauty and of hope,
Or a high hearted king of orient Inde,
O'er the blue swelling seas, for few brief days
Sunny and tranquil like the human heart,
And o'er the cedar forests and oak woods
Of the proud mountains of Dalecarlia, veiled
In floating mist or glistening with young dew.
From the harmonious waters of all streams
The morning vapour curls and seems to rise
In forms of fairhaired dryads, as of old,
Along Permessus' banks, the daughters nine
Of wise Mnemosyne, when they had drank
The holy dew amid the fountain vale,
Together clomb the hill of Helicon.
The songbirds lift their voices all around,
The violets and hyacinths unveil
The pictured bosoms of their virgin buds,
The sweet and racy air becomes a bliss
To the free organs of the heart, and heaven
Bends in more beautiful arcades and seems
Swelling far up, beyond all taint of earth,
In azure vastness, on whose shadowy edge
Hyperion pours the glories of his brow.

How felt Luzelia? Moonlight unto her,
Through the void watches of the night, had been
A sole companion, and her tossing thoughts,
Like stormy waters, nameless leagues from land,
Rolled through the darkened boundlessness of mind,
Sounding a terrible music to her heart.
Like one lone palm amid a sea of sands,
She stood in the pale beauty of the moon,
Whose mellow light around her softly stole
With a pervading blessedness, that fell
Upon her fainting spirit with a sense
Of still and solemn faith. Thou blessed Light!
Held holy in all times—in every clime—
Among all people; on the mourner's brow
Thou pourest consolation and dost woo

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Grief from its darkened citadel and change
The wormwood of the heart to soothing balm.
And, all unconsciously, Luzelia blessed
Thy ministrations, Dian! while she gazed
On the deep shadows of the woods, the glow
And gloom of changing forest streams, and rocks
Abrupt and massy, on whose jutting crags
The transitory beams streamed like a shower
Of molten pearls; though, all the lingering night,
The image of no human form appeared
To gladden the fixed eye or charm away
Perilous thoughts inurned; but there she stood,
Poor girl! stunned, dumb, and breathless, like the work
Of some most perfect sculptor, Phidias old,
Myron, Praxiteles; her ear was wrought
To agony's intensity of sound,
And oft her own deep pulses or the stir
Of leaves came o'er her like the echo faint
Of far off footsteps hurrying o'er the dale.
Leoni came not—yet she questioned not
The faith well known for years and deeply tried,
And thus she shunn'd the strongest agony
That Love can feel—the faithlessness of one
Deeply beloved, who robs the heart of heaven.

Her mother—wasted, palsystricken, old,
A leafless tree that moaned in every wind,
Missed not Luzelia's well accustomed voice
Upon the morn, nor lacked her common aid,
Nor marked she, in the oblivion of her age,
The pale brow and unrested eye, and tones
Faltering and low, of her most priceless child,
Who shrined her unimagined fearfulness
And desolation in her fondest heart,
And held alike her constancy of love
And duty to the helpless. Crowds went forth
O'er vale and hill, and mountain echoes bore
Leoni's name through every darkened wood!
No answer came. They questioned man and child;
All knew, but none had seen him since the eve

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Appointed for his bridal. Far and wide
Luzelia wandered and her voice went up
On every breeze; no answering voice was heard.

Brief summer, briefer autumn passed, all streams
Vanished before the universal frost,
That silently, with a resistless power,
Suspended life; on every shaggy cliff
The beaded hail hung like a robe of gems
Beneath the gleaming glimpses of the sun
Or moon, when from her rolling rack she flung
A flood of phantom light; on every thatch
Icicles, like Doric pillars, in the light
Of woodfires, streaming through the lattice, glowed,
And drifted cones of snow among the boughs
Of thickleaved pines perennial everywhere
Lay deeply—pallid white above rich green—
Hoar winter in the arms of virgin spring—
Death on the bosom of undying Life!
But the long season of chill'd verdure passed,
And desolating winds to farthest North,
To Arctic seas, Spitzbergen and the Isles
Of everlasting iciness, with moans,
Departed at the hest of maymorn suns.
Yet came no tidings of the lost, the loved,
And poor Luzelia lingered o'er the looks,
The smiles, the tender words, the oft sealed vow—
The last of lost Leoni—and the dreams
Of years that had a fearful waking now,
And broken images of early love,
Till her whole heart gushed out and she would fain
Have flown to the lone wilderness and died
Where last he might have pressed the moss or leaves.

'T is easy to resign the breaking heart
On passion's altar; 't is an angel's task
To live when life hath ceased to be a joy,
Buffet the billows of despairing thoughts,
Baffle disguised temptation, and bear up
Beneath a burden martyrs never bore,

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Sickness of soul, that o'er earth's joyance throws
The lurid hue of a distempered mind,
And sergeclad poverty, whose daily bread
Unceasing labour only can procure.
These, in the voiceless anguish of a heart
Full of intensest feeling, and a soul
Haunted by wild imaginations, dim,
Wavering and vasty as the countless forms
On Shetland Skerries when the storm is up,
With meekness and a patient tenderness,
An earnest and heartgushing Love, that fell
Upon her mother's darkened sympathy,
Like a skill'd leech's welltimed liniment
Upon a warrior's wound—sublimely, these
Luzelia bore through months of vague belief
Of undetermined ill; and she could smile
Sometimes, and feel the burden from her heart
Lifted by an invisible power awhile,
And then her voice, narrating legends old
Of Doffrafield, put on a cheerfulness
That sent its sunlight through her mother's heart.
Then the pale palsied pilgrim would look up
And bless her daughter with a trembling hand,
And her dimmed eyes were lighted up with fires
From the altar of her youth, and her weak voice
Came o'er Luzelia like a benison
From the far world on whose veiled shore she stood.

So Time passed on, and the poor heartsick girl
Alone remembered lost Leoni now.
Friendship is but the outward foil of men,
The fleecy foam emitted from life's sea,
Seen only in the swirling wake, the barque
In its fair voyage leaves behind; but Love,
(Not the gross passion of the buskin'd stage,
The glare of eyes, the bubble of blown cheeks,
The start, the feign'd devotion and wild speech)
Love lingers by the shrine when cold and dark
And offers up its orisons the same;
Love clings unto the wreck when wildest winds

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Sweep darkest clouds before them and the voice
Of upturned ocean wails like dying men:
And, more than all, Love, in the hourly cares
And deep anxieties of humble life,
To household hearth and board and pallet bed
Bears the most hallowed memory of the lost,
The bliss of agony, the chastened woe
Of an all feeling and benignant heart.

'T was winter midnight, and Luzelia sat
Beside the deathbed of her mother, last
Of all her kindred; o'er the pallet fell
The wavering rushlight and the moss roofed cot
Within was silent, save when feeble moans,
Like spirit whispers low, stole from a heart
Too wasted now to bear much agony.
Without, the winds were loud, and mount and vale
Through all their vast and solemn solitudes
Replied to the wild spirit of the storm;
And the cold moon through huddled clouds appeared
Fitful and ghostlike; and the ravining wolf
Yelled in the agony of famishing
From perpendicular rocks, whence caverns yawned
Below, and glaciers hung on all above.
Luzelia watched and wept not in the depth
Of visible desolation; when she lost
Leoni, the deep wellsprings of her heart
Dried up, and left her like a branching palm
Amid the Desert; she had lent her shade
To a poor wayworn pilgrim who had borne
The burden and the heat of many a day,
And now beneath the shadow of her leaves,
And on the bosom of her solitude,
That pilgrim sunk to sleep—earth's silent sleep—
With her deep vein'd and bony hand upon
Luzelia's bow'd head resting; and the words,
Last heard from her pale lips, were words of peace
And blessing; and her parting breath went forth
In the cold kiss of death! Luzelia knelt
Beside the deathbed and her heart rose up

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In prayer, and in her loneliness and grief
Strength was vouchsafed unto her to compose
The dead for burial. And she slept that night!

The yearning pathos of the heart bereaved
Time mellows in its silent soothing lapse,
And deepest ills and worst privations lose
The lurid hue and leaden heaviness,
The mazy and bewildering dream of woe.
Not the sun's shadows on the dial's disk,
But the mind's thoughts upon the busy brain
Mete out o'erpassing periods; hours of grief
No famed clepsydra ever measured well,
Nor modern instrument; deserted life
Beneath thatch'd cottage on the drearest marge
Of bosky dell, o'erpillar'd by wild rocks,
And bordered round by furze and fern and gorse
And matted briers and tangled underwood,
Lingers and lingers like a new made bride
Beside the deathbed of her love's best lord.
But years, and the deep thoughts they bring with them,
Tame down the spirit as they bow the frame,
And leave behind affections purified
Though undiminished in their heartfelt power—
Fervent though calm—deep like the stillest stream,
A sealed up fountain brimming with the thoughts
That made earth paradise in happier days.

Precept and sentiment are idle things,
And so is love's romance in sickly tales
Of aromatic fabulists, whose sighs
Are frequent as the free unchartered air.
But just example, in all ways of life,
Is as a visible divinity,
That o'er all minds hath power and in all hearts
Resteth, as rivers, gliding through green meads,
Where cowslips blossom, rest in sunny seas.—
Luzelia's mild, dim, melancholy smile,
And quiet step and soft though faded eye,
And mellow voice heard in her loneliness,

264

And chariness of mind and ready hand
In the acquittance of kind offices,
Had touched, as with the altar fire of love,
All hearts that yearned for kindred sympathies
And blest affiance in their rugged path.
And suiters, such as fathers could approve,
Many and oft appeared—were mildly heard—
And went their way, not scorned though unreceived,
Less in pride's anger than in mournfulness;
For still she was the tomb lamp of the dead,
Keeping lone watch o'er buried memories,
And ne'er ungracious in a thought or speech
Save when they named Leoni doubtfully.
There were not wanting tongues in that wild land,
As everywhere, to babble of the dead
And wrong the living, and full oft their shafts
Pierced lone Luzelia's bosom to the core.

The Maiden's lot was dark, yet all was peace
Within her humble cot, and cheerfulness
Around it, for the spirit, that, of old,
Hallowed its hearth, had left a blessing there,
A delicate and music breathing Ariel,
Whose plumage never ruffled, sun or storm.
It was the Miners' Holiday; and joy
Sent forth the voice of lustihood—the sound
Of Scandinavian harps o'er all the hill;
And prouder merriment was never heard
E'en in Valhalla's azure palaces
When the Valkyriur, in rainbow paths,
Usher young fallen heroes to their home.
Luzelia threw her cheeriness of heart
O'er Toil's sole yearly festival, and sung
A song that had a touch of gladness in 't,
Though, as she sang, she could not choose but think
How lost Leoni at such time stood up
Beautiful as Balder—sungod—in his pride.
Then filled her faded eyes, and with much thanks,
Up from the wooded dell the Miners passed.

265

Evening drew on, and at her cottage door
Luzelia rested, sadder far than wont,
(Revel and mirth are ministers of woe
To the sick heart, that enters not their haunt,)
When down the shelvy rock a Miner leapt
Wildly, and with dark words of strange import
Led her along the precipice, and up
Steep forest paths, to a deserted lode,
Round whose black marge a huddled crowd had met.
“'T is strange!” said one. “This mine hath not been wrought
“For years, but left to goblins and blind owls.
“I well remember (I was then a boy)
“When the old Dane—a hoary locust left
“Out of the slaughtered host—came one bright morn
“And bade us lift the ladders from the lode,
“And gash the pillars of the roof and leave
“The plundered hell to bats—their rightful home.
“Well, here this body of stone that once was flesh,
(“'T is petrified 'mong minerals of the mine)
“In his blind hurry to the bridal feast—
“'T was dark as Hela—fell and died unknown!”
“Give way, it is Luzelia!” every eye
Fastened upon her face, as she drew near,
And every lip was mute; one moment passed
Of deep, soul piercing earnestness of gaze,
Then her brow lightened, and her features glowed
With all the beauty of her virgin youth,
And her breast heaved in panting sobs,—and then
She fell upon the blackened corse and cried—
“Leoni! 't is Leoni! said I not
“He kept his Troth till death? Oh, 't is not Death!
“It gives me life, Leoni! no, not Death!”

* * * * * *
—In the green dell there is a ruined hut,
And on the margin of that cold dark mine
A wide grave with a rudely graven stone,
That bears Luzelia's and Leoni's name.

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MUSIC AMALGAMATED.

There's music in the hurricane,
And in the catgut's scrubbing;
Where slayers thunder o'er the slain,
Where democrats are drubbing;
There 's music in the boiler's hiss,
When steamers race for glory,
And in the nigger's glorious kiss,
With tyrant blood all gory.

There 's music in the midnight wreck,
'Tween tempests, rocks and billows,
When death is master of the deck,
And reefs are dead men's pillows;
There 's music in the windstirr'd grass,
In the whispering leaves of spring,
In martial drum, and braying ass,
And pugilistic ring.

There 's music in the glimmering stream
'Mid woods, flowers, verdure flowing,
And in the poet's noontide dream,
Where phantom fame comes glowing;
There 's music to the fairy's ear
In shadows, dews, and bubbles,
And to old maidens, when they hear
The voice of wedlock's troubles.

There 's music in the deathbell, tolling
The fair and good to heaven,
On breezy hill and landscape rolling,
In twilight, morn or even;

267

There 's music in the streets where imps
Of colours all assemble,
And in the deep, where sprats and shrimps
Before behemoth tremble.

There 's music in the bullfrog's croak,
When sunset gilds the pond,
And in the spoil'd child's treble note,
Commanding mothers fond;
There 's music in the feline chorus
On dark piazzas mewed—
When arm'd moschetoes circle o'er us,—
And roistering rakes are slued.

There 's music in the Mohawk whoop,
In the howl of pongoes praying,
In plundered camp and conquered coop,
And herds of jackals straying;
There 's music in the crashing skies,
And in the virgin's sigh,
In gallant hearts, and starlight eyes,—
When all are born or die.

There 's music in the whispered word
Through hosts, war-waiting, sent;
Who, by old victories thrill'd and stirr'd,
Watch the sunkindled firmament!
There 's music in the click of gun,
Sword flash and bayonet gleam,
When battle heralds havoc's sun,
And purples every stream.

There 's music in the bagpipe's drone,
In sweet M'Henry's verses;
In ballroom shuffle, dungeon groan,
And Conrad's tragic curses;
There 's music on the mount, or moor,
In ocean, sky or cave,
With queen or hoyden, a king or boor,
The autocrat or slave.

268

Niagara thunders music down,
The earthquake thunders up;
Volcanoes shout o'er buried town,
The plague, o'er poison cup;
The tempest and the lightning sing—
Stars, meteors, flowers—earth, heaven—
Music to every human thing,
Save modern bards, is given!

THANKSGIVING.

When young Time sung in Eden's bower,
And angels echoed back his strain,
Ere sin mildewed each morning flower
Of hope, and pleasure died in pain,
Each love-winged thought that rose on high
Was man's melodious prayer of praise,
And happy hearts threw o'er the sky
Blessings, as flowed the elder days,
While Heaven benignly smiled and breathed the grateful lays.

No seasons, then, by power assigned,
Restricted songs of holy praise,
For man's pure heart and pious mind
Threw glory o'er life's younger days;
But, his high spirit higher soaring,
He knowledge bought, and was unblest;
And, when he should have been adoring,
Lost Eden—love's abode of rest,
And wandered forth o'er earth, an exile sore distrest.

269

There was a jubilee in Heaven,
When man to being sprung, and raised
His soul in praise for blessings given,
The image of the God he praised;
And there are songs of glory swelling
O'er Heaven, e'en in these sinning days,
When man laments his long lost dwelling,
Yet for earth's joys chants hymns of praise,
And sings in Eden's speech, though lost to Eden's ways.

For sunny skies and balmy showers,
And mellow airs, and cheerful health,
And bloomy meads and dales of flowers,
And fields of beauty rife with wealth,
And still green vales and wooded hills,
And Plenty smiling o'er each home,
Whose rose-lipped love with odour fills,
And sweet Content, who scorns to roam;
For blessings such as these, let glad Thanksgiving come.

No pestilence hath stalked abroad,
And thrown o'er bliss the funeral pall;
No sword of crime-avenging God
Hath marred man's toil-won festival;
His earthquake voice hath not been heard
Amid the cheerful mirth of men;
The soul in peace hath drank His Word,
And Life found joy in wold and glen,
And Love crowned every bliss again—and yet again.

270

ANCIENT WORSHIP.

To me less hallowed, high and awful seem
The rites and rituals of these our days,
When hollow forms and ceremonies hide
Hearts stained by guile, that murmur while they praise,
And lip humility and swell with pride,
Whose faith is false as youth's fantastic dream,
Than that pure worship of the olden Time,
When from the dim wild stream or lonely height
The Chaldean Shepherd read the spheres sublime,
The starry glories of untravelled space,
Where the wing'd seraphim, in countless choirs,
Hymn'd the Immortal and his love and grace,
Blessing the spirit, that from earth aspires,
To flowery realms of everlasting light.

In the far orient climes of living bloom,
Where rosy earth and starry heaven unite,
How blest the luxuries of solemn thought,
The dreams and oracles, that, born of night,
O'er the rapt spirit breathed and in it wrought
A deep and sacred triumph o'er the tomb—
The tomb, that then knew not the searching light
Of Shiloh's holy, all atoning smile!
While round him slept his flocks, from some far height
The solitary watcher gazed afar
On the vast mysteries, that rolled above,
And saw in every bright revolving star
Beauty of holiness and peace and love,
That soothed and sanctified his mortal toil.

Then came the morn and evening offerings
Of the first fruits upon the forest shrine—
A simple sacrifice of reverent praise
And humble heart and gratitude divine.

271

Oh, how unlike these proud corrupted days,
When dark hypocrisy in triumph brings
Its gifts, and bids high heaven behold the deed!
In the young ages of the earthly Life,
The husbandman accounted not his seed
Fruitful until his sacrifice was done;
The warrior prayed before the ark, ere war;
The king, ere judgement; and beneath the sun,
Love, prayer and praise were wafted from afar,
And every heart with holy hope was rife.

Not idle words from faithless tongues alone,
But trying deeds, these proved the hearts of men:
A Father offered up the world's Young Heir!
And incense rose from many a lonely glen,
When daggered danger stood beside despair,
And hope did fail, and succour there seem'd none.
But trials lost their bitterness when Earth
Seemed to the true the golden gate of Heaven,
And angel shapes from the blue sky came forth
And listened to man's all confiding prayer;
For VIRTUE had a refuge, and the heart,
That trusted, never sank into despair,
As it had found that higher, better part
To gentle, generous, noble spirits given.

Man with his Monarch and his Maker held
Communion in the elder years of love,
And throned seraphim unsinning kept
Guard o'er the son of earth in every grove,
Whether he toiled a field, or safely slept
Lone in the branching melancholy weald.
And Truth was then the sovereign of the mind,
And Charity man's best and only creed,
And kindly offices true hearts could bind
And social men, more strongly than the stern
And blasting laws of these our dungeon days.
Ah! man must live his threescore years to learn
Earth is corrupt in all its countless ways,
And evil Knowledge is his bitter meed.

272

Those solemn, simple, hallowed days are gone,
The Glory's vanished from the Cherubim,
And Shrines and Oracles have passed away!
But, oh, I love to gaze upon the dim
And shadowy beauty of that elder day
In saddened silence mid the wood alone,
And image the old Partriarch by his shrine
Kindling amidst the forest his pure fire
On sacrificial fruits and clustering vine;
For unto me such lonely worship brings
Higher and holier thoughts than our proud forms
Of pomp mid throngs whose varied aspect flings
The world's cold shade o'er every prayer, that warms
And bids the heart in holy hope aspire.

SONNET.

O give me music, for my soul is fainting!
Not the gay strains of laughter-loving mirth,
But those deep notes of feeling at whose birth
The heart o'erflows with rapture past all painting!
Blend, O Musician! every tender thing
In Heaven and earth with thy low murmuring strain,
Till my sad thoughts in silence turn again
To the fresh fragrance of life's flowering spring!
I'm tired and sick of folly and the mad
Uproar of merriment, and all the vain
Laughter and babbling that around me reign—
The mean delights of meaner things that had
Never a noble thought. Oh, I would hear
Such music as waits on the dying year.

273

THE LAY OF THE LOST.

When through the dimness of the lonely night
Silence leans listening from the pale blue sky,
Amid the mysteries of the shadowy light
Of cypress groves that in the low winds sigh,
The shade of Death comes o'er my heart,
Like a dim dream of summer even,
And then I feel I could depart,
Like a sunbright cloud from the brow of heaven!
Without a sigh, without a fear,
Without a last lamenting tear,
A doubt to dim my spirit's bloom,
Or one lone shadow from the night of doom!

Then Memory lingers o'er departed hours,
When Love, unstained by human passion, came,
Like starlight stealing through Arabian bowers,
The Spirit-Herald of a deathless fame!
But those are hours of sadness now,
Of vain repining and regret,
For Hope's fair sun hath left my brow—
The darkened light of love hath set!
Sweet Mary! like a tender dream,
A shadow on the rippling stream,
Thou liv'st alone in my clouded brain,
The vision of blest days that cannot dawn again!

I roam to seek thee in the tufted grove,
The dim green wood, where purls that lonely stream,
Where erst, in commune high, we loved to rove,
Wrapt in the glories of Love's morning dream!

274

Beneath thy bower, in starry gloom,
I hear thy voice, whose music flows—
—Oh! only from the midnight tomb!
Like the fragrant breath of the morning rose!
Chilled to the heart, I wake to weep,
And sigh, alone, once more to sleep,
That Illusion may weave her mystic spell
Round the lone heart that hears the eternal knell!

Friends of my orphan youth, too well beloved!
The true in heart, the tried in faith, the wise—
Ye, wanting not, when long and deeply proved,
In ought that breathes and blossoms in the skies!—
I look around, but where are they?
Like moonlight on the mountain, gone,
Blest spirits! from their strife of day
Up to their home round heaven's high throne!
The pale cold stars smile on the scene
Where life and hope and joy have been,
While lowly they slumber, unsought, unknown!
Beneath the rank green turf and sculptured stone.

Fain would my thought in grief return to thee,
Lost lovely One! thou twinborn of my soul!
Thy seraph smile, thy fawnlike step I see,
Thy fair hair streams, thy blue eyes laughing roll!
Oh! thou art here in all thy bloom,
And blessedness of heavenly love—
—Hark! that low voice as from the tomb!
That moaning like the widowed dove!
Death's shadow slumbers in her eyes,
Cold, pale and still the victim lies,
Her spirit parts like an autumn even,
Her brow reveals the eternal light of heaven!

The beauty and the bliss of days gone by
Deepen the darkness of the early doom,
That o'er the glory of my summer sky
Rolls from the deep recesses of the tomb;

275

Imagination's fairy dreams,
The bloom of beauty in the mind,
The blush of music breathing streams,
Vanish—and leave reality behind!
I see no more the shapes of air,
Nymphs, dryads, oreads—angel things!
That threw abroad their golden hair,
And fann'd the blue heaven with radiant wings!
They are gone from me now,
Like the stars from the brow
Of the forest-crown'd hill, in the still of night—
And sullen sinks the blaze of all that magic light.

Cold on my shuddering soul the echoes fall
Of voices heard when every breath was joy:
Sere fall the leaves of youth's green coronal
Wreathed when high hopes were lighted at the sky!
Yet, like Tiresias—prophet old,
Or him—the Samian sage revered!
My o'erfraught bosom still may hold
The power and pride of things unfeared,
And though my song may never be
What it had been in days more free,
Yet its voice may soar above the grave,
Like low prophetic notes from old Trophonius' cave.

I could lie down on earth's green breast and weep
This weary, faint and hopeless life away,
And sink, at last, in death's undreaming sleep,
Like a fair child, tired of his noontide play;
For I have born and still must bear
The burden of a heart that feels
To deeply for the things that are—
A world that tortures or anneals!
And I would pass beyond their power,
Beyond the triumph of an hour,
Where my heart might catch the inspiring strain
Of bliss in worlds beyond the power of human pain!

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NIGHT-DREAMS.

Oh, I do love thee, Night!
When twilight dews descend,
And lights and shadows blend,
And sweet-voiced birds their tender vespers sing,
Then furl in sleep the weary wing,
Amid the starlight grove,
And dream in song of love;
While silence sleeps around,
Save when the whispering flowers
Breathe forth a rosy sound,
Like memory sighing o'er lamented hours—
Oh! I do love thee, Night!

But most I love thee, Night!
That thou dost ever bring,
Upon thy dewy wing,
The voice, the image of my lady-love,
The charm of hall and grove,
The joy of other years,
The sunlight of my tears,
My lost, yet worshipped heaven,
Possessed no more below—
For one brief hour of rapture given—
Then snatched away from vainly wailing woe,
For this I love thee, Night!

With thee I can forget,
The sunny youth has flown,
Love, hope and rapture gone,
That desolation watches round the bowers
Of wedded hearts in happier hours,
And all the cares and fears,
And woes too deep for tears,

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And anguish and despair,
That will not cease, that cannot part,
It hath been mine to bear,
Since that wild rending of the broken heart—
I can forget awhile.

Amid thy shadows, Night!
I see the ancient seers,
The prophets gray with years,
The patriarchs reigning o'er the people blest;
Sages in antique stole and vest,
And bards, whose lays of love
Were heard in Ida's wood and Daphne's grove,
And all the high and holy ones,
Whose brows bend o'er us in our dreams,
Like spirits o'er elysium's streams,
Who leave awhile their starry thrones,
And fill our souls with heaven's celestial gleams.
Thy shades are living, Night!

Dreams come of thee, sweet Night!
Bright visions float around the brain
Of days that cannot dawn again,
And hope deluded smiles mid banished bliss!
Pale lips meet in a long, wild kiss,
Dissevered hearts together beat,
And tearful eyes in rapture meet,
And time flies fast in joy,
And earth resembles heaven!
—I start and wake! o'er morn's dark sky,
As o'er my heart, black clouds are wildly driven—
Where are thy visions, Night?

Thou soothest sorrow, Night!
I love to watch thy skies,
And stars like tearless eyes,
And pale, cold moon, whose shivering light is sweet
To lovers when they meet,
By stream or shadowy wood,
In speaking solitude;

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For thou dost seem to me,
Beholding her, whose look
Was such as those we see,
Bright Oreads', in the wildwood's wary nook—
When twilight tints the woods.

Thou bringest peace, sweet Night!
To many a wasted heart,
That loves and sighs apart;
As when from Latmos' hill thy gentle queen
Smiled o'er the lovely scene,
And blessed her sleeping lover,
So I do breathe my spirit now,
Old ocean's stormy billows over,
And kiss thy cheek and brow,
And wreathe my arms around thee, Love! as erst,
And fondly think that thou canst see
Thy lover bowed, as at the first,
Before the shrine of his idolatry.
Joy waits upon thee, Night!

Oh, I do love thee, Night!
Though harrowing thoughts arise,
And unavailing sighs,
Yet, Ellen, oft I muse on thee afar,
'Neath Gallia's evening star,
Sweet love! now doubly dear,
For many a lingering parted year!
Time and distance and deep woe
Make thee lovelier, dearer, love!
A heart like mine can never know
Change, while the stars we worshipped, shine above.
Oh, I do love thee, night!

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ABADDON, THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION.

280

THE ARGUMENT.

Abaddon or Apollyon, as the name imports, is supposed to be subordinate only to Satan, the adversary or tempter, who prepares by intrigue and seduction for the terrible triumphs of the Fiend of Ruin. The scenes subsequent to the flight of Abaddon have been necessarily selected for a general illustration of the desolation and agony which sin has entailed upon the world; and the purpose of the author has been to exhibit, in the strongest light, the malevolence, the ingratitude, and the weakness of men; their ineptitude to choose the highest good; their bigoted perseverance in confirmed and habituated crime; their insusceptibility, in the midst of desperate vice, to permanent impressions of virtue; and their ill-fated adherence to all that demoralizes the heart and degrades the mind. From the vast empire of History but few examples could be delineated or even named in a poem so brief as this; but it is trusted that enough have been presented to unfold the melancholy truth, that man has too often been the dupe of fallacy and the slave of passion, devoted to the accomplishment of ambition or opulence—the common vain glories of life—though exposed to the penalty of popular execration and personal unhappiness. Little relief has been thrown upon the picture; for the purest religion has been for centuries made subservient, in too many instances, to the perfidious policy of designing men, who sullied the purity which opposed their ambition, or annihilated by ostracism, the scaffold, or the pyre, the enlightened few of a darkened era.

True piety, averse from contention, and humble in its lofty devotion, exerts but little influence over the affluent and the worldly. The Spirit of Love breathes over the agitated waters, but seldom hushes their commotion; the rainbow of beauty only adorns the storm-cloud which it cannot disperse.

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Where the wild darkness of the nether world
Fell with its ghastliest grandeur, and vast clouds
Trailed o'er the panting firmament, and hung
Like sworded ministers of vengeance, low
Upon the dismal, thick, and deadly air,
Abaddon stood companionless, and wrapt
In wasting thought—a pyramid of mind
On the dark desert of Despair! Alone
He stood, and his broad shadow quivered o'er
The jagged and tumultuary clouds,
Where living blackness struggled with the glare
Thrown from the fierce volcano's lava breast,
With even a deeper gloom; for moral guilt
Transcends the tempest's terror and the wreck
Of warring elements, and brands its curse
Upon the tortured spirit, from its throne
Hurled down, and doom'd to agonize and burn.
Abraided of his glory—shrouded now
In the dire garments of the accursed race
Whom Pride, the child of Intellect, o'erthrew,
Buried in blackness with the muttering slaves
Of his tremendous treasons—worst of all,
Too proud in desolation's loneliest hours
To hold communion with inferior minds,
Or, for a moment, bend the archangel's brow
To baser natures, pale Abaddon leaned
Against a towering pillar charged with flame,
And spurned the fierce coiled serpents at his feet
With calm derision, for he felt within
Strong anguish past their power. His blasted brow
Worked in a terrible torture as the throng

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Of horrible remembrances went by,
And all the majesty of mind unblest
Glared in the high and haughty scorn that burst
From his indrawn, remorseless, withering eyes.

Hurled from the pinnacle of glory—hurled
From seraph throne, from love, from heaven and hope,
The matchless mind, that consummated bliss
When o'er the crystal fountain of his soul
Hovered ethereal Purity and smiled,
Now sealed the utter madness of his doom.
Memory—the star-eyed child of Paradise!
Rushed o'er the burning realm of banished thought,
Raining her scorpion arrows—Shame, Remorse,
Vain Penitence and Hatred of himself
Haunted the ruined altar of his soul,
And offered up the sacrifice of death,
That found no mercy and could never die.
The glacier barriers of his banishment,
Perdition's shattered rocks, whose awful peaks
Gleamed in the holiest light of glory lost,
Closed round his prison-house—his living tomb
Of still tremendous intellect; despair
Followed his steps along his lava path,
And pride restrained his anguish, though no more
He watched with the wild agony of hate
The dayspring or the twilight flight on high
Of gleaming seraphim, or heard the hymns
Of cherubs drinking knowledge from the fount
Of Love and basking in the light of God.
The thoughts, that cast him from his palmy state,
The limitless aspirings and desires
Of an immortal nature, once to him
The ambrosia and the diadem of bliss,
Came o'er him like the spectres of the past,
To shriek amid the ruins they had caused,
And pierce like fire-bolts through his maddened brain.
He dared, and perished in his power and pride,
Fell from the hallowed throne of cherished hope
And sunk to shame—it was enough to know

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And feel as great minds feel their perill'd might
And ruined fame, and conscious guilt beyond
The venal casuistry of proud self-love.
He would not be Mezentius to himself,
And wed his great ambition to the corse
Of his dead being; nor, Procrustes-like,
Measure departed happiness in heaven
By present misery in Hades' vault.

So back upon himself, with dire resolve,
The voiceless desperation of his doom,
He deeply shrunk, and reck'd not of the Power
Forever paramount, nor punishment
Doomed to the round of ages; desolate,
He cherished not a hope of happier hours,
Loved not, confided not, but breathed above
All sympathy and fellowship and fear.
He poured not tears on thunder-riven rocks,
Nor sighs upon the burning air, that fell
Like lava on his brain and through his heart
In livid lightnings wandered; but he grasped
His garments of eternal flame and wrapt
Their blazing folds around his giant limbs,
And stood with head upraised and meteor eye,
And still lips, whose pale, cold and bitter scorn
Smiled at eternity's deep agonies,
The Spirit of Destruction undestroyed!
Remote from all who fought and fell like him,
In the lone depths of vast Gehenna's waste,
And by the lava mountains overhung,
That darkened e'en the vaulted vapour's gloom,
He stood in that sick loneliness of soul,
That awful solitude of greatness lost,
The Evil, highly gifted, only know,
When every passion riots on the spoils
Of knowledge, and the fountain springs of life
Burst in a burning flood no time can quench.

But that which agonized his hopeless heart
And stung him oft to phrenzy—that, which hung

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O'er his all-dreading yet all-daring soul
Like thousand mountains of perpetual flame,
Was earthly innocence. Ere then, had flown
The fame of man's creation, in a sphere
Fashioned in beauty for his joy and use,
Through the black chambers of the central world:
And misery, leagued with being's deadliest foes,
Blighted Ambition and vain hope of Good,
Restless Remorse and desolating Shame,
Pictured the loveliness and love of earth—
The sunlight hills, to whose immortal thrones
Morn like a seraph in its glory came;
The shadowy valleys, where autumnal airs
Mid pine and firwoods uttered those sweet hymns,
That sink into the spirit and become
Oracles of future joy when earth grows dark;
The leafy groves, still'd at the fervid noon
That silence may attend on solemn thought,
The incense rendered on the sun's vast shrine;
The broad and beautiful and glittering streams,
Where Nature, in her soundless solitudes,
Smiled grateful back the eternal smile of Hope.

With the bright hues misfortune gives to joy,
The outcast angel, in his dungeon gloom
Girdled and counselled by the false and vain,
The wicked without aim save love of change,
The galley felons of unguerdoned guilt,
Painted the matchless charms of new born earth;
And, as he imaged forth its blissful scenes,
His burning, riven, desolated heart
Groaned till the caverns of remotest hell
Echoed, and all the envious demons laughed.
For well he knew that while the laws of God
Were as the breath of life to man, no power
Could loose Destruction's adamantine chains,
Or shield his haughty spirit from the scoff
And contumelies low of herding fiends,
Who drivelled e'en in torment, and could find
Meet mirth in wilder madness, and misdeemed

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Their crime and agony of less amount,
When mind alone was wanting both to rend
And still renew the anguish ne'er to close.

But soon from Eden, o er the wide void deep,
Returned the adversary, the master fiend,
Moulder of fiercest passions—queller, too,
Of turbulence and vain ferocity,
Whose serpent wisdom nourished matchless pride,
Whose hope was ruin and whose counsel, death,
In guile without a peer; on holy works
And customary rites attendant e'er
As come their seasons, with a zealot's speech
Prolonged and trumpeted that pours and pours
Like turbid waters by the tempest hurled.
He holds devoted natures with the grasp
Of death, and 'neath the pictured mask of grace
Hides the atrocity and doom of hell.
Opinion, fount of action, falsely held,
Founds and confirms his empire; fallacies,
With master skill and magic, he distorts
And beautifies with the fair robes of faith;
The martyr's sacrifice—the patriot's doom—
The just man's dungeon hours—the last despair
Of virtue, and proud honour's agony,
To him are mirth and music; and he feasts,
With hetacombs of victims offered up
Upon the idol shrine of evil here,
His own eternal anguish and remorse.
The rushing of his dragon wings, like storms
In mountain gorges, shook the conscious air,
And rapture sounded in their vast quick sweep
Along the dim confines and swirling gulf
Of chaos! Crowded round the cloudy throne
Of Pandæmonium all the rebel horde,
And rapidly, with haughty gesture, passed
Abaddon to his place, the loftiest there
Save one, and terribly his glowing eyes
Watched and awaited the descending chief.

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As in the prophet's vision by the brink
Of Ulai's orient wave, the victor foe
Touched not the earth in haughtiness of power,
But, ere confronting, conquered in the spoil;
So rushed the giant prince of darkness now
On condor pinions, with hyæna eye,
And broad brow in the storm-cloud deeply wrapt,
In his career exultant that despair
And death from birth to burial should infect
Man's heart pulse, paralyze his spirit's power
Seal all his human hopes with vanity,
Burden all pleasure with besetting fear,
Wed honour to disgrace and pride to shame,
Bring widowhood in youth, and friendless leave
Unportioned orphanage in evil days,
And change each quickened breath to sobs and sighs,
And o'er all scenes of love and rapture cast
The gloom of peril, hopelessness and want
That trails and languishes yet fears to end.

Crowned with a volcan glory, came the fiend,
Trembling amid his triumph lest the wrath
Of fiercer retribution should pursue
His victory, and o'er his deathless fate
Hang with unutterable revenge that grasps
Eternities of misery, though he felt
Awful capacities, transcendant powers,
Knowledge of good and evil past the scope
Of all created minds, and strength of will
Matched only by his restless agony.
On—on he rushed, like that dread vision borne
O'er Gilboa's midnight hills when shield and spear
Shiver'd and regal crown and sceptre rolled
Down desolate ravines—resolved to bear
All evil worst imagined with a soul
Of quenchless majesty, till o'er all space
Annihilation reigned by chaos' side.
So, fanning the black gulf of flame amid
The horrible profound, his cloud-like wings
Furled at the flaming footstool of his throne.

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“Triumph, Dominions!” loud the arch-dæmon cried,
His eyeballs flashing round; “The Son of Heaven
“Hath fallen as we fell! Ye legions? Lift
“Your voices till the rifted concave shrieks,
“For I have vanquished His peculiar work!
“We lost our birthright for Ambition's wreath
“Of martyrdom, and for ourselves alone
“We bleed and burn; but these weak beings sought
“Evil for evil's sake—knew not, forewarned,
“That knowledge is the crown of destinies,
“And thought not that one crime in them must breed
“Myriads of myriads, and perpetuate
“Misery and madness till unnumbered years
“Have wafted hosts on hosts to one abyss
“And earth no more can sepulchre the dead.
“Who shall arraign the Tempter? faith, untried,
“May be but falsehood; innocence becomes
“Virtue but in victorious trial; proved
“In his proud conquest o'er deceit and guile,
“Man had been worthy of his Maker's trust,
“But, disobedient to well known commands,
“He stands disrobed, unfolding what he is.
“The Almighty held denial in his power
“Of the permission to attest his work,
“But used it not; he might have crowned the man
“With perspicacity and strength beyond
“The daring of the bravest; but he left
“His creature to the workings of his will,
“The illusions of his uncontrolled desires,
“Though oft premonished; so, at once he fell
“And reaped the recompense, and where 's the guilt?
“Not mine, but his who saw yet boldly sinn'd!”
While Satan thus harangued his rebel band,
Mounted in pyramids the lurid flames
On the black mountains and the vales of hell,
And loud the concentrated shouts went o'er
The radiant battlements of heaven, where stood
Seraph and cherub on their missioned charge.

Scarce ceased the wild acclaim, ere swiftly rose
Abaddon and down dropped his chains; the blaze

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Of battle burst along his broad high brow,
Its thunder from his voice; he stamped his foot,
And hell recoiled; he turned his scorching eyes
Upon the gathered fiends, and all fell back,
Save Moloch, with a shudder felt through all
The realm of darkness; but a withering smile
Quivered o'er Satan's dreadful countenance
To witness thus his victory; his thoughts
Sprung on eternity's vast shadowy wings,
And down the viewless future madly rushed,
With the uproar of ocean breaking through
The crashing mountain barriers of the earth.
Conquered and manacled, but unsubdued,
Despairing, yet devoted to his crime,
He grasped at all fantastic shapes—all shades
Of stalwart phantoms, gaunt, and grim, and huge,
And moulded them to giant foes of God.
Though in his Titan heart the poison stirr'd,
Thrilled through each vein, and every iron nerve
Convulsed, and mounted to his burning brain
In boiling eddies, yet his scornful lip
Still pressed the chalice of a vain revenge.
He started from his vision as the fiend
Of Ruin, dark Abaddon, shook his plumes,
Broad as the tempest's banner, on the air,
And, roaring like the famished lion round
The wastes of Tadmor or Ipsamboul, cried—
“My time hath come! no more in this black den
“Of sloth, and desolation, and despair,
“Slumbers the Spirit of Destruction! Sin
“Invokes her bridegroom Ruin! Earth and Time
“Already shudder, conscious of my tread.
“We meet no more save on our embassies
“Of woe and terror till our prince achieves
“His glutted vengeance; but in many a land
“Ye shall be gods to nations, who shall fall
“Before your shrines and sacrifice their blood
“In rites the stars shall mark with pale affright,
“Mysteries and sorceries and magic charms,
“To win the endless torment of our hell!

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“My spirit feels the knowledge—fallen man
“Will dare beyond the damned—sink his soul
“In vengeance and corruption—bare his arm
“Against the heavens that bless him, and exceed,
“Once taught, e'en my capacity of hate.
“Therefore, exult! exult! and fare ye well!”
He said; and momently his pinions shook
Their first quick curses o'er the quivering void!

The Spirit of Celestial Love, that stood
Beside the throne of mercy, breathing bliss
Through each ethereal bosom, inly felt
By that mysterious mind, which guides all thought
And unwilled feeling and directs all deeds,
The flight of evil and the dæmon's power;
And, silently commissioned by that mode
Ineffable and yet well known in heaven,
By which the electric will of Deity
Pervades all spirits as light gleams through the eye,
The Angel of Benevolence arose
And passed from peace and praise to wrath and hate,
From perfect bliss to doubt and care and strife,
From heaven's own glory to the gloom of earth.
But great the guerdon and the final crown,
A living and perpetual fount of joy,
By human pride unsullied, by the lips
Of guilt untouched, shrined in the unchanging skies.
—Thou soul of music in a world of hate!
Thou beautiful and holy spring of love
And mildness by the bland and blessed voice
Of martyrs and apostles gently called
Charity, that hides unreckoned sins.
O'er troubled earth thou breathest balmy peace,
Hushing disquiet with a whisper heard
Like greenwood hymns at eve; and men, unawed
By storm and earthquake, to thy soft low voice
Listen like convicts to unhoped reprieve.
Immortal love! though generations glide
In shadowy armies to the spirit-land,
And kingdoms perish, and their glories fade

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In fabled legends, and untravelled seas
Lament o'er buried cities, still thy youth,
Thy brightness and thy beauty glow the same.
In living hearts thine empire changes not,
And from the vale of sepulchres thy smile
Wafts spirits purified to glory's home!—
—Forth went the angel to his trial, meek
In power, by soft allurements to o'ercome
The savage wrath of men, and thwart the aim
Of the remorseless fiend loosed on his prey.
Time with the silent speed of light passed o'er
Eden's poor wandering exiles, and the gush
Of their first anguish and remorse and woe,
Beneath the hallowed influence of love,
Daily endearment and affections linked,
And blended destinies and humbled thoughts,
Faded to an endurance and a hope
That breathed like zephyr o'er them; and they drew
From nature and her eloquence of bloom,
Her moonlight music and her starry hymn,
Her still green places of repose, her crowned
And glorious mountains, where the bannered trees
Against the sunset sky like angels stood
And waved the way to heaven—they daily drew
A blessing on their toil—a sacred charm
For loneliness that fell not on the heart,
Meek quiet filled with stilly dreams of days
Unborn—and lifted up in thankfulness—
And faith that linked them to immortal life
With Him, the Christ, redeeming what he judged.

So in each others' weal and in the love
Of children smiling on a wondrous world,
And, like the lonicera round the palm,
Climbing about their bosoms while the flowers
Of young mind perfumed all the enchanted air,
They found their solace; and winged pleasure sung
Around their rest, undreading future ill.
Years brought their fruits and flocks, and Abel's voice
Cheerily went up on morning airs, and swelled

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In that sweet living melody of heart
Pure thoughts inspire at hallowed eventide.
His home was on the hills, his altar there;
His sceptre was his crook, his soul his throne,
Peace was his realm, his God was everywhere.

Cain tilled the earth, a stern and wayward man,
Cursing the curse of toil and barrenness,
Though plenty clothed the hillside and the vale
With golden beauty, and his generous herds
Reposed, full banquetted, on broad green meads.
He recked not of the gentleness of love,
Calm virtue and submitted pride and thoughts
Exalted o'er all evil, from the dross
Of earth refined and fitted for their home.
But great ambition panted for renown
And monuments and temples and a fame
Immortal as the skies that watched his soul.
Tradition, uttered by the voice of grief,
Had told the pomp of hierarchies throned
And sceptred seraphim, and Cain's vain heart
Burn'd for their princedoms and their potencies.
So evil grew, and daily to his task
He bore a darker spirit; envy cast
Midnight o'er happiness not left for him,
And hatred tracked the shepherd to the hills.
There are two altars on a lonely mount
Since named the Throne of Elbours, mid the land
Of Iran, clothing its dark brow in clouds,
While thunder voices down each shattered gorge,
Ravine of rocks and dreary shagged glen
Mutter and moan, and in the fiery depth
The dread volcano startles into wrath.
Beside each shrine stand two majestic forms,
Beautiful in early manhood, girt with strength
As with a robe of steel, whose thousand chains
Sleep 'neath the silken draperies and plumes
And broidered cloth of gold of courtier pomp.
Yet in their orisons and deeds unlike,

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Their thoughts and sacrifice, a spotless lamb
Divided lay on Abel's shrine; the fruit
Of earth, the haughty offering of a heart
That bade the Deity accept the form
Of worship, and give back the meed deserved,
Fell from the hand of pride upon the wood
Of Cain heaped on steep rocks in shapeless piles.
The shepherd's prayer in stillness mounts to God,
And fire descends and curls in lambent wreaths
O'er faith's oblation and adoring love.
But darkly broods the storm of heavenly wrath
O'er the unholy sacrifice of guilt;
Naked before the eye of judgement stands,
Benetted with hypocrisies and crimes,
The fierce conspirator, whom evil thoughts
Clothe as a garment; and he turns aside
From the heart-withering glance aghast with shame,
Yet desecrated to revenge in blood.
Lowered the flushed brow of Cain—his visage fell,
And through the darkened avenues of sin
The Fiend of Ruin to his bosom stole
And stirred the livid flame: “Thy Maker scorns
“Thee and thy service and he hath respect
“Alone for slaves who prostrate do his will.
“Thy vassal brother wins the praise of God
“By austere life and a feigned awe of heaven,
“While thou, the victim, though thou hast the power
“Of victor, waitest on his sanctity,
“And, with a forced repentance, standest by
“To breathe the accepted incense of thy foe!
“Earth, sea and hell cry vengeance—be avenged!”
Cain listened and obeyed—his weapon fell—
Death started from the gory ground and gazed
With haggard horror on his father fiend.
And fled, the trembling vanquisher! All heaven
In awful stillness heard the martyr's groan,
The cherubim amid their worship paused,
And even the viewless throne of God was veiled
In sevenfold darkness!—silence hushed her heart!

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Cursed with a deathless agony—the seal
Of terror on his brow, the fire of death
Coiling around his spirit, to man's scorn
And desolation and despair marked out,
Creating solitude where'er he comes,
Shunned by the death he summoned from the sod,
And left a breathing sepulchre amid
The mirth of nuptials and the feast of birth,
Departs the Fratricide; and with him haste
To the lone wilds of Elam, land of Nod,
Belial and Moloch, grovelling chiefs of hell.

Hast thou beheld the Persecutor gloat
O'er banished virtue, outcast guiltlessness?
Hast thou beheld him following Want's slow tread
To poison every little stream of life?
Oh, hast thou heard him whisper chill distrust
And viper caution into friendship's ear,
And seen the electric change—the altered eye,
The hand withdrawn—the petrified repulse—
While voiceless Innocence retired and wept?
Hast thou seen hatred wear the guise of grace,
And robe revenge in the fair garb of heaven?
Before me rises the inquisitor,
With meek hands folded on his breast—bowed head,
And downcast eyes, and noiseless, gliding step,
Proudly exulting in the awarded praise
Of mild humility and zeal chastised
By holy ruth that weeps the doom it speaks;
While rancour revels in his bigot heart,
And chain and faggot—woe and lingering death
Rejoice his spirit more than temple hymns.
Thus to his spoil went forth the dreadful Fiend,
(And he hath many a slave even now on earth)
To gather in the harvest of his hate.

Crime came to consummation when the sons
Of heaven reviled the image of their King,
Wedded idolatries and nameless rites,
Debased their nature in the dust and sealed

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Lovebonds with the accursed race of Cain.
Hence miscreations came—the giant kings
Of old, and monsters, hideous birth of sin,
Phœnicia's Anakim—Titanic chiefs,
Centaurs and Lapithæ, vampires and gnomes,
Malign and elvish dwarfs whom dregs suffice,
Save that they, serpent-like, will lick the dust—
Briareus, Polyphemus and their peers,
Nature's abhorrence and derision, sent
To riot in all wrong and waste and woe.
Bright, young and beautiful, the world o'erflowed
With shame that hath no voice in better days,
And mercy, wearied with perpetual guilt,
Lifted her prayer no more, and justice cried
“God's spirit shall not always strive with man!”

The years of long forbearance slowly fled,
The vision of the prophet from all eyes
Vanished like sunrise vapors, and the words
Of wisdom echoed like a dying voice
In Sinai's wilderness; no spirit bowed,
No heart relented at the coming wrath.
Revel that brought no joy, and shrill-voiced mirth
Most melancholy poured their madness out,
And lozels wantonn'd o'er the poisoned bowl,
And blasphemy embraced the shape of death,
Howling hoarse curses, and all forms of sin,
All gross imaginations of desire,
All vampyre appetites and goule-like lusts
Trampled and triumphed o'er the laws of God.

The pictured cloud conceals the wildest storm,
The earthquake leaps from slumber into rage,
And guilt, most safe, is nearest to despair.
All bosoms had been gored by man's excess,
And all thoughts coined and coffered up to pile
The matchless monument of evil deeds.
Poesy, the bride of Beauty and the child
Of Purity, immortal in the skies,
Soiled by the atheist and the ribald, lost

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The brightness of her birthright, the blest charm
Of her ecstatic being that hung round
Her sylphic form in rainbow robes of light,
And fell before the altar of the Fiend.
Struck by the pestilence that roamed each track
Of daily life, the Good in forests dim
Or Al-Gezira's loneliest caverns dwelt,
Pale famished anchorets, and hoary hairs
Waved in the winter-winds of Oman's Sea.
These few; the undreaded Future's destinies
Rival not present policy—the scope
Of proud example, and expediency,
That sullies more than less occult offence.
Hoar heads alone rever'd celestial laws;
Exuberant youth, in confidence of time,
Held the late banquet, seeking pleasure's meed
Among the bowers of pain; and Jubal's lyre,
Hung on the willow, harped in desert winds.
To crown the cup of vengeance and to bar
All hope forever, sons of Belial poured
On Noah's heart the gall of base report
And pointed at him with a scoff and jeer,
And drove him from their dwellings with reproach.
Then came the herald of the heavens and closed,
With awful words, the prophet's mission there;
And, hovering o'er his victims in the pride
Of power, Abaddon listened to the roar
Of coming Ruin as the war-steed drinks
At mourn the music of the noon-tide strife.

Lingering like hopeless love around the form
Of its young worship, slowly on the verge
Of the blue firmament a bannered cloud
O'er Taurus rose and rested in the air.
Upon its folds deep darkness hung and oft
Quick shooting gleams of lurid fire withdrew,
For momentary glances of mad fear,
The vast dark curtain of God's mysteries.
Then up 't was lifted o'er the lovely vault
Broader and blacker, and the thunder's voice

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O'er Caucasus and Shinar's evil realm
Rushed, like the archangel's trumpet blast of doom,
Crying “Repent while judgement waits your prayers!”
But silence answered, and ascended higher
The tempest in tremendous masses swept
Like dust before the samiel. On the peak,
The utmost pinnacle of those vast clouds,
Grasping the arrowy bolts that round his brows
Hung like a crown, and glaring down on earth
With eyes of basilisk that drank the blood,
The Appearance of a giant shape appeared;
And, as the priest and prophet sadly paused
To gaze and weep, he raised his swimming eyes
To watch the moment when the door must close
And hope expire; and, like a swirling bark
In Norway's Maelstrom, sank his awe-struck heart—
For he beheld Abaddon, calling up
All wandering vapours from the shoreless Deep,
Guiding the hurricane and hurrying on
The dread reluctant Ruin, and he heard
The laugh of hell beneath the stars of heaven.

Up to the zenith heaved the o'erfraught clouds
And hung—then fell, dread billows of the sky—
Upon the far horizon. Through the depths
Of the tumultuous welkin flew the flames
Like fiery scorpions; east to west replied;
Pole shrieked to pole; the brazen atmosphere
Grew ghastly mid conflicting lights and shades,
And quivered till the eyeballs blurred and reeled.
And peril and dismay and fainting fear
And terror and confusion and despair
Entered, like siegers furious for the spoil,
The abodes of the deserted, while the floods
Fell, like Araxes from Armenian hills,
Or thousand torrents from Cordillera's brow,
Down—down upon the drenched and gasping earth.
The apostates at their feast in songs obscene
Mocked Noah and his storm-ship, shouting “Lo!
“The madness of the hypocrite! his beams

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“Of gopher to the cruel seas will tell
“A tale of wreck, and all his crowded beasts
“Will roar the lawless ocean into peace.
“Fill round and drink for wisdom—the red wine
“Mantles with pure philosophy—old Cain
“Commends its cheering in the chilly night!”
So talked the infidels; but morn replied!

They slept the sleep of wassail; but, ere stars
Faded behind the universe of clouds,
All woke in the wild terror of the Bad.
The solid battling skies poured deluge down,
Typhon poured out earth's dirge from heavens of wrath,
The forests shook and heaved and tossed and creaked,
The waters through their dwellings dashed and moaned,
The herds sent up a piteous cry—the flocks
Were hurried o'er the illimitable waste
Of countless torents and the desert beasts
Mingled their yells with the last wail of men.

Day broke and in the grey and quivering gloom,
The dull, cold twilight of the cheerless morn,
All eyes beheld on waters bubbling up
From every fountain of the yawning earth,
And pouring from each livid mass above,
The Cypress Ark, the home of truth and love,
The just man's sanctuary; and with shrieks,
And supplications and despairing tears,
Ten thousand voices blended in one prayer—
“Receive us! save us from devouring deeps!
“Receive us! save us from the tempest's rage!
“Receive us! save us from the wrath of God!”
But on o'er surging seas and broken waves
Floated the Ark—the eternal door was shut.

The shuddering waters gathered, and the cries
Of utter, hopeless, helpless agony
Rose o'er the crash and howl of elements
Convulsed and quivering in each other's wrath.
Vain were uplifted arms and faces wrought

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To anguish; vain, the hoarse and strangled voice
Of sinking feebleness; and vain the shrieks
Of beauty, erst the wonder and delight
Of human passion, while the torents swelled,
And quick through shattered billows glanced pale brows,
Closed eyes and raven hair, amid the foam,
Like countless apparitions round the couch
Of fever, hovering for a moment's lapse,
Then vanishing far down the unfathomed Deep.

Down came the Deluge. Kuma's lonely vale
Beneath far stretching Caucasus no more
Glowed in its beauty like a virgin bride
Unclosing the barr'd vizor of her lord.
The bright and glorious hills above the flood
Looked forth and vanished, while the victims clung
To the drown'd cliffs and topmost trees and gasped
Their last quenched shriek for succour; every pulse
Ceased in the turbid waters—every head
Sank on its cold, dark pillow—all was still!
One moment's struggle—and the silence fell;
One awful pang—and Death swept o'er the sea
And found no sacrifice! Then hoary Cain,
Whom multitude of years, baptized in guilt,
And branded with impieties, had brought
To this dread expiation, 'mid his sons,
His nation of idolaters, o'erwhelmed
By the resistless billows, proudly fell
In sullen haughty silence and cold scorn
And unrepentant pride; and his last breath
Quivered with voiceless curses as he swirled
Along the surf and vanished in the gulf.

Then with a music like the battle dirge
From midnight mountains sent in waves of sound
O'er forest and dark dell and starless vale,
Abaddon whirr'd along the dreadful waste.
Loud cried he is his glory: “Triumph yet!
“Sin loves her bridegroom Ruin! loyal Death
“Obeys his monarch and the world is mine!”

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Creation groaned; the universe throughout
Infinity with sudden terror quaked,
Then came a Voice: “Thou dost what God permits,
“Apostate, reprobated slave of crime!
“The author, punisher and victim too
“Of recusant and unforgiven guilt!
“Vaunt not, with fond ovation, evil done
“By heaven's allowance, lest thy doom should be
“To invent fresh torture for thy fellow fiends!”
The Dæmon quailed; yet soon above the Ark
Hovered on giant pinions, looking down
With vulture eyes unsated by despair.
The mountains trembled in the vast abyss,
The Hazaldera to their centre shook,
Hyrcania's sea forgot its ancient bounds,
Wandering o'er precipice and wood and wild,
And ocean's viewless monsters o'er their tops
And in their awful caverns rolled their vast
Unwieldy forms and played their giant game.

Meantime, the floating temple wandered on;
And in the bosom of the house of God
Rested the child of heaven; and praise and prayer,
Chastened affection, gentle gratitude,
Serene devotedness and fearless trust
Worshipped in every pure though saddened heart.
Peace as in Paradise reigned sole; the asp
And viper coiled beside the infant's couch,
Lion and elephant and cougar fed
With lamb, gazelle and antelope; the breath
Of wolverines and leopards stirr'd the fur
Of slumbering creatures once their hate and spoil.
For there the Angel of Celestial Love
Abode as afterward above the seat
Of mercy and between the cherubim,
To commune with the spirit that had dared
The scorner's blasphemy, the earth-fiend's assault,
The hatred and contempt of men, and soared
Beyond the scope of evil—and to teach
His faith by prophecies of future good,

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And glory and dominion; how that vice
Should minister to virtue and guilt change
Its nature and be fashioned into good,
And all conspiracies of men and fiends
But consummate the last great praise of heaven.
So counsell'd and consoled, when hung the Ark
On Ararat, and no more the dove came back,
Forth went the Patriarch to his own wide world.

When the clear rivers had resumed their banks,
And vivid verdure gladdened o'er the plain,
And every tenant of the storm-ship, robed
Again in its peculiar nature, had gone forth
To breathe the living air of mountain haunts
And graze upon the vale of fountains bright
With moon and sunlight and the stars' soft smiles,
The rainbow revelation of the skies
O'er wood and mountain glowed with hues of heaven,
And on the altar of man's sacrifice
Appeared the missioned Angel; “Never more,
“Saith God, shall Deluge drown the earth; no more,
“Till Time expires, shall dewy seedtime fail
“Or cheerful harvest; cold and heat shall track
“Each other's footsteps in the round of years,
“And birth and death to nations shall succeed
“As nature dictates.” Upward soared the voice.

Revered in reverend age, for all his deeds
Were chronicled in Honour's living scroll
And with remembrances most sacred charged—
Beloved in his last hour—the deeper then—
For countless hearts had garnered up his thoughts,
His counsels, his examples, faith and love—
The Patriarch (by the sage of thousand years
Named Noah, consolation for the curse)
Summoned around his deathbed from afar,
Cathay, fair Al-Gezira and the isles
Since titled of the Gentiles, and the shores
Of Oman's sea and the broad realms that clasp
Those waters trusted in all times with wealth

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Of argosies and galleons and triremes,
Laden by Egypt, Sidon, Tyre and Moors
Of Afric and proud lords of Christendom—
These called he—sons yet chiefs and kings—
Before his presence ere the soul grew dim,
Pour'd in their waiting minds dread prophecies,
And histories of mutable though prospered life,
And then gave up to his Preserver God
His spirit, tried and purified by time.
In latter ages he, who wanders down
Euphrates' banks, may see nomades stand
Beside an ivied moss-grown monument
Mid ancient woods, and hear the watchers say
“Behold Dair Abunah—the temple-tomb
“Of him who saw the world expire and lived.”

Once more the earth was peopled, and the land
Portioned among the children of the just.
The branching olive in the valley grew,
The vintage on the hillside blushed, and grain
Waved its green glories o'er rejoicing fields.
But men forgot their blessings and despised
Their birthright, and the standard of their king
Deserted in the faithlessness of sin,
Deeming their own vain workmanship could build
Castles impregnable, towers proudly crown'd
By the blue heavens, secure from future wreck.
Thus tempted he, Abaddon, for he knew
That doubt brings terror—fear of boundless power
Avoidance of communion and concern
And final hate; and to this scope he swayed
The fickle mind of youth, with dread of ill
Blending sublime and thrilling phantasies
Of honour, greatness, affluence, and fame.
Hence rose corrupt condemners—judges throned
In bought authority and base insolence,
Accusers, yet dispensers of men's doom.
Hence tyrants rose, who trampled on quick hearts,
And drank the shrieks and agonies of earth.
Hence envy sprung, armed at its birth with stings

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Of scorpions, and revenge from midnight gloom
Leapt on its victim with uplifted hand.
But craftsmen skill'd like Sinon in old time,
Who offered ruin upon Illum's shrine,
Or Clazomenian Artemon, who wrought
The fierce balista, or Dædalus fam'd,
Rival not wisely Him, whose moment's thought
Created myriad systems, stars and suns.
Each artizan on Babel sudden heard
Mysterious voices from familiar lips,
Unknown behests from architects wellknown,
And each misdeemed the other mad or seized
With fiend possession. Anger, wrath, distrust
Threw gloom on every stricken countenance,
And sundered the assemblage and dispersed
O'er undiscovered realms and regions wild,
Forest and seashore, mountain, dale, and plain,
Proud men and builders vain, who left behind
The monument of folly to proclaim
The nothingness of man's magnificence.

In earlier years, unvisited as yet,
Though fraught with many evils, by the rage
Of worst assassins, in my solitude
I sung the vengeance and the recompense
Of guilt that wrecked the Cities of the Plain;
And, earlier still, the triumph on the waste
Of Israel o'er the banded host and pride
Of Egypt long renowned for arts and arms.
And now, thou beautiful imperson'd Thought!
Queen of the blest Camœnæ! Dweller lone
On promentories high, by pebbly spring,
Clear as thy soul and mirror'd like thy heart,
Here stay thy flight; thou canst not follow death
Through all its triumphs in all time, nor paint
The Dæmon as he swiftly sweeps the world,
Rushing from woe to woe, and bearing high
His carnage front, crown'd with its wreath of flame.
But thou canst picture such disastrous deeds
As leave their deadliest wounds in life, and so

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Offer upon thy country's shrine thy lay.
Guide now my flying song through awful scenes
That darken the soul's sunlight, and let not
Thy deep moralities and lessons stern
Be wanting to instruct the soul of man
That wisdom dwells with cloistered gentleness,
And greatness with a conquest o'er desire,
And fame with justice and with duty, peace!

Remorseless avarice and serpent guile;
The ravine and the rapine of men loos'd
By legal sanction on each other's weal;
Accursed usury and trade that seared
The generous spirit of benignant youth;
Feud, faction, rivalry in court and camp,
In nuptial pomp and guady obsequies,
And daily intercourse; pale jealousy,
Blighting the mildewed heart and forging wrongs
To consummate suspicion; envy, hate,
Howling defiance or disguised to kill;
All desolating slander, whispered out
In night assemblies, and ere noontide hurled
O'er the wide town to feast upon the slain;
These and unnumbered terrors more were born
When cities rose and thronged societies
Drave sleeping passion into ruthless war,

Nor Sheikh nor Ephori nor Archon throned
In Areopagus, nor Consul stern
In curule chair, nor chief nor king nor czar,
Could ever crush the giant crimes of men,
Or hold, when maddened by indignities,
Their bandit natures subject to his law.
All codes and pandects and enactments framed
By skill'd and titled senates cannot bind
Man to his fellow's weal, nor countermine
The quick evasions of a mind resolved
To build on human heads its dome of gold.
Custom creates desire, and want uplifts
Its voice and yearns for common vanities;

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And folly, minister to pride, hath had
Its bribe in every age and clime and heart;
And interest coins new gold from sack and spoil
To bear the gorgeous pageant bravely on.
So luxury dissolves the strength of men,
And poverty degrades the eagle thought;
And faith deserts all commerce and all speech.
Then tyrants trample; but the same dark fiend,
That covered them with purple, yet hath slaves
More terrible than this; and rebels crouch
Around the throne to cleave one despot's brain,
And seat another on their vassal necks.
Thus doubt, intrigue, cabal and mutual hate,
The monstrous birth and bane of social life,
Bear retribution to the lips of all.

All history is but a scroll of blood,
The record of destruction and despair;
The life of man hath parted from each sod
Where spreads a kingdom, and the voice of woe
Uttered its wailings round triumphal cars,
And purple pomp and unrestricted power,
Since first the astonished sun beheld the sin
And shuddering horror of Earth's fallen sire.
Ixion's wheel, the rock of Sisyphus,
The Danaides' hopeless, endless toil,
But image to our wiser sense of fate
The misery and the madness that have crowned
Lust and ambition since the cherub's sword
Gleamed o'er the closed gate of lost paradise.

Lo! glorious Babylon—the gorgeous queen,
The lady of earth's kingdom! beauty, strength,
Dominion, glory, and magnificence
Gleamed in her diadem, and nations quailed
Before the rushing squadrons of her kings.
Towers, castles, palaces and guarded walls,
That shadowed the sheen dayspring;—colonnades,
Whose porphyry pillars glowed with crowns of gems,

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And glittering marts of merchant princes meet
To purchase monarchies;—and temples wreathed
With gold and diamonds, through rosy airs
Soaring to heaven;—and from vast terraces
Gardens, like Eden's in its hours of bliss,
Gemm'd with the matchless flowers of all the east,
And shaded by the cedar, laurel, palm
And grovelike banyan, hanging from the walls—
All these defended and adorned her pride,
Her boasted immortality of power,
And captive monarchs laid their sceptres down
Beneath her footstool, while her king of kings,
Nabocolasser deigned to bid them serve.
Girded by battlements that mocked assault,
And beautified by every art of man,
Her bands invincible o'erspread the earth,
And garnered up in her proud palaces
The majesty and pomp of prostrate thrones.
But strength, on odours pillowed, faints and dies,
And glory brooks not love's voluptuous ease.
Fame sculptures its own throne and monument,
O'er perishable existencies and things
Doomed to decay it pours its deathless soul,
And in the realms of thought forever reigns.
But from the hidden urns of gold and gems
The spirit of magnificence enshrined
In darkness, from temptation's weak research,
The destined king, whom vice emasculates,
Bears to his banquet poison and despair!
Nimrod and Ninus and Semiramis
Gazed from the icy pinnacle sublime
Of restless action and unslumbering toil
On broken dynasties and conquered crowns
With wine and courtezans and sycophants
Belshazzar revell'd till the spectre hand
Wrote ruin on the radiant tapestries,
And ivory pillars of his banquet hall,
And Mede and Persian up Euphrates' bed
Rushed to the throne that held no more a king.

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The solitary Syrian pilgrim roams
Through Hellah's dismal hamlet and discerns,
He deems, from hot and drifted sand exhumed,
Relics of Babylon—yet doubts his quest,
And searches more intently, while the wind
Moans o'er the desert with a broken voice,
And bats and bitterns hover, and the fox
Springs from his burrow, and the jackal's scream
Haunts the lone air throughout the livelong night.
This is ambition's triumph! this the crown
And consummation of earth's monarchies!
Myriads have toiled their threescore years, and bled,
And swallowed loathingly their galley food,
And died, the slaves of myrmidons, for this!
Childless Chaldea! realms of sorceries,
And worldly wisdom and enchantment! queen
Of all that charms man's nature and inflames
His fatal hopes—pale dust to dust gone down—
Thy sole memorial but a word—a name!

The pale pure pearl in summer daylight smiles,
But diamonds, gained by blood, alone shoot forth
Their radiance when the chandeliers disperse
Wavering darkness and the shapes it broods.
Thus joy and fame, possessed by others' good,
Shed their blest beauty o'er our brief sojourn,
While fierce ambition's earthquake ravages
Leave empires blackened by a nation's gore,
And glooming 'neath the volcan blaze of war.
Stand thou upon the holy hill of truth,
And mark below the struggles and the wrath,
The dreadful patience of death's artizans.
Behold the monarch trembling with the fear
Of viewless treason, troubled and unblest,
While envy gazes from afar and sighs.
See magi erring—and enchanters lost
In their own labyrinths of fraud revered.
The wanderings of the wisest and the fall
Of bravest combatants behold! and send
Thy spirit on the winds o'er every clime

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To weep the ruin of earth's holiest hopes;
To weep that folly ministers to woe,
That weakness reigns with wisdom, and the blood
Of centuries but buys a gilded tomb!

Then what avails the voice of old renown?
The masques and riotings and glories past?
Lived Phalaris the merciless? there are,
Who doom deserving to the dungeon now,
And chain high merit to the felon's wheel.
Did Thais, frantic o'er the maddening bowl,
Tempt him of Macedon to stain his name
And in the torrent flame of Persia's throne
Persepolis consume his memory?
Our Fathers—faith's poor exiles, fed
By Red Men's charity, and warmed to life
By their devotion to unfriended want,
Went forth from unbought refuges and fired
The dwellings of the monarchs of the land;
And from that midnight slaughter all, who dared
The wreathing flames, fell by the sword or ball.
Did the bold Granicus back to its fount
In Ida bear the shrieks of dire defeat,
And Issus and Arbela wail aloud
O'er satraps, princes and Darius slain?
Europe through all her coasts with terror saw
Destruction sweep o'er Austerlitz, and crush
Hispania 'neath his iron foot, and hurl
Embattled nations to the doom knell'd out
By the vast Kremlin's Tocsin when his host
Drank the deep cup of vengeance to the dregs.
She saw the man of destiny dethrone,
Demolish and confound the crowns of kings,
While on his banner-bearers in the van
Of desolation hurried, leaving slaves
To bury their dead conquerors—or die.
Drave Shalmaneser from Samaria sacked
And pastoral Naplousa's mountain land
The countless hosts of conquered Israel
To bondage, martyrdom—and buried all

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Beneath the mysteries of viewless fate?
Careered Sesostris in chariots drawn
By kings made vassals o'er the famished realms
Where erst they reigned in Plenty, Power and Peace?
Who hath not wept o'er Poland's utter spoil
And Kosciusko like a star cast down?
His country mangled, riven, with bleeding limbs,
Hurled into Hinnom, darkened and devoured
By boyars, starosts,—ruffian hordes of chiefs—
Banished and banned, her patriot spirits robbed
Of home and hope—her throne in ruins laid—
And tyrants trampling in her temples armed!
Through ranks of victims crucified and racked
Stalked fierce Volesus and his spirit glowed
With demon gladness and a murderer's pride?
See Marat on the Greve! or hear (and quail)
The dying prayers of Glencoe, and the shrieks
Of Saint Bartholomew—the feast of God,
The holy eve of heaven! and yet again
Sicilia's Vespers and the torch of Fawkes
Mark and compare! be still and weep thy heart

What hath been is and will be. Seasons change
Their advent and departure; empires fade
And fall like autumn leaves; and manners take
New effigies, and customs like the moon
Wex, glow and wane; and e'en the steadfast earth
Unfolds fresh aspects both of land and wave;
But man and man's strange nature never change.
The mutability of brief frail life,
The woes that weave their poison in the threads
Of being, and the vanity that sinks
In loathing sickness o'er accomplished fame—
All utter counsel vainly—madly on
Borne by the whirlwind of o'erwening pride,
He pauses not—he breathes not in repose
Till the grave buries pomp and great renown,
And desert winds o'er dreadful solitudes
Utter their voices—chanters for the Dead!
What can avail magnificence and might,

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Dominion bounded by the ocean's surge,
And fame, whose herald was stupendous fear?
Search Memphian pyramids and mete by line
Gigantic obelisks; tread o'er the ground
Where stood Diana's temple, dashed to earth
In blackened masses on the fated night
That shuddered o'er the birth, in Macedon,
Of the world's scourge and curse; or print thy foot
Among the ashes of Moriah's mount,
And paint in burning hues its day of doom;
Dare the simoom and let thy voice be heard
In Tadmor's awful solitudes, or turn
And mourn dismayed in Balbeck's domes of death;
Toll yet again the thunder knell of Rome
And proud Athena, and let Egypt hear
And echo back thine eloquence of thought!
And what shall this avail thee, if thou drink
No loftier inspiration from the scene
Than wonder and amaze and vain romance?
But if thou wilt be wise and choose thy good,
The large revealment is before thee here.
Ruins of glory teach thee meek content,
Beatitude that offers silent praise,
And still content, the best religion,—love,
Untrembling confidence in Him who holds
The universe in scales, and faith prepared
To mingle with its Fountain at all hours.
Destruction hath not slept since fell his chains
In deep Gehenna at the fall of man;
But better minds, on high pursuits intent,
Create and fashion fortune to their will.
The outward ill may torture, and the strife
Of the heart's foes may bow the spirit down,
But over all they reign at last, and bring
From the world's wreck and their own sorrows food
To nourish christian meekness for the skies.

Receive the legacy of buried years!
The thoughts sublime of high philosophy,
The thrilling music of great intellects.
It argues but a helot soul to pore

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O'er mouldering instruments of havoc—lance,
Bowstring and javelin and catapult;
Or paynim rituals by Menes framed,
Solen or Numa—fittest offered up
To sculptured deities and pictured Gods.
Holier than sage sanhedrim soared the thoughts
Of Plato on their glorious way, and earth
Grew lovelier than love's bright imagings
Beneath the starry splendour of his soul.
The lion-hearted son of Arcady,
Diagoras hath shined his memory too
Deep in the stainless fountain of all truth;
For with the wanton creed and faith obscene
And faithless deeds of Jove's mad worshippers
He held no commune, but with martyr voice
Bade Venus bind her zone and veil her brow,
And Pallas cast away her ægis and no more
Gorge her beaked eagle with the blood of men.
The maniac son of Semele he bade
Forego his thyrsus, and no longer fill
The madden'd brain with fierce licentious thoughts.
Thus in the council of his country's gods
He stood—like Austin by Andraste's shrine
On Stonehenge, girdled by the Druid band,—
And with a dauntless eloquence portrayed
Their hideous idols, whom their bigots mocked.
Banished, proscribed and with anathemas
Burdened, alone into the desert passed
The stern philosopher from bondage free.
And Socrates hath left his legacy,
The immortal science of a heart resolved
To ratify its greatness in the hour
Of doom, and o'er the shrinking dread of death
Mount like Elijah to the heaven he saw.
Lo! what a hallowed beauty and a gush
Of soft seraphic beings float around,
When in the music of an elder day
The Samian sage Pythagoras reveals
The inner brightness of his spirit throned!
These in a gross and grovelling time gleamed out

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As miracles of omen! and they stood
Untrembling at the tyrant's judgement seat
And heard, like Galileo from the lips
Of Bellarmine, the fiat undismayed.

Like them, devoted scholar! treasure up
The oracles of nature and be wise.
Look not on any faith with hate or scorn,
For who hath throned thee in the place of God?
Papist or Huguenot—Condé or Guise—
Christian or Osmanlee or Brahma's chief—
Guelph or Gibbeline—theist or priest—
Their creeds revered call not thee arbiter!
It can avail thee nought to sear the heart
Of blest humanity and brand the brow
Of intellect with evil thoughts of men,
And hoard in the bright mansion of young mind
Harsh sentences and judgements to corrode
The fair work of the Deity, whose love
Pervades alike all nature and all hearts.
Rejoice that thou art free to feel and think
And utter without fear; that human judge
No more hath power to chain thee in the flame,
Or on the rack or sachentege. Beware
That while, with ashes on thy head, thou sitst
In penitence, those ashes from the fires
Of vanity and pride fall not to sear
The soul that should be purified love!

Turn, Spirit of my song! and gaze with grief
Once more on death that in the noontide comes!
Methinks, in crowded solitudes I stand,
At nightfall, by the serai's darkening walls,
In beautiful Byzantium, laved by seas
Of old renown, the Euxine, Hellespont,
And fair Propontis; and the turban'd crowd,
With ataghan and scymitar, pass on
With hastened steps that fear yet will not shun
The dreadful pestilence that sweeps along.
The distant lights of Pera, one by one,

312

Shoot forth, and the sweet voice of love's guitar
Comes on the fragrant yet deathladen air
With a heartstirring influence and charm
That melts into the mind like childhood's smiles.
Below me lies a weltering trunk, and yon
The headsman sheathes his kinskal to relight
His quenched chibouque, and drops into the dust
The hoar head of the Hospodar. Along
The colonnades move slow the Soldan's guards
Silent and waiting death they dare not fear.
The wan moon o'er the Bosphorus ascends
With sicklied lustre, and her mournful smiles
Rest on the countless monuments that throng
Byzantium's land of burial; and methinks
The solemn cypress trees do moan the dirge
Of all the morning sun shall see entombed.
In stillness flies the pestilence; aud prince
And slave lie writhing for an awful hour,
And perish; and the merchant's crowded mart
Of loveliness from fair Circassia's vale
Will open on the morrow to convey
Beauty unto her bridal in the tomb.
Life's breath is here extinction: moments grasp
A thousand destinies; and funerals glide
Like evening shadows by, as thick and fast;
And up the ladder of the dead methinks
I see the votaries of Islam pass,
In silent shadowy multitudes, to lay
The idols of the heart's worship where no more
Bereavement and lone widowhood of hope
Pour earth's deep night o'er visions of the blest.
Woe sits in every threshold; and the hour
Of prayer, by struck muezzin call'd in vain,
Passes without a voice ascending up.
O night and pestilence! and doubt and death!
How terribly distinct the heart-pulse throbs,
That soon may cease! as through the quivering gloom,
The quickened vision glances on the shade
Of fierce Abaddon's form that hurries by!

313

—Anark and Rioter in myriad woes!
The fierce orgasms of maddened agony
Have been to thee electric ecstacy,
Demoniac rapture—since the smile of God
Was clouded by despair that weds with crime.
Before thee sink the Beautiful—the Bard,
Wasted in youth and in his flower age seared
By the world's samiel and his own quick thoughts!
The hero on the bosom of renown!
The suneyed child whose being is a bliss!
The virgin in her loveliness—the son
Of many hopes and dreams sublime of love,
When the first dawnings of his fame gleam'd out!
The mightiest armies of the dead rise not
From gory battlefield or lava seas,
Drowning still cities in deep floods of fire,
Or earthquakes yawning to profoundest depths,
Or tempest, or crusade, or ghastly plague.
Deeper than the rent banners of the slain
Was steeped the soul of Cæsar in men's blood;
And Attila from Chalons' streaming plain,
Heaped with its hecatombs of victims, fled
Before Theodric with a heart afloat
In gore of Hun and Goth. Judea's soil
Grew rank in richness o'er the sacrifice
Chivalric monarchs, led by bigot wrath.
Offered to Saladin and the Sepulchre.
Lo! awful Victory o'er seas of blood
Waving her standard, while the world contends
On Zama, Cannæ, Waterloo, made rich
By human hearts forever pierced in vain!
But Persecution hath a wider range,
An ampler spoil than these; lo! from the roll
Of Record starts the pallid student up
And cries—“Thou prince of justice and of peace!
“Wolves ravin in thy fold, and mercy shrieks
“In vain succour while the guiltless die!
“Familiar and inquisitor and doom!
“Apostle, prophet, martyr—child and eld!
“Freedom and shackles and the axe upraised

314

“Red with the life of Hampden, Sydney, More!
“Tyrants and parricides and length of years,
“Ismaël Aurung-Zêbe and Tamerlane!
“Oh, the soul sickens o'er the scroll of fame,
“The just man's wrongs, the widow's unseen tears,
“The orphan's helpless woes, the tyrant's power,
“The pride of Mammon, and the painted brow
“Of hypocrites exulting o'er their prey.
“God of the guiltless! in Peru's dark mines
“Her kings dig gold for murderers! and see
“Assassins goading to the Oregon
“The ancient sovereigns of our plundered realm!”

Thus deems the nobler mind, intent to delve
For knowledge and yet shuddering o'er its toil.
Thus vanish generations down the gulf
That opens to Eternity, and thus
The Fiend of Ruin wastes a dreaming world.

But there shall come an hour when truth shall stand
Upon the mountain and declare to earth
Her seraph oracles; when Love shall thrill
Each bosom wedded to the world's wide joy,
And image in the fountain of the soul
The universal bliss; when Faith shall roam
On lovelier meads and hills with glory clothed,
O'er whose bright summits rainbows rest in heaven,
And over the charmed universe of thought
Pour its pure radiance from the shrine of God.
Then, cries the Vision of the banished saint,
In deep Gehenna's darkest depth again
Shall writhe in adamantine manacles
The Spirit of Destruction, and no more
Vainly appeal pale Famine's hollow eye,
Or broken voice of burning Pestilence.
Or unheard groans of battle raging on.
But dove-eyed Peace shall float on snowy wings
O'er nations banded in each other's love,
And the free souls of Heaven's blest children flow
In light and love o'er earth and rest in God!

315

TO ISOLINA.

To be wroth with those we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
Coleridge.

Oh! must it be so? Must thine image be,
Through the long lapse of all my future years,
A madness and a mockery to me,
That glows amid my heart's corroding tears?
Must we in anger part—forever part,
Without one solace for the bleeding heart?

I loved thee, maiden!—'t is no shame to own—
Deeply as loves the heart-sear'd hermit saint,
The highest, purest star that gleams alone
In the blue depths of heaven, which none may paint;
I loved thee as the bulbul loves the flower,
That blooms and breathes and withers in an hour.

E'en now I turn, and o'er the waste of years,
A broken spirit and a bruised heart, trace
The charm, the magic of thy smiles and tears,
The heaven that met me in thy soft, sweet face;
And still to thee my crushed affections rise
Like holiest incense o'er the evening skies.

When first we met and looked, and loved, the past
With all its perils vanished from my brain;
Thy form was like the Peri of the waste
Whose smile is heaven in a world of pain—
Alas! 't was but the radiance of a dream
That left me woe in its departing gleam.

316

Thy blessing was the blight of life's best hours;
Thy soft embrace the serpent's deadly wreath;
Thy kiss, a poison hid in heavenly flowers,
Thy look breathed madness and thy voice spake death.
How couldst thou rend the heart thou wouldst not kill?
Why bid me part—yet kiss and linger still?

Why fold thy snowy arms around a heart
Thy quick unkindness fill'd with utter woe?
Why to my soul elysian bliss impart,
Life's lingering anguish only to bestow?
Why bid me hope—to feel the last despair?
Point me to heaven—when hell alone was there?

O Isolina! thou wert made as fair
As Azrael, ere the withering bolt was hurled,
That pierc'd the seraph with a fiend's despair,
And drave him—dark destroyer, o'er the world!
Thou wert as lovely as that eastern flower,
Who touches, droops, and dies within an hour.

I deemed thee all the poet loves to paint—
Full of young loveliness and virgin love,
In soul an angel and in heart a saint,
Earth's fair inhabitant, but born above;
I may not think—I dare not tell thee now
What my heart murmurs o'er thy broken vow.

Hadst thou been all my trusting heart believ'd thee,
I had not loved as I do hate thee now;
Oh! hadst thou never in thy pride deceived me,
I had not blessed as I do curse the vow
My willing homage to the syren paid,
Who heard and smiled—who listened and betrayed.

Farewell! the voice of all confiding Truth
No more salutes me on my wandering way;
Farewell! the morning glory of my youth
Already darkens in Earth's troubled day;
Farewell! I loved thee as a dream of heaven—
Dissolved in darkness at the moment given.

317

We part—not as we met in other hours,
Radiant with love and rapture's magic glow,
But blighted—broken—and our passion's powers
Linked in a living web of fear and woe!
Alas! the erring of my own heart throws
Its thoughts o'er thee!—blest be thy calm repose!

Sleep, Isolina! and bright dreams be thine
Of triumph o'er a heart that throbbed and bled
Alone for thee, with passion too divine
To doubt—till love and every hope had fled;
On the dark wreck enjoy thy placid sleep,
And mayst thou never—never wake to weep!

Once more, farewell! my barque is on the main,
My native land is o'er the stormy sea;
I cannot tear from out my heart and brain
One thought to leave behind—save agony!
Farewell! may Memory in thy soul expire,
And Hope attend thee with her golden lyre.

O Thou! the present and the Past,
The Future, the Eternal Lord!
Whose every breath can bless or blast,
Teach me the council of Thy Word!

While friends forsake, and foes oppress,
And Time is veil'd in storms of gloom,
Teach me that one great happiness
That lives beyond the mouldering tomb!

My errors, faults and sins forgive!
Lighten my path and cheer my heart!
In Thee, to Thee I only live—
Thou the Supreme and Righteous art!

318

THE LAY OF THE COLONIST.

On the rude threshold of his woodland cot,
When the sun turned the western sky to gold,
Wrapt in dark musings on his wayward lot,
And joys long past that o'er his spirit rolled,
Stern in his faith, though sorrow marked his mein,
The exile stood—the genius of the scene!

Unbounded, solitary, dark and deep,
The mountain forests lowered around and threw
Their solemn shadows o'er the craggy steep,
Where human foot had never brushed the dew;
And through the tangled maze of wildwoods run
Streams, whose swift waves ne'er glittered in the sun.

O'er the vast sea of this green solitude
No wreathing smoke from distant cottage rose;
No wellknown voice came singing through the wood—
No form beloved tracked o'er the winter snows,
Or sunny summer hillside, glad to seek
And find a friend to cheer him once a-week.

Unbroken there was life's lone sleep, save when
The moose or panther yelled along his way,
Or the wolf prowled and ravined through the glen,
Or, high in air, the eagle screamed for prey;
The Indian's arrow had a noiseless flight,
More dark and deadly than a monarch's might.

Oft lonely barrows on the woody plain
Alone revealed that mortal things had been;
That here red warriors, in their slaughter slain,
Reposed in glory on the conquering scene
Of their high valour; and their fated fame
Hath left them not on earth a record—or a name.

319

But soon the whirring arrow, stained with blood,
Gave fearful warning vengeance slept not here—
That he, who threaded thus the mazy wood,
And slew faroff the wild and timorous deer,
Had darts within his quiver stored to bear
Death to the white man through the silent air.

Mid the dense gloom of nature's forest-woof
The exile stood, who erst in pomp abode;
Rude was the cottage, with its leaf-thatched roof,
Where dwelt the Puritan—alone with God;—
There terror oft through nights of cold unrest
Counted the pulse of many a trembling breast.

In the vast wilderness, afar removed
From scenes more blest than happy hearts can tell,
Torn from the bosoms of the friends he loved
Too fervently to bid a last farewell;
Here, at the hour when hearts breathe far away
Their music—thus the Exile poured his lay:—

“Mysterious are thy ways, Almighty One!
And dark the shades that veil thy throne of light,
But still to thee we bow—thy will be done—
For human pride leaves erring man in night;
To thee we make our still and solemn prayer—
Be thou our Sun and every scene is fair!

“When from oppression, crowned and mitred, Lord!
We fled—a faint band—o'er the Atlantic main,
Thou wert our refuge—thou, our shield and sword—
Our light in gloom—our comforter in pain;
Thy smile beamed brighter on our woodland shed
Than all earth's glory on a regal head.

“And oft, amid the darkness and the fears
Of them thy goodness gave to share my lot,
Thou hast in mercy listened to the tears
Of love and innocence in this rude cot,
And filled pale lips with bread, and the raised arm
Of murder palsied ere its wrath could harm.

320

“When through the unbarred window on our bed
The famishing bear hath looked—or to our hearth
The tiger sprung to tear the babe—or red
The hatchet gleamed along the glade; on earth,
Ev'n as in Eden, thou hast walked in power,
And saved us in the dark and trying hour.

“When, gathered round the winter fire, whose flames
The cold gale, howling through the cottage, fanned,
We talked o'er distant loved and honoured names,
And sighed to think upon our native land,
Thy still, small voice was heard—‘The same God here
Beholds thee as thy friends beloved and dear.’

“Thus hast Thou been our comfort—Thou, for whom
We left the land—loved land! that gave us birth,
And sought these shores of savageness and gloom,
Cold, faint and sick—the exiles of the earth!
We heard thy summons, Lord! and here we are,
Beneath New England's coldest northern star.

“Softly beneath thine all-protecting smile
Hath been our sleep in perils dire—and on
The stormy waters and the rugged soil
Thy blessing hath descended, and thy sun
Hath unto us such gladdening harvests given
As erst came down on Zin from pitying heaven.

“Narrow and dark through this entangled shade
Our winding paths o'er cliffs and moors must be;
But bright with verdure is our lovely glade,
And from its temple soar our prayers to Thee;
And here, though danger point the poisoned dart,
We wear a charm, true faith, within the heart.

“The radiant sun, thy glorious work, O Lord!
Fades from the West and lights the moon on high;
As they, who trust in thy most holy word,
Catch light and glory from the blessed sky;
And even here amid the forest's gloom
We breathe the blessing of the life to come!”

321

The exile turned and entered to his home,
Blest with the view his pious soul had caught
Of heaven's mysterious ways—and o'er him come,
As through his mind roll living streams of thought,
Such gleams of joy as ever must arise
From his pure heart who worships at the skies.

Irreverent sons of Plymouth's pilgrim band!
Approach not them ye will not to revere!
The wandering fathers of this mighty land
Contemplate thou with reverence and fear;
Heir of the Faithful! let thy bosom take
The faith that dared the exile and the stake!

THE DIRGE.

Weep not thou for the dead!
Sweet are their dreamless slumbers in the tomb—
Their eyelids move not in the morning's light,
No sun breaks on the solitary gloom,
No sound disturbs the silence of their night—
Soft seems their lowly bed!

Grieve not for them, whose days
Of earthly durance have so quickly passed,—
Who feel no more affliction's iron chain!
Sigh not for them who long since sighed their last,
Never to taste of sin and woe again
In realms of joy and praise!

322

What they were once to thee
It nought avails to think—save thou canst draw
Pure thoughts of piety, and peace, and love,
And reverent faith in heaven's eternal law,
From their soft teachings, ere they soared above,
Lost in Eternity!

When o'er the pallid brow
Death flings his shadow—and the pale, cold cheek
Quivers, and light forsakes the upturned eye,
And the voice fails ere faltering lips can speak
The last farewell—be not dismayed—to die
Is man's last lot below!

Death o'er the world hath passed
Oft, and the charnel closed in silence o'er
Unnumbered generations—past and gone!
And he will reign till Earth can hold no more—
Till Time shall sink beneath the Eternal Throne,
And Heaven receive its last.

Death enters at our birth
The moulded form we idolize so much,
And hour by hour some subtle thread dissolves,
That links the web of life—at his cold touch
Power after power decays as time revolves,
Till earth is blent with earth.

The soul cannot abide
In the dark dreariness of flesh and sin;—
Its powers are chained and trampled on by clay,
And paralyzed and crushed; 't would enter in
Its own pure heaven, where passion's disarray
Comes not, nor hate nor pride.

Come, widowed one! with me,
And we will wander through the shades of death!
Look now upon those sheeted forms that soar
Amid the still and rosy air! their breath
Wafts the rich fragrance of heaven's flowery shore—
Amid the light of Deity!

323

Would'st thou wail o'er their flight?
Or curb their pinions with the chains of Time?
Art thou or canst thou be so happy here,
Thy spirit pants not for a fairer clime?
O, sorrowing child of sin, and doubt, and fear!
Thy heart knows no delight.

Would'st thou roll back the waves
Of the unfathomed ocean of the Past,
And from soft slumbers wake the undreaming Dead,
Again to shiver in the bleak, cold blast,
Again the desert of despair to tread,
And mourn their peaceful graves?

Ah, no!—forget them not!
Thoughts of the dead incite to worthy deeds,
Or from the paths of lawless ill deter;
When the lone heart in silent sorrow bleeds,
Or sin entices—to the past recur—
Trust heaven! thou wilt not be forgot!

Weep not for them who leave
In childhood's sinless hours the haunts of vice!
Mourn not the Lovely in their bloom restored
To the bright bowers of their own paradise!
Mourn not the Good who meet their honoured Lord
Where they no more can grieve!

But rather weep and mourn
That thou art yet a sinning child of dust,
Changeful as April skies or fortune's brow;
And, while thy grief prevails, be wise, and just,
And kind—so thou shalt die like flowers that blow,
And into rose-air turn.

324

A MONODY.

When first I drank thy starlight smile, and revelled in thy love,
How could I know that thou wert here, but as a pilgrim dove?
How could I think that thou wouldst part and vanish like a star,
And leave me here alone to weep, when thou hadst fled afar?

Thou wert to me so dear, I felt as if shut out of heaven,
When death came o'er thy beauty, like a cloud o'er summer even;
And many a time in solitude, in malady and sorrow,
My heart hath turned to yesterday, and quail'd to meet tomorrow.

When in the silent sanctity of Love's own holy sky,
We fondly talked of days to come, I thought not thou couldst die;
Ev'n while I gaz'd upon thy fixed, yet lovely look in death,
I kissed thy lips and started—for I met no answering breath.

Though day by day I saw thee fade—I dare not ponder now!—
Though the fire of death was on thy cheek—its blight upon thy brow;
Though words, that turned my heart to tears, oft from thy pale lips fell,
I thought not thou wert doomed to die—I could not say farewell!

I knew thou wert too pure to dwell amid the sins of earth—
Too high, too holy, to enjoy its follies and its mirth.
But, oh! I trusted thou wouldst live that I might daily see
And love the holiness of heaven, so imaged out in thee.

So long in sorrow I had flown to seek thee in thy bower,
I could not bear the solitude of desolation's hour,
The utter gloom, the emptiness, the silence never broken;
Where all was music, life, and love—though oft no word was spoken.

325

The light of stars—the melody of bosky brooks were thine,
A heart that breathed the bloom of bliss—a spirit all divine:
In sacred song or antique lore, or wisdom daily shown,
Thy mind was like the glorious sun descending from his throne.

Our meeting was in hope and bliss—our parting in despair;
And when I saw the shade of death glide o'er thy features fair,
And raised thy cold face from my breast to lay thee with the dead,
I wept not—sighed not—but I felt that all earth's charm had fled.

I never thought that I should see thine eyelids shut in death;
Thy bright brow cold—thy spirit quenched, that glowed and bloomed beneath;
I never thought to lay thee down, in thine unwedded grave,
With the chill hand of that despair, which could not—could not save!

But disappointment long hath cast desertion o'er my days,
And many a dreary ruin lies in all my wandering ways;
In moody moments I have thought a spell was on my name—
My love hath ever been unblest—I seek not phantom fame.

But peerless Beauty's syren song and Grandeur's pride of power
Could not together win me from the memory of one hour;
For well I know, where'er thy home, thou wilt come down to soothe
The solitude and grief that cloud the morning of my youth.

Farewell, Luzelia! oh, farewell! I may not linger long
To greet thy kindred spirit with a slow and solemn song,
But, like the star beside the moon, on a still summer even,
I'll mingle with thy brightness, Love! and follow thee to heaven!

326

GLENDALOCH.

Here where Time's pillar'd tower, sublime and vast,
Lifts to the skies its hoar and awful brow,
And seems to moan and mutter o'er the waste
Passion's wild horror and Despair's last vow,
While Night o'er healthy hills, and moors below,
Sinks like Death's shadow on the slumbering brain,
And Avonmore's deep torrent voice of woe
Roars like the howl of ghosts on battle plain,—
I stand alone and gaze o'er centuries of pain.

Here rose the incense of unhallowed rites
When startling Horror was the wild man's god;
The dusky glen laughed wild 'neath ghastly lights,
The cavern altar shook its blaze abroad,
And idol worshippers in quick blood trod!
Pity beheld,—her only voice was tears,—
Truth whispered vainly from the gory sod,—
While reigned the Dæmon in unutter'd fears,
Shrieking redeemless woe from all the darkened spheres.

Here Shiloh's glory gleamed on midnight minds,
And Fable feigned when Oracles were still;
Music and prophecy were in the winds,
Saints in the vale and sages on the hill,
And angels passive to the voiceless will;
Leaves had their missions,—waters held a power
Of bale or bliss, and fearful hearts did thrill
Beneath the unseen influence of the hour
When darkness clomb the mount and storms began to lower.

327

When Evil entered man's o'ermastered heart
The savage wrath of beasts revealed his fall,
And Hate and Envy, each his bitter part,
Pursued in him, who on the azure wall
Of Eden saw his doom,—yet knew not all!
Knew not that Truth should perish for Deceit,
And Love for Mammon,—and that Peace should call
God's own adores at His shrine to meet
In vain while zealots warr'd and spurn'd her to their feet!

This, old Glendaloch! thou too oft hast seen!
Pagan or catholic, Power wields the doom,
And Passion tramples over what hath been,
And Pride vaunts empire o'er the martyr's tomb.
E'en now strange beings mingle with thy gloom,
And wild Glendasan, as it plunges, shrieks
Amid thy holy ruin's dreadful womb,
And every vast tree from its foliage speaks,
And from the starless heaven the crashing thunder breaks.

Faith without knowledge every arch and nook
Hath robed with sanctity; the sculptured nave,
The vaulted cloister, where the sable rook
And owlet moan and croak; the mouldered grave,
And every idle stone! What deeper slave
Clanks his cold fetters in unguerdoned toil
Than bigot Pride, that cannot cease to crave
Poison, and consecrates each dusky aisle
Where every creed was preached—save Heaven's unchanging smile.

Banished to deserts and the caves of earth,
With austere eye and form by penance scarr'd,
How should thy charms win man to Heaven's high birth,
Religion! when thy golden gates are barr'd?
Greater than all is thy supreme reward
Both in thyself and nature and the Love,
That gives and gains new beauty! with the bard
To Avonmore, to fair Avoca's grove
Go, worship in the sun and God's own blessing prove!

328

Go, mantle all things with a holy hope,
The spirit of a prophecy benign,
A blessedness and beauty; on the slope
Of newmown hillside, 'neath the bowery vine,
Or by the clear brook's margent,—all are thine!
And it were wise to give thy free soul up
To quick imaginings and thoughts divine,
With living flowers in grassy meads to sup,
And hear mind's beings laugh in every bluebell's cup.

But sink, thou monkish monument! and ye,
Gray, ghastly ruins of a faith blasphemed!
It is not thus thy sons should worship Thee,
Whose name is Love; nor have I idly dreamed,
But drank the glory that on me hath gleamed,
And sought in God's own works his pleasure best.
Not in vain temples, have I ever deemed,
Dwells the Great Spirit, but His holiest rest
Must be upon the throne of youth's still thoughtful breast.

For a minute and learned account of this romantic ruin in Wicklow, Ireland, see Dr. Ledwick, and Carr's “Stranger in Ireland.”

SONNET.

Why thus, with mournful thought and tears and sighs.
Hail'st thou, my spirit! the sweet autumn hours?
Why fall the anthem strains of shadowy bowers
Unfelt, that had communion with the skies?
Why fade the glories of the sunset now,
Why drop the rainbow leaves upon my track
Unmarked? Pale phantom thought looks back
Through tears, on what hath been, and from my brow
The glorious dayspring of my life hath fled!
Trial and grief, bereavement and the throes
Of an o'erburdened, injured spirit's woes,
Companionless, have left me with the dead;
Father, son, sister, life, hope, light have gone—
Why o'er Earth's desert should I struggle on?

329

PHANTASIE.

'T was the deep noon of night; I slept and dreamed;—
On the fair bosom of a lawn, methought,
Flowery and green, and girdled by fresh rills,
Silvery and musical, that purled along
In mellow cadence like the cloudless days
Of early youth and inexperienced love,
I lay in the soft sunlight, that did bloom
And wanton in the aromatic air
So tenderly transparent and so mild,
It floated o'er me as on angel wings.
The loveliest creatures were around me, flocks
Of birds, whose plumage in the pale blue sky
Glittered like stars through clouds, and whose gay songs
Like spirit voices fell upon the soul
Beautifully sweet and full of love and praise.
All the fair forms of nature were in joy,
And Earth was revelling in the smiles of Heaven.
My heart was rife with blessedness—I caught
The freshest bloom of opening buds and breathed
The odour of the poetry that flowed,
Like clearest waters, through unbounded realms,
And thought that yet my heart might trust in hope
Of days less evil than my birth star doomed.

That vision passed; a wildering dream ensued:
Methought I had no being, and that all
The beautiful diversities and charms,
The panorama of this wondrous world,
Were but imagination's tricksy work,
The illusions of a Spirit malcontent,

330

To palpable appearances and shapes
Wrought by the magic of the mind to suit
The pilgrim wanderings and wayward freaks
Of my distempered mood. The mighty Sun,
Voyaging upon his bright and glorious way,
The fair, round melancholy Moon, the Stars,
The eyes of Heaven o'er all God's Universe,
The green and bloomy Earth—blest far beyond
The meed of its indwellers—all did seem
But phantoms of my thought, unreal things
To be dissolved like vain and feverish dreams.

Long, lingering hours of dim incertitude!
Now I was wedged amid the icy cliffs
And glaciers of Monadnock; now I heard
The sealike waters of Missouri roll
And rush and roar above me as I gasped
For breath and eddied with the torrent flood;
By Chimborazo's crater I was chain'd,
Doomed to the death of ages, while the fires
Wreathed round me in the terror of their pride.
Yet I was conscious of a sovereign power,
But could not grasp it, such a mountain lay
Upon my heart and bore me down to earth,
Like the all-potent one of olden time
Who wreaked on darkness his immortal might.
With unimagined pain I raised my eye,
That roll'd in agony's delirium,
On the strange unreality—the deep
And cloudy nothingness, and lo! around
A dark and rugged battlement that pierced
The midnight skies! gigantic forms and shapes
Titanic, sons of Anakim, came forth
On every jutting prominence, in mail
Of countless shekels, and their demon eyes
Flashed on my shuddering soul a hellish light,
Drinking the morning rose-dew of my heart.

And thus I lay, it seemed unnumbered years,
And not a sound of earth broke forth; my voice
Sunk in my bosom like a burning rock

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Thrown high o'er Ætna, that falls blazing down
The tomb of the wise Roman; and my breath
Burst forth in sobs—as every throb were last—
While my heart swelled in stifled agonies,
And my brain wandered—smitten by the fear
Of unknown, boundless, and eternal woe.
The spirit's sunlight left my eyes, and deep
Within their sockets burned remorseless fires,
But still I heard the fiends, in whispers low,
Mutter some terrible event to come,
And then a laugh smote on my quailing sense
Like the vast Kremlin's knell, when Moska flamed.
Then o'er me came a living death—a dream
Of life that had been, but was not—a faint
And twilight glimmering of dusky light
Amid the shapeless ruins of the soul.

I rose and I beheld! The mind hath power,
When the sense slumbers in the deep of night,
Beyond its common majesty; it dares,
Endures, and acts with prouder strength than all
The martyrs and the giants of old time.
Still frowned the black and Alpine battlement,
That darkened o'er the heavens—still the forms
Moved in their fiery darkness round and round,
Silent as dark-robed, stern inquisitors.
The pale curl of their livid lips, the throes
Of voiceless pain that shook their shuddering limbs,
The upturned eyes that prayed not, and the brows
Scarr'd in a terrible strife, gave awful note
Of pride that triumphed o'er unuttered pain.

* * * * * * * * *

There was a pause; and short and thick my breath
Hollowly quivered, and my heart stood still,
I lifted up my spirit, then, in prayer
For mercy; when a cloud of purple fire,
Like worlds on worlds consuming, glared above
The prison battlements, that gloomed on high,
And down it sank and turned the air to flame—

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And all the world quaked loud! the azure skies,
The broidered curtains of the Universe,
Quivered as if they trembled to reveal
Mysteries most terrible and dread, and then
Tornadoes howled along the burning Vast—
And, at protracted intervals, a trump
Sounded along immensity so loud—
It seemed as if all nations of the dead
Had mingled all their voices in one blast!

My prayer was now for death—I found it not!
None meet the Spectre when their hearts desire,
He comes in silence when the world looks fair!
Now came a shock as though unnumbered worlds
Were driven to a centre, and the Earth
Rolled like a shallop on the Deep—the fiends
Shrieked, changed and vanished—and through bickering flames
Wide as the fathomless Atlantic, down,
Down, amid clouds of awful gloom I fell,
While blazing wings, outspread, shot o'er the gulf
Like wildest meteors, and ten thousand cries
Went up from depths no eye could ever scan.
Then through thick clouds of tempest glanced an arm,
Mighty and dark, and in its hand appeared
A burning scroll of fearful characters!
Then all was hushed; worlds upon worlds lay piled,
Pillowed in darkness! And my dream was o'er.

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THE REIGN OF GENIUS.

The spirit cannot die; it must dilate
Eternally, and be a vital part
Of everlasting ages—as 't was born
Amid unwinged infinity and linked
With the immensity of fate; 't is just
It should be deathless, for its glorious powers
No limit know nor border, shining through
Creation like Hyperion; but the heart
Will prey upon its energies and hang
A mountain on its wings, for subtle thought
Is but the slave of feeling, and the soul
Will languish when the bosom aches, and be
The vassal of men's usages, depressed
By poor contingencies and habitudes.
Life's feeble purposes demand the use
Of powers almost angelic, for the soul
Is like the sun, though stationed in the skies,
It must look down on earth, and light alike
Things beautiful and loathsome. Be it so!

Spirits of greatness have human form
And feature, like the veriest thing that gropes
And grovels in the mind's midnight; and they pass
Before the world as other mortal shapes,
And, though the eye may beam unusually,
The brow wear deeper lines of thought intense
Than others, and the glow and gloom of hope,

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The sunlight and the darkness of the soul,
Vary the changeful feature, and the tread
Be more unequal and the outward bearing
More plainly intellectual than the step
And look of the great mass, yet deeply dwells,
Unseen, impalpable, the living beam
Of glorious light that issued from the sun
Of the Divinity; and, unbeheld
By creatures of most ordinary note,
Beings pass by in silence or they stand
Apart, by flickering fashion unbeheld,
Or by the world's worst slaves, whose spirits are
More fitting glory and would wear the robes
Of angels more to nature than the shapes
Mortality has burdened them withal.

Such Spirits fill the universe—they live
In the blue ether and their dwelling place
Is the immensity above; they sit
Upon the thrones of seraphs in the stars
And hold converse with them when night with stars
Canopies earth and holy nature folds
Her moonlight drapery round her and lies down
By bright Hyperion's side to bridal sleep.
This world of peril they in thought forget
And all its crimes and woes, and they become
Associates with the blest in pure desires
And feelings holy; and they love to tread
The verge of paradise, though mortal yet,
Seeking to know the loves that blossom there,
The joys that never fade in those bright fields,
The thoughts of bliss expanding ever through
The pauseless ages of undying love.
Such spirits find no thoughts reciprocal
In earthly beings; none can estimate
Their greatness rightly; none can feel the same
Dissolving and absorption of all powers
In soft elysian visionry; they live
Alone, starbeams round the sun-throne of God!
The sovereign eagle ever dwells alone

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In solitary majesty, and waves
His mighty wings in air unbreathed by things
Of lowlier nature; and the lion walks
His monarch path untended and alone;
So the proud spirit lives in loneliness
All uncommuning, and its solitude
Becomes its empire where it reigns fore'er
In might and majesty.—But when 't is chained
In the bad world's cold prisonhouse, and mocked
By gazing folly and unholy guile,
And taunted by the reptile hordes around,
Madness springs up within the brain and glares
In deadly fury from the eye and whelms
The spirit prostrate which could be subdued
Only by its own despair! the throned mind
Is to itself a god and its high powers,
Like golden chains, are linked unto the skies.
The boundless universe with all its worlds
Of stars and suns is but a narrow path
For the immortal spirit; one bright glance
Of the soul's eye pervades all space and flies
Beyond the farthest reckoning of the sage
Who reads the heavens; the winged thought sublime
Wanders unresting through creation's worlds
And searches all their glorious beauties, till,
Yet unsatisfied, it would rove through realms
E'en angels know not, when some sudden pang,
Dark passion, want or weakness crushes thought,
And brings the mighty spirit down to earth,
And all its chilling woe and bitterness.

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THE LAY OF THE FATHERLESS.

Thou! that in pangs didst give me mortal birth,
Nourish my helplessness at thy life's spring,
And bear me gently o'er the desert earth
Upon thy bosom till my thoughts took wing!
Thou! that in days of loneliest grief didst fling
The mornlight of thy smile, thy voice of joy
O'er my quick spirit, till each human thing
Glowed with the outbreaking glory of the sky,
And o'er the bosom gushed of thy devoted boy!

In pain and peril, when thy years were few,
And Death's vast shadow on thy pathway fell,
Thou to the greatness of thy trial grew,
Bade fortune, mirth and cherished hope farewell,
Resigned, for me, with sorrow long to dwell!
Thy sleepless eye my daring steps pursued,
Thy lone heart o'er my guarded couch did swell,
And o'er thy child's untrodden solitude
Thy thoughts like seraphs flew, the messengers of Good.

That harrowed brow, once smooth as Parian stone,
That hollow eye, erst filled with Love's own light,
Dimmed by the bloom through memory's temple thrown—
That pale cheek, writ in characters of night,
That wasted form, which, ere the hour of blight,
Stood proudly up in worshipped loveliness—
All to my soul reveal the charm and might
Of deathless Love, that dares unsoothed distress,
And to the shrine of Truth can guide, and shield and bless.

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Should I forget the heart that never quailed,
Nor shrunk from fast and vigil for my sake:
Could I forget the faith that never failed,
The solitary star on youth's wild wake:
Justly my Maker from my soul would take
The hope that wings me to a heaven of light,
And leave me in the waste alone to slake
The deaththirst, burning through the mornless night,
Of the seared heart that loved not Love in its delight.

Bereaved of all that gave thy being bliss,
Save one unfortuned and unfriended child,
Without thy crown of gladness, and the kiss
Of wed affection cheering through the wild,
Thy spirit on my saddened seasons smiled;
Thou in my being didst condense thine own,
While poverty assailed and power beguiled,
And sickness made in solitude its moan—
And can I e'er forget what thou hast dared and done?

Can matin orison and vesper hymn,
Soaring when slept earth's dagon soul of guile,
E'er cease to thrill, while shades of sorrow swim,
Memory, whose thoughts with thine own look now smile?
Can twilight meadow and hushed temple aisle
Cease to enchant and hallow with their songs?
Or commune with wood, mount, vale, stream, the while,
Pass from my spirit 'mid the world's deep wrongs?
Thy wisdom triumphs o'er life's vain vindictive throngs.

Beauty in loneliness her image wrought
Within my wrapt unsolac'd bosom—thou
Ledst grandeur to the still throne of my thought,
And badst me drink heaven's waters from the brow
Of the hoar giant precipice! and now,
Albeit, men skill not to scan me right,
Thy lessons lead me, as by palmer vow,
Through trial, toil, hate, grief, the watching night,
Like them, whose desert guide was Sinai's holiest light.

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Yet this is but a portion of my debt,
My Mother! thou amidst my foes hast stood,
As in his eyrie, when the air is jet
With wings of obscene birds and beaks of blood,
The eagle stands—lord of the solitude!
Their shafts have broken on thy bosom—thou
Hast grasped the arrows—struggled with the flood—
Borne more than all my sufferings, and liv'st now
To bear day's toil for me and those that round me grow.

And can this be forgotten? can I shrink
To brand the mortal demon who shall dare
To doubt thy matchless love? and from the brink,
Dragged from the vile crypt of his serpent lair,
Hurl him blaspheming in his writh'd despair?
No! thou hast dared the torrent—trod the waste
Through life for me—and, witness earth and air!
The heart, that but for thee to dust had passed,
Shall bleed, ere venom more upon thy truth is cast?

Let thy foes wither in the worthlessness,
The scorn of coward vengeance! that the name
Of thine assailer in thy long distress
Fitted the lips of e'en a moment's fame!
Oh, on his brow the infamies of shame,
Branded by agonies, should fall and rot
Into his heart and brain till earth should claim
No portion of his vileness, but his lot
Be with corruption which in death decayeth not!

Let the fiend hear! he hath not checked my thought—
My heritage was sorrow and hath been,
Yet poverty and grief not vain have wrought,
And I can scorn and pass the base unseen,
And deem their malice, jest, howe'er they ween!
But there shall come a time—'t is but delayed—
When ye, forgers of falsehood! cannot screen
Your bosoms from the lightning! ye have made
The storm your couch—and ye shall lie there mocked and flayed.

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For they, the loving and beloved, whom hate
Hath hunted from the birth of being, bear
My burthen, and the trials of my fate,
Because your calumnies defile the air!
And shall ye be forgotten? when the fair
And matchless forms of earth, sea, heaven and mind
Have worn the wan looks of a soul's despair,
And I have wandered like the homeless wind,
Foreboding doubt before and many woes behind!

Hope not oblivion! e'en your bread is bought
With lies; a libel press pours out the bane
That in your rank heart festers; ye have sought
The spoils of long revenge, and by the pain
Ye round my household hearth have shed, your gain
Shall be—Derision; and in future time,
When earth casts up your names and deeds profane,
Rotting in curses, o'er your dastard crime,
The shouts of hell shall roll and hail ye to its clime!

SUNSET AT SEA.

Armies of clouds, that with the dayspring rose,
In sable masses float and fade away;
The summer sun—Jehovah's shadow—glows
Along the shoreless verge of parting day;
And Ocean lifts his king brow to survey
The radiance heaving like his proudest swell,
And gorgeous companies in heaven delay
To drink new glory ere they haste to tell,
In Fancy's phantom realms, how Ocean's sunset fell.

340

In storm and gloom morn came, and midday hung
Like a dark dream upon the o'erburdened brain,
And the worn mind o'er its creations flung
The dreamy languor of the listless main:
But now to landsick voyagers again
Fair heaven reveals the beauty of her brow,
And, where the wing'd clouds sudden part in twain,
Like Antisana's flame o'er mounts of snow,
The evening sunbeams gush, and skies and waters glow.

Lo! where the rainbow—radiant light of love,
Arch of the Deluge—Hope's celestial bride!
Metes the wild tempest in its wrath above,
And seems o'er doubt, disaster, death, to guide
The earthsick heart beyond the scorn of pride!
On its fair height, methinks, a gleaming throng
Of cherubim repose, and seraphs glide
Amid their choirs, with hymn and matchless song,
To waft His praise who sees and shelters human wrong.

Far o'er the billowy deep the summer sun
Bursts like high heaven upon the spirit's eye,
Or newmade angel's gaze, when thought doth run
Down the bright lapses of Eternity;
Remotest ocean and unfathomed sky,
Through all their depths of voiceless mysteries,
Gleam at the glance of Being thron'd on high,
And mind is lost in what that will decrees,
Which holds its power alone in two eternities.

Bosomed on grandeur 'mid the purple host,
Soft, blue, and beautiful, the crystal heaven
Looks down like Pity on the fierce Self Lost,
And hushes hearts that long have bled and striven;
And, with a smile like that of sin forgiven,
Seems to allure the unhappy to its breast,
Where God's high messengers, at morn and even,
Come from the diamond mansions of the blest
To whisper oracles and soothe the soul to rest.

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So through the glory and the pomp of earth,
The vain habiliments we weave in woe,
The gentle hours, that blessed our gladsome birth,
Come o'er us with a bland and budding glow.
In youth we feel, in manhood search and know;
One for enjoyment, and the other, Fame!
Oh, happier far to treasure and bestow
The diamonds of the heart, than crown a name,
And shrine a memory here, where first oblivion came.

Before the faint breeze, o'er the slumbering Deep,
The clouded ship without a sound moves on:
And now the clear horizon seems to sleep
In that soft sea of light, as on a throne,
Where all the clouds adore the triumph won,
And throng around the sun's immortal shrine:
They rise, sink, burn—and ere the crimson's gone,
The purple robes them in a garb divine,
Till dusky death hastes on, and utters “All are mine!”

Where sea and sky, like love and beauty meet,
The illumined vapour revels in the breeze;
So deep its brilliance, and its smile so sweet,
So awful in their silence, trackless seas,
With all their wild and maddening mysteries,
Methinks, I sail on that charm'd visioned wave,
The saint in Patmos saw—where deathless trees
By mirror'd waters bloom, and princedoms lave
Their wings of thousand eyes—beyond earth's dungeon grave.

And yon the shore of Paradise, the home
Of wrecked affections and unblest desires,
And hopes that fed on poison! thither come
The forms that shadowed sorrow's wasting fires,
The hearts that glowed along the thrilling wires;
And voices, wafted on the holy air,
Echo the music of archangel lyres,
And many a child of sin, in Love's high prayer,
Adores the Power benign that rescued from despair.

342

Wedded to images of lonely thought,
Linked to the dim world of past revelries,
The mind, that long unto itself hath wrought
Fairy enchantment from whate'er it sees,
Creates a shrine in every cloud that flees;
Temples and chateaux, groves and meadows bright
With violet smiles, that perfume every breeze,
And towers and palaces, in that deep light,
With the old look of pride salute the radiant sight.

And in those wing'd and wandering mansions dwell
Affections, thoughts, hopes, fears, and transports past,
The blighted love, that like Phaëton fell,
The great ambition, like a shadow cast
O'er the dead solitude of Barca's waste!
And through the blue and glorious boundlessness,
To each sweet star that visited our last
And wild farewell, our visions haste to bless
Hours happier for their doubt, and victors of distress.

Thou sacred Tempe of the wearied mind!
Hope in stern trial—home in wildest storm!
Imagination!—wing'd upon the wind,
Child of the rainbow, gifted with a charm,
That sanctifies the heart, and keeps it warm
With beautiful humanities—delay,
While years depart, and, in all trouble, form
Thine airy armies round me, though my way
Should lead o'er Hecla's fires, or orient Himmaleh!

Thou to our mood dost fashion outward things,
And all the chainless elements combine
To shed the bloom without the bitter stings,
That panoply, O Earth! each flower of thine!
Thus in blest solitude we grow divine
With a far higher nature than our own,
And follow Hope along her golden line,
While mingle smile and sigh and mirth and moan,
To that bright realm of dreams where Mercy holds her throne.

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Thus in the solitude of Ocean, come
Thrilling revealments of a holier state,
Great thoughts that struggle for their native home,
Deep feelings tortured in the cell of fate,
Fame crushed by falsehood, love by causeless hate;
And, floating on the wave that cannot rest,
E'en Death becomes companion, courteous mate,
And friend and counsellor—and he is blest
Who o'er Life's tempest flings the rainbow of the breast.

THE LAST SONG.

'T is the last song—the last song of a wronged and injured spirit,
That, through woe and misery, only death can inherit;
The last song of a northern bard beneath a southern clime,
The last heart-breathing, burning words in all the lapse of time.

If to the spirit God has given we ever would be true,
If the evil world would render e'er the tribute that is due,
We never, while the earth abides, might lose the heart of hearts,
That thrills the soul with many a dream, whose magic ne'er departs.

Woe to the proud and daring soul that spurns the chains of earth!
Woe to the child of genius from his fatal hour of birth!
His struggles are with the low—his triumphs are his doom,
And the only fires that light him on are the watchlights of the tomb!

Farewell to all that ever gave my earlier being bliss!
Let me pass away to other worlds who am so sad in this!
If the soul that is my torture now, in the far, far heaven can live,
Then adieu fore'er to all below, for I would not here survive!

We breathe in bondage but to bear the ills we never wrought,
And to cast among a mocking world the holiest gems of thought:
The madness and the misery, that await us from our birth,
Are but heralds sent from God to wing us from the earth!

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THE IDEALIST.

When the last hues of sunset fade away,
And blend in magic wreaths of light and shade,
And stillness sleeps beside the closing day,
Drinking the music of the breezy glade,
'T is joy to wander forth alone
Through shadowy groves and solemn woods,
And muse of pleasures past and gone,
'Mid nature's holy solitudes:
For then my spirit to its God aspires,
And worships in the light of Love's ascending fires.

Where rocks hang tottering from the mountain's side,
And ancient trees in hoary grandeur wave,
I love to sit, forgetting pomp and pride,
And all the passions that the soul enslave,
And yield my heart to the sweet charm
Of nature in her loneliness,
While soft voiced zephyrs, breathing balm,
The perfumed flowers and shrubs caress,
And the last songbird pours her parting lay
Of love and praise to bless the brightly closing day.

There is a loveliness in nature's smile,
Which fills the heart with heaven's own holy gladness,
Though he, whose heaven is in her charms, the while,
Feels thoughts steal o'er him of surpassing sadness.
When 'mid the perfect works of God,
He muses on the sin and folly
That make man's heart their dark abode,
Oh, who would not be melancholy?
How sad the thought that this fair world should be
The dwellingplace of guilt and helpless misery!

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Yet if his woe be unallied to crime,
And suffering not from evil conscience spring,
To nature's bosom let him come, what time
Flowers ope the bud and birds are on the wing,
And there the fretful world forget
And search the world of his own breast,
Where thoughts, like suns, arise and set,
And whirlwind passions rage unblest;
There let the son of song and sorrow lie
And inspiration catch from nature's speaking eye!

From earliest youth I loved alone to climb
The moss-wreath'd rock, and from the mountain's brow
O'er sea and land, an amplitude sublime,
To gaze when sunk the sun in radiant glow,
And poured o'er quiet vales and hills,
And groves and meads and gushing streams,
Such glory as creation fills,
His last full swell of golden beams.
O ye, who would adore the Eternal Power,
Go forth alone and pray at twilight's hallowed hour!

The spirit then throws off the garb of clay,
Which in the warring world 't is doomed to wear,
And robes itself in beautiful array,
And soars and sings amid the blooming air,
Where in aerial halls of light
Meet kindred spirits pure and good,
And parted souls again unite
Where grief and pain cannot intrude,
And in the radiance of soul-mingling eyes,
Reveal the mystic power of heaven's high harmonies.

I ever was a melancholy child,
Unmirthful and unmingling with the crowd;
The loneliest solitude on me hath smiled
When lightning darted from the rifted cloud;
And I have felt a strange delight
'Mid forests and the cavern's gloom,

346

And wandered forth at dead midnight
To muse beside the lonely tomb.
I always loved the light of that dread Eye,
Which flashed upon me from eternity!

I knew not whence such unshared feelings came—
I only knew my heart was full of deep
Emotions vivid—but without a name;
Within my breast they would not—could not sleep,
But swayed me in their giant power
To passion's uncommuning mood,
And drave me from the festive bower
To ruined tower and lonely wood,
Where on my soul ideal glories came,
Fairies and oreads bright, and coursers wrapt in flame.

Oh, how I loved that solitary trance,
That deep upheaving of the bosom's sea,
O'erstrewn with gems that dazzled on my glance,
Like eyes that gleam from out eternity!
Creatures of every form and hue,
Lords of the earth and angels past
In garbs of gold before my view,
Like lightnings on the hurrying blast,
And voices on my inward spirit broke,
And mysteries breathed, and words prophetic spoke.

The child of reverie and the son of song,
A word could wound me or a look depress;
I saw the world was full of ill and wrong
And sin and treachery and sad distress;
And so, e'en in my boyhood's morn,
I fled the haunts that others love,
That I might think why I was born,
And what below and what above
Was due from one thus sent upon the earth
To sow and reap in tears and mourn his mortal birth.

My birthplace was the airy mountain height,
And childhood passed 'mid nature's grandeur wild,

347

And still I see by memory's magic light,
How on my soul each Alpine mountain smiled!
Though years have passed since I was there,
And many a change hath o'er me come,
There 's not a scene, or wild or fair,
Around my long forsaken home,
But I could point in darkness out, and tell
The shape and form of things I loved so well.

Trees, birds and flowers were my familiar friends
In boyhood's days—and every leaf that grew
Whispered soft oracles of love;—there blends
With budding thought a spirit from the dew,
That gems each quivering leaf and flower;
And precious to the mind mature
Are memories of that guiltless hour,
When with a worship fond and pure
The soul beheld in every thing below
A God sublime, whom we in works alone can know.

Deep in the soul rest early thoughts, and now
My spirit roams 'mid lonely hills, when night
Her starry veil throws o'er her spotless brow,
And wraps her elfin form in fair moonlight;
Then o'er me come those thoughts again,
Which were my heaven in other years,
And I forget my bosom's pain,
And cease to feel my trickling tears.
Wierd sybils! cease of destiny to prate!
The boy creates for life and ratifies his fate.

Here let me rest—a wanderer tired and faint,
Dear Nature! on thy soft maternal breast,
And learn for others those fair scenes to paint,
Which taught me wisdom and which made me blest!
Fashion and folly still may rove
And seek for pleasure in the throng,
But I will live in thy sweet love,
And blend thy praises with my song,
O holiest daughter of the Holy One,
Whose smile wafts spirits to the heavenly throne!

348

THE DREAM OF THE SEPULCHRE.

In solemn commune of the lone still night,
When, throned in heaven, the stars beam brightly clear,
Shedding on earth dim shadowings of that light,
Whose radiance gleams o'er glory's brightest sphere,
I oft have dwelt on that recoiling fear,
That shuddering awe which bows the human mind,
When beckoning shadows in the gloom appear,
Or sheeted phantoms wail in midnight wind,
Dread visitants, uncalled, unto their shuddering kind.

And it hath seemed an awful thing and strange
That unblest spirits o'er the earth should roam,
Unbanned, tho' feared—for ever bringing change,
Sorrow and death—prophetic shades of doom!
Mystery of mysteries! not e'en the tomb
Vouchsafeth slumber unto souls unblest,
But from sepulchral darkness they will come,
From their dark prison and their chill unrest,
And with mute horror freeze the fountains of the breast.

In every age, in every clime, vain man
Hath sought what, found, could give him only woe;
Since the long eras of despair began
He hath desired that knowledge which doth grow

349

In the dark vale of death alone—and so
His spirit hath no rest—he pants to drink
The waters that will poison ages!—Go!
Turn not! away from horror's dizzy brink,
For vain are all the thoughts thy burning brain can think!

Dreams, omens, apparitions—tales of eld—
Vague oracles and auspices and charms,
And spells of hoary magi—holy held—
All that electrifies, enchants, alarms,
And lays, as 't were, within our living arms
The secrets of Eternity; all these,
While life's quick spirit every bosom warms,
Will be, as they have been, the sounding seas,
O'er which man's soul goes forth, a barque before the breeze.

And these will warp the spirit in their power,
And crush the green buds of the heart, and throw
The gloom of destined grief o'er every hour;
Thus tribulations and hard trials grow
To utter agony—despairing woe—
Low wailing discontent and blasphemy;
Thus hope forsakes us in the rosy glow
Of young desire—and o'er our morning sky
The tempest gathers dark on youth's rejoicing eye.

Yet gray-hair'd sages, skilled in secret lore,
Against the fearful creed have vainly striven;
Shadows uncouth have gloomed on dusky shore
And dark bleak heath amid the gathering even;
Strange forms have glimmered o'er the twilight heaven,
E'en to the eyes of wisdom, unlike earth's,
And howling shrieks, upon the tempest driven,
Blanched rosy cheeks round merry crackling hearths,
And frantic mothers mourned o'er diabolic births.

The lamp's red light hath suddenly turned dim;
Wild hollow gusts moaned o'er the midnight sky;
From halls of banquet wailed the funeral hymn,
While terror clouded the inquiring eye,

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And shook the shuddering heart in mastery,
When faltering voices awful knowledge sought,
And pale lips quivered, breathless for reply
To daring question of mysterious Nought,
Whose gibbering accents fell—annihilating thought.

Mail'd knights, their helms and gorgets streaming blood,
And their torn banners spotted with dark gore,
Have blown their warhorns in the mountain wood
Till every cavern echoed to the roar;
And coal-black steeds, mid arrowy lightnings, o'er
The precipice have leapt and clattered on
Through rock-barr'd glens, by ocean's sounding shore,
While their dead riders, from their eyes of stone,
Flashed forth a demon light and raised an awful moan.

Mid the deep passes of the Odenwold
Or Hartz—meet haunt for fiends that tempt and kill,
The traveller's heart in terror hath grown cold,
As, like a whirlwind, up the haunted hill,
Where all was vast and dark and ghostly still,
He hurried on—nor dared to turn his head—
While yet the night obeyed the demon's will,
And round him flocked an army of the dead,
With juggling giant fiends, who mocked him as he fled.

Where old St Gothard, from his alpine height,
O'erlooks the avalanche and glacier steep,
The monk hath wakened, in a wild affright,
From troubled trances that do murder sleep,
And leave the wearied eye in vain to weep,
While the Wild Huntsman and his train went by,—
Hounds baying, bugles wailing—one wide sweep
Of woodland warfare, that portended nigh
The viewless woes of all called forth to do or die.

The assassin host hath started from his feast,
When the loud summons shook his castle-gate,
And on his tongue died merry tale and jest
At the dread warning of triumphant Fate!

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Through mossgrown towers and vast halls desolate
Till morn rëechoes the slow armed tread,
And, where the ancient chieftain whilome sate,
Fixed eyes unearthly gleam, as if the dead
Were throned in judgment o'er dark deeds of years long fled.

Barons have trembled like their vassals when
Death shook his cerements off, and came among
The living, like a victor;—priests have then
Clung to their shrines e'en as the voiceless tongue
Grew to the quivering palate;—vaults have rung
With vigil prayers and groans of agony,
And moans of penance and low dirges sung,
Till the scared worshippers made haste to flee,
And hurried, baffled in their power, in dark crowds franticly.

Mid the deep silence of her sacred cell,
The vestal hath forgot to tell her beads,
And listened to the agonizing yell,
That fearfully revealed most fearful deeds!
Vain, then, were crucifix and prayers and creeds,
Vain the dim vigil and the patient fast—
Still, like the moaning of sepulchral weeds,
Sighs, as of suffering spirits, by her passed,
And shrieks thro' cloisters rung—the wildest and the last.

Why come these bodements of approaching ill
O'er Thought, the silent language heaven doth hear?
Why quails the heart, with a pervading thrill,
At the dim shades of what it should not fear?
—All we should know is known and felt;—draw near!
Read the fair volume of the earth and skies!
Rest thou on Hope, without a sigh or tear!
And joy on earth shall be thy glorious prize,
While He, thy Helper, reads the fearful mysteries.

And when thy pathway is beset, and grief
Waits on thee like a shadow, and thou art
An alien from thy kind—a pilgrim-chief
On life's wild desert, yet thy yearning heart

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Will cling to its youth's heaven and impart
The tender beauty of its blest repose
To all that lives; so thou dost ne'er depart
From truth revealed, nor crown thy many woes
By dark distrust and doubt that round thy spirit close.

Strange things have been, if there be truth in oath,
And mighty men have been o'ercome with dread,
And holy priests of bell and book—though loth
To quail before the inessential dead;
The wisest, purest, bravest, best have fled
From midnight wailings and mysterious forms,
Nor dared to watch the slow unsounding tread,
Nor hear the shrieks, mid wildly bickering storms,
Of souls unblest that howled o'er their cold bed of worms.

And mind hath quailed to phantasies, and signs
Upon the heart have fallen like a hell;
Life hath been measured by the palmer's lines,
Whose hours allotted God alone can tell;
And seasons have been sanctities, whose spell
Was bane to beauty and a blight to love;
And men have drunken at the merlin's well
Till demons peopled every idol grove,
And shut from human eyes the glory from above.

“We meet at Philippi!” the Phantom said,
And Rome was lost when her last hero fell—
Fell where the ghost of vanquished Cæsar led,
While Freedom vanished and the funeral knell
Toll'd for her country!—To the wizzard's cell
Crowds throng to perish 'neath inflicted fears
Deeper and deadlier than their dreaded hell,
While ghastly spectres of predestined years
Gasp hideous smiles and mock at unavailing tears.

There is a voice in every leaf that stirs.
Amid the greenwood, when the twilight air
Sighs through the oaken boughs or close thick firs,
Revealing future glory or despair;

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And melancholy Thought from things that are
Catches dim glimpses of the days to come,
And thus sky, earth and sounding ocean wear
The ghastly glimmer of a quivering gloom,
The hue of voiceless Fear—the terror of the Tomb.

The mind of Man! a strange and awful Power!
Seraphic brightness shadowed o'er by dust!
A god that left its paradise an hour,
And clothed itself in clay—its hope and trust
Still yearning for the mansions of the just.
Dimmed, not polluted, by the body's ills,
(Like virgin gold most precious 'neath its rust)
The spirit here its pilgrimage fulfils,
And heaven receives its thoughts, as ocean, countless rills.

To die is doom and Life enacts our Death—
That should not daunt us nor the manner how;
So we escape the villenage of breath,
And all the sorrows that beset us now;
But in the deep guilt of a broken vow,
And sin unpardoned, to behold the ban
And fear yet shun it not—oh! this is woe
Which quenches mind, that cannot choose but scan
The endless errors and the destiny of man.

Mid the vast pomp of Judah's sacred fane
The holy man in glistening ephod passed,
And marked the Chosen; while, like April rain,
Guilt's blood poured forth; and thus, until the last,
Crime unredeemed will stain the boundless waste
Of life,—and he that sinneth can but die;
Yet for the few who shun the desert blast
Of Evil, joy still dwells beneath the sky,
And Hope that mounteth up—whose Eden is on high.

To thoughtful wisdom every spot of earth
Is full of beauty, every sound, of joy,
And the soul revels in its deathless birth,
And feels in age the genius of the boy.

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So He ordains who dwelleth in the sky,
Though billowy clouds float round about His throne,
And darkness His pavilion is on high,
For justly He beholdeth all that 's done,
And chooseth from the earth the souls that are His own.

The world is full of terror—terror born
Of what we know not; like the sacred gold
That Brennus stole from Delphi, left forlorn,
Life is a fatal treasure! we grow old
In early youth and human joy is sold
For fear that bringeth woe; bound down, girt round
With woes we never can on earth unfold,
We still must bear, while every sight and sound
Chills the wild breaking heart in sorcery's fetters bound.

We are not of the things we seem; there lies
A boundlessness we search not—cannot know—
Around, and, like the starry fields and skies,
Thoughts distant mingle in a maze of woe
And break the spirit down and o'er us throw
The robe of Nessus; knowledge skills not here;
In the dark commune of a dream, we grow
Unto the things we fashion and the tear,
Unshed, doth turn to ice and this the heart must bear.

The spirit cannot grasp what it defines;
All must believe what none can comprehend;
Our Fate must trace the long, the fatal lines
That bind our hearts and with their being end!
We are but shadows here; strange things that blend
Oft with the earth—sometimes, with heaven; like snow,
Pure in the dayspring of our birth, we wend
After in the world's wide pathway and soon grow
Familiar with Earth's guilt and all the sinner's woe.

Dark visions of the Sceptic! where ye lead
Thousands will follow; what ye teach, believe!
Tremble! dim reason is the failing reed
Ye lean upon in mystery! Oh, deceive

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The widowed heart no more, or it must grieve
O'er the cold ruin of its darkened shrine,
And, as it wanders, still behind it leave
Its godlike powers, high thoughts and hopes benign—
And the immortal Light that proved its birth divine!

False as responses from Dodona's cave,
Or rude Telmessus, are the unearthly fears
That haunt the heart thro' being to the grave,
And change to agony outgushing tears;
Yet every changeful leaf and shadow bears
Some dim similitude of woes to come,
And lone reflection, like dark waters, wears
Life's life away—in peril of its doom—
Till the grieved spirit parts and wanders to its home.

The midnight churchyard and the lonely heath,
The o'erarched forest and the ruined tower,
Where stilly roam the images of death,
Where goblins gibber at the voiceless hour,
And strange appearances, like giants, lour
Thro' the dead darkness of the creaking wood—
Oh! these are seasons when the fiend hath power,
And places where he tempteth men to blood,
While madness springs from fear and stunning solitude.

And these things, awful in their mystery, fill
The o'ercharged heart with horror past all speech,
And shoot thro' every vein a quivering thrill,
An awe that petrifies, beyond the reach
Of human healing; wisdom cannot teach
Knowledge, nor tame the terrors that will bear
The spirit into frenzy! Preach, oh, preach,
In zealot dooming to the empty air,
Ye ministers of men! then tremble in despair!

Reveal your mission! rend away the veil!
Tell us what 't is we dread and what we are!
Cloud not the heart whose thickening pulses fail!
Doubt o'er us hangs, like a cold distant star,

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That shows but darkness—truth abides afar,
None knoweth where; but are ye of the skies,
Yet cannot tear away the obstructing bar,
That shuts out knowledge? Light our groping eyes,
Or never more o'ercloud the eternal mysteries?

Where are we? Earth doth seem a hell afar
From the bright dwellings of the pure and high;
The darkened mockery of a cold dim star,
That, ages since, dropped from the glorious sky!
—What are we? Angels vouchsafe no reply,
And our own thoughts are but a maze of dreams,
That wrap us in delusion; the soul's eye
Is dimmed by doubt and dazzled by the gleams,
That flash from heaven o'er earth, like lightning o'er dark streams

Why should we live to be the thrall of fears,
That sear the bleeding bosom? Why abide
Where Hope's frail flowers are watered by our tears,
Where passion riots on the wreck of pride,
And every joy is hurried down the tide
Of Time to dim oblivion?—All is pain,
Our birth, life, death—and, onward as we glide,
We leave behind the things we love, full fain
To linger near past joys we shall not see again.

Why such things are, earth never can reveal!
The canon of our doom hath found its close!
The dread Dispensers of our woe or weal
O'er earth and heaven—its angels or its foes—
Wander where'er the tide of being flows;
We know not, none know, where our path began
Nor where 't will end! but while the blue sky glows,
And seasons bless our bosoms, still the ban
Of Evil doth not blight the moral heart of man.

Though branded by the taint of sin, and blurr'd
By the dire passions of our earthly lot;
Though upas envy in the soul hath stirr'd,
And dark revenge that cannot be forgot;

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Though murder leaves its hecatombs to rot,
And bandit kings are Earth's Liege Lords of woe;
Yet there 's redeeming beauty for the blot,
And blessedness, that, with a mellow glow,
Lights up the deepest stains that steep our hearts below.

E'en as I write, old ocean's billows swell
And rush and roar around me, and the sun
Gleams o'er the Atlantic waters as they well
From the deep fountains of the depths; near done,
The summer eve sinks on the sea, and on
The gallant ship careers like hope to Heaven!
But all is mystery around; we run
A race with fate in darkness, and 't is given
Our weary, fainting hearts to be asunder riven;

Or worn, like rocky channels, till our life
Becomes an agony—a burning thirst,
A gasping fever—a Prometheus strife
With Destiny almighty from the first!
Vain is the song that from the heart hath burst,
Vain is the incense of the poet's soul,
Vain, deeds of glory blessed or accursed,
And vain the fruits of seasons as they roll,
If human hearts bow not to Him who guides the whole.

Dark the palazzo of the sunny south
To him whose spirit broods o'er wrong and ill;
Dark the fresh bloom of innocence and youth
To the chained victim of his own wild will!
Love's first warm gush and Joy's electric thrill
Stern passion changeth into bitter grief,
But meek contentedness abideth still,
And humble trust that is its own relief,—
The blossomed seed in spring—the golden autumn sheaf

Like twilight shed from treetops on blue streams,
The future shadoweth o'er the yearning mind,
That is a dim and dusky heaven of dreams,
Where high events are uttered by the wind;

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Yet to a bosom humbled and resigned
Still there is Hope—high; holy hope, that soars
To realms the dervise never yet divined,
Where seraphs wander by elysian shores,
And thronging World on World the Eternal One adores.

The lone heart looks and lingers and still yearns
To drink the bann'd cup of that awful lore,
Which dwells among the ashes of death's urns,
And is poured forth on that untravelled shore,
Whence parted spirits can return no more!
But, oh, the quest is vain; the burning thirst
Of knowledge never can be quenched before
The chains that bind the struggling spirit burst,
And the free soul departs to realize the worst.

But well our searching thought these shapes may deem,
These sheeted shadows and mysterious forms,
No strange creations of a feverish dream,
That come and vanish on the wings of storms,
But Spirits whom the fire of glory warms,
Who from the sepulchre of darkness come,
From the cold mansion of corroding worms,
To soothe the sadness of despairing doom,
And with a gentle love lead Earth's beloved home!

Sweet messages of mercy may invite
Blest ones to wander mid their own loved kin,
That they may minister to their delight,
And shield their hearts from error and from sin;
So, by this hallowed commune, they may win
Offenders from the path that leads to woe,
And guide them where the holy enter in
The heaven of heavens—the home that cannot know
That sorrow, sin and death which visit all below.

O Thou! the beautiful, the loved, the lost,
For whom unwonted tears are shed alone!
Hear, thou of all on earth beloved the most,
O hear my song beneath the eternal throne!

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To what far realm, fair sister, art thou gone?
Where is thy dwelling with the purified?
Hear'st thou thy brother's deep and bitter moan?
Cleanse thou his heart and check his human pride—
The seraph be thou wert! that with thee I had died!

In the fresh bud of being thou wert swept
From the glad earth and the rejoicing sky,
And stranger hearts, o'ergushing, deeply wept,
That one so blest and beautiful could die!
Oh! many a bosom heaved its first low sigh
O'er beauty's blight and genius' early doom,
And, well do I remember, every eye
Looked from the shadow of its mournful gloom,
While Mary's lovely brow was darkened by the tomb.

I would not thou wert here; earth is a cold,
A cuel sojourn to the pure and mild,
And none can long the sweet affections hold
Of such as thou, blest sister, undefiled!
But when in memory thine eye hath smiled,
And thy voice came like songs from glory's sphere,
While I roamed sadly o'er earth's desert wild,
I oft have sighed to meet thee, sister dear!
Where thou art still the same as when our blessing here.

Thou, too, my father! ere thy son could catch
And paint thine image on his glowing breast,
Wert taken from thy skill'd and patient watch
O'er men by ills afflicted and distrest,
To the lone chamber of thy silent rest!
I cannot well remember thee; there floats
A proud veiled image by me—half expressed;
An eye that bears the spirit it devotes,
A brow, a face, a form, but faint as sunbeam motes.

It is not oft thy name is uttered now,
For men are false to fame, and thou wert proud,
But some have told me that I bear thy brow,
And like thee move among the huddled crowd;

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If thus it be, my father! though the shroud
Is dust upon thy heart, thy spirit still
Lives in thy firstborn boy, who hath avowed,
And will uphold the grandeur of thy will,
And, till the death decreed, thy great designs fulfil.

It is a pleasant thought that thou mayst know
From all that live the person of thy son;
Yet I would not thou shouldst behold his woe,
But mark his ordeals passed—his trophies won—
Teach him to bear his trials, yet begun,
And follow Virtue—though a banished queen,
And Honour, where high deeds in youth are done,
Reckless of all that may be or hath been,
If it exalt us not above this grovelling scene.

Among the ancient hills of Warwick sleeps
A lake that mirrors the blue bending skies,
And round its waters lone the Mountain sweeps,
Whose pinnacles are thrones of destinies:
And by that sunny lake's green margin lies
A garden-plot choked up with poison weeds,
And in the midst a Ruin; there these eyes
First drank the beauty of a world that bleeds,
Amid its thousand charms, o'er Passion's evil deeds.

And o'er a beetling crag a palmer bent
At that young hour—a wild and brainsick man—
And through the clouds of future being sent
His spirit: coalblack was his hair, but wan
His lips that seemed to mutter o'er a ban.
He spake of sorrow and an orphan boy,
And widowhood in summer years began,
And guardian guilt and toil without a joy,
And yet a gifted Mind no trial could destroy.

That palmer's footstep prints no more the earth,
But his dim oracles were words of truth:
My sire—my sister—many a friend of worth
No more watch o'er my melancholy youth,

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And kindred friends are few, and foes, in sooth,
Amid the mazes of earth's withering gloom,
Like scorpions crawl and pierce, with barbed tooth,
My heart, that dares the worst of evil doom,
And will not cower nor quail till shrouded in the tomb.

But happier thoughts and holier feelings wake,
And man may learn to seek his trust above,
Unawed by all the world can give or take,
Confiding in the fountain of all love!
Resigned and holy faith will ever prove
The highest hope, the purest bliss—the best
And only gift that nothing can remove!
Lean thy sick heart on heaven and be at rest!
Who early seek such strength will be forever blest.

Hold sweet communion with loved ones who sleep,
Yet not unconscious of thy love and woe,
In Death's cold arms, yet in their bosoms keep
Such high affection thou for them dost show!
For thee their spirits still with young love glow,
For thee they whisper in the evening wind
Soft soothing words, that like blue waters flow;—
“Though dead, our love yet lingers all behind—
“For thee in heaven we dwell—be thou to heaven resigned!”

Reason is blind in mysteries revealed,
And thought is folly o'er our destiny;
The tree of knowledge unto all is sealed,
Alike to worshipper and Sadducee,
Alike to Muterin and Osmanlee;
And faint and finite is the brightest gleam
Of our chained spirits o'er Eternity;
Wisdom must wait on fevered passion's dream,
And solemn awe direct the thoughts we dare to deem.

We die with every friend that parts from earth,
But live again with every soul whose home
Is the blue ether. From our hour of birth
Lost loved ones are around us, and they come

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Into our thoughts, like moonlight, when we roam
In silvery silence 'neath the starlight sky;
They charm in grief, irradiate in gloom,
Impart meek gladness to the brow and eye,
And teach our weary hearts that spirits never die.

In this Poem it is the purpose of the author to suggest and illustrate those unceasing though unprofitable wanderings of the mind, which, discontented with the common allotment, searches after an Arcadian Utopia among the shadows of futurity. The subject has been deemed one of high poetical capability; how far the writer has done justice to his theme is a question that awaits the reply of the courteous reader.

OLYMPIADS.

MARRIED LOVE AND MARRED LOVE.

I wedded the Beloved—the Beautiful!
She had an eye like Spring's first flowers, or stars
At summer twilight, and a high pale brow
Of tender beauty, where the wandering veins,
Like hidden rivulets, revealed the gift
Of Mind; while Thought upon her Grecian face
Sat like a Seraph on his throne when all
The angelic princedoms bow before their God.
Pure as the maymorn breeze, or beaded dews,
That diadem the rose—in every thought
The creature of a blest humanity
And purified affection—she became,
E'en to my earliest glance, the evening star,
(The holy light that hushes all to peace)
Of a lone heart, that lingered o'er past hours
And basked in vain though glorious imagery.
I looked and loved, and o'er my spirit came
The rush of solemn feelings (golden clouds,
Though dim and fading, on the wings of years)
And all the idol memories of life

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Went by like music on a summer eve.
Love! 't is the dream of every young pure heart,
A fairy vision of a better sphere,
A rainbow, resting on a world of woe,
But leading unto heaven; a charm in hope
To all, though unto few the holiest bliss
Of earth—the earnest of eternal heaven.

Passion's young pilgrim, I had roamed afar
O'er foreign lands, where unfamiliar tongues
And aspects strange saluted me; my ear
Had ceased to hear the tender voice of love,
And never trusted words that knew no heart.
I long had roamed the world in utter scorn
Of all man toils to gain and cast away;
And lingering time hung o'er me like a sky
Of deep, dull, chilling clouds, without or light
Or darkness, and all human things to me
Brought neither love nor hate, but one dead waste
Of life and all its passions, hopes and fears.

I trod my Native Land again, unchanged
In the deep love my spirit bears to thee,
Divinest Liberty! but hopeless else
Of all the common happiness of man.
Forecast not fate, nor to thyself appoint
Thy destiny! for, over all supreme,
A power directs our days and their events
Unseen, all prescient and inscrutable;
And, in the world, full oft a single word,
Uttered unwarily, will more avail
Thy welfare, than long years of vain pursuit,
Passion and tempest and unslackened toil.
I long had deemed that earth held many hearts
Deep, proud and high like mine, but what I sought
With martyrlike devotion—vainly sought—
Came in an hour when hope had passed away,
And chance assumed her empire o'er my fate.
Deep streams will mingle, though their fountains rise
A thousand leagues asunder: so will hearts,

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Whose feelings ever blend, though far apart
Born, and in fancy for another fate.
We met—we loved, and she became to me
A solace and the hope of better days.

I had looked forward to this sacred hour
As look the weary mariners for land,
As captives for the day that sets them free,
As desert pilgrims for Zahara's wells,
As saints for paradise. Love was to me
My sainted father's only dying gift
Not clutched away from a young orphan's grasp,
And the o'ergushing heart will spread o'er earth
A paradise of bloom, or on the waste
Of an unthankful world pour out its life.
Affections unbestowed, in the deep spring
Of a o'erfraught bosoms dwelling, like pent streams,
Stagnate in their large affluence; but unlocked,
Bear wealth and beauty in their silent flow.
To throw one's self upon a kindred heart,
To love as angels do—to know one's hopes
And fears are shared by a devoted bride;
To cling through good and evil to the shrine
Whence bridal vows ascended to the skies;
This to my bosom had been paradise;
But ever had I felt 't was to search
For what my spirit, in its lonely moods,
Had imaged out—for, oh, too well I knew
Such high revealings had no earthly type.

In other days, when earth and air and sea
Glowed with the glory of ambition's dreams,
Passion awoke, and worshipped at the shrine
Of a pure heart with all the earnest love,
The wild adoring of a soul that cast
The world away to win a heaven below.
But evil came—a blight was on my love,
The storm rushed o'er the sunbeam, and, amid
The darkness of a deep unnatural night,

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Rude hands bore off the idol of my youth!
—Ten years have died! to linger on the days
And mark their thoughts and deeds, long ages pass
Like endless shadows o'er me; but to fly
To Housatonic's stream and Derby's hills
And that old mansion, whose great balcony
Hung o'er the waters—brief as hope appears
The Olympiad of my first unhappy love.
Through the dark night I saw the glimmering sail
Resting upon the wave: I saw the barque,
And heard the dash of oars that bore away
My heart's best hope—Despair hath dreadful strength!
I saw the vessel glide away, and heard
Voices upon the deep until they came
O'er me like the far sounds of dreams! And then—
—Then I went forth, a man, mid other men,
Not to lament—the proselyte of fools—
Nor rail, like girls hysteric, nor arraign
The doom of evil; but to feel and bear,
To think and keep deep silence, and to love
Too sacredly for earth to know my love.
I sought not dim forgetfulness, but nursed
Memory and loved the blissful pangs she brought.

Years past, but I remembered her, and then
My heart grew milder than in other times,
And when I thought of the loved one, 'twas not
With bitterness, but tender melancholy,
Shadowed and softened by the lapse of years
And many changes. Like the gushing forth
Of twilight waters or the whispering stir
Of dewy leaves, or breath of fading flowers,
The memory of our young and blighted love
Came o'er me, and 't was blessedness to think
How I had loved her—though my bosom bled
O'er my lone grief and her dark sacrifice.
O'er the wild surges of the ocean oft
My spirit wandered back when far away,
But with a settled grief serene; none knew
From outward mildness and smooth courtesy

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And mannerly respect of customs old,
That passion's flood had left my heart a waste.
Lost to my arms but not my love—I knew
Her days could not be blest in this wrong world,
And never would I by remotest word
Waken a scorpion in her wedded heart.
She was a thing of holiness—high throned
As among cherubim, beheld far off,
And worshipped unapproached; and oft I wept
And prayed that she might calmly bear the task,
The bitter task, that was her portion here,
Without repining o'er the fatal hours
That fled like morning stars; and 'twas my trust
That he—her unknown wedded lord—might prove
Gentle and faithful to the blighted flower!
And never—never would I see her more,
Though, sometimes, tidings of her lot would come,
Like desert blasts or storms at equinox,
To darken the bright stream of wandering thought.
So all my deep affections mellowed down
Into a sorrow gentle as the sigh
Of the low evening wind through autumn woods.

As I have said, I wedded the Beloved!
'T was when the sweet autumnal days came on,
And earth was full of beauty, and the heavens
Of glory, and the heart of man of praise.
I gave her all the deep love of a heart
Long tried and faithful unto worse than death,
And she did love me more that I had loved
With a fidelity and strength alike
Unconquered by repulse and woe and time.
Her smiles went o'er my bosom like the air
O'er flowering shrubs and honeysuckle bowers,
And she, at times, was mirthful as the birds
In the sweet month of May; and then again
Quietly sad as any nightingale.
Playful, yet full of feeling, innocent
Without suspecting guile, in smiles and tears

367

Pleasant as stars when fancy images
The thrones of angels there, she gently taught
Forgetfulness of many an irking ill,
Lost in the beauty of her winsome smile,
And did become, first in herself, and then
In the blest offerings of love, a world,
Where peril, calumny and pain are lost
In this revealment of restoring Heaven.

THE DESERT HORSEMAN.

The lightning glared, and the wild wind blew,
And the hurtling thunder broke,
And awfully black the storm-clouds grew
Beneath each wrathful stroke;
When the Warrior Chief of the wild woods sprung
On the Desert's coal-black steed—
Oh! fearfully then the dark skies rung
As they trump'd the awful deed!

The plumes of the eagle waved o'er his brow,
And his tomahawk glistened bright,
And his bended bow and his arrows now
Were ready for the fight;
The scalping-knife hung at his wampum belt
And his mantle loosely flowed—
Oh! who may tell what the Warrior felt
As thus with the winds he rode?

On, on to the desert!—Hegon's eye
'Mid the gloom like a meteor burned,
When the furnace fire of the midnight sky
To cavern darkness turned,

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And his warwhoop pealed through the pathless wood
As he hurried madly on;
And the wild horse dashed through marsh and flood—
Oh! where hath the Chieftain gone?

Hark!—'t is the shout of the Indian band
That rises loud behind;
And the Warrior lifts his blood-red hand,
And hurries with the wind
Through the haunted glen and the trampled dell,
And the woodland plain of gore,
Where his Huron foes in the battle fell
A thousand years before.

And he vanisheth by the hallowed vale
Where his fathers' sepulchres lay,
And a thousand ghosts with whoop and wail
Do hurry him on his way,
While the lightnings flare and the thunders break,
And the dark gale howls along—
Yet the Chieftain's heart it doth not quake,
But he bears him high and strong.

On, on to the desert!—wildly bend
The moaning woods around,
And the thick ravines of the mountains send
A hollow deathlike sound;
And the beasts of the forest howl and cry
For the heart of the Indian Chief,
But the Sagamore hurries quickly by
As the hurricane bears the leaf.

On the wild steed's back he stands upright,
And his warwhoop shrieks afar,
And he draws his bow with a monarch's might
At a light like a distant star;
And a wail arose in the morning there,
For an innocent child was dead,
And the arrow hung in its bosom fair—
But where had the murderer fled?

369

On the horse of the desert Hegon stood,
And the trees shrunk back as he passed,
While the black steed's hoofs through the lonely wood
Crashed louder than the blast;
And the serpent, coiled in his venom fold,
Sprang vainly from his den,
For far away over wood and wold,
The horse rushed through the glen.

And a thousand men had vainly striven
To stay that wild career—
With the arrowy bolts of the midnight heaven
Rode Hegon, void of fear;
And his tomahawk struck on the forest trees,
As he passed with terror by,
And the wildwood fell—and the morning breeze
Shook the sear leaves o'er the sky.

Thus the Prophet Chief in his terrors passed
To the hunting ground of souls,
'Mid the lightning's glare and the tempest's blast,
Where, from their secret holes,
The moose and the deer start up and scud
Before the hunter's bow,
While his arrow drinks their red, red blood—
This Kichtan doth bestow.

Thus Hegon passed in his war array,
On the coalblack steed of Death,
To the Land of Souls, where the warm clear day
Is Areouski's breath,—
And far in the northern wood, at night,
The Oneida poets tell
How Hegon rode in his warrior might,
Where only warriors dwell.

Founded on a tradition of the Oneida Indians.

The god of hunting.

The god of war.

370

VISIONS OF ROMANCE.

When dark-brow'd midnight o'er the slumbering world
Mysterious shadows and bewildering throws,
And the tired wings of human thought are furled,
And sleep descends like dew upon the rose,
How full of bliss the poet's vigil hour
When o'er him elder Time hath magic power!

Before his eye past ages stand revealed
When feudal chiefs held lordly banquettings,
In the spoil revelling of flood and field,
Among their vassals proud unquestioned kings:
While honoured minstrels round the ample board
The lays of love or songs of battle poured.

Mid loud wassail and legend quaint and jest,
The horn-rimm'd goblet, pledge of heart and hand,
To knightly lips in solemn faith is pressed,
And rose-lipped mirth waits on the warrior-band,
To whom the brand and cup alike are dear,
The storm of battle and the banquet's cheer.

Throned on his dais the proud old chief looked o'er
The lengthening lines of haughty barons there,
And listened to the minstrel's rhythmic lore;
Or boon accorded to the suppliant's prayer;
Or planned the chase through wood and mountain dell,
Or roused his guests by feuds remembered well.

371

The dinted helmet, with its broken crest,
The serried sabre and the shattered shield
Hung round the wainscot dark and well expressed
That wild, fierce pride which scorned unscathed to yield;
And pictures there with dusky glory rife
From age to age bore down stern characters of strife.

Amid long lines of glorious ancestry,
Whose eyes flashed o'er them from the old gray walls,
What craven quails at danger's lightning eye?
What warrior blenches when his brother falls?
Bear witness, Crescy and red Agincourt!
Bosworth and Bannockburn and Marston Moor!

The long lone corridors—the antlered hall—
The massive walls—the all commanding towers—
Where revel reigned and masquerading ball,
And beauty won stern warriors to her bowers—
In ancient grandeur o'er the spirit move
With all their forms of chivalry and love.

The voice of centuries bursts upon the soul—
Long-buried ages wake and live again—
Past feats of fame and deeds of glory roll,
Achieved for ladye-love in knighthood's reign;
And all the simple state of olden Time
Assumes a garb majestic and sublime.

The steel-clad champion on his vaulting steed,
The mitred primate, and the Norman lord,
The peerless maid awarding valour's meed,
And the meek vestal who her God adored—
The pride, the pomp, the power and charm of earth
From Fancy's dome of living thought come forth.

The sacred orri flamme in war's red tide
Waves mid the shivering shock of lance and brand,
And trump-like voices burst in shouts of pride
O'er foes whose blood hath stained the wasted land;
Hark! through the convent-shades triumphal songs!
Lo the rich shrine!—thus saints avenge our wrongs!

372

O'er kneeling penitents at the abbey's shrine
Absolving voices speak God's benison,
And lonely cloisters echo prayers divine
From many a holy, world-forsaking nun,
Before the image of the Crucified
Bowed in prostration of all worldly pride.

The pale-brow'd vestal and the dark stoled friar,
The beaded monk whose heart is in his grave,
Raise their low voices in the holy choir,
While in response the solemn yew trees wave;
And through the cloisters and lone aisles they sigh
That hope smiles not for them beneath the sky.

Beyond the holy walls stern warriors sleep
Who gloried in their highborn ancientry;
Whose war-steeds erst in many a desperate leap
O'er lance and spear went on right gloriously—
Carved on the tombstone, rests the brave knight's form—
Where is the knight? Ask not the battening worm!

The feast is o'er, the huntsman's course is done,
The trump of war—the shrill horn sounds no more—
The heroic revellers from the hall have gone—
The lone blast moans the ruined castle o'er!
The spell of beauty and the pride of power
Have passed forever from the feudal tower.

No more the drawbridge echoes to the tread
Of visored knights o'ercanopied with gold,
O'er mouldering gates and crumbling archways spread,
Dark ivy waves in many a mazy fold,
Where chiefs flashed vengeance from their lightning glance,
And grasped the brand and couched the conquering lance.

But all hath not in silence perished here—
The deep, still voice of lost power will be heard;
Mysterious spectres in the gloom appear.
As still in death they would be shunned and feared;
All is not lost—the bright electric air
Glows with the spirits of the great that were!

373

One generation from another draws
Greatness and glory added to its own;
It breathes the spirit of the primal laws,
And makes the heart a freeborn nation's throne;
Time treads in dust earth's highest pride and fame,
But thoughts of power forever are the same.

Oh, who so weak as ponder on the tomb?
The dead are nothing!—drink the mountain breeze
Or roam o'er ruins wrapt in ages' gloom,
And hoard thou well Earth's silent mysteries!
The Past is written in the lightning's glare
To bid the Future for its doom prepare.

The gorgeous pageantry of times gone by,
The tilt, the tournament, the vaulted hall,
Fades in its glory on the spirit's eye,
And fancy's bright and gay creations—all
Sink into dust when reason's searching glance
Unmasks the age of knighthood and romance.

For fatal feuds from unknown sources sprung,
Raged unrepressed and unappeased, by tears;
And (shame to tell!) the royal minstrels sung
Oppression's pœan in those darkened years;
Then empire hung upon the arm of power,
And fate frowned o'er the dark embattled tower.

Like lightning hurtled o'er the lurid skies,
Their glories flash along the gloom of years;
The beaconlights of Time, to wisdom's eyes,
O'er the deep rolling stream of human tears.
Fade! fade! ye visions of antique Romance!
Tower, casque and mace, and helm and bannered lance!

374

HOPE.

Like the foam on the billow
As it heaves o'er the deep,
Like a tear on the pillow
When we sigh in our sleep,
Like the syren that sings,
We cannot tell where,
Is the Hope that hath wings,
The phantom of air!

Like the starlight of gladness
When it gleams in death's eye,
Or the meteor of madness
In the spirit's dark sky;
Like the zephyrs that perish
With the breath of their birth,
Are the hopes that we cherish—
Poor bondmen of earth!

The pleasures and pains,
That pass o'er us below,
Fade like colours and stains
On the cold winter's snow;
All the loves of the bosom
That burns with delight,
Are mildew'd in blossom
And wither'd with blight.

The sunbeam of feeling
Lights the ruins of love,
And sorrow is stealing
O'er the visions above;
Like a spirit unblest,
Hope wanders alone,
With a heart ne'er at rest,
In the future or gone.

375

She drinks from Time's cup
The bright nectar of heaven,
And her spirit mounts up
'Mid the glories of even;
But the world drugs with death
The chalice of bliss,
As the nightingale's breath
Wafts the rattlesnake's hiss.

From the bowers of repose
Like a spectre she starts,
And she breathes the spring's rose
O'er the depths of all hearts;
But fancy and feeling
Must vanish in sorrow,
Struck hearts have no healing—
Hope sighs o'er tomorrow.

THE FATHER'S LEGACY.

By Hudson's glorious stream, in death's cold rest,
Thy head lies low, my great and gallant sire!
Pillowed in peace on earth's eternal breast,
No more thy bosom pants with hope's desire.
Now, more than ever, doth thy name inspire,
For lingering years have wept above thy grave,
And shed their cold dews o'er my lonely lyre,
But to enhance the grief that could not save,
The settled woe that sighs o'er Hudson's midnight wave.

376

In the first gush and glory of my years,
Ere reason glowed, or memory held her power,
Thy pale proud brow was wet with infant tears,
And wild cries rose in thy deserted bower!
Oh, how the dim remembrance of that hour
Crowds on my brain like night's most shadowy dream,
When winds wail loud and o'erfraught tempests lower!
A glimpse of glory in a meteor's gleam,
Sunlight in storms—a flower upon the rushing stream.

The budding boughs, the limpid light of spring,
The mirrored beauty of the brimming rills,
The greenness and the gentle airs, that bring
Life's golden hours again, when heavenly hills
And vales bore witness to the soul that thrills
The heart of youth ere passion riots there—
Shed o'er me now the loveliness which fills,
At parted seasons, such as wed despair
When being's dayspring breaks and all but life is fair.

Yet from this scene of most surpassing love,
Not unrefreshed, I turn to happier years,
Quick in their flight, when through the highland grove
I ran to meet thee with ecstatic tears,
And in thine arms forgot my deepest fears!
Oh, then thou wert to me what I am now
To one blest boy—my sorrow's bliss—who wears
The very majesty of thy high brow,
The pride, the thought, the power, that in thine eye did glow.

No proud sarcophagus thy corse enshrines,
No mausoleum mocks thy mouldering dust,
But there the rose, amid its mazy vines,
Blooms like thy spirit with the pure and just;
And—image of earth's high and holy trust—
Deep verdure smiles and wafts its breath to heaven,
And, holier far than antique print or bust,
Lives in my heart the portrait thou hast given,
The worship of pure love—the faith of autumn's even.

377

Thy Legacy was not the gold of men,
The slave of pomp, the vassal of the mine,
But an o'ermastering intellect, that, when
The world reviled and trampled, soared divine,
And stood o'erpanoplied on God's own shrine!
This did'st thou leave me, Father! and my mind
Hath been my realm of glory—as 't was thine—
Though much it irks me to have cast behind
Thy godlike skill to quell the ills of human kind.

'T was thine to grapple with the fiend of gain,
'T was thine to toil and triumph in the field—
It cannot be that I should faint in pain,
And like a craven, to the dastard yield;
On the starr'd mead, and in the o'erarching weald
It hath been mine to think and to be blest,
And oft on mountain pinnacles I 've kneeled
To pray I might be gathered to my rest
With glory on my brow and virtue in my breast.

Though anguish throbs through all my bosom now,
And wild tears gush whene'er I think of thee,
Yet like blue heaven upon Cordillera's brow,
Thy memory clothes me with divinity,
And lifts my soul beyond the things that be,
The strife of traffic, falsehood's common fear,
Friendship betrayed, unguerdoned vassalry,
And every ill, that reigns and riots here,
In this dark world so far from thine immortal sphere.

My earliest smiles were thine—my earliest thought,
Like rosy light in morn's translucent sky,
First from thine eye, my spirit's sun, were caught;
And as it gleams on days that vanish by,
It turns to thee, my fountain shrined on high!
—My Sister! is she with thee? where thou art
Thy children fain would be!—on starbeams fly,
Spirits of Love! and in my raptured heart
Make Heaven's own music till my soul in transport part.

378

And teach me with an awed delight to tread
The darksome vale that all must tread alone,
And gift me with the wisdom of the dead,
Justly to do, yet all unjustly done,
Freely to pardon!—Till the crown is won,
Be with me in the errings of my lot,
The many frailties of thine only son,
And when brief records say that he is not,
Hail his wronged spirit home where sorrow is forgot!

What, alas! I was.

RELIGION UNREVEALED.

Ancient romance of visionary minds,
Shadow and symbol of a holier creed!
To thee wild voices, wing'd on mountain winds,
And countless hecatombs, predoomed to bleed,
And earth and heaven, submissive to thy reed,
Bore awful witness to surpassing thought;
And many a vast emprise and godlike deed
Rendered its glory to thy fane unsought,
And o'er the soul of man its thrilling magic wrought.

Thy handmaid, Fable, shadowed love and truth,
As sunset waters image summer skies;
And genius blossomed in perpetual youth,
Wielding at will prophetic destinies;
Each gem and pearl, that in dark silence lies,
O'er thee its beauty like a sunbow shed,
And for the heaven of thought, that never dies,
Men toiled and suffered, smiling while they bled,
Till heroes, sages, bards, rose gods among the dead.

379

O'er unlearned hearts, whence gushed translucent rills
Of mind, the floating darkness of their day
Lived with the presence of a Power, which fills
Each dewbell, leaf and raindrop with a ray
Of that divinity, all worlds obey.
Clothed in his terrors, on his mountain throne
The Olympian Thunderer sat, upon the play
Of arrowy lightnings—weapons all his own—
Gazing with that dread eye which ever smiles alone.

Below, that wondrous beauty of the heart,
Dian of Delos, with a seraph brow,
Threw the deep sanctity pure thoughts impart
O'er the green vale of fountains, and the snow
Of high Olympus. With his shaft and bow,
Apollo wandered in his matchless might,
The god of eloquence and song, ev'n now
Invoked to crown the work of minds, whom night,
In time's abyss, then brooded o'er with still delight.

Limpid and laughing waters leapt and sung
Before the nymphs, and summer breezes came,
Hymns of the watching heavens to chaunt among
The old and solemn woods—wild haunts of fame!
The birthbed of full many a deathless name
Was hallowed first by thoughts, whence forms arose
Of virtue, beauty, glory—all that claim
Resolve and wisdom—and each wildwood rose
And oak wreath gave the power which great renown bestows.

Imagination's Eden—Arcady!
Thy spirit triumphs yet o'er waste and death;
Thy hallowed hills, thy pure and glorious sky,
And thy great thoughts, that burned in deeds beneath,
And veiled with awe and beauty rock and health,
To vast renown thy chosen name have given;
And not less lovely in thy victor wreath
Beam the bland smiles, like tender eyes of even,
Of Oread, Dryad, Muse, robed in the hues of heaven,

380

The unsearched depth of the soul's mysteries
Was to the men of elder time a home,
A heaven, where dwelt their mightiest deities,
Regents of good or ill—o'er years to come
Scattering their blight or brightness!—Ocean's foam
Gave birth to nature's crown of loveliness,
Hope was their Iris through the sky to roam,
And all their simple faith could not but bless
Hearts quick to share all bliss, and soothe unshunn'd distress.

Watchers and warders o'er the changing fate
Of life's brief season—thrones of spirits blest,
Where envy entered not, nor rival hate,
The stars were hope's eternal home of rest.
The o'erwrought brain, the worn and wasted breast
Drank in the nightsong of the Pleiades,
Whose music of the mind, like leaves caressed
By dayspring zephyrs, winged on melodies,
Wafted Elysium's soul on every holy breeze.

The headlong torrent with its noise of war,
The brook that gurgled o'er the velvet vale,
The hoar and giant mountain, seen afar,
Whose dusky summit seamen wont to hail,
Ere Tiber or Piræus saw their sail—
The awful forest, and romantic wood,
Each had its god, its shrine, its song and tale,
Twilight revealments of a restless mood,
Gentle creations of the heart's dim solitude.

Gymnosophist or gnostic ne'er beheld
Wilder or fairer visions; every spot
Was peopled by divinities; hills swelled
And valleys glowed with grandeur; unforgot,
Man felt his Maker everywhere, and nought
Dimmed his deep faith that they, whose features won
His household prayer, would guide him to a lot
Blest as the flower that blossoms in the sun,
When toil had gained its meed, and virtue's race was run.

381

Fear had its triumphs then—when had it not?
Cocytus, Phlegethon, the gulph of gloom,
Forms shadowless in sunlight—shades of thought!
But sacred sympathies o'er all did bloom;
And the fair urn, unlike the mouldering tomb,
Freshened the memory of the cherished dead;
And, bending o'er it, love could still illume
The father's ashes, and around them shed
The sunbeams of the soul, that followed when he fled.

Ancient Romance! thy spirit o'er me came
In early years, and many a weary hour
Hath glided by, like music, while the fame
Of genius held me in its welcome power.
And now—though shadows rest upon thy bower,
And sorrow weeps o'er my vain vanished dreams,—
I feel, thou hadst a great and glorious dower,
From whose vast treasure, Time's unnumbered streams
Have washed to us the gold that in our vision gleams.

THE CHIEF OF HAZOR.

[_]

The poem is founded on the events narrated in the fourth chapter of the book of Judges.

O'er Tabor's height and Ezdraelon's plain
The morn is breaking with a silvery swell
Of light, so beautiful that it doth float
In the blest air, like breathing poetry.
The mountain breeze comes o'er the dewy flowers
With all the freshness and elysian bloom
Of the young heart expanding—(Oh! how soon
To catch the fatal leprosy of guilt!)
When its first thoughts run wild in glorious dreams
Of Fairyland or Paradise; and birds

382

Of rainbow plumage lift on high their songs,
Whose mellow music breathes deep joy and love.
Along the mossy banks, o'er rugged shelves
And sunny pebbles, leaps the living brook,
Rejoicing in the dayspring, while it drinks
The earliest glory of the sunlight's gush;
And the sweet face of nature wears a smile
Of beauty like the image of its God.

Thy glorious Temple, Heaven! thy matchless works
Why should the evil enter? why the voice
Of wailing rise—the hollow groan of death—
The savage shriek of carnage? Why should blood
Stain the rich soil that giveth life to flowers,
And mingle with the sunny lowland rill,
Whose music tells of quietness and love?
—Alas! that man, whose hours are very brief,
Should seek to check the race that soon must end!

The roar of battle sunk to hollow moans
Far o'er the reeking field and fast he fled,
The haughty Chief of Hazor, Sisera,
From his benetted chariot, and alone,
Like a shunn'd leper, held his rapid way
Through the dark woods of Tabor. Ne'er before
Had Jabin's captain quail'd, though fearless foes
And mighty had come down upon his host,
Like an unbroken cataract; but now
The hero fled in panic haste, and oft
He shudder'd as he heard the victor shout
Behind; and then his proud o'ermaster'd heart
Fell in his bosom like the purple haze
Upon the desert pilgrim, while he thought
That spear and oxgoad had availed against
His archers, clad in armour, and the strength
Of iron chariots, drawn by barbed steeds.

It is a bitter thing to see the pride
Of a high spirit thus cast down and crush'd
Beneath the darkness of its destiny;

383

The toil of years repaid, in one dark hour,
By scorn and infamy; the patient thought,
The watching and the weariness—the brunt
Of battle and the countless woes of war
All borne in vain; the lofty consciousness
Of high deserving mantled o'er with shame;
And he, who long hath been the battlement
Of his adoring country—in whose eye
The King hath read the oracles of war—
Whose serried falchion, like a glorious star,
Hath lighted oft the path of victory,
In one brief hour dethron'd from men's esteem,
And driven forth from his own place of pride—
An outcast—with a price upon his head!

Dark was the soul of Sisera! His king
Had gazed upon him with an eye, whose light
Had shed its glory o'er his path! his brow
Had gleamed with victor radiance o'er the Chief;
And higher honours mark'd his last farewell.
The hoary seer of Ashtaroth had blessed
The warrior when he parted for the fight;
Maidens had scatter'd roses in his path,
And beardless boys before his war-horse run,
Shouting the name of Sisera! and now—
Nor slain nor victor! thus before the foe,
The sons of herdmen, hurrying like a bann'd
And outlaw'd thief! The Chief had recked of death
And feared it not; he had not thought of this!
Alas! he knew not, till this hour, how much
The human heart may bear—how darkly work
The mysteries of destiny—how low
The loftiest may be humbled, and the best
Stained, spurned and branded—sealed and garnered up
To meet the doom their pride seeks not to shun!

The mists of morn still linger'd in the vale,
That skirted the deep base of Tabor's height;
And hurriedly, through the dark mazes of the wood,
He fled and threw aside his casque and spear

384

And mail of many shekels, for his strength
Had sunk in the wild battle, where he wrought
The last deeds of his high renown—and now
What more could proven arms avail the Chief?
His glorious name was lost—his honour soiled—
His proud king's curse hung o'er him—and he heard
Low lurking catamites, around the throne,
Whisper disgrace and craven treachery!
Stung by the thought, he broke his gory sword,
And threw the blade dishonoured in the brook,
But kept the jewelled hilt, for there were words
And names of glorious import graven there!
He paused not e'en to quaff the lucid stream,
Or bathe his burning forehead—but kept on—
The mighty, though the fallen Sisera!

The warrior came to Jael's tent. His limbs
Were weary, and his mighty frame grew weak
In the despairing sickness of his heart.
With a fair faithlessness, the subtle wife
Of Heber wooed the warrior from his path,
Who nothing craved but safety and a cup
Of water from the fountain that gush'd forth
Amid the palm-grove, in whose centre stood
The Kenite's tent—upon the border land.
And he lay down within; the beaded dew
Of his soul's agony hung on his brow,
The arrow's bloody path was o'er his breast,
That heaved as it would burst in the wild war
Of master passions—blasted pride, and shame
That gasped for vengeance—and revenge that quailed
Before disgrace—and mocked the heart it seared.
The Ætna of the bosom never sleeps!
The fever of wild enterprize—the rush,
The roar of strife—the speed of hot pursuit
Or breathless flight, fill the proud heart with power
Even when the glory 's lost—but when the pause
Follows, and the discerning mind beholds
The universal ruin—the wild waste
Of all its honours—the disgrace, despair,

385

And desolation—it doth sink to sleep,
The oblivion of all hope, all human fear,
The only blessedness not reft away,
Like a sweet child that knoweth not a care.

Though allied to the invaders of their rich
And pleasant heritage—their ancient lot—
Yet Heber long had flourished 'neath the smile
Of Hazor's king—nor wrong had he sustained,
Nor injury in word or deed. His days
Had glided on in peace since he had dwelt
In Harosheth of the nations, and his tent
Had found due honour in the wildest strife,
Nor had the deepest want unjustly snatched
An ewe lamb from his flock.—But, thro' all times
The open heart, the ready hand hath wrought
Woe to the giver, and confiding truth
Received a dark reward! Like a fair tree,
The evil flourish to a reverend age—
The good wear out their strength in early youth
And perish—and their memories are forgot!
—It is a sickening task to look abroad
This dark and evil world! high hearts must bleed
Beneath the torture—generous feelings turn
To anguish 'neath the infliction of the vile,
And the proud power of thought becomes a curse
Amid the meshes of men's villanies!
Thus it hath ever been—and Heaven's great name
Must bear the dark reflection of man's deeds,
For with its holiness he covereth them.
The warrior slumbered deeply—and the folds
Of his dark mantle quiver'd as the breath
Rushed forth, like a wild torrent, from a heart
Weary and worn and tried and broken now
When its proud pulse throbbed deepest. The orient morn
Was beautiful as dreams of other realms;
The palm was full of music, and the pine
Sent up mysterious melodies; the hues
Of the rich lotus and bright aloe glowed,

386

While from the soft green vale the mellow air
Stole through the tent and breathed upon the brow
Of Sisera as he slept!

Jael drew near
With feathery footsteps, like a guilty thing,
And listened as she bent o'er the dark Chief.
Her starting eye did wander in wild fear,
A demon light was on her brow—her lips
Had that compression, which implies resolve
Of something terrible; upon her cheek,
'Mid corselike paleness, sat the hectic spot
Of the assassin—from the accusing heart
A fearful witness! and her coal-black hair
Fell in unequal clusters down her neck,
That had a swanlike curve, and, as she bent,
Dropped o'er her panting bosom.—She came near
And drew aside the covering from the face
Of the lost warrior chief, and on him gazed.

Dark were the dreams of Sisera! His brow,
Scarred by the casque of war, and harrowed up
With many burning thoughts and sleepless cares,
Quivered convulsively; his sallow cheek
Was flushed by the last fever of his heart;
His mighty bosom rose and fell, like seas
When the great spirit of the tempest reigns;
His hand, still gauntletted, had grasped the hilt
Of his dishonour'd sabre, and his lips
Mutter'd strange words that sounded mournfully;
(His spirit fought the battle o'er again,
And he was struggling for the victory.)
Dark Sisera arose and drave his sword
Through the thick tent—and smiled; and then sunk down
As if it nought availed—and sighed like one
Whose hopes have vanished—whose despair is fixed,
And slumber'd yet more deeply—though the shades
Of thought passed o'er his warworn countenance
Like mountain shadows o'er a mirror'd lake.

387

Jael knelt down beside the chief, and drew
Aside his clustering locks, which toil and grief
Had changed from the dark beauty of his youth,
And, like a fiend, gazed on the chieftain.—Pause!
Woman! hast thou a son? There 's one afar
To whom that warrior's filial smile is dear!
E'en now she looketh for her child—her heart
Is trembling for her firstborn and her best!
Hast thou a boy, bann'd Jael?—Lo! her lips
Murmur—“My son shall judge the land for this,
“A glory to the nation of the Lord!”
(Thou Merciful! why dost thou spare the guilt,
That clothes itself in thine all spotless name?)
Lifting the fatal weapon, while her eye
Glowed with a wild ferocity, she drave,
At one quick blow, the iron through his brain.

Up, like a goaded lion, sprang the Chief!
The burning blood poured down his long dark beard,
And fell, like lava, on his bosom—still
His strength was equal to the deadly strife
Of man with man. But when the hero saw
A woman's triumph o'er him—when he felt
His uttermost disgrace—thus—thus to die
Alone, unhonoured, by a woman's hand,
Without a word, a signal, or a look,
He fell; his giant limbs relaxed—his head
Rolled on the earth—and his last quivering gasp
Went forth like an undying curse of doom.

So perished Hazor's pride! Oh, happier thus
To die, the mighty by the weak—the great
By the low dastard, than to live a scorn,
A blot, a loathing, an assassin host,
A dark-soul'd traitor! Jael! be thy name
A damned sound—a word that blasts the lips
Till the wild Arab doth a deed like thine!

388

THE SPELL OF THE GLOAMIN.

'T is a sweet eve in autumn! The blue sky
Of that blest season of the soul soars up
In its pure beauty, while the winnowing breeze,
Free from the charter of man's privilege,
Wanders where'er it listeth, o'er the earth,
Breathing the life of life o'er all that feels.
From the vast swell of sunset glory comes
A broad, deep, all-pervading gush of light,
A blaze of immortality, that bears
The spirit upward as on seraph wings,
That wave in the dim vision of our dreams.

O'er yon fair Isle of Sycamores—o'er all
The rugged Laurel mountains, whose dark cliffs
Pierce the deep azure and throw back their forms,
Uncouth and vast, against the sleeping sky,
Like the heroic warriors of old time
Reposing on soft bosoms;—o'er the woods,
That crown the toppling peak and down the vale
Sweep like a long array of visions past;
O'er the broad waters of Potomac, now
Slumbering in shadowy cavities, and now
Hurrying o'er arrowy shelves, like a proud steed
Appointed to the battle;—o'er the earth,
With all its beauties, and the bending heaven,
With all its glories, pours the godlike sun
His sea of light, and the ethereal heart mounts up
To catch the inspiration of his smile,
As a sweet child climbs to its father's bosom
To meet his kiss, whose blood through every vein

389

Rejoices, and whose eye reveals his soul.
The sunlight fades; the purple clouds assume
The changeful violet—the dusky rose,
The gray of mountain rocks; and now the breeze,
Enters their twilight tents and they are gone—
Where our thoughts vanish—where our hopes become
Phantoms of fear—where evening winds are born,
And sever'd souls depart!—Sage! canst thou tell?

In the deep hush of her solemnities
The crescent moon comes forth mid chequering clouds,
That o'er the aspect of her beauty throw
A picturesque romance—an ideal charm—
A visible music and an eloquence,
Like the deep pulses of the bosom heard
In forest-depths, when by the river bank,
And wooded hill and thymy valley sleep
The echo fairies and the water nymphs.
—Ye ties inscrutable, that link our hearts
To the deep solitudes of rock-barr'd dells,
And hoary hills and ever-flowing streams
And valleys breathing quiet! Let me catch
The spirit of your silent sanctity,
And learn to bear the burden of men's talk
With an invisible though haughty scorn,
That, like a mirror, shows them what they are.—
Through sombre hanging woods, on either bank,
O'er tiny waterfalls, on right and left,
Down roars a mighty river, whose deep voice
Ascends in one eternal hymn of praise.
—Mysterious Life! whose evidence is Power,
Or in the voice that uttereth oracles,
Or in the solemn sound that hath no words,
Thou dost pervade all Nature, the deep sea,
The craggy mountain and the heart of man;
And art a glory—whether, from thy touch,
The insect's little wings of pictured hues
Float on the air, or whether, at thy voice,
The fearless eagle's sun-affronting eye
Marks out his prey;—alike thy power is felt

390

When the soft flame sheds blessings round the hearth,
And when the Volcan pillars midnight skies.—
Through skirting woods and sundered rocks sublime
The waters hold their turbulent career
Mid broken crags and promontories high
O'erarching, since that hour of miracle,
When the vast Sea of their imprisoned waves,
Repellant at their bondage, in their strength
Rose up, and swept the mountain from its throne,
And to the ocean in their might went down,
Like Death to Armageddon's war of Doom.
How beautiful the moonlight (while we stand
On Monticello's Rock) upon thy stream
Bubbling in eddies, or in azure sleep,
Lifting its solemn music, or beside
The lofty bank reposing, while the trees
Scatter their sear leaves on its calm expanse!
How sweet to catch the hum of voices down
The peopled street—the mirth of happy hearts—
The blessed music of our daily life,
While the proud anthem of the waters swells
Upon the evening breeze, and forests join
The glorious hymn with melodies of leaves!

'T is such a night as gentle hearts desire;
'T is like the mellow courtesies of life,
A silent soother; and the low faint breeze
Steals through the firwood and the piny copse
With those deep, tender, solemn whisperings,
That stir the heart like music. From the sky
The stars look down with cheerly modest eyes,
That beam the truest oracles of joys
To gladden after years, so lovely now
That the worn heart no longer feels its woes,
Or discontent or dark-browed melancholy.

Those miscreations and repugnancies,
Those cold repellings of unuttered scorn,
Those ingenuities of suffering,
That oft, in the thronged world, become a part

391

And portion of our being, enter not
The mansions of the spirit, when it seeks
The fountain-springs of life and drinketh there
The waters of its purity, amid
The still and hallowed sabbath of the heart.
Here let me linger, like a pilgrim far,
From all he loves, and hold the feast of thought,
While jarring passions, like the desert winds,
Pass in the distance! Let my heart resume
The earlier kindness of its generous pulse,
And, stern to its own errings, render up
The prayer of charity for all that breathe!
Here let me think how far from Wisdom's path
And Truth's most pleasant places I have roamed,
And, with a heart of sorrow, look abroad
The world that sins when sin brings misery,
And peril, and a bitter bondage here,
And unacquainted woe in other worlds.

There is a time when sorrow on the soul
Hangs like the mortcloth on the shrouded Dead,
Deepening the darkness of death's mysteries;
When the barb rankles in the quickest depths
Of the dark bosom, and strange Shapes come forth
From Memory's pictured chamber to distort
And magnify our misery! But here
The pale serenities of floating stars,
The slumber of the solitary woods,
And the low gurgling gush of waters blue
Lift the glad heart into the realms of peace.

392

TO THE OWL.

Dark Bird of the Night,
That shunneth the light,
Whither away on thy wandering flight?
“From the blood of the slain,
“And the gaze of the Dead,
“From the long lone plain
“Where the horseman bled,
“I hurry, I hurry and I come not again!”

Lone lover of gloom,
Whose lair is the tomb,
Why glarest thou o'er yon marsh of broom?
“The darkness is deep as death,
“But I see a dead man there,
“And I heard his throttled breath,
“And the gasp of his despair,
“When he perished alone on the dismal heath.”

Bird of the Night! how did he die?
“With a cloven brow and a bloodshot eye,
“A clench of the hand and a gurgling cry;
“Then a form appeared and took
“The murdered in his embrace,
“And amid the forest brook
“I heard a plunge—I saw a face—
“Oh! never had living man such look!”
Miserere, Domine!

393

In his home of peace dear eyes
Yearned for their earthly paradise,
While the shedder of guiltless blood had power;
But the bandit—where is he?
“The outcast wandereth on,
“And he skulks behind each tree,
“For the fear of the slaughter done—
“While the Gold—lo! it lies by the side of Thee!”
Miserere, Domine!

Watcher of solemn woods,
That lov'st the roar of floods
When they plunge through the midnight solitudes,
Flap not thy wings, but stay!
“To snuff the warm blood of men?
“To gaze on the dead? away!
“In the depth of the hemlock glen
“Man cometh not, nor the sunlight of day.”
Miserere, Domine!

From the lightning scathed tree,
While his wings winnowed free,
The Bird hooted thrice and again at me;
Then through the rolling gloom
He took his darkened flight,
Untainted by the doom
Of that most fearful night,
When the horseman slept without bed or tomb!
Miserere, Domine!

394

THE WANE OF THE YEAR.

Tu poverari si come sa ai sale
Lo pane altrui, et quanto e duro colle
Lo secendere a salir pur le altrui scale.
Dante. Paradis, Cant. 16.

There's beauty in the autumnal sky,
And mellow sweetness in the air,
But it hath sadness in my eye,
And breathes of sorrow and despair;
Its softness suits not settled woe,
Its richness mocks my poverty,
And sunny day's ethereal glow
Laughs o'er my dark soul's misery.

The requiem song of sighing gale
With the dead forest foliage playing;
The chilling night wind's saddening wail
O'er rock-browed hill and wild heath straying;
The mournful sound of lapsing flood
Lamenting desert mead and shore,
Rather beseem his solitude
Who weeps for all he did adore.

I long have been a wanderer, fated
Lifes ills and wrongs and woes to bear,
With all the world can offer sated,
And borne to earth by deep despair!
And I have been betrayed, oppressed,
Belied and mocked in guise so foul,
That there dwells not within my breast
A hope, or purpose in my soul.

395

Though kindred bosoms beat with mine,
Yet I am one the world loves not;
No hopes around my being twine,
No glorious majesty of lot;
Oh! had I perished when a child,
Ere high aspirings burned to heaven,
Devotions blasted, pleasures foiled,
And passions ne'er my heart had riven!

I have no friend on this cold earth,
No cheerful prospect charms my eye,
Despair watched o'er my unwished birth,
And woe wept o'er the agony;
My childhood groaned 'neath wrong and ill,
And I grew sad when others smiled,
And ever on joy's vital thrill
Came sorrows deep and miseries wild.

My youth has been a scene of woe,
And wandering and reproach, and all
That loved me in death's overthrow
Have passed away beyond recall;
And I am left alone to bear
The burden of my burning woes,
And, blended with my heart's despair,
The tauntings of unfeeling foes.

Pale daughter of the dying year!
I ever loved thy scenes of death,
Thy foliage dropping red and sere,
Thy pensive look and nipping breath;
For thou wert like thy votary son,
Fading and dying day by day,
And smiling that thy task was done
So soon, and life had passed away.

When, oh, I trace the path of years,
And count the pangs my heart hath borne,
And number o'er my bosom's tears,
And sighs and groans of grief forlorn,

396

And think of all the dead behind,
And what they were in life to me,
I feel a glory of the mind
In holding converse thus with thee.

Oh, I would change my being high
Gladly a withered leaf to be,
And float on zephyr's pinions by,
A thing unknowing misery!
And when the snows of winter fell,
I should not feel their icy blight,
But slumber in the mountain dell
Sweetly the livelong northern night.

I ne'er could cringe and crouch to guile,
Nor thoughts repress that would arise,
Nor visor with a villain smile
Avenging hatred's demon lies;
I ne'er could herd with fashion's throng,
And whirl away the unmeaning hours,
Nor link with base nefarious wrong
My spirit's unpolluted powers.

And so my mortal life hath passed
In loneliness and grief and woe,
And I have trod a burning waste
With measured step, lone, solemn, slow,
And seen the viper brood of hate
And baseness crawl around my way,
And felt my being desolate,
A heritage of grief foraye!

Oh, dying Autumn! would with thee
I could lie down and sleep fore'er;
Thou wouldst not waken misery,
In the soft springtime of the year,
By breaking his undreaming sleep
Who never loved its brilliant flowers,
But often sighed—he could not weep—
O'er sorrow's lone and lingering hours.

397

Cold is the hand that once was pressed
In passioned rapture to my heart,
And colder yet the guiltless breast
That felt in all my woes a part:
Wild wails the wind o'er many a tomb
Which holds full many a dear one bound,
And in creation's starless gloom
I hear a lone, deep, dirgelike sound.

'T is nothing, Autumn! but thy breeze
Amid the leafless forest flying,
But yet it comes through bending trees
Like the last groan of nature dying;
And seems, as low the sun sinks down,
Like a sweet voice I loved to hear,
Though altered now its thrilling tone
To suit the melancholy year.

In childhood's hours left fatherless,
Reflective, feeling, sad and wild,
Unblessing, with but one to bless
A friendless, visionary child,
I roved abroad 'mid hills and woods,
And clomb the cliff and pluck'd the flower
That flourished there, and skimm'd the floods
And dared worst danger's utmost power.

I little thought, at that sweet time,
My heart would ache 'mid scenes like these,
When the soul soars, on wings sublime,
Among the blue sky's deities;
But, ah, long time has passed away
Since I knew not the world's deep woes,
And pleasures past around me play,
Like spectres round the dead's repose.

Since thou, pale widow of the year!
Wert here before, strange deeds have been;
Full many a heart hath quaked with fear,
And many a lovely, joyous scene

398

Hath changed to desolation wild;
Eyes, that once shone with pleasure's light,
Have wept like those of little child,
O'er rosy being's last cold blight.

And many a proud and lordly one
Hath knelt beside the robbing tomb,
And highborn things to dust have gone
With creatures nursed in lowly gloom.
All—all, O nature! die with thee,
The high, the low, the sad, the gay,
And it were joy, in sooth, to me,
If I could die like yon sweet day.

FAILEAS MORE.

“A dark gigantic Shade is seen stalking across the loch in the evening, which vanishes at a certain headland, and from that place the next morning, between daybreak and sunrise, a whole troop of shadows arise and with Mac Torcil Dhu at their head, walk in procession to the Standing Stones and hide themselves again in their graves.” Hogg's Basil Lee.

Shades of the Dead! what necromantic power
Breaks thus the silent slumbers of the tomb?
Dwells there mysterious magic in the hour
Of birth or death to summon from the gloom
Of man's last resting-place the parted soul?
Can earthly joy or sorrowing abide
Beneath the veil of death—or thought unroll
The record of past passion, love and pride?

'T is vain to question—ye may not reply;
Death seals the lips of his dim shadowy forms—
Thought cannot pierce his awful mystery,
And the soul shrinks from converse with the worms;
Shrouded and coffined—buried in the dust—
Wrapt in undreaming sleep forever there—
'T is nothing to the penitent who trust
Their God—but where 's the spirit? Oh, that where!

399

Come ye, dread Shadows! to forewarn the advance
Of pestilence or famine, war and death?
Weak hearts catch terror from your amenance,
And fear hangs quivering on their stifled breath.
What mystic lore would ye to man impart?
What secrets to his doubting soul convey?
Life's vital flood is curdling round his heart—
Oh, quick reveal your message and away!

Why should the living seek to know what, known,
Would leave them nought of being save their breath?
How can the dead for past misdeeds atone
By fearful shadowings of approaching death?
Through life we hear the echo of that tread,
Each hour distincter growing, which at last,
We know not when, will crush and leave us dead,
And still sound onward like the sweeping blast.

What are ye, Spectral Shades? the hue of guilt
No mortal eye on your wan brows may trace,
And yet, perchance, blood dyed your sabre's hilt,
Drained from the veins of some fraternal race;
Or persecution waited on your beck
To seethe the human heart in boiling gore;
To bow the martyr's and the patriot's neck,
And rend away what earth could not restore.

The sepulchre is no abode of rest
For them who lave their souls in seas of blood,
Or stamp despair on virtue's virgin breast;
They roam forever by oblivion's flood
Living to agony, yet dead to hope,
And wander o'er the ruins they have made,
To wail where erst they shouted in their scope
Of power amid the mighty cavalcade.

And ye, perchance, are of the accursed crew,
Whom penitence, vouchsafed to all beside,
Can ne'er avail; affliction's healing dew,
Tears flowing from the wellspring of lost pride,

400

Will never on your withering hearts descend;
Enough of life to see and feel your death,
Mocking the agony that cannot end,
Is all that's left—pale forms without a breath.

The scenes of your wild deeds and buried crimes
Alone are open to your shadowy tread;
Your course is bounded by forbidden times
To where the victims of your vengeance bled;
At the dim twilight hour of morn or eve
Alone can ye appear, and much the scene
Mysterious lends its aidance to deceive
The eye, that hangs upon your fearful mien.

Not oft doth he, the great Omniscient give
Warning to mortals when their course shall cease;
Save on his doubts and fears man could not live,
Nor rest his sad and weary soul in peace;—
If mighty terror doth chain down weak minds
When the dead walk again the conscious earth,
Let all the omen be the fear that binds
The heart to heaven, and calls high virtue forth!

The deep, the fervent longing of the mind—
The eternal aspiration of the soul
Seeks things unreal as the summer wind,
Which all can hear, but none on earth control;
Oft doth the vivid fancy paint the form
That glides around us with prophetic eye,
Whose awful voice is heard amid the storm
When spirits throng the chambers of the sky.

Yet shapes appear and shadows float along
Which have no mortal moulding, hue or birth,
And wild romance and legendary song
Tell of dread spectres doomed to roam the earth,
Eternal heirs of uncommuning woe!
And well may man in such wild tales discern
How far extends the chain of guilt below!—
How long remorse within the heart doth burn!

I. E.—The Great Shadow.

University of Virginia Library

Vol. I.

THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.

THE ARGUMENT.

HOUSEHOLD HOURS.

THE SUMMER EVENING HYMN.

THE LAST NIGHT OF POMPEII:

A POEM IN THREE CANTOS.

PREFACE.

THE ARGUMENT.

CANTO I.

THE VESTAL'S HYMN.

THE MIDNIGHT PRAYER.

CANTO II.

THE PÆAN OF THE PANTHEON.

STROPHE.

ANTISTROPHE.

EPODE.

THE SYBIL'S INVOCATION.

CANTO III.

ARGUMENT.

THE VISION OF THE FLAMAN.

THE DEATH-CRIES OF POMPEII.

THE FAREWELL OF THE CHRISTIANS.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

PERE LA CHAISE.

AN EVENING SONG OF PIEDMONT.

THE COURTEZAN.

THE LOZEL.

LINES COMPOSED WHILE ASCENDING THE MISSISSIPPI.

THE HOUR OF DEATH.

TO MY SON IN HEAVEN.

SONNET.

TO MY DAUGHTER GENEVIEVE.

SONGS TO CLARA.

1. PART I.

2. PART II.

3. PART III.

4. PART IV.

5. PART V.

6. PART VI.

SONNET.

GRAVE WATCHING.

THE CONFESSIONAL.

FANCY'S FAITH.

THE SUNSET VOICE.

THE SACHEM'S CHANT.

THE TREASURE OF THE FOREST.

THE SULIOTE POLEMARQUE.

SONG.

REMEMBERED WRONGS.

MEMENTO MORI.

THE AUSPICES.

THE POET'S NIGHT SOLITUDE.

SONNET.

THE AUTUMNAL EVE.

SONNET.

THE TRIAL OF THE TROTH.

MUSIC AMALGAMATED.

THANKSGIVING.

ANCIENT WORSHIP.

SONNET.

THE LAY OF THE LOST.

NIGHT-DREAMS.

ABADDON, THE SPIRIT OF DESTRUCTION.

THE ARGUMENT.

TO ISOLINA.

THE LAY OF THE COLONIST.

THE DIRGE.

A MONODY.

GLENDALOCH.

SONNET.

PHANTASIE.

THE REIGN OF GENIUS.

THE LAY OF THE FATHERLESS.

SUNSET AT SEA.

THE LAST SONG.

THE IDEALIST.

THE DREAM OF THE SEPULCHRE.

OLYMPIADS.