Poems of "Frank Forester" (Henry William Herbert)

Come back and bring my life again,
That went with thee beyond my will;
Restore me that which makes me man,
Or leaves me wretched, dead and chill.
Thy presence was of life a part;
Thine absence leaves the blank of death.
They wait thy presence—eye and heart,
With straining gaze and bated breath.

The light is darkness, if thine eyes
Make not the medium of its ray.
I see no star in evening skies,
Save thou look up and point the way.
Nor bursting buds in May's young bloom,
Nor sunshine rippling o'er the sea,
Bear up to heaven my heart's perfume,
Save thou my monitor can be.

There are two paths for human feet—
One bordered by a duty plain,
And one by phantoms curs'd, yet sweet,
Bewildering heart and maddening brain.

The one will right and reason urge;
But thou must walk beside me there,
Or else I tread the dizzy verge,
And thou some guilt of loss must bear.

Come back: there is no cause on earth,
No word of shame, no deed of wrong,
Can bury all of truth and worth,
And sunder bonds once firm and strong.
There is no duty, Heaven-imposed,
That, velvet-gloved, an iron band
Upon my heart-strings crushed and closed,
Thy hate should all my love withstand.

Days seem like ages; and, ere long,
On senseless ears the cry may fall;
Or, stilled by bitter shame and wrong,
The pleading voice may cease to call.
Come back, before the eyes grow dim
That keep but sight to see thee come,
Ere fail and falter hand and limb,
Whose strength but waits to fold thee home.

“MY HOME.”

A home! a home! Yes, yes! though still and small,
I have a home where soft the shadows fall
From the dim pine-tree, and the river's sigh
Like voices of the dead wails ever nigh;
Nor hearth is there, nor hall, nor festive place,
Nor welcome smile of that bewitching face,
Nor the low laughter, nor the fond, sweet tone
That make pain pleasant: yet it is mine own—
My heart's own home, where'er my foot may tread.
Oh for my narrow house and lowly bed!

Let others turn, when each has ceased to roam,
To the calm pleasures of his childish home;
Let others turn, when the day's hot toil is o'er,
To that pure kiss which greets him at the door;
To that bright eye which kindles at the sound
Of their known footsteps, shedding glory round.
I have no childish home, nor earthly hold;
The kiss that breathed upon my lips is cold;
The eye that beamed for me is dimmed and dead.
Oh for my narrow house and lowly bed!

Earth has no home that can with mine compare,
For thou, my own lost one, for thou art there.
It matters not that they are sealed in death,
Those founts of light, and still the balmy breath,

And wan the radiant lip and lustrous brow:
It matters not; for it is always thou.
It matters not how cold, if I at last,
On that true heart of thine, when all is past,
May pillow once again my lonely head,
Oh for my narrow house and lowly bed!

Oh! weary, waste and weary is the day,
And weary is the night. Oh! will away!
For anguish weakens with the rising morn
And sleepless sorrow of the night is born;
And years must pass, long years, ere I shall run
To that dear spot, where fools are fain to shun,
The only home which now my soul doth crave,
Thy home—the long, the last—thine early grave.
Oh that for me the bridal sheets were spread
Now in my narrow house and lowly bed!

TO ***

We are not parted—no, though never more
Thy cherished form may greet my watchful eye,
Nor thy soft voice speak welcome to mine ear
Sweeter than summer music. Seas may roll,
And realms unnumbered stretch their boundless width,
A wearisome gulf between. Long years of woe
May lag above us, with their icy weight
Freezing the healthful current of our lives.
Yea, Death himself, with blighting fingers cold,
May sunder us, not e'er to meet again
On this side immortality. Thy frame
May gently moulder to its natural dust,
Dewed by the tear-drops of lamenting friends;
Mine rot unhonored in a foreign soil,
Without a stone to mark the exile's head,
Or blessed ministry of holy church
To smooth the sinner's passage to his God.
Yet so we are not parted! Souls like ours,
Knit by so strong a harmony of love,
With hopes, fears, sorrows, sympathies the same,
Still commune with each other, twain in one
Indissolubly joined, and yet more near,
When dies the clay that dims the immortal spark.

THE ETONIAN'S ADIEU.

“Fare thee well; and if forever,
Still forever, fare thee well.”—
Byron.

As some poor exile, on the boundless main,
Quits shores and skies he ne'er shall see again,
Casting, as darts his shallop from the strand,
One lingering glance upon his native land;
Then distant marks the elemental war,
The billows' shock, the ocean's thundering roar;
No hopes allay the tumult of his mind,
No joys efface the joys he leaves behind.
In vain for him the breeze inviting sounds,
In vain the gallant vessel proudly bounds
Triumphant o'er the waters; with that coast
His every joy, his every hope, is lost.
So as I quit my sacred mother's breast,
To change for toils and cares this seat of rest,
No glowing prospects gild the dismal scene,
No glimpse of peace the clouds of grief between.
In vain for me the sun, the skies, may shine:
The dream is past which made those pleasures mine.
The morn of life is o'er, the tints are flown,
Which made this earth a heaven all my own.
The joys of life are o'er, and what remain
To gather, save the sorrows and the pain?
The early friends of life already gone,
Some in the world to find new friends; but one
From long affection's arms forever torn,
Beyond the cold interminable bourne.
The manly form, the generous heart, is dust;
The sparkling eye is quenched, the voice I loved is hushed.

Henceforth I ne'er shall feel what I have felt,
Nor be what I have been; the blow is dealt
Which breaks the fairy visions of the mind,
And rends the chains which now no more can bind.
Time has fled quickly, since these ancient halls
Received me first within their classic walls;
Yet five whole years have rolled their train along,
A thought! a dream! the burthen of a song!
And now I am no more the careless child
Who played, and smiled, unconscious why I smiled;
For cares come thick upon me: yet I run
A course as vain as that which now is done.
And I shall sport no more beneath the shade,
Where oft at eve my boyish limbs were laid;
My days are done, by river and by plain,
In thy haunts, sweet Etonia; if again
I stand among thy children, other hands
Will wield the bat, or lead the watery bands:
My name is not among them, nor will be—
Eton has many a worthier son than me,
But none more true, if love may fill the place
Of nobler deeds, and of a prouder race.
Yet, though the loftiest titles man can give
To birth, or learning, in thy tablets live,
Not to the learned, or to the proud alone,
The arduous path to glory's height is shown:
Hence springs the hope to earn myself a name,
And add, Etonia, to thy scroll of fame.
Hence, if in after time some scanty bays
May crown my toils with undeserved praise,
Though brighter jewels in thy chaplet shine,
My boast shall be that one, at least, is mine.

RECORDS.

This was a happy day a year ago,
As now most wretched. This day I returned
From absence of one little month—one month
That seemed a year:—returned to feel her heart
Beat against mine, that ne'er shall beat with joy,
Or leap in ecstasy to those blue eyes
So bright and beautiful, or throb again
To mine responsive.
Oh! I see her now,
As she upstarted from her chair in haste
To greet me, with the eloquent warm blood
Flushing her fair white brow, the lips apart,
And radiant with that sunny smile that spoke
The joyous mirthfulness of her pure soul—
Most innocent and artless, and the eyes
That flashed affection out in dazzling beams
Electrical. I hear her soft, low voice
Say, “Dearest, dearest, have you come at last?
Long have I waited for you, and last night
Watched till nigh morning. Had you not come home
To-day, I should have sickened with the ‘hope
Deferred.’”
But it is I that now am sick,
Past thought to be relieved; sick not with hope,—
For that disease hath still some saving touch
Of consolation in't, that nerves the soul
To bear its tortures,—but for very lack
Of anything to hope on earth again.

For she is gone—aye, gone! and that rare form,
Which I see now as palpably as though
It stood there, glowing in the perfect grace
And glory of young womanhood;—a dream,
A trick of memory, lighter than a shade,
And by no sense of mind to be enjoyed
Or apprehended.
Yes, I see her now
As she upstarted, in her purple robe,
Graced by the fair proportions of her shape,
Not gracing them—her bosom of pure snow,
Translucent, with its thousand azure veins
Matchlessly beautiful; her glorious hair
Clustered in mazy ringlets of rich brown
Lit with a sunny lustre, down her neck
Falling profuse.
I feel her clasping arms
Wound close about my neck; her soft, thick curls
Fanning my cheek; and her sweet, lovely face,
Burning with blushes, hidden on my breast.
I hear her fond voice faltering in my ear
Glad tidings—that our little one—our boy,
Whom I left mute as yet, had found his tongue,
And learned to lisp her name.
It is but one year
Of the threescore and ten which sum the toil,
The lengthened weariness, and transient joy,
Of man's allotted time, and all is changed—
Withered and cold forever, as my heart;
Which is alone, and desolate, and void,
And hopeless. She was all I had on earth:
The one rare treasure that enriched a life
Quite barren else; the only being that loved
And cherished, aye! and honored me, whose course
Has ever lain among the storms of the world,
The blight of evil tongues, and rancorous spite

Of who, not knowing, load with ill report
That which they comprehend not. She was all—
All that I had or wished. Love, happiness,
Ambition, hope—all, all in her
Were centred; and with her they are all gone,
Ne'er to come back to me.
I have nor home,
Nor country, nor companions; and the grave
Will be a resting-place, a distant end,
Not shunned, but longed for, as the pleasant bourn
Of suffering, and perchance the gate of joy;
Beyond the perishable, where immortal souls
May meet and love each other with a love
Transcending aught mortality has felt
Of best affections.
Oh that it were so!
Oh that I could believe, and in that trust
Be confident and strong, that even now
She looks upon me, and, in perfect bliss,
With something of affection still regards
The lost companion of her mortal joys,
The last attendant of her painful bed—
Him on whose breast her head was propped, on whom
Her glazing eyes were fixed, that yearned to see
When sight had left them; him whose hand yet thrills
At recollection of the entwined caress
Of those poor fingers, in their dying spasm,
Affectionate to the latest; him whose name—
Never, 'tis like, again to greet his ear
From any lips on earth—her lips strove hard
To syllable, but could not!
Life itself
Were not all weary, could I deem that she,
Marking my ways, might see each step more near
To heaven and her; and feel her very bliss
Something augmented by the unchanging love

Of him she loved so fondly; that one day
She might come forth to meet me, as of old,
But robed in beauty that will never fade,
And, radiant with eternal joy, again
Say, “Dearest, dearest, you have come at last;
Long have I waited you; and seen your love
Constant and faithful, and fidelity
Hath its reward; and we are met again,
Never to sorrow more, or sin, or die:”

Oh! might I trust in this, I could go on,
In confident humility secure,
And fearless of the future.
But who knows,
Except the Father, and the Son who dwells
Forever in his glory? Who may dare
E'en to dream of that, which He hath left
Obscure, nor by a word of his illumed
The utter darkness that enshrouds the dead?

But thou art merciful, and knowest, Lord,
The weakness of the mortal: banish thou
The cruel thoughts which terrify my soul,
Whispering that she, whose early grave hath closed
Over the sweetest of thy daughters, lies
Forgetful of the life that lived for her,
Or, in her happiness, sees not the woe
That steeps in utter gloom the heart whose light
She was, and is no longer; the dark doubt,
Never to be enlightened till that day
When all shall be revealed—the dread, dark doubt
That we shall meet no more, when but to meet
Would make earth heaven—as her sweet smile of old
And soothing voice could win a charm from pain,
Make poverty seem wealth, and sorrow bliss!

Gentlest and mirthfullest of living things,
And sweetest in thy purity of youth,
Thine artless innocence, thy charity

That thought no harm, thy love that knew not self—
To minister with the angels thou art gone,
And never shalt come back to me again,
As the light cometh with the morn, the leaves
With the glad spring-time.
Grant it, God, that I
May go to thee, and know thee, and be known,
There, where the wicked from their troubling cease,
The weary are at rest.
I ask but this:
Could I but think it, I could go my way
Rejoicing, and look forward to my goal
Happy, nor faint nor falter on the road,

SUNSET ON THE HUDSON.

In the cloud-curtained chambers of the West,
Serene and glorious, he hath sunk to rest—
Immortal giant; but his parting kiss
Hath steeped his earthly bride in holier bliss
Than when she sunned her in his rapturous ray
Of noontide ardor. Slow they glide away,
The gorgeous gleams that flash from Hudson's tide,
And paint the woods that gird old Beacon's side;
Yet round the clouds that veil the bridegroom's head
A fringe of lucent glory still is spread;
While from the zenith tints of deeper blue
Steal o'er the bright horizon's azure hue,
Rob the broad forests of their verdant cheer,
And tinge the silvery brook with shadows clear.
The dewy rushes wave in arrowy ranks,
Now gilt, now gloomy, on the darkening banks;
And snowy sails, that stud the distant river,
Glance, and are lost as in the breeze they shiver.
There is a thrill in the awakening flush
Of early morn, there is a breathless hush
In fainting noonday; but the fairy space
That parts the evening from the night's embrace
Breathes out a stronger charm, a purer spell,
Bathing the soul in thoughts that fondly swell,
Like sacred music's melancholy close—
Sweeter than grief, and sadder than repose.
And is it fancy's fond delusion only
That hallows so these woods and waters lonely?

Or is there in each bold, majestic hill
A mighty legend, in each tinkling rill
A whispering voice, and in the wind's low sigh,
Telling of days and deeds that ne'er shall die?
'Tis holy all, and haunted. Each green tree
Hath its own tale, each leaf its memory.
The streams that knew the Indian's tread of yore;
The breezy hills, with rock-ribbed summits hoar;
The lordly river, with its ceaseless moan—
Have all a power more potent than their own;
For each and all, with echoing pride, have rung
To the wild peal which Freedom's trumpet sung,
When forth, to shield his bleeding country's breast,
He stood, the Cincinnatus of the West;
The founder of a world—whose course was run
All bright and blessing!—like yon setting sun,
Alone of men, HIS youth was spotless seen,
His manhood mighty, and his end serene;
Without one blot to dim his deathless name,
Or bid the nations weep that watch his fame.

BROWNWOOD FEMALE SEMINARY.

Sweet spot of earth, with umbrage never sere
Of mightiest woods embowered, and dewy lawns
Wooing the glimpses of the sun between,
And flowers that love the shade, and opening buds
That court the noontide ray—meet home is here
For those rare spirits, flowers of the mortal world,
Most beautiful and best, where all was good
When the Creator saw it in the prime,
Ere knowledge tainted innocence, and sin
Crept with that knowledge in, which is not life.
I see your white walls shining through the gloom
Of the long dim-wood cloisters, steeped in calm
Of holiest quietude, beneath the eye
Of the fair azure through the gauzy fleece
Of summer clouds its glory smiling down
On that fair home of the fairest.

But no sound
Comes to my ear from dewy lawn, or glade
Wood-girdled, voice of man, nor song of birds,
Nor streamlet's rippling melody—all mute—
All, but the solemn whispers of the breeze
Holding strange converse with the spirits that dwell
In the green leaves and gnarled branches old
Of the nymph-haunted foresters.

Yet pause!
There comes a gentle murmur on the air,
Sweeter than rippling streams, clearer than song
Of rarest warblers, gentle, faint, and low,
Yet blithe as summer: 'tis the distant strain
Of girlish voices musically shrill,
Half heard, half lost, yet floating on the air
In purest symphonies.

Lo! it has ceased,
And all again is silence. Can it be
These pleasant woods, these lawns so dewy bright,
These fair white walls, are but the pomp of woe,
The pride of the prison-house! Can't be that here
Imprisoned maids, immured from light of day,
Waste their sweet harmonies of soul and heart,
Their founts of love and bliss, thus barren made,
Self-mortified and fruitless?

Stranger, no!
There come no groans upon the summer wind;
No bitter tears of the heart belie the strain
That wells so joyously from the young lips we heard
Hymning the Lord of Life! No: knowledge here,
Clogged with no curse, allures the fair and bright
Toward Heaven, not bars the gates of Paradise,
Nor makes of Earth a Hell. And Georgia's daughters
Are better taught the immortal aim and end
Of being, than to lock their inborn charms
Against their sweetest uses, and cry shame,
By scorning Nature's law or Nature's God;
But in their innocent girlhood, trained to arts
The old world knew not, think to be—like maids
Of olden time, renowned in classic lore—
Proud wives and happy mothers of brave men.

THE SUMMER STORM.

Forth to the dewy champaign—to the banks
Of that bright river, by whose margent clear
The gentle wind makes music evermore,
Tuning his harp amid the breezy ranks
Of juniper “with foliage never sere,”
And plumed locusts old and poplars hoar!
Forth from the crowded haunts—the gilded pen
Of toiling myriads—from the dust and din,
Splendor, and want, and wretchedness, and sin,
To the broad meadows, and the wildwood glen,
Whence the free mind may soar, with joyous flight,
Unchained and buoyant toward the throne of light!

Glorious—how glorious!—is the sunny face
Of the fresh earth—fresh as a youthful bride
Waking to hail her earliest wedded morrow,
What time, half shrinking from his fond embrace,
She meets with radiant eyes a husband's pride,
Radiant through tears that tell of all but sorrow!
In tranquil beauty, redolent of bloom,
Each opening floweret lifts its diamond crown,
From every tangled brake or grassy down
Mingling its tribute with the rare perfume,
Which floats, meet incense—with the strains that rise
From thousand matin birds—to reach the skies.

Better to watch the slant rays stealing by,
The shadows sweeping o'er the herbage cool,
The maize-leaves twinkling as the breezes play,
The early vapors, as they mount the sky—
Vapors that mantled late each lowly pool—

Changing with saffron tints their curtains gray!
Better—far better—so to greet the morn,
With the free gales about our temples blowing,
And the bright waters nigh our pillow flowing,
Than start to see the gorgeous day-god born,
In halls of splendor, faint, forlorn, and jaded,
Amid the waning lamps, and garlands faded!

The very air exults with blissful life.
Glitters the gem-like humbird to and fro,
The robin trills his soft domestic note,
The insect hordes career, in sport or strife,
Quick-glancing; while with measured motion slow,
Lo! the poised hawk on gliding pinions float!
As fancy swift, through glassy ripples seen,
Momently springs the silver trout on high;
The tiny snipe elude the gazer's eye,
Skimming the pebbled marge, or current sheen;
While ever and anon the far cascade
Sends its faint echoes through the greenwood shade.

Oh, who that might refresh his spirit so,
Bathing it all in ecstasy divine
Of natural devotion—who would bear,
His soul oppressed by the dark city's woe,
In that great wilderness, the world, to pine,
Without one heart his yearnings strange to share?
Oh, who would mingle with that loathsome crew,
Foul in their pleasure, sordid in their gain,
Coward to feel, as slow to pity, pain,
Without or love unbought or anger true—
Who that might lie on this luxurious sod,
“Alone with Nature, and with Nature's God”?

Now 'tis the very hush of summer noon:
The breeze has sunk to sleep; and slowly pass,

Scaling the peaceful azure, one by one,
The volumed clouds, snow-white, but changing soon
To deepest purples, edged with paly brass
By the sick radiance of the shrouded sun.
There is no life abroad: the trout lies still;
The insect swarms are hushed in death-like sleep;
Silent the birds in shadowy coverts deep;
The aspen waves not on the distant hill;
Nor sound nor motion wakes the sullen rest
That steeps in horror brown the river's breast.

There is a quivering of the loftier trees,
A quick, wild rustle; and a sad repose,
River and field and forest mute as death.
Again—the boughs are crashing in the breeze,
The leaves are whirled aloft; the noisy crows
Fly diverse from the coming tempest's breath;
Before the gale dark streams the driving wrack
In shattered masses, like a charger's mane,
Who snorts amid the trumpets; and the rain
Patters in gouts no more, but broad and black,
Reeling in columns from the bursten cloud,
Veils the near landscape with its misty shroud.

Glorious—how glorious—is the stirring din
Of the strong elements!—the thunder's roar
Splitting the ear; the sun's unnatural glare,
Shot from his throne the curtained storm within;
The baleful lightnings, and the fierce uproar
Of the dread powers that ride the tortured air.
Nature, great Nature, let me dwell with thee
In thy far forest home—aloof the crime
Of mean ambition, that arch-mock of time;
Lord of myself, content, serene, and free;
Regretting naught society can give,
And pleased, if friendless, passionless to live.

THE FRESHET.

“Yes! there they sat like lambs within the fold,
While all around the swelling waters rolled,
Making an island of the little space
Where they had found their pleasant resting-place.
Close to their pent-up feet the torrent passed,
And every moment seemed as 'twere their last.”
J. K. Paulding, The Backwoodsman.

'Tis summer morn; yet the new-risen sun,
Shorn of his beams, a dim discrowned king,
Peers through his watery tabernacle wan
In desolate eclipse. The winds are out,
Careering through the wilderness: huge pines,
The Titans of the forest, rent like straws,
With all their leafy honors full and fair,
Crash constantly; while trees of feebler growth
Bow prostrate to the tempest demon's sway.
Hark to that sullen roar! Near and more near,
Blent with the sobbing of the gale and groan
Of immemorial oaks, it drowns the ear—
The gush of mighty waters! Lo! it comes,
Red with the soil of many a ravaged field,
Heaping its foam against the sturdy stems,
Rock-moored, which bar its fury—deep and strong,
Whirling like feathers on its tortured breast
The woodland ruins. From a hundred hills,
Swelled by a thousand founts, it raves along,
A torrent—broader than that southern stream,
Boundless Marañon, swifter than the rush
Of Indian Tigris—where anon it flowed
O'er many-colored pebbles clearly seen,

A bright translucent river, with sweet sound
Soothing the greenwood echoes, fringed with reeds,
And garlanded with lilies meet to grace
The golden ringlets of a Nereid's hair.

Where shall he shield him from the coming wrath,
The exile emigrant, the pioneer
Of nature, journeying from the populous east
To tame the western solitudes, the reign
Of buffalo, and beaver, till man came,
Sole architect to bridge the brawling stream?

Lo! where to leeward of the rifted rock,
Girt by the foamy tide, he stands erect
In native hardihood—erect to brave
The battling tempest—with his sturdy arm
Propping the shelter frail, wherein they crouch
Who deem each gust their last, each loftier wave
Their summoning to doom, his sunburnt mate,
And fledgeless swarm, that soon shall strip the earth,
Sweeping the forest as with whirlwind's power
Before their footsteps! Cheering words and high
Burst from his dauntless lips—high words of hope—
Hope which himself feels not—to cheer the woe
Of that wan mother and her perishing brood—
Of safety, desperate but to Him who bade
The waters peace—and “lo! there was a calm.”

THE WRECK.

I.

With the bellying arch of her white sail set,
To the fresh breeze bending low,
Dashing the spray like a fountain's jet
In diamonds from her bow,
Outspeeding the waves in her murmuring pride,
And the spice-wind's balmy sigh,
Like a swallow in air, or a swan on the tide,
The good ship glided by.

II.

The Indian sun was blazing bright
In the cloudless, tropic sky,
And the sea like a mirror of azure light
Glowed to its canopy.
The shark shot by, and the nautilus shell
By its fairy mariner driven;
And the flying-fish glanced from the liquid swell
Like a star from the vaulted heaven.

III.

The surface is tranquil and clear as glass,
And the eye dives deeply through
To the sparkling gems, and the ocean's grass,
And the corals of crimson hue;
To the fry that sprang from their sea-weed lair
At the changeful dolphin's stroke:
But of all the wonders that glittered there,
Not a sign of peril spoke.

IV.

The hurricane slept in its sultry shrine,
And hushed was the surge's moan,
And the soundings were deep in the measured brine,
Full forty fathom down.
Five hundred hearts beat proud and fast
On the frigate's stainless deck;
Five hundred hearts, that had dared the blast,
Or the battle, their pulse to check.

V.

The helmsman was still at his steady wheel,
And the watch at their stations round,
And the officers leaned on the lazy steel
That had flashed at the bugle's sound.
Not a bosom was there that dreamed how nigh
Was the viewless angel's rod,
Nor shuddered to think that ere day should die
He must reckon with his God.

VI.

Like a swallow in air, or a swan on the tide,
The good ship rode the wave;
And little they deemed in their manhood's pride
She was hurrying to her grave.
With a shivering crash, and a sullen shock,
Stopped short in winged career,
For an instant she clung to fatal rock,
Then plunged through the waters clear.

VII.

Not a second was granted for thought or prayer,
Not a second to struggle for life;
Not a glimpse of fond memory was hovering there
In the spirit's parting strife.

Not a hope for the future, a sigh for the dear,
Nor the love that is strong in death:
It was but an instant from first to last,
And sound there was none, nor breath.

VIII.

The waters were clear as they were before,
And the gales as balmy blew;
But where are the hearts that rejoiced in their roar,
And the ship that before them flew?
She was here but now, like a wingèd sprite
Upborne on the sunbright air:
Where is she now, with her pinions of light?
The wild waves answer, Where?

THE MOTHER.

A SONNET.

Beautiful bride of old historic race,
Beautiful mother of the noblest boy
That e'er sweet hope repaid with sweeter joy,
Canst lift the veil from that sweet sunny face?
Canst read the virtues of each warlike peer,
That left his fame in trust to after days,
Kindling his future sons to deeds of praise,
Rivals of Hastings, Cressy, and Poictier?
If noblest steeds their sires' high strain partake,
If soars the eagle's nestling to the sun,
If stanchest hounds the stanchest whelps do make,
Fear not: thy child as clear a course shall run
As hers, who ne'er the haughty boast did rue,
That all her sons were brave and all her daughters true.

THE RESCUE.

“Fortune, or rather the good foresight of Anne Burras at length brought them to a little basin, sunk a few feet into the ground, at the bottom of which bubbled a clear spring, almost the only one in that sandy region. Here, Fenton, who led the van, approaching with the silent caution of a cat, discovered his little lost sheep. The Indians had kindled a fire to cook a piece of venison, and sat quietly smoking their long pipes. Just as they were taking aim, the boy suddenly passed between them and the Indians. Foster shuddered, and dropped the muzzle of his piece. Again he raised his deadly rifle, and again, just at the actual moment, the boy glided between the savages and death.”—

J. K. Paulding, Old Times in the New World.

There was a fountain in the wilderness,
A small lone basin, undefiled and bright,
Beneath the shadow of the forest king,
The immemorial oak, whose giant form,
With gnarled trunk, and tortuous branches old,
And wreathèd canopy of moss and vines,
Filled the transparent mirror. From its depth
Of limpid blackness leaped the living spring,
A gush of silvery gems, that rose and burst,
Studding, but ruffling not, its glassy sheen.

It was the height and hush of summer noon:
There was no warbling in the air, nor hum
Of bird or bee; the very breeze was dead,
That evermore amid the vocal leaves
Is blithe and musical; the brooklet's flow
Through the dank herbs was voiceless; and the spell
Of silence brooded, like a spirit's wing,
O'er the pure fountain and the giant tree.
Worn with the heat, the burthen, and the toil,
They rested them beside the lucent marge,

The maiden and her captors. Stern and still
The tawny hunters sat; the thin blue smoke
Upcurling from the tube that steeped their souls
In opiate dreams of apathy; the glare
Of the red firelight flashing broad and high
On their impassive features, shaven brows,
And scalp-locks decked with the war-eagle's plume.
Beside them, yet aloof, their delicate prize,
The forest damsel lay—the forest flower,
Untimely severed from its parent stem,
Blighted yet beautiful,—her fair young head
Bowed to the earth, her pale cheek wet with woe,
And those sweet limbs, that wont to fix all eyes,
Wounded and weary. Yet her heart was strong
In glorious confidence: her calm clear eye
Soared upward; and although the lips were mute,
Heart-orisons arose—more fragrant far
Than vapory perfumes, sweeter than the peal
Of choral voices, when some cloistered pile
Thrills to the organ's diapason deep
In pomp sublime of regal gratitude.
And he, the seedling gem, that nestled there
In that pure bosom—never more, perchance,
Oh! never more to glad a parent's soul
With beaming smiles and sportive innocence.
No; they were not deserted. Hagar found
In the salt wilderness a living well;
And Hezekiah saw, at dawn of day,
The shouting myriads of Sennacherib
Stretched, horse and rider, on the bloodless plain,
By angel-swords of pestilence divine.
Yea, on the cursed tree the perishing thief
At the tenth hour received the word of grace,
When hope itself was hopeless. Who believes
Shall never be forsaken—never fall.
She heard them rustling in the tufted brake,

The snapping boughs beneath their cat-like tread;
The leaves that shivered, though the clouds aloft
Hung motionless, betrayed them. They were nigh—
Her friends—her rescuers! She did not spring
In frantic joy to meet them. Eye—hand—tongue,
With more than Roman hardihood of heart,
Were still and silent. Yet she marked the range
Of the bright rifles, and she dragged him down—
Down to her bosom—in the living chain
Of her white arms, that trembled not, spellbound
By agonizing hope more keen than fear.

Rang the report! The stream of vivid fire
Swept o'er her, and the bullets hurtled near,
Fearfully near, yet harmless. She is free,
Clasped in a father's, in a lover's, arms!
And they, their brief career of conquest run,
The red-men sleep, no more the yells to raise
Of fiendish war, or light the pipe of peace.

THE OLDEN TIME.

Oh for the time, the olden time,
When earth was in its youthful prime—
The time of truth and glory;
When men were men of manly mould,
Ere faith was bought, and friendship sold,
And honor but a name for gold,
And love a minstrel's story!
When smiles were worn to welcome friends,
And frowns for open foes;
And smiles and frowns had honest ends—
Zeal, faith, and lusty blows.
When words but spoke the bosom's truth,
And hands avouched that words were sooth;
And men were weighed as they were worth,
For gallant deeds and generous birth,
Wit, virtue, valor, fame.
For them nor garb the limbs might wear,
Nor glittering trash their pouches bear,
Gave honor, place, or name;
All in the time, the olden time,
When earth was in her youthful prime,
The time of truth and glory.

Then slavish bearing marked the slave,
And none were noble but the brave;
None louted to the golden knave,
With pedigree in purse.
Then honest merit stood as high,
Although his weeds were sere,
And bore his head as near the sky
As paladin or peer.

The proudest prince the sword who drew,
When trumpets rang and splinters flew,
Shields broke, and red blood ran,
Dared not, though daring was his trade,
To wrong by word, unproved by blade,
The meanest gentleman.
The poet's place was honored then;
The fount of glory was his pen,
His scorn the deepest curse.
Then courtesy was nigh to State,
And none so gentle as the great,
So humble as the high.
And wealth was vile that decked the rude,
And good was prized but for the good
The owner did thereby.
All in the time—the olden time—
When earth was in her youthful prime,
The time of truth and glory.

Then ladies' love was merit's meed,
And sought in truth, and wooed in deed,
For it was worth the wooing;
When none might hope to prosper there,
By costly garb, or courtly air,
Unless his heart were right.
When hearts were only proved by trial,
And constancy by stern denial,
And courage but by fight.
When to have failed the weak to aid,
When to have wronged the humblest maid,
To have hedged one pace from truth aside,
One pace from war's most deadly tide,
Had been a king's undoing.
When every wish that, half expressed,
Faint faltered from the maiden's breast,
Who, safe as diamond wrapped in flame,

Preserved her honor's purity,
Was law to every knightly crest,
Although a queen's supreme behest,
Were but one blot upon her fame,
Had passed unheeded by.

All in the time—the olden time—
When earth was in her youthful prime,
The time of love and glory;
When men were men of manly mould,
Ere faith was bought, and friendship sold,
And honor but a name for gold,
And love a minstrel's story,

Then happy was the peasant's hut;
The squire's hall-door was never shut,
Nor yet his buttery latch;
And when the Christmas chimes rang out,
Though wild the wintry storms did shout,
The yeoman sent the ale about
Beneath his roof of thatch.
His step was firm, his bearing bold,
His heart of the good English mould,
Bowed not to force or fear.
No slave was he i' the olden day,
Yet dared his parents to obey,
His betters to revere.
For though he could not pen a line,
Nor knew to read the book divine,
Nor clerkly hymns to sing;
The churchyard path he weekly trod,
His heart was faithful to his God,
And loyal to his king.
No brawling demagogues had then
Poured passion in the ears of men,

And filled their souls with gall;
The laborer, by his evening cheer,
Envied not, hated not the peer
In his ancestral hall;
But rich and poor were neighbors good,
And dreamed not, in their happy mood,
Nature had made them foes.
For side by side in sport they stood,
And side by side lay in their blood
When Britain's war-cry rose.
All in the time—the olden time—
When earth was in her youthful prime,
The time of truth and glory.

Now honesty is nothing worth,
And honor nothing high,
For sordid gold commands the earth,
If 't have not won the sky.
The meanest wretch that wakes at dawn,
To lie, to falter, and to fawn;
Give him but wealth enough,
And how shall virtue, birth, or name,
Service, desert, wisdom, fame,
Match with his gilded stuff?
For he shall cringe before the proud,
Flatter the rank, ignoble crowd,
With false demean, or fair,
Till he hath won his way to state,
And sits triumphant and elate
Where heroes might despair.
The rich man hoards his paltry pelf,
Or wastes it on his sordid self;
And beauty is no more the meed
Of generous worth or gallant deed,
Of faith or constancy;
But ladies weigh the purse's length

Against affection's deathless strength,
Virtue, and lineage high.
And youth, young spirit, soul of fire,
All that enamoured maids desire,
You sigh and plead in vain,
When wrinkled eld prefers his claim,
Of loveless wedlock linked to shame,
So wealth be in the train.
The noble wastes his high estate,
The peasant shivers at his gate,
With curses deep and low;
For evil tongues have thrust between,
Malice, haughtiness, and spleen,
Oppression, care, and woe;
And iron hands have marred the scene
Which gladdened every village green
Three hundred years ago.
The prince's state is sullen pride,
The church's rights are now denied,
And equity forsworn;
The low, if lowly, now are slaves
(The high, if courteous, fawning knaves),
Vile from their cradles to their graves,
The brawling liberal's scorn.

New world, alas! where all is strange,
Uncertain, dark, and full of change,
And naught preserves its name;
That men may doubt from all around,
Since nothing now is constant found,
If heaven be still the same.
Oh for the time—the olden time—
When earth was in her youthful prime,
The time of truth and glory!
Oh for the time—the olden time—
That now but lives in story!

THE NOONDAY MEAL.

It is the very lull of noon. The sun,
Which smote the champaign but an hour ago
With violent heat, in pity hath concealed
The intolerable splendor of his brow
In tabernacles of cerulean cloud,
Gold-fringed and gauze-like. But a milder glow
Streams over hill and dale, and meadows green
Besprent with the rath cowslip; lanes o'erhung
With clustered woodbine; clumps of sycamore;
And immemorial oaks—green sepulchres
Of countless centuries; and proud roofs between,
Peaked and embattled; homes transmitted down
From sire to son for ages—since the day
When Norman William smote the Saxon force
Of Harold on the hill;—and lowly cots
With diamond casemates flashing to the morn;
And happy hearths, though humble; and tall spires
Pointing the heavenward road to who would ask,
And find—
An English landscape, such as lie
Stretched out by thousands through the sea-girt isle
From farthest Tweed to those white walls which frown
Her southern bulwarks o'er the subject sea.

It is the very lull of noon. The thrush,
Which all the morn has poured his richest strain
In musical gushes from the umbrageous tent
Of yon gnarled thorn-bush, stills his liquid throat
Mute by his silent mate; the lark, down dropt
Amid the young green wheat, with trailing wing

Pants in the furrow, by excess of song
Faint, and forespent with bliss. In limpid pool,
Or shallow reach of the quick-glancing stream,
The spotted heifer shuns the midday glare,
Half hid i' the willows pale, or on the bank
With open nostrils quaff the cooling breeze.
There is no life astir, save in the beam,
Where float, like dusty atoms, or the sand
On the seashore, wheeling their short-lived dance,
The myriad insect tribes, born but to die—
Most beautiful and briefest.
Oh! 'tis strange,
And passing sad, that in this human world,
Where all is fleeting, transitory show,
Naught should so fleeting be as what is best,
And dearest, and most lovely, and most loved.
Alas! alas! Is it, indeed, that those
“Whom the Lord loves die young,” thus spared the lapse
Of years which are but sorrows; rescued thus
From trial and temptation, to look down
In perfect bliss on that uncertain state
Which once to them was happiness and love?

Or is it that our world, those left to strew
Its weary paths with gladness, and illume
Its shadows by their inborn light of soul,
Would e'en too happy be, too bright; and so
Our aspirations to the mortal bind
Which should to the immortal and eterne
Rise hopefully, and leave the dust of time?

Enough for us that it is He whose hand
Gives to the painted insect but one day
Of joy and beauty, and an age complete
To the slow, senseless reptile; He it is
Who takes the purest and the sweetest souls

Early away, and leaves the rude and vile
To grow apace and ripen—He it is,
Most merciful and wise! And thence we know
This best and wisest; though to mortal eyes
Strange, and intolerable to endure.
Bright insects, ye have led me from my theme
Devious, and like a child whom o'er the mead
Your downy wings invite to dubious chase
Illusive; but small things will thrill the chain
Of memory, which links all time, and binds
All things that are, or have been, or shall be,
Into one present.
When the heart is bruised,
Even blissful things and gay their nature change,
Making its sadness sadder yet: the boon,
Long wished and long denied, which, had it fallen
Yestreen, had been esteemed a gift from God,
To-day comes as a grief, and adds new pain
To that needs no addition.
Thus it is
That I have wandered—
Yet it still is noon
In the fair landscape. The swinked husbandman
Sits in the cool blue shadow of the oak,
His garments spread beside him, and the tools
That win his scanty bread dismissed awhile,
Yet soon to be resumed. A little hand
Rests on his knee, a delicate, small voice
Speaks music to his weary ear: his girl,
Bareheaded, in the sunshine, with bare feet,
Yet fair and graceful as a prince's child,
Has brought across the fields his noonday meal,
And o'er the stile, and by the deep woodside,
Nor stopped to gather kingcups in the mead,
Or gay marsh-marigolds beside the brook;
Nor, when her little sister clapped her hands,

And laughed, till the old trees sent back her glee
In mellow trebles, to see Carlo chase
The light-winged swallows o'er the new-mown hay,
Tarried to share her glee; but hastened on,
Meek type of sweetest womanhood, to soothe
The toil of others, careless of her own,
Gentle and uncomplaining, and most glad
To mark a smile steal o'er the face she loves,
Lit by her coming.
Happy, happy they,
Though poor, and weak, and lowly in estate,
And haply scorned by the proud, who have on whom
To lean in sorrow, and with whom in joy
To feel joy doubled by the radiant smile
That thanks the giver of 't.
And wretched he
Who, blest albeit with riches, honor, youth,
Vigor of bone, and intellect sublime,
Would barter—oh how freely!—youth, and wealth,
Glory, and strength, and genius—and the last
Perchance most willingly, as adding most
To that he suffers—for one little hour
Of who no longer is; although she live
In bliss forever, by no sense of his
Perceived or apprehended, and perhaps—
Most saddest thought of all—no more to be,
Or known, or loved, beyond the pitiless tomb.

THE INDEPENDENT FARMER.

How pleasant it seems to live on a farm,
Where Nature's so gaudily dressed,
And sit 'neath the shade of the old locust-tree
As the sun is just sinking to rest.
But not half so pleasant to hoe in the field,
Where the witch-grass is six inches high,
With the hot, scorching sun pouring down on your back—
Seems each moment as though he would die.

How pleasant to sit in the cool porch door,
While you gaze, half reclined at your ease,
Half asleep, o'er your beautiful field of grass,
As it sways to and fro in the breeze;
But not quite so pleasant to start with your scythe,
Ere the morning sun smiles o'er the land,
And work till your clothes are completely wet through,
And blisters cover your hands.

In keeping a dairy there's surely delight;
And it speaks of contentment and plenty
To see a large stable well filled with choice cows,
Say numbering fifteen to twenty:
And yet it seems hard, when you've worked from the dawn
Till the sun disappears from your sight,
To think of the cows you have yet got to milk
Before you retire for the night.

But the task fairly o'er, you cheer up once more,
And joyfully seek your repose,
To dream of the cream-pots with luxury filled,
And milk-pans in numberless rows;
But your sweet dream is broken when early next day
You're politely requested to churn,
And for three weary hours, with strength ebbing fast,
The victim despondingly turns.

But no one disputes that the farmer is blessed
With true independence and labor,
Whose food don't depend on the whims of mankind,
Like that of his mercantile neighbor.
For God in His mercy looks down from above,
And patiently gives him his bread.
Provided he works eighteen hours every day,
And devotes only six to his bed.

THE FISHER-BOY.

Back to my days of boyhood! Fresh and fair
Again they spring before my age-dimmed eyes,
With skies of blue, bright earth and balmy air,
All choral with heaven's sweetest melodies.
My heart is young again! It leaps to life,
As leaped the Genoese to gain the shore
Of his new world; and memories thick and rife
With pleasure float before me: yet once more
I clasp them in my senses' eager fold,
And dream this heart can never all grow old.

The very sense of being was a joy,
Deep thrilling in its own self-made delight;
The visible world a fair and painted toy,
Played with all day and dreamed about all night;
The fresh young world within the breast, a scene
Peopled with beauty, thronged with shapes of grace,
With hopes all sunshine, and with memories green,
That bloomed within their pleasant dwelling-place.
No serpent doubt, no fear, nor carking care;
The very Eden of the heart was there.

Then would I roam alone the whole day long,
Companioned by some gay fantastic dream,
Listening the free bird's wild melodious song
In the deep woods; or by the sunny stream,
In innocent excitement watch the quill
Dimpling the surface of the waters clear
At eager bite of sunfish, perch, or brill,
Till the broad sun the mountain tops did near:

For naught of guilt of gloom had then the power
With shadowy clouds to dim one happy hour.

And thou, fair child, who sit'st, as I of yore,
In those sweet days that never must return,
A thoughtless angler by the silent shore,—
Thou too must feel thy bosom throb and burn
With those fierce visitants that make their nest
In every human heart—love, hate, and woe:
Thou too must gaze, with seared and callous breast,
On all that once seemed beautiful below;
Must pant for bliss, yet panting find it not;
Must live for joy, while grief is still your lot.

OBERON.

Say, hast thou left the faëry realms, that lie
Beyond the famed Hesperides,
Those gardens of the southern seas,
Fanned ever by the spice-wind's gentle sigh,
Spirit of beauty? Or with rapid flight
Parting the dusky pall of night,
Hast flitted hither from the velvet green,
By the chaste moonlight seen,
Of some fair English lawn, or forest glade,
Checkered with dewy light and mellow shade?
Hast thou forsworn, deserted quite,
The frolic wild and mirthful dance,
Circling with giddy round the midnight lawn,
Till the broad peep of dawn;
The gorgeous banquets on the yellow shore;
The goblets brimmed with May-dew,—never more
To greet Titania's eyes of light
With loving smiles and bright enamoured glance?
That thou hast chosen for thy dwelling rare,
Thou swift intelligence, this infant fair.
Oh, worthy choice and wise!
Oh, shrine most fitting for a sprite like thee,
Romantic, wild, and debonair,
And fanciful and free!
The clear soul glancing from the sunny eyes;
The temples of deep thought, that brow within
So massive, broad and high;
The glowing cheek, rich with the pearly dyes
Of morning roses; and the dimpled chin
So eloquent and sly:

Just pride of that enraptured pair,
Who, gazing on his glorious face,
In every speaking feature trace
A brilliant destiny.
Oh! if thou mak'st thy dwelling there,
Blending thy spirit-nature wild
With Christian meekness pure and mild,
And love that ne'er shall die,—
Oh! mayst thou never rue the frolic strange
That prompted this fair change;
But find, in place of fierce and reckless glee,
A quiet joy, serene, and calm, and free;
A happiness, unmoved by storm or strife,
Enduring still through every phase of life,
And shining but more brightly from the gloom
That may not shroud its transit through the tomb
To everlasting bliss and deathless bloom.

MARGARET.

It was wild and winter night, cold the wind was blowing;
Not as yet i' the lonely farm was the red cock crowing;
Only from the reedy fen came the bittern's booming,
Long before the misty morn in the east was glooming:

Long before the misty morn in the east was breaking;
Only on the moorland dun was the hill-fox waking;
Only from the ivied holt sad the owls were hooting;
And the gusty skies along falling-stars were shooting:

Only from the gusty skies falling-stars were gleaming,
Not a light from lordly tower or lowly hut was beaming;
Only o'er the green morass meteors pale were creeping:—
Yet was Margaret awake, all awake and weeping.

Early Margaret was awake, early awake and sighing,
For how could she lie warm asleep, when he lay cold and dying?
There was a terror in her ear, as of a bell slow ringing,
A deep, dull toll, though toll was none, upon the night-wind swinging;

A heavy terror at her heart, strange shapes around her wheeling,
A steed all blood, a saddle bare, a dark rout blindly reeling.
Sad Margaret, she only heard that bell's unearthly tolling;
Pale Margaret, she only saw that red tide round her rolling.

Yet now there came, when lulled the wind, a sound of war-steeds stamping
Adown the hill, along the fen, across the bridge slow tramping;
And now there came, amid the gloom, the flash of torches glancing,
And harness bright, and lance-heads light, and plumes and pennons dancing.

It was wild and winter night, cold the wind was blowing;
Not as yet i' the lonely farm was the red cock crowing;
It was wild and winter night, all but she were sleeping,
When the war-cry broke above them, changed their rest to weeping.

Only from the reedy fen came the bittern's booming,
Long before the misty morn in the east was glooming;
When the sullen cloud of smoke, o'er the roof-tree sailing,
Changed their brief and bootless strife into endless wailing.

Sad Margaret, she only waked when all the rest were sleeping;
Pale Margaret, she only smiled when all the rest were weeping;
True Margaret, she only said, “I care not though ye slay me.”
She only said, “I care not; but near his cold corpse lay me.”

Brave Margaret, she only said, when flashed the broadsword o'er her,
She only said, “I care not,” when her life-blood streamed before her;
She only said, as ebbed her life, “This is the end of sorrow;
For I shall be with him,” she said, “with him and my God, to-morrow.”

SONNETS TO MADELINE.

I never see thee, fairy Madeline,
But that I find some new, endearing grace,
Some beauty playing o'er thine earnest face,
Some gentle loveliness before unseen.
Thus he who plucks from Flora's gay demesne
The bulbul's flower, the softly blushing rose,
Will find each hour its corolla unclose
Some secret sweet its tinted leaves between.
The flower of Love! an emblem just of thee;
For while it charms the still delighted eye,
Admiring thought doth in its odors see
The type of mind throned on thy forehead high:
I'd call thee, sweet one, “Rose,” but that I ween
The sweetest of all names is—Madeline.

Where is the realm by bulwarks stern surrounded,
Adorned with palaces and gardens fair,
With flowers that fling their fragrance on the air,
And by unsleeping hostile nations bounded?
And who the queen that there, enthroned on high,
Smiles at the strain her troubadour has sounded,
And sheds the cheering sunshine of her eye
To warm the love on which her empire's founded?
Those bulwarks firm are Virtue, Honor, Faith;
That palace-splendor Wisdom's varied lore;
Affection's type those flowers of odorous breath;
While Passion's hosts beleague them evermore.
That realm's my heart! and crowned with myrtle green
Upon its throne of roses reigns my Madeline!

Fragrance and freshness fill the balmy air
These silent garden walks and shades around,
And 'mid their cool retreats a lake is found,
Bright flowers reflecting in its mirror clear;
And see—a blushing rose, low bending here,
Its petals bathing in the dimpling tide,
As though it yielded like a trembling bride
To the lake's wooings of its kisses dear!
And thus my soul wooes thee, my Madeline;
Thus its deep thoughts reflect thy vernal charms,
And kneeling thus 'twould woo thee, beauty's queen,
To bend in grace unto my upstretched arms,
And like the kisses of that garden wave,
Thus let my stainless love thy lips' carnation lave.

I dreamed, Italia!—'mid thy ruined fanes
And crumbling columns, where the ivy clung,
I sadly gazed on ancient gods' remains,
By pagans worshipped and by poets sung;
When, lo! the moon a crown of glory flung
Upon an image as divine as fair,
With swelling bust and step as light as air,
Instinct with life, those marble gods among:
It grew in beauty on my ravished sight,
Until the faultless Venus stood revealed;
It grew in beauty, like a young delight,
Till gentle ecstasies my bosom sealed,
And still it grew in beauty—for serene
Upon my wakened sense my Madeline was seen.

TO MELANCHOLY.

Let no rude noise, no idle laughter, stain
This sacred bower's retreat, this silent shade:
Hence, frolic joy; hence, pleasure's gilded train,
That smile in summer's ray, in winter's tempest fade!

Hence, sceptred vanity, profane desires!
Hence fell ambition, with uplifted eye,
That, rising still, to loftier scenes aspires!
Hence purple pride of kings, and mobs' unhallowed cry!

But thou, sweet nymph, who fliest the noise of courts
To seek some lonely grot, some hermit's cell,
Where neither lust nor avarice resort,
Where no tumultuous joys, no martial terrors dwell,—

With me into this solemn grove retire,
And by the slowly trickling stream reclined,
To sympathetic numbers tune the lyre,
And hush the voice of care, and soothe my anguished mind.

Here by this limpid fount and moss-grown cave,
Where boughs impending cast a checkered shade,
And sedge-crowned nymphs their sea-green tresses wave,
Gliding with timid foot along the watery glade;

Here, where no mortal footsteps e'er pollute
The sacred stillness of this hallowed bower;
Here, where the idle voice of mirth is mute,
And every gentle gale obeys thy secret power,—

At eve, retiring from the restless crowd,
Thou lay'st thy head upon the mossy couch,
And all around diffused, a magic cloud
Protects thy holy form from Pleasure's wanton touch.

And near thy sister Meditation lies,
Deep wrapt in thought, with look depressed on ground;
And ever and anon she lifts her eyes,
And with mysterious glance in silence rolls them round.

Beneath this grot, which tumults ne'er pollute,
With thee the pensive muses oft retire,
And softly sound the sweetly breathing flute,
Or to pathetic strains attune the golden lyre.

Not to such numbers as the Teian bard
Erst by lascivious Pleasure's impulse sung,
Whilst Cupids breathed out every honeyed word,
And perched on every string the wanton chorus hung,

But notes which Zephyr wafteth through the trees—
Melodious strains of tender harmony,
That hush each rising gale, each stirring breeze,
And lull the soul with sounds of gentlest sympathy.

Drawn by thy voice the Naiads seek thy bower,
And slowly o'er the glassy surface glide:
Thy influence, lovely nymph, thy sacred power,
Can soothe the wretch's woe, and bend the tyrant's pride.

From me the sweet delusive siren Mirth,
And revelling Comus' jovial train, are flown;
Gay Pleasure sternly frowned upon my birth,
But thou with placid smile didst mark me for thine own.

Not with the pangs that rend the tortured heart,
Not with the weight of unrelenting grief,
Of wild despair, the fury's venomed dart,
When every hope is gone, and naught can bring relief.

Thou, heavenly maid, with majesty serene,
With solemn sweetness and with pensive eye,
Immersed in peaceful thought art ever seen,
And now steals forth a tear, and now a tender sigh.

Here by thy altar's flame, thy hallowed shrine,
My soul a faithful votary shall lie;
Here let me oft with placid brow recline,
And by thy influence live, and by thy influence die.

TO ESPERANZA.

Ay, thou art pure, and beautiful, and young,
With thy dark tresses, and thy neck of snow
As limner e'er portrayed, or minstrel sung:
No shadow yet hath stained that lustrous brow,
Nor blighting grief its haggard dimness flung
O'er those transparent eyes, in which the light—
The beaming radiance of a soul unwrung—
Floats like the moon mirror'd on waters bright,
A peaceful glory, incorrupt by woe,
And nearest heaven of aught that shines below;

For happiness to thee hath been a dower
Changeless and constant. Passion ne'er came nigh,
To scorch, like summer noon, the delicate flower,
Bidding its tender charms consume and die;
Nor stern remorse, the coldest, keenest power
That shakes frail reason on its tottering throne,
Around thee spread the clouds that still must lower
When the wild storm which raised them far hath flown;
Nor slighted love, nor kindness unreturned,
Chilled the clear flame that in thy bosom burned.

Sweet as home-music to the exile's ear
Are thine untutored harmonies of voice;
And thy light laugh, with thrilling accents dear,
Compels its every hearer to rejoice.
Thy summer-seeming friends, untried by fear,
Or doubt, or danger—faithful all, and free;
Thy world, one paradise of deathless cheer,
Thy life, one voyage o'er a tranquil sea,
Without or rock to break its azure sheen,
Or treacherous shoal the sunny deeps between.

Young hearts have bounded wild when thou wert by,
And eloquent tongues have breathed their incense near,
Half aspiration proud, half timid sigh.
And thou hast lent a fondly credulous ear
To creatures of a world—itself a lie!—
Creatures that smile and truckle, fawn and kneel,
Giving their breath of life to swell the sail
That asks no aid, but prompt to turn the wheel,
Veer but one point of fortune's changeful gale,
In impotent revenge, and paltry hate,
That they were less than thee, their queen of late.

Oh! wouldst thou never learn to rue thy lot,
To loathe the very race of which thou art,
Scorning it so that thou canst hate it not;
Oh! wouldst thou never know thy gentle heart,
Undone, deserted, trampled, and forgot,—
Then soothe not, love not, list not, nor believe;
Hope not on earth to find one holy spot
Where foes will spare, and friends will not deceive.
Better untrusting, unbetrayed, to die,
Than look for truth, love, honor, save on high.

INNOCENZA.

Thou art not a being of upper air,
Though thy form be as slender, thy beauty as rare;
Nor a daughter of the bounding sea,
Though thy smile be as sunny, thy bosom as free.

Thou art not the Dryad's woodland child,
Though the glance of thine eye be as timidly wild.
Nor nymph on the margin of haunted rill,
Nor fairy that circles the moonlit hill.

Spirits are these, but of humbler birth
Than the heavenly soul of a child of earth:
Spirits are these that must fade and die,
But a spirit art thou of eternity.

For a Christian mother o'er thee did raise
A prayer of hope, and a hymn of praise,
That thou might'st pass, when life be spent,
Pure to thy Maker, and innocent.

Sadly she soothed thy plaintive wail,
Till the rosy hues of her cheek grew pale,
Wearily watching thine infant bed,
While sleep from her heavy eyelids fled.

And fondly she looked, that a brighter day
Those sorrowful hours should well repay—
A day of long and brilliant years,
Full of promise, and free from tears.

And she trembles now with a fearful delight,
As she gazes on thee, thou blossom bright;
Oh, may no breath of sin or slight
Steal o'er thy flowerets, to banish their light!

The ills that must be to all our race,
Mayest thou bear with patience and humble grace;
Brighter, and better, and happier still,
Till thy years shall have passed the brow of the hill!

Then, when thy path shall be downward turned,
And heaven desired, yet earth not spurned,
To thy long home pass, in calm content,
Pure as thou now art, and innocent.

VIRGINIA.

So arch a smile as Ariadne wore,
To greet her wine-god on the desert shore;
So sly a sparkle in that liquid eye,
As Dian cast to rapt Endymion's sigh.

Wild as the wood-nymph of a minstrel's dream,
Shy as the Naiad by her crystal stream,
Pure as the priestess in Apollo's grove,
Yet warm as Danaë half won by Jove.

Fair form, young loveliness, and noble race,
All woman gentleness and woman grace,
Heaven hath no treasured benefit in store,
For those it favors most, thy love before.

Unsunned by passion, innocently bland,
Fresh as the forests of thy virgin land,
Tender, and delicate, and warm, and free—
Oh, may my lot be cast with such as thee!

THE MAGNOLIA.—I.

Not in the autumn pale and cold,
When flowers of frailer beauty fade,
When sombre hues the woods unfold,
And violets droop beneath their shade.

Sweet flower, thou bloom'st in lonely grace;
But when at radiant summer's call
Her bright one woo the wind's embrace,
Thou shin'st the loveliest of them all.

The wild rose rears its glowing head
Beside thee, emulous, but in vain;
Soft leaves and buds their odors shed,
But thou art sweetest of the train.

No rival 'neath the summer heaven,
Majestic flower, thine empire shares;
And thus the bard to thee hath given
A deeper meaning far than theirs.

This volume, too, amid the throng
That shine with evanescent grace
In the gay garb of smile and song,
Would claim, like thee, the brightest place;

Yet would not droop, like thee, away,
When days of light grow dark and chill;
But, like the truth thy leaves display,
Be fragrant and unfading still.

THE MAGNOLIA.—II.

Ours is no native bud, nor cultured gem,
Nor in the forest glade,
Brief offspring of some frail deciduous stem,
Was ever meant to fade;

Nor waits the genial call of peeping morn
To ope its modest eye;
Nursed not by zephyr, nor of summer born,
To bourgeon and to die.

It shall not perish by the nipping cold
When skies are drear and dun;
Nor tremble at the tempest's summons bold,
Nor droop i' the noonday sun.

Only it dreads the blight of bitter tongue,
And critic's censure rude—
Forever prompt, since Theban Pindar sung,
To blast the bright and good.

Oh guard it, ye who do the muse revere,
This fragrant thing and frail;
Nor suffer it unwept to wither here,
Pinched by cold envy's gale.

So, in young dalliance with the balmy May,
When early flowerets bloom,
Fairest and first its leaflets shall display
Their rich and rare perfume.

So, in the glare of August's fiercest glow,
When every grove is hush,
It still shall boast its cup of stainless snow
Without or blame or blush;

And when December storms are raving shrill,
Its deathless prime shall wave,
Though all beside are marred by frost-wind's chill,
O'er nature's annual grave;

So shall it live, nor ever fear to die,
Spite wind and winter's rages,
Nearer each season to its parent sky,
A phœnix flower of ages.

THE MOTHER'S JEWELS.

“These are my gems,” the Roman mother cried,
Her bright lip wreathed in smiles of sunny pride;
“These are my gems,” as o'er each infant head
Superbly fond her high-born hands she spread:
This, with dark eyes, and hyacinthine flow
Of raven tresses down a neck of snow;
That, golden-haired, with orbs whose azure hue
Had dimmed the Indian sapphire's deathless blue.
“These are my gems! bring ye the rarest stone
That ever flashed from Eastern tyrant's throne;
Bring amber, such as those sad sisters gave,
Vain bribes to still the rash, relentless wave,
Bring diamonds such as that false matron wore,
Bought by their sheen to break the faith she swore,
Who lured to death foredoomed her prophet lord—
To death more certain than the Theban sword;
Bring gauds, like those which caught Tarpeia's eye,
Fated beneath her treason's price to die,—
And I will match them—yea, their worth outvie
With that nor art can frame, nor treasure buy,
Nor force subdue, nor dungeon walls control,—
Each precious gem a freeborn Roman soul!
Know ye not how, when quaked the solid earth,
And shook the seven hills, as at Titan's birth;
When the proud forum yawned—a gulf so wide,
Rome's navy in its space secure might ride;
When pale-eyed prophets did the fate declare
That dread abyss should yawn forever there,
Till Rome's best jewel, darkly tombed within,
The gods should soothe, and expiate the sin,—

Know ye not how their robes of Syrian hue
To the sad king the trembling matrons threw?
What flower-crowned captives bled the abyss to close?
What Syrian perfumes from the brink arose?
What sculptured vases of barbaric gold,
What trophied treasures, through its void were rolled?
What sun-bright gems—onyx, and agate rare,
And deathless adamant—were scattered there?
But not in gold, nor gems, nor Tyrian dye,
Trophies, nor slaves, did Rome's best treasure lie.
His limbs superb in war's triumphant guise,
His soul's high valor flashing from his eyes,
His courser chafing, impotently bold,
Against the hand that well his fire controlled,
Forth—forth he rode, in native worth sublime,
Unstained by fetters, ignorant of crime!
Forth—forth he rode, to play the martyr's part—
Rome's richest jewel—a right Roman heart!
‘So may the gods avert my country's doom,
I rush in triumph to my living tomb!
Rome hath no jewel worthier earth's embrace
Than one free warrior of her fearless race.
Fearless I come and free! Accept the gift,
Dark Hades!’ Leaped the youth, and closed the rift,
And rolled the cloudless thunder—Jove's assent
That Rome's best jewel to the abyss was sent,
These are my gems! Each for his country's weal
Devote to raging fire, or rending steel,
So long to live, so soon to die, as she—
She only—shall determine and decree!
Blest that I am to call such jewels mine,
All else to fate contented I resign.
Contented if they mount the curule chair,
Its best adornment: I shall view them there:
Contented if they fill a timeless grave;
Their wounds, their wounds of honor, I shall lave!

Secure in each event, Cornelia's race
Shall live with glory, die without disgrace:
Secure that neither, even in hopeless strife,
Shall turn upon his heel to save his life;
Secure that neither, heaven itself to buy,
A foe shall flatter or a friend deny.
These are my gems! Give ye your country such.
So shall ye put your vauntings to the touch;
Or, yielding me the palm, your boast disown:
Your diamonds may not match what I have shown!”

THE OATH OF HANNIBAL.

“Dixitque tandem perfidus Hannibal:
‘Cervi luporum præda rapacium,
Sectamur ultro, quos opimus
Fallere et effugere est triumphus.’”—
Hor., Lib. IV. Ode 4.

“Eternal hate!” in manhood's accents stern—
“Eternal hate to Rome!” the father vowed,
While many a marble god and sculptured urn
In deep triumphant echoes murmured loud,
“Eternal hate to Rome!” The sunbeam flowed
In liquid light upon the infant brow
Of Hannibal—'twas Hannibal that vowed,
All passionless and pure as Alpine snow,
At that red shrine. Let ages mark the lisper's vow.

“Eternal hate!” with dove-like features mild,
And childish murmurs musically low,
The unconscious hero swore; and swearing, smiled
On the drawn falchion, and the infernal glow
Of altars, smoking to man's deadliest foe,
The old Avenger!—earth and air and sea
Shuddered; and, answering from their cave below,
Hell's myriad voices yelled in fiendish glee,
Presaging to their slaves the curse of victory.

Eternal hate to Rome! 'Tis yours to tell,
Ye towering pyramids of living stone—
Ye thrones of winter—ye, whose monarchs dwell
In the frore avalanche, the torrent's moan,
Cold, deathless, inaccessible, alone!—

'Tis yours to tell, ye mountain walls, that stand
Girding Italia with a frozen zone,—
But stood in vain what time the Punic brand
Cleft your stern rocks as torrents cleave the sand.

By Sanguinetto's brook and Thrasymene,
By Threbia's banks and Cannæ's reeking plain,
By hostile camps from the Tarpeian seen,
By Roman legions—Roman eagles ta'en,
By thrice three thousand rings of knighthood slain,
Well was that vow fulfilled—Eternal hate!
Hate!—till nor name nor stone on stone remain
To tell of Roman glory; till her fate
Baser may be than bright of yore her loftiest state.

Eternal hate to Rome!—till battle's tide
Reluctant ebbed; till Nero, glorious name—
Victorious Nero—he whose free-born pride
Is all forgotten in the damning fame,
The black eternity, that brands, like flame,
His diademed successor—from the crown
Of the fair Apennine, redeemed the shame
Of Latin arms with Hasdrubal's renown,
Trampling the latest stay, last hope, of Carthage down.

Sadly they vanished from his lingering view,
The sun-bright shores of Italy; and tears
Streamed hot and heavy, as those mountains blue
Sunk slowly, one by one—his hopes, his fears,
His fortunes buried there! The toil of years,
The struggle, and the triumph, and the gore,
Gone to the winds! The last hill disappears—
The wild and shoreless sea is stretched before—
What passion racks him now? Hate! Hate for evermore!

Eternal hate! When Rome's unconquered pinion
Shook its red horror o'er his Libyan strand,
When striving, not as erst, for high dominion,
Or blood-bought conquest of a foreign land,
The swarthy legions of his parent sand
He led—not now to glory. When no more
Victorious fortune plumed her on his brand,
While Rome hung balanced in the battle's roar,
But Carthage' self was staked—was lost on Zama.

When all save life—friends, country, power, were flown;
When, reft of hope, his heart yet scorned to ache;
When the world's outcast, agèd and alone,
Whom toil, war, famine, woe, had failed to break;
Whom hostile force, or kindred guile to shake—
Rome's terror still—in ghastly pride he sate,
Till the Bithynian tyrant deigned awake,
A mighty suppliant at his barbarous gate;—
Eternal hate to Rome, 'twas still—eternal hate!

When the soul hovered on its quivering wing,
As loth to fly, yet impotent to stay;
When the last comfort of the treasured ring—
The sole Avenger of dark Cannæ's day—
Was quaffed; when hope had naught for which to pray,
When writhing brow confessed, and grinding teeth,
The pangs which rend the spirit from the clay;
Hate parted not, but with the parting breath—
Hate, as in life supreme, invincible in death.

CLEOPATRA.

“Deliberatâ morte ferocior
Sævis Liburnis scilicet invidens
Privata deduci superbo,
Non humilis mulier, triumpho.”
Horace, Lib. I. Ode 37

Away! away! I would not live,
Proud arbiter of life and death,
Although the proffered boon of breath
Which fain thou wouldst, but canst not, give,
Were Immortality.
Though all that poets love to dream
Of bright and beautiful were blent
To flow in one delicious stream,
Till time itself were spent;
Though glories such as never met
In mortal monarch's coronet
Were poured in one unclouded blaze
On Cleopatra's deathless days,—
I would not bear the wretched strife,
The feverish agony of life,
The little aims, the ends yet less,
The hopes bud-blighted ere they bloom,
The joys that end in bitterness,
The race that rests but in the tomb:—
These, these, not death, are misery.
Nay, tell not me of pomp or pleasure,
Of empire or renown or treasure,
Of friendship's faith or love's devotion,
Things treacherous as the wind-rocked ocean,—
For I have proved them all.

Away! If there be aught to bless
In rapture's goblet, I have drained
That draught—misnamed of happiness—
Till not a lurking drop remained
Of honey-mantled gall.
Oh! who would live that once hath seen
The Lamia Pleasure's mask removed;
That once hath learned how false the sheen
Of all he erst so madly loved?
And I have seen, have learned, the whole;
Till, for the passions fierce and wild
That, torrent-like, defied control,
A wretched apathy of soul,
Exhausted rapture's gloomy child,
Hath crept into my very blood,
Chilling the tides that wont to flow
Like lava in their scorching flood—
An apathy more dull than care,
More sad than pain, more still than woe—
Twin-sister to despair.
And think'st thou I would stoop to live
On mercy such as Rome might give—
Or what is Rome, and what am I,
That I should bend a servile knee,
The free-born daughter of the free,
To her whose victor lords have thrown
Their sceptre-swords before my throne,
And lost their empires at my frown?
Or deemest thou, impotent and base,
That I, of eldest earthly race,
Will thread in slow procession pace
Rome's proud triumphal way—
A crownless queen, a shameless slave,
Beside thy golden chariot's wave,
With fettered hands supine to crave

Ple beian pity, Roman ruth,
And with unroyal tears, forsooth,
“To make a Roman holiday?”
An emperor thou! and I—no more!
My foot is on life's latest shore.
Away! even now I die.
I feel it coursing through my veins,
The peace that soon shall still my pains,
And calm my ceaseless woe.
Away, proud chief! I would not yield
My empire for the conquered world
O'er which thine eagle wing is furled—
My empire in the grave.
Hades shall rise my steps to greet,
Ancestral kings my advent meet,—
Sesostris, of the man-drawn car,
And Rhamses, thunderbolt of war,
Amenophis, of giant frame,
And Tathrak, of immortal name.
The mighty Ptolemies shall rise
With greeting in their glorious eyes,
And cry from lips no longer dumb,
“Hail, sister queen, for thou hast come
Right royally thy feres among;
Our thousand thrones have tarried long,
Till thou shouldst mount thine own.
Last, loveliest, frailest of our line,
By this immortal death of thine
Thou hast outdared all daring—thou
Art first among us. Lo! we bow—
We kneel—before thee. Sister queen,
The end of fortune here is seen:
Ascend thy fated throne.”
And now my woman-heart is steeled;
Call forth the bravest of the brave,
Your reapers of the crimson field,

To whom the battle-cry is breath,
To look upon a woman's death.
I have outlived my love, my power,
My country's freedom, people's name,
My flush of youth, my beauty's flower,
But not, oh! not my thirst of fame.
The Pyramids before me lie,
Piercing the deep Egyptian sky,
Memorials of the nameless dead,
To build whose glory thousands bled;
And I, the latest of their race,
A captive in their dwelling-place,
Die, yet survive them all.
I tell thee, when no trophies shine
Upon the proud Capitoline,
When Julius' fame is all forgot,
Even where his honored relics rot,
Ages shall sing my fall.
Proud Roman, thou hast won. But I,
More gladly than thou winnest, die.
Away! When crowns were on my brow,
And nations did my rising greet,
And Cæsar grovelled at my feet,
I lived not—never lived till now.

JOAN OF ARC.

“This admirable heroine, to whom the more generous superstition of the ancients would have erected altars, was, on the pretence of heresy and magic, delivered over alive to the flames, and expiated by that dreadful punishment the signal services which she had rendered to her prince and to her native country.”

—Hume, chap. XX.

The moon had set behind the tufted hill;
The silent stars, though waning, glimmered still;
The drowsy woods were steeped in voiceless rest;
Dead stillness brooded o'er the water's breast;
The cloudless firmament was spread on high,
Dark but transparent, like the liquid eye
Of Andalusian maid in orange grove,
Dissolved in rapture at the tale of love;
Nor voice of man, nor cry of passing bird,
Nor ban-dog's bay from cot or keep was heard;
The wolves were hushed in tangled coverts deep,
The very owls had wailed themselves to sleep:
But fresher yet the breeze came murmuring by,
And colder breathed the air as morn drew nigh.
The paly streaks, that told of coming day,
Dappled the horizon's verge with feeble ray;
Yet one who paused on yonder hillock's brow,
Above the blooming plain which smiled below,
Might linger there, nor dream a city's pride
Was slumbering by that sluggish river's side;
Though close beneath, in darkest garb arrayed,
Blent with the forest's gloom, the mountain's shade,
A gorgeous town lay stretched: with streets sublime,
Turret, and dome, and spires of olden time,

Teeming with life and wealth, war's stern array,
The cares of commerce, and the church's sway.
No crash of wheels, nor hum of crowds was there,
Nor neigh of warlike steeds, nor torches' glare;
All whelmed alike in night's oblivious pall:
The drowsy watchers nodded on the wall;
The haughty conqueror in his trophied bed;
The slave in chains, the serf in lowly shed.

But one was there, whose eyes nor night could close,
Nor opiate draughts could lull to calm repose.
In bloom of beauty, in youth's earliest flower,
Condemned to brave the inevitable hour;
To quit the verdant earth, the genial sun,
Ere half her course of womanhood was run;
Unbent by years, without one silver hair
In her bright tresses; ignorant of care,
Of pain, or sorrow; while the world was new,
While life was beautiful, and friends seemed true,
Doomed to the worst extremity of pain,
Which flesh can writhe beneath, and not sustain;
To die in fire, unhouselled and unshriven,
Scorned by her murderers, and shut out from heaven,—
The maid of Orleans. She whose sacred brand
Had wrought deliverance to her native land;
Had slacked the bowstring in the archer's blood,
And tamed the Island Leopard's furious mood;
She who had crowned a monarch, who had raised
A nation from the dust; whose name was praised
In court and cottage, from the snowy chain
Of Alpine Jura to the western main,—
Her country's Guardian,—fettered and alone
In patient helplessness she sat: no groan
Passed from her ashy lips; her mind's control
O'erpowered the whirlwind passion of her soul.

Calm had she bent the knee, and humbly prayed
From Him who gives to all who seek His aid.
Humbly she knelt, and self-absolved she rose;
Tried in success, and purified by woes,
She felt her glowing spirit mount the skies
To meet the witness of “those perfect eyes”
Which endless time nor boundless space can blind,
Secure in her Redeemer, and resigned
To bear all torments, in that narrow road
Which leads, through death, to glory's pure abode.

She turned to take a long, a last, farewell
Of the dear country she had served so well,—
Of the dark skies, and each peculiar star
Whose melancholy glance she had loved afar
In her own vale, while France as yet was free.
She saw the Seine rush proudly to the sea;
She saw the foliage in the breezes wave;
The flowery turf, that might not yield a grave
To its heroic daughter: but her mind
Marked not the hurrying flood, nor heard the wind.
Far, far away, her fancy's eyes did roam
To the known landscape and the cottage home—
The willows bending o'er the argent rill,
The rustic shrine, and the familiar hill;
The lawns where oft her pastured flocks would stray;
The village green, where still on festive day
She led with artless grace the rural dance,
All hearts subduing with untutored glance;
The cheerful hearth, the calm though humble bed,
The dreamless sleep which hovered round her head;
The days of innocence, the nights of peace.
Alas, that hours like these should ever cease!

Forth rushed the burning tears,—not one by one,
But bursting out as mountain streamlets run,—
Her mother's face benign, her father's smile,
Palpably gleaming on her heart the while,

Till in that gush of soul she well might deem
The dead restored by no uncertain dream.
Yet soon that passion passed—a sudden start
Called back the crimson current from her heart,
And flushed her cheek with indignation's tide.
“Shall I, the maid of Arc, shall I,” she cried,
“Weep like a village damsel for some toy
Of childish love?—I, who have known the joy
Of triumph, and high glory; who am styled
My country's saviour—France's noblest child?”

She ceased. For as she spoke, with plaintive swell
Answering her words of pride, a ponderous bell
Rang out its deadly summons. Well she knew
The sound of terror; and the transient hue
Which shamed but now the tints of breaking morn
Had vanished from her brow: yet still upborne
By calm submission, and the holy zeal
Which erst had nerved her arm to point the steel,
She stood unblenching. To the place of shame—
Branded forever with the virgin's name—
They led her forth in the resistless might
Of maiden virtue,—girt, as to the fight,
In panoply of mail,—her long dark hair,
Unbraided, and her features firm as fair,
Stern Bedford gazed upon her dauntless mien
With half-repentant wonder. He had seen,
Unmoved and fierce, all bursts of female fear,
Had scorned the sigh, and revelled in the tear;
But the wild courage of that heavenly face
Half moved his iron heart to deeds of grace.
The free-born archers of the ocean isle
Reluctant marched along, no vengeful smile
Mantling their rugged brows: that band had rued
The victim's valor in their dearest blood;

Yet not for that would consign to flame
A glorious spirit and a woman's frame.

The goal was gained; and ye do still forbear
To speak, ye thunders! Where, O tempests! where
Are your tornadoes, that ye do not burst,
Whelming with heavenly streams the flame accurst?
They bound her to the stake, and tore away
The arms she bore in many a glorious day;
Yet still she trembled not. They touched the pyre,
And the red torrent of devouring fire,
Broad as a chieftain's banner, streamed on high,
E'en to the abhorrent skies. Yet not a cry
From out the volumed conflagration broke;
Nor sound was heard, save when the eddying smoke
Roared from its crackling canopy. A sob
Heaved the assembled concourse—a wild throb
Of anguish and remorse. A secret dread
Sank on the bravest heart, and stunned the firmest head.

Fools! did they deem that flames could check thy course,
Immortal Freedom,—or that human force
Could cope with the Eternal? That pure blood
Tainted each gale and crimsoned every flood,
Through Gaul's wide confines, till her sons arose
An overwhelming landstorm on their foes,
And piled, with hands unbound, a deathless shrine,
And kindled on their hearths a spark divine,
Unquenched for ages, whose immortal ray
Still brightens more and more to perfect day.

MARGARET OF ANJOU.

A LEGEND FROM THE WARS OF THE ROSES.

The strife had ceased: on Hexham's charnel plain,
Fattening the thirsty soil with blood for rain,
Peasant and prince—Earth's vain distinction past—
Slept their cold sleep, the soundest, and the last.
A thousand fiery hearts, that ne'er again
Shall leap in rapture at the trumpet's strain;
A thousand eyes, that never more shall beam
With mild affection, nor with fury gleam;
A thousand hands, that never more shall grasp
The mortal sword, nor flutter in the clasp
Of fairy palms, when passion's sweeping tide
Hath whelmed the barriers of controlling pride;
A thousand tongues, that never more shall swell
The earthquake clamor of the battle's yell,
Nor breathe sweet music to the harmonious wire,
Nor win soft fantasies with sighs of fire,
Chill—glassy—nerveless—silent—as the clay
Whence sprang their forms, which grows with their decay.
The broad May moon her tranquil glory shed
On friend and foe—the dying and the dead;
The glittering casque upon the pallid brow
Flouting the ghastly smile that grinned below.
The gorgeous stripling, with his locks of light
All stained and dripping in the dews of night;
The hoary grandsire, with his thin gray hair
Plucked from his front to deck the raven's lair,

Rider and steed, their course of glory run;
The loyal father and the rebel son;
York's snowy rose beside the rival flower,—
All blended there in death's impartial hour!

The shaft of Lancaster was shot—his brand
Forever broken! To a firmer hand
His kingdom's majesty had passed; and he,
A houseless wanderer on the barren lea,
Dethroned, deserted, desolate, alone,
Without one hand, one heart, to call his own,
Desperate of human hope, deplored the fate
That cursed him with that misery—to be great!

Northumbria's woodlands wide are robed in mist;
The last faint gleam of waning day hath kissed
Old Cheviot's heathery sides, and forehead bare
Of living granite; while the evening air,
Though chill and shivering, lacks the breezy power
To shake the dew-drops from each forest flower,
That droops, surcharged with tears, its modest head,
Like some pale girl whose first fond dreams are fled.
White curled the vapor from the river's breast;
The pearly boughs, by watery weight oppressed,
Distilled their showers condensed, with heavy sound
The big drops plashing on the steamy ground.
At times with booming knell the bittern's note
Rose from the marsh—wild as the tones that float
On the still midnight, ominous of death
When Erin's noblest gasp their failing breath,
And shuddering vassals mark, in hopeless gloom,
The Spirit wailing for the mortal's doom;
At times, in fiercer strains, the wild-cat's yell
Awoke the echoes of the mountain dell:
But voice of man was none, nor cheery light
Gilding the dark unlovely face of night;
Nor shepherd's beacon on the distant hill,
Nor huntsman's fire beside the tinkling rill,

Told aught of human aid—of refuge nigh,
From the harsh peltings of the inclement sky.
Yet there,—even there!—in solitude and woe,
With streaming locks, with “faltering steps and slow,”
Her royal robes by chilling tempests drenched,
Bent her proud form—her spirit still unquenched,
Margaret of Anjou—with that princely boy,
Sole source to her of love, and fear, and joy,
Through the dread wilderness toiled feebly on,
But knew no terror, e'en when hope was gone.
That morn had seen her, with her gallant train,
Trampling in fearless pomp the fated plain,
Elate in coming triumph, and secure
Of all her friends should win, her foes endure;
Noon came; and lo! the invincible array
Dispersed—hewn down—cold as their kindred clay!
Night found her, shivering, with her infant child,
Benumbed and famished on the houseless wild,
Crowning with this despite—the worst and last—
A hopeless future and a hapless past!

From the red sway of York's unsparing sword
Escaped—escaped from the relentless horde
Of outlawed ruffians,—far from mortal ken
She fled for safety to the savage den;
Safer midst ravening wolves and starless night,
Than girt with thousands in day's garish light.
Yet on that pallid cheek no selfish dread
Paled the warm flush nor shook the stately head;
Nor recked she that her limbs were chilled and torn
By the keen night air and the rending thorn;
Nor that the traitor's guile, the usurper's doom,
Might hurl her headlong to a felon's tomb:
Fame, power, and pleasure, reft by fortune's frown,
A royal husband and a queenly crown,
She heeded not, so he might stem the flood
Of stern misfortune—he for whom her blood

Was turned to bitterest gall, for whom her heart
Had felt all womanish emotions part,
Till she had donned stern manhood's iron guise,
And banished mercy fled her burning eyes.
Yet was she gentle once—while young and fair
She breathed enraptured the enchanting air
Of her own Anjou; while the tints of youth,
Undimmed as yet by graver hues of truth,
And sad experience, lent their glorious tone
To earth and heaven, the cottage and the throne
While every soul seemed warm, and pure and high,
While faith and friendship beamed from every eye,
Till the young pilgrim through this vale of woe
Saw in the skies above, the world below,
One boundless paradise of hope and joy,
With naught to temper this, or that to cloy.
But fast and fatal fell the shafts of fate,
And nature yielded to affliction's weight,
Till the fair damsel of that southern land
Could wield with murderous grasp the fatal brand;
All—all the thousand lovely traits that graced
Her glorious prime, evanished or debased,
Save one alone, which o'er that wreck of soul
Soared proudly heavenward, and defied control.
Ye who have felt the pangs which mothers know,
And loved more deeply as more deep the woe;
Ye who have known what 'tis to watch the smiles,
The first faint accents, and the endearing wiles,
Of your new infant,—was it not the glow
Of MOTHER'S LOVE, which ebbed not when the flow
Of stormy passions and engrossing care
Had whelmed the mind in guilt and dark despair?

And now, when all was o'er, she clasped him close
To her lorn breast, and soothed his childish woes:
She spoke of happier days, and joys to come,
His noble father, and his cheerful home;

By soft endearments whiled the weary hours,
Till paly dawn o'ergilt the forest bowers.
Sudden she paused! An armèd tread, a cry
Rose from the copse! She turned—she sprang to fly,
When, bursting from the tangled thicket's shade,
With eye of gloom, red hand, and brandished blade,
The woodland rover bounded! Fixed she stood
As some tall marble; but the boiling blood
Rushed to her brow—her cheek! Her glance of pride
Quailed not. “Behold!” in haughty tones she cried,
“Vassal, behold thy prince! To thee is given—
His faithless subjects from their master riven—
To shield thy monarch's son from chains and death,
To guard his footsteps with thy latest breath;
To live—to die for him, and leave thy name,
Though branded now with blots of foulest shame,
More honored so than if thy days had flowed
Forever in pure virtue's spotless road.”
Aghast the robber started! O'er his soul
High thoughts and noble, with the surge-like roll
Of memory's ocean, swept; the impetuous sway
Of frantic passion calmly passed away.
Down dropt the weapon, and with suppliant mien
The ruffian bent to the majestic queen;
And, “Hear,” he cried, “Earth, Air, and Ocean, hear!
By Him who made both these and me, I swear!
By my pure boyhood and my sullied name,
By my fierce yearnings for a better fame,
That I will save him: man nor fiend shall part
The deep resolve from my unconquered heart!
Thy son shall rule, a king, his father's land,
Or rest in safety on a foreign strand.”

THE COVENANTER'S GRAVE.

The setting sun is sleeping wide
On Pentland's rude and heathery side;
In purple shadow, broad and still,
Distinctly looms each mighty hill,
While every burn is sparkling bright
In liquid lines of silver light.
But not one ray can pierce the gloom
That veils the martyred peasant's tomb—
So dark, so sad, so deeply laid
In yon ravine's unhallowed shade.
No shepherd's footsteps e'er intrude
To break the glen's wild solitude;
No sounds the slumbering echoes wake,
Save the throstle's carol from the brake,
Save the stream's ripple, or the cooing
Of some lorn dove's enamoured wooing.
The rude gray stones, that hide his clay,
Sink like their tenants in decay;
But one lone alder's branches wave
In pensile verdure o'er his grave,
While sadly, from her nest above,
The cushat pours her lay of love.
They laid him there, in that lone spot,
Unhonored and unknown, there to rot—
No anthems o'er his relics pealing,
No friends around his cold corpse kneeling;
Yet shall a country's blessing dwell
About that low and nameless cell,
Appeal forever to the Christian's God.

THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS.

It was the evening of a summer day
Serene and breathless; gentle dews from heaven
Fell silently upon the grateful flowers,
That all the livelong day had bowed their heads
Drooping with heat, but now from every sod
Sent up their happy perfumes to the sky,
Purer than man's thanksgiving. From the brake
Tufted with jessamine gushed the enchanting song
Of the rapt nightingale; and round the well,
Filling their pitchers, underneath the palm,
The village girls, a gay and graceful throng,
Stood laughing. But anon a sadder mood
Fell on their spirits, as they thought of her,
Who lay even now beyond a father's hope,
To smile, or raise her fair young head again—
Jairus' daughter. Hushed was all their glee;
And their hearts smote them, as they homeward went,
That they did laugh but now, and she the while,
Their innocent playmate, dying—perchance dead.

He was a ruler of the synagogue,
A dark grave man, not cheerful, but austere
And stern withal, though pious. He had known
Sorrow and suffering, and had weaned his heart
From earthly things to fix his hope on high.
Yet ever would his gloomy brow unbend,
As the blithe carol of that little maid,

Or the clear treble of her joyous laugh,
Spoke music to his ear, and won his soul
To smile on her, when darkest.
He had watched
Long days beside her couch, and marked the change
Creep o'er her face, the shadow which death casts
Before his coming. Save his own, no hand
Had smoothed her pillow; none had raised but he
The chalice to her lips, which still were wreathed
Into the painful semblance of a smile,
Striving to thank him for 't. He broke no bread,
Nor tasted wine, but sat in desolate grief,
Since the first night the fever smote his child,
Rending his garments, and with ceaseless prayer
Seeking the Lord; until all hope was o'er,
And it was evident that, ere the sun
Should leave the plain, her soul must pass away.

But while he mourned a neighbor entered in,
And told him how the Son of man was nigh,
Teaching the people on this side the sea.
Then he arose, and went his way, and fell
Before the feet of Jesus, where he stood,
And earnestly besought him, crying, “Lord,
My little daughter lieth, even now,
At point of death. I pray thee, come to her,
And lay thy hands on her; and she shall live.”
And Jesus went along with him. And they
Who had been gathered round him followed on,
And thronged him. And a certain woman there,
Which had been wasted by a flow of blood
Twelve weary years, came in the press behind
And touched his garment's selvage—for she said,
“If I but touch his clothes, I shall be whole!”
But he perceiving turned himself about,
And asked the crowd, who touched his raiment's hem.
Then she, in fear and trembling, being healed,

And knowing that was done in her, fell down
Confessing. And he said to her, “Arise,
Daughter, and go in peace; thy faith alone
Hath made thee whole!”
And while he yet did speak,
Came handmaids running from the ruler's house,
Which said, “Thy child is dead, why troublest thou
The Master farther?” But when Jesus heard,
He said unto the father, “Yet fear not!
Only believe!”
And thence he suffered none
To follow after him, save James, and John,
Brother of James, and Peter; and he came
Into the house—a pleasant house and fair,
Shadowed by olives, and a creeping vine
That wound about the casements, with green leaves
In the calm sunshine twinkling, and the plash
Of a cool fountain from the inner court
Murmuring pleasantly. But now the voice
Of men that wept, and woman's shriller wail,
Filled all with tumult, and the sound of woe.
He said to them, “Why make ye this ado?
And wherefore weep ye? the maid is not dead,
But sleepeth?
And they laughed him to scorn!
Then did he put them forth, and taking none
But her that bore the maiden, sorrowing now
With an exceeding sorrow, and the sire,
And those that came with him, he entered in
Where she was laid.
Her face was very pale—
Paler than her white vestment; and her lips,
Parted a little, wore almost the smile
Which constantly played over them in life,
Nor had in death quite passed from them. Her hands
Were folded on her breast. Some fresh bright flowers,

Sweets to the sweet, scattered their perfume round,
Emblems of beauty's briefness—soon to die.
But when he took her by the hand, and cried,
“Damsel, I say to thee, arise!” a blush,
A warm bright blush, shot o'er the ashy face,
Conscious and beautiful; the pallid lips
Waxed rosy, and breathed forth an odorous sigh;
And she upraised her eyes with a clear light,
Alive and lustrous; and arose straightway
And walked.
Astonished were all they that saw,
With great astonishment; and yet their joy
Was mightier than their wonder was, or woe
Had been. The father, the austere dark man,
Who had not wept before for very dearth
Of tears and agony of soul, wept now.
But these were tears of thankfulness, not grief.

JAEL AND SISERA.

Judges, ch. iv., v.

And Israel again before the Lord
Did evil, that he sold them to the hand
Of him who reigned in Hazor, Canaan's king;
And Sisera, the captain of his host,
Which lay with all his might of barbèd horse,
Footmen, and bows, and iron chariots hung
On scythèd axles, thrice three hundred strong,
In Harosheth of the Gentiles.
Loud and long
Went up the clamorous and plaintive cry
Of the people to their God, for twenty years
Scourged by the heathen grievously.
But now
Was Deborah, a prophetess, the wife
Of Lapidoth, who judged Israel,
Dwelling beneath the palm-tree's shade, which grew
Alone nigh Ramah, half way to Bethel,
In Ephraim's Mount; and all the people came
To her for judgment; and the Lord of Hosts,
The God of Abraham and Isaac, spoke
Out of her lips his oracles sublime,
True and eternal, that she sent and called
From Kedesh-Naphtali Abinoam's son,
Barak, and said unto him,
“Go, and draw
Toward Mount Tabor!—hath not the Lord God
Of Israel commanded, ‘Go and take
Ten thousand men—ten thousand of the Tribes

Of Naphtali and Zebulun, and I
Will draw unto thee, to the river's brink,
The river Kishon, Sisera and his host,
His chariots and his multitudes, to be
A spoil into thine hand’?”
And Barak said,
“If thou wilt go with me, then will I go;
But if thou wilt not, neither then will I.”
And she replied, “Surely I go with thee.
But for this journey that thou takest, lo!
Its glory shall not be to thee; nor thine
Its honor, who hast doubted: for the Lord
Into a woman's hand shall sell the might
Of Sisera.”
And Deborah arose,
And Barak; and he summoned to Kedesh
Ten thousand men: and Zebulun went up,
And Naphtali, ten thousand men of war.
Thy princes, Issachar, were in the field
With Deborah, all-armed with shields of brass
And brazen casques, and on their banners broad
A bounding stag for Issachar: on foot
Went Issachar, with Barak—all on foot
Into the valley.
Reuben was afar,
Abiding in the sheepfolds, pleased to hear
The bleating of the flocks, the pastoral reed,
The songs of tuneful damsels in the shade,
But deaf to the clear trumpet.
Gilead lay
Safe beyond Jordan, and his guarded ships
Held Dan in shameful peace; and, miles aloof,
On the sea-shore sat Asher, at his ease,
Abiding in his breaches.
But not so
Did Zebulun or Naphtali—not so!

They were a people on that fearful day
Who jeoparded their lives unto the death
In the high places of the field.
The kings
Came down and fought: the kings of Canaan fought
In Taanach, beside Megiddo's wave.
They fought—on earth they fought—and took no gain
Of money.
Yea, they fought from heaven. The stars
Fought in their courses against Sisera;
And the Lord smote him before Barak—him
And all his host, and all his cars of steel,
With the sword's edge. The river Kishon swept
Their mighty ones away—that river old,
The river Kishon! There their horses' hoofs
Were broken by their prancings, that they fled—
With fiery Barak thundering on their rear,
Crushing their chariots, trampling down their strength,
Riders and horses, in his hot pursuit,
To Harosheth of the Gentiles; with the sword
Smiting relentless, till of all the host
No man was left alive, but he alone,
Their leader. For he 'lighted down, and fled,
Leaving his chariot broken on the way,
And his proud steeds, that wont their lord to greet
With ear erect, and shrill triumphant joy
Of tremulous neighings, soiled with dust and gore,
Crestfallen and subdued, and ne'er again
With toss and tramp to hail the welcome step
Of him who fed them.
On his feet he fled
Toward Jael's tent, Heber the Kenite's wife,
Which pitched his tent nigh Kedesh in the plain
Of Zaanaim—for there was peace of old
Between the King of Hazor and the House
Of Heber.

And the woman saw him come,
Fleeing, bareheaded, in the scorching noon,
Gory, and grim with dust, and spent with toil,
And cried unto him,
“Turn, my lord, turn in
Unto thy servant, and fear not!”
And he
Was very weary; and his spirit was sick,
And his heart fainting: so he entered in
Into the tent, and laid him sadly down,
Trusting in her. And o'er his arms of price
She spread a mantle, as he lay at length
Painfully breathing.
And he said to her,
“Give me, I pray thee now, that I may drink,
A little water.”
And she gave him milk,
Opening a leathern bottle; and he drank
A deep, deep draught, for he was sore athirst,
And nigh to fainting.
And he laid him down,
And thanked her, and besought her,
“Stand awhile
In the tent door, and when they come and ask
Is any one within, see thou say ‘No.’”
And Heber's wife arose, and stood awhile
Silently watching, till the rise and fall
Of the dark mantle, regular and calm,
And the soft placid murmur of his breath,
Told that he slept.
Then stretched she out her hand,
And took a nail of the tent, and in her left
A workman's iron hammer, and knelt down,
Pale, but exceeding beautiful, yet stern
In her exceeding beauty, at his side.
There was a wild light in her large dark eye,

And on her soft red lips a fearful smile,
A curl in her proud nostril—terrible,
Unwomanly, unnatural! She knelt,
And listened with her ear beside his lip.
Soft as a child he slept,—his fair broad brow,
Whereon of late the beaded sweat-drops stood,
Troubled, and ominous of strife within,
Calm as the river's breast, when, far below
The thundering cataract, it sinks to rest,
Aweary of convulsion. His firm lips,
Parted a little, glittered with a smile,
Full of mild meaning; and anon a sound
Came feebly murmured forth—that woman's name,
Coupled with epithets of love, who knelt,
With murder glaring from her wolfish eye,
And the steel ready in her delicate hand,
Athirst to slay.
She tarried not for that,
But set the nail's keen point against his brow
Softly, and raised the hammer-head on high,
And smote—smote once! And through it went, and through,
Piercing the ground beneath him—needed not
A second!
At her feet he bowed him, and
Lay down, and fell; and where he bowed he died.
One strong, short spasm fluttered through his frame—
Proud frame, that had defied a banded host,
Prostrate before a woman. All was calm.
One sharp sigh struggled through his lips, and all
Was silent.
Long his mother watched on high;
Long looked she from her window, and cried out
From the tall lattice, “Wherefore tarry they,
His chariot wheels? and why be they so long,
His iron cars, in coming?”

And her dames
Made answer,—yea, she answered to herself,—
“Have they not sped? have they not gained a prey?
And have they not divided?—to each man
A blooming damsel, lovely as the morn,
And two to Sisera?—and glorious spoil
Of divers colors, vestures wrought about
In needle-work, fit for the necks of who
Fight valiantly, and make their foes their prey?”

But he came not, nor yet his cars of steel;
Nor brought they damsels, or the broidered wealth
Of raiments, who lay swart with blood and dust,
Parched by the sun, and torn by teeth obscene
Of the wild dog, and beak of carrion fowl,
Or weltering, tost on the ensanguined tide
Of Kishon, that old river.
But he lay—
The spoiled and not the spoiler; but he fell,
Ignobly slaughtered by a woman's hand!

So let thine enemies all perish, Lord;
But those who love thee, let them still increase
All glorious as the sun, when in his might
He goeth forth.
And blessed be Heber's wife,
The Kenite, above women! yea, above
All women in the tent! For though her deed
Seem harsh to human eyes, bloody and bold,
The Lord it was who ordered it, and He
Errs not—nor they who do his bidding straight
In innocent obedience, free from hate.

THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

St. John, ch. viii., vv. 1–12.

Without the city walls, the Son of man
Had watched all night upon the stony ridge,
Beyond the Brook of Kedron, which o'erlooks
The fatal town, and Moriah's mount sublime,
Crowned by the temple of the living God,
And Silsa's stream oracular, and the vale
Named of Jehosaphat, where soon shall stand
The abomination making desolate—
Then with his Father, till the stars were pale,
In holiest commune on that lonely steep,
The Mount of Olives.
Now the sun arose,
And through the stillness of the early morn
Volumed and white up-soared the savory smoke
Of morning sacrifice, and pealed aloft
The silver trumpets their sonorous praise,
O'er Zion.
Then he ceased from prayer, and came
Again unto the temple, and went in,
And all the people gathered to his words,
Breathless and mute with awe, the while he sate,
Teaching.
But while the sweet and solemn sound,
The words of Him who spake as never man
Spake, or shall speak, filled every listening soul
With wisdom that is life, a throng of Scribes
And Pharisees came hasting through the doors,

And, haling a fair woman towards his place,
Set her before him in the midst.
She was
Indeed most fair, and young, and innocent
To look upon. Alas, that such as she
So should have fallen!
Pale she stood, and mute,
Her large soft eyes, that wont to swim in light,
Burning with tearless torture; cheek and brow
Whiter than ashes, or the snow that dwells
On Sinai. Thus she stood a little space,
Gazing around with a bewildered glare
That had no speculation in't—
Then sank
In her disordered robes, a shapeless heap,
At a tall pillar's base, her face concealed
In the coarse mufflings of her woollen gown,
And the redundance of her golden hair,
Part fairly braided, part in wavy flow
Dishevelled, o'er her bare shoulders spread,
Purer than alabaster—naught beside
Exposed, save one round arm the bashful face
With slenderest fingers hiding, while the drops
Oozed through them slow and silent—she wept now,
When none beheld her!—and one rosy foot,
Unsandalled, peering from the ruffled hem
Of her white garb—all else a drifted mass
Of draperies, heaving, like the ocean's swell,
To that unspoken agony within
Rending the bosom, unsuspect of man,
But seen of the All-seeing.
Up they spake:
“Master, this woman in the act was ta'en
Sinning. Now Moses taught us, in the law,
That whoso doeth thus, shall surely die,
Stoned by the people; but what sayest thou?”

Thus said they, tempting him, that they might have
Of sin to accuse the sinless.
Jesus stooped,
Silent, and with his finger on the ground
Traced characters, as though he heard them not.
But when they asked again, importunate,
He raised himself in perfect majesty,
Calm and inscrutable, reading their souls
With that deep eye to which all hearts are known,
From which no secrets can be hidden.
Then,
“He that is here, among you, without sin,”
He said, “let him first cast a stone at her.”
Then stooped he again, and on the ground
Wrote as before.
A mighty terror fell
On those which heard it, in their secret souls
Convicted. One by one they slunk away,
The eldest first, as guiltiest, to the last;
Till none were left, but Jesus in the midst
Standing alone, and at the column's base
The woman grovelling like a trampled worm:
They two were in the temple—but they two,
Of all the crowd that thronged it even now—
The sinful mortal, and her sinless God.
When Jesus had arisen, and beheld
That none were left of all, save she alone;
“Woman,” he said unto her, “Woman, where
Be now those thine accusers? Hath no man
Condemned thee?”
And she answered, “No man, Lord.”
“Neither do I!” Jesus replied to her,
“Condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.”
And she
Arose, and went her way in sadness; and
The grace of Him to whom the power is given

To pardon sins sank down into her soul,
Like gentle dew upon the drooping herb
That under that good influence blooms again,
And sends its odors heavenward.
And perchance
There was great joy above, in those bright hosts
Who more rejoice o'er one that was a slave
To sin and hath repented, than o'er ten
So just that they have nothing to repent.

SIR AMELOT DE VERE.

A FRAGMENT OF UNPUBLISHED ROMANCE.

“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel,
For the brightest glance of her azure eye
Thou must be willing to live or die.
For the brightest smile of her radiant lip,
Or a kiss of her finger's rosy tip,
Thou must be willing to cast away
All that thou holdest dear to-day—
Kindred and country, and friendship true,
All that is old for one that is new.
Thou must make her famous o'er land and sea,
By dint of thy dauntless chivalry.
Thou must make her adored by one and all,
Whom thy sword shall save from Paynim thrall.
Thou must make her name a sovereign spell,
For all who own Amelot's Isabel,
That they who ne'er saw her shall strike for her fame,
And then render mercy in Isabel's name.

“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel,

Thou must be first in the battle's brunt,
When the bravest shrink from its iron front;
The foremost to conquer, and first to spare,
Where fame is to win, thou must still be there.
Thou must be first in the courtly hall,
The star of the peaceful festival,
The foremost ever in ladies' grace,
Yet cold as snow to the fairest face.
Men must fear thee, and women love,
But thou must be true as the widowed dove.

“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel,
Thou must be hers and hers alone,
In every thought thy soul doth own.
Not an eye for the brightest, or ear for the sweetest;
Courteous but cold unto all thou meetest;
Not a hope in thy heart but still to be near her;
All to worship, yet something to fear her.
And then, when thy fame is on every tongue,
Broad as thy banner in battle flung—
Then, when thy lance shall have given her glory,
And made her the theme of each minstrel's story;
When Europe, and Afric, and Araby,
Shall own her the brightest and best to be;
Then, when thy trust is in her alone,
Then, when thy life, thy soul is her own;
Then must thou hold thee guerdoned well,
By one cold smile from Isabel.
Like sunbeams on flowers her smiles shall fall,
Lovely and loving on one and all;
And thou shalt win no higher prize
Than leave to look in her lustrous eyes;
Or if she shall give thee her love to-day,
To-morrow's frost shall freeze it away.

And if thou lay thee down to-night,
Blessed with her promise of near delight,
To-morrow shall find her as cold and as far,
As the wintry sheen of the fartherest star.

“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel,
If thou wilt do all this I have spoken,
Thus as I rede thee, thy fate shall be wroken.
Thou shalt make her proud, herself to see
In the mirror of thy chivalry;
Thou shalt make her to love thy fame as her own;
To live in the light of thy great renown;
In thine absence to blush, when thou art but named;
To be eloquent if she hear thee blamed;
Yet then shall she love thy deeds, not thee,
For false is her bosom, and false shall be.
She shall wear thy hair, and wring thy heart,
Yet from her thrall thou shalt not depart.
She shall work thee woe, she shall work thee shame,
Yet thou shalt worship her still the same.
Thy friends she shall sever, thy peace undo,
Yet still shall thy love be loyal and true
All but thine honor shalt lose for her sake—
Pause then, nor rashly the strife undertake.

“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel,
Grant her the sweetest child of earth,
The loveliest creature of mortal birth,
Grant, if thou wilt, that she may be won,
As all things may beneath the sun,
By talent and toil, by sorrow and sinning—
Mark me well, is she worth the winning?”
He started from his magic sleep,
Beneath a cedar's thicket deep,

In a glade of Lebanon.
And was it fancy, was it sooth,
A form of air or a thing of truth?
Athwart the setting sun,
Clad in a robe of hazy light,
There seemed to float a vision bright
Between him and the hoary height
Of the old sacred hill.
He gazed, it faded from his eyn,
Till he could see the sunbeams shine
Beyond, in many a misty line,
And tip the green with golden hue,
And stream that waning vision through;
And yet could see it still.
He bounded forward. It was gone,
And in that haunted glade alone,
With bristling hair, but dauntless breast,
The chosen champion of the West
Stood like a carved stone.
Still in his ears those tones were ringing,
Softer than sweetest human singing;
Still he could hear the burthen float,
Clear as a seraph's liquid note;
“If thou wouldst win her, mark me well,
Ravenwood's beautiful Isabel.”

And I will win her, by the grave
We fight from Infidels to save;
Nor might of man nor demon's power
Shall turn me! Is she not the flower,
The pride, the gem of English earth,
Where more of sweetness hath its birth
Than in the world beside?
And whoso saith she hath a peer
Beneath bright heaven, I tell him here—
I tell him, Amelot de Vere—

Let him be man of human mould,
Or fiendish knight, such as of old
With mortal champions vied,
Let him do on his arms of proof,
Or hold his coward head aloof—
I tell him he hath lied!”

He paused, as though he thought to see
The gleam of fiendish panoply,
With blazoned shield and waving plume,
Emerging from the cedars' gloom.
But all was silence deep and still
On Solomon's immortal hill.
The sunshine slept upon the sod,
The very cedars ceased to nod,
So tranquil was the glen.
He turned—he started, and his hand
Fell to the guard of his good brand:
Was it a trumpet's tone
That startled all the forest round,
And wakened, with defying sound,
The mountain echoes lone?
'Twas silence all; or if that peal
Was sooth which made his senses reel,
So soon it passed away,
That Amelot uncertain stood,
Whether the demons of the wood,
Or the mere coinings of his blood,
Distempered, and his dreaming brain,
Had mocked him once and yet again,
With cheats most like reality;
And to his dying day
He knew not. For such things fell out
In after time as made him doubt
Almost his own identity.

But now he turned him to the host
Encamped on Syria's sultry coast,
And as he passed the mountain down,
Amid the shadows falling brown,
And heavy dews, he only said,
With resolute gesture of his head,
And hand upon his war-sword's hilt,
The cross, “By all the blood we've spilt,
Let them bring all the powers of hell
To aid—I will win Isabel.”
[OMITTED]

THE HAWKING PARTY.

Dimly gray the dawn is stealing—
Stealing up the eastern sky;
Loud the red-cock's clarion peeling
Tells the world that morn is nigh.

Southerly the wind is sweeping
O'er the forests sad and sere;
Heavily the dews are weeping—
O'er the death of the woodland year.

Faint and few the stars are paling
Through the rents o' the rising mist—
Though the fog-wreaths heavenward sailing
Are not yet by the sunbeam kissed.

All the things that love the day,
All that feed or fly by night,
Early greet the opening day—
Early shun the approach of light.

Homeward is the hill-fox bending
Slyly through the darksome glen;
From their nests the rooks are wending,
Far and fast o'er field and fen.

Swift the woodcock's wing is gliding
Down the vale to his lonely brake,
And the teal her brood is hiding
In the reeds by the lilied lake.

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In the yellow stubbles feeding
Calls the partridge sharp and shrill,
While his hinds the stag is leading
Toward his holt from the heathy hill.

Lo! the great sun skyward rushing,
Blithe as giant from his lair,
While the lavrock's chant outgushing
Greets the lord of earth and air!

In their stalls the coursers stamping
Chide their laggard grooms, this morn:
They their bits should now be champing,
Bounding now to the mellow horn.

In their courts the pack is whining,
Anxious, with erected ear,
For the glorious rally pining,
For the jolly hunter's cheer.

Wake then, wake, each peerless maiden.
Wake, each gallant cavalier;
Lo! the gale with moisture laden,
And the month the best o' the year!

Blithe September's days are over,
Brown October's suns are past,
Sere is now the seeding clover,
And the leaves are falling fast.

Southern wind and cloudy sky,
Not a dew-drop on the thorn;
Splendidly the scent will lie:
'Tis a glorious hunting morn.

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Lo! they muster, lord and lady;
Brow of pride and cheek of bloom,
Pointed beard and tresses shady,
Velvet robe, and waving plume.

Housings gay, and bits gold-glancing,
Bells of falcons tinkling light;
Chargers tall, and palfreys prancing,
Meet for damsel, meet for knight.

Yeomen tall, with badge and bearing,
Gather to the bugle blast;
Green-frocked varlets, featly wearing
Frames whereon the hawks to cast.

Gray-haired huntsmen, sage and steady,
Oracle of all the train;
Hare-brained pages rash and ready
For the skurry o'er the plain.

They have limmers fleet and fiery,
They have bloodhounds stanch and slow,
They have terriers grim and wiry,
They have spaniels slight and low.

Long-winged falcon, merlin light,
Tarsel gentle, goshawk gay,
Foes for fowl of every flight,
Heavy duck, or heron gray.

Choose your coursers, grasp your bridles,
Lightly leap to the broidered selle;
Lo! yon jennet snorts and sidles;
Gallant, look to the lady well.

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O'er the meadows, gently sweeping
To the marge of the streamlet clear,
Slowly now the train is creeping,
Lest the heronshaw should hear—

Where beside the riplets dancing,
Still and silent as the stone,
Whence he waits the small fry's glancing,
Sits the hermit gray and lone.

Now the spotted brach is questing—
See her feather, see her stoop!
Ho! boy, cease thy timeless jesting!
Lo! the quarry! Falconer, whoop!

With his harsh note hoarsely clanging,
Lazily the air he fans,
Heavily his long legs hanging,
Slow he beats his sail-broad vans.

Falconer, whoop! fling free your jesses!
Let the Norway falcon fly!
Dames, 'twill ruffle sore your tresses;
Would you see this heron die!

Oh! but you must gallop gladly,
Over dry and through the deep;
Spur your faltering jennets madly;
Lift them at the rashest leap!

See! he spies the falcon's pinion;
Upward! upward! soars he straight—
Toward the skylark's lone dominion,
Where he sings at high heaven's gate.

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Up, and up, in circles sailing,
Wheels the heron round and round—
Higher yet the hawk is scaling,
Higher yet the blue profound.

Scarce you see them now careering—
Now they're lost i' the vapors dun;
See them—see them reappearing,
Far above the morning sun!

Now the hawk, in pitch of pride,
Meditates his fatal swoop:
Watch him now, howe'er ye ride—
Watch him, would you see him stoop.

Lo! he binds him—plumb, together,
Fifty fathoms through the sky,
Falcon's talon, heron's feather,
Down they struggle—win or die!

On the greensward faintly lying,
Heavenward ne'er again to soar,
Hawk and heron both are dying,
Beak and single wet with gore.

Woe for thee, thou bird so daring—
Doomed ignobly thus to fall!
Long thy bells, like warrior's bearing,
Shall bedeck the old oak wall.

Long, the theme of knightly story,
Shall thy gallant feats be told—
Parcel of thy good lord's glory—
Won by river, wood, and wold.

104

Out! alas, I am but dreaming:
In this cold degenerate day
Naught of high or knightly seeming
Lives, but in the minstrel's lay.

Knightly sports and knightly daring
Long ago have passed away;
We, their names and 'scutcheons bearing,
Soon to pass, and be as they.

Well for us, if, when we perish,
History bears as high a trace
Of the things we do and cherish,
As of their renownèd race.

But I fear me, history's showing
Will for us be brief and bare;
All our modern trumpet-blowing
Bootless blasts of empty air.

And I only can deplore me,
As I think, in bygone days,
What my fathers were before me,
What their labors, what their praise.

105

WELLINGTON.

FUNERAL SONNETS.

[I. Greatest of Englishmen, thine England's heart]

Greatest of Englishmen, thine England's heart,
Like her own ocean, mourned from shore to shore,
Oppressed at hearing of the muffled roar
Of those death-drums that rolled for thy depart.
Thou wert her chief of men, when nations shook,
And royal cities crumbled to the sod,
Before his footsteps, whose imperial nod
From proudest thrones their palsied kings downstruck.
Thou wert her chief of men when civic hate
Howled in her streets, when all souls but thine own
Faltered, as Treason knocked at Freedom's gate.
Well may she mourn, thou gone, who stood'st alone,
The proud supporting pillar of the state,
The iron column of the popular throne.

[II. Not that he was the chiefest of her men]

Not that he was the chiefest of her men
In battle's hurly; not that his right hand
Beat back the imperial giant's baffled band,
From Douro's bank to Bidassoa's glen;
Not that the vanquished eagles backward flew,
While Prussia's vengeful trumpets tore the air,
To France presaging quiet and despair,
From the red field of deathless Waterloo;
Not that he conquered every stricken fight;
Not that he never lost an English gun,—

106

Was he the first and best in England's sight.
But that he was strong Duty's iron son,
Severe in truth, sublimely stern in right,
Pre-eminently English Wellington.

[III. Arthur the great is gone, who saved the land]

Arthur the great is gone, who saved the land
From conquest; who drove back the shivering clash
Of steel, that scared our shores, and let it dash
Their eyes and hearts who first took up the brand.
Arthur the great is gone, who saved the throne,
And him who sat on it, when treason's cry
Tumultuous appalled the British sky,
And England shook from Tweed to London stone.
Arthur, who gave us equal law, is gone,
Who gave us equal conscience, equal bread,—
Arthur, whom people, peers, and queen bemoan.
Yet not gone all, though gone, is he who led
Our men. His counsel lives, for whom we groan,
To guide the land he saved, though he be dead.

[IV. Our mightiest warrior is dead—is dead]

Our mightiest warrior is dead—is dead.
A nation bore him to his noble grave,
Beside the mightiest rider of the wave.
By Nelson, Wellington has laid his head.
What marvel England should his memory bless?
A man himself, who nothing human thought
To himself foreign: if he pardoned naught
To others, who himself forgave the less.
So he is gone, that we no more shall hear
His short stern sentences, which rang so true,
Making all hearts impassible to fear.
Yet all, when duty is most hard to do,
So strong they live in every English ear,
Shall think of Wellington and Waterloo.

107

THE BEAUTY OF LIBERTY.

“Of all things that have beauty on the earth, there is none that is so comely to man as Liberty.”—

Milton's Prose Writings.

Southward I gazed, and toward the icy North,—
To the sun's cradle, when he rushes forth
With blessings on his broad and burnished brow,—
And, westward thence, to that far, fragrant verge,
Where, stooping headlong to the Atlantic flow,
He bathes his coursers in its lucid surge;
I marked each new, peculiar aspect rise
From earth, and ocean, and the eternal skies:
And beauty was in all,—earth, air, and sea,—
But beauty none like that my spirit pined to see.

I marked the freshness of the pearly dawn,
The dappled firmament, and dewy lawn;
The mist-wreaths curtaining the limpid pool;
The shadows fleeting as the tall grass waved;
The rabbit's track, amid the herbage cool;
The matin bird, its early wing that laved
In the clear brooklet; and the rich perfume
From the near bean-field, and the clover's bloom:
And beauty was in morning's sweet repose—
But beauty none like that my spirit's judgment chose.

I marked the languor of the silent day,
When nature fails beneath the noontide ray,—
The cattle midway in the cooling stream;
The voiceless music humming on the breeze;
The myriad tribes that in the sunlight gleam;
The warblers hushed in the unshaken trees

108

The sultry haze that shrouds the distant hill;
The ceaseless clacking of the unwearied mill:
And beauty was in summer's panting breast—
But beauty none like that should fill my spirit's quest.

I marked the breathlessness of eve's decay,
When the dim landscape melts in night away,—
The circling bat that wheels down in the glade;
The plaintive night-hawk's sadly simple strain;
The dews that rustle on the quivering shade;
The distant owl that shrieks along the plain;
The diamond sparks that gem the dark serene;
And crescent moon the fleecy clouds between:
And beauty was in evening's tranquil eye—
But beauty none like that my spirit would descry.

I looked upon the dense and turbid haze
Cleft by the baleful lightning's lurid blaze,—
The big rain plashing on the levelled grain;
The torrents thundering from the mountains hoar;
The giant trunks uptorn with fearful strain,
And the hoarse crashing of the thunder's roar;
The terror of the universal earth,
Reeling and shuddering to the tempest's mirth:
And beauty was in trembling nature's strife—
But beauty none like that my spirit calls to life.

I gazed upon the blue and breezeless deep,
In the hot tropics where the waters sleep,—
The snowy bird, that, on her slumbering pinion,
Hangs unapproached in viewless depths of air,
Sole occupant, sole queen, of high dominion;
The small seas rippling in the sunny glare;
The blue shark glancing on his liquid way,
And changeful dolphins spouting in their play:
And beauty was upon the peaceful waves—
But beauty none like that my restless spirit craves.

109

I saw, where round the dark and dreary brow
Of Horn's stern cape the breakers burst in snow,—
The rack low-scudding, and the mist that flies,
Shorn, by the tempest-demon's searching sway,
From the vexed billows, that no more can rise,
But howl, one white expanse of driving spray;
The death-shriek wild, the spars so sadly strewed,
Where late the gallant ship superbly rode:
Yea, beauty was in ocean's tortured hell—
But beauty none like that whereon my soul might dwell.

I gazed where Asia's arid wastes expand,
Boundless and bare, in swells of burning sand,—
The lonely palm-tree and the brackish well;
The shattered reliques of some pillared fane;
The roving Arab with his battle yell;
The caravan slow-winding o'er the plain;
The red simoom; the pilgrim bones that lie
Untombed, and bleaching to the brilliant sky:
And beauty was in those stern solitudes—
But beauty none like that on which my spirit broods.

I dreamed, where round Marengo's conqueror shook
Princedoms and thrones beneath his slightest look,—
Imperial crowns, and royal robes were there,
And canopies of Ind, and Afric's plume;
The sun-bright flash of steel, the trumpet's blare,
All of man's pomp, and all of woman's bloom;
Fronts of dominion, hands of iron might,
And sunny curls and eyes of liquid light:
And beauty was about that glorious place—
But beauty none like that my anxious soul would trace.

I gazed upon a face whose gaze doth bless
My wayward soul with sweet forgetfulness
Of all things else, save that most eloquent eye,
Half lustre, languor half and soft desire;

110

A lip whose taste might woo from halls on high,
And chain to earth some amorous seraph's fire;
A brow, a smile, a form, whose every trace
Showed passion, gentleness, and woman-grace.
And beauty was in her, more bright than all—
Yet beauty none like that my soul must win or fall.

I gazed upon a nation fair and great,
Fearless of foes, and confident of fate;
Its flag a starry constellation free,
Its crest the young and puissant bird of Rome;
A nation throned beyond the western sea,
The dread of tyrants, and the exile's home:
Mercy and valor there went hand in hand,
Freedom the God, the guardian of the land!
Hers was the beauty I had pined to see—
Earth has no beauty else, to mate with Liberty.

111

JANE McCREA.

It was brilliant autumn time—
The most brilliant time of all,
When the gorgeous woods are gleaming
Ere the leaves begin to fall;
When the maple boughs are crimson,
When the hickory shines like gold,
And the noons are sultry hot,
And the nights are frosty cold;

When the country has no green,
Save the sword-grass by the rill,
And the willows in the valley,
And the pine upon the hill;
When the pippin leaves the bough,
And the sumach's fruit is red,
And the quail is piping loud
From the buckwheat where he fed;

When the sky is blue as steel,
And the river clear as glass,
When the mist is on the mountain,
And the network on the grass,
When the harvests all are housed,
And the farmer's work is done,
And the stubbles are deserted
For the fox-hound and the gun.

It was brilliant autumn time
When the army of the North,
With its cannon, and dragoons,
And its riflemen came forth;

112

Through the country all abroad
There was spread a mighty fear
Of the Indians in the van
And the Hessians in the rear.

There was spread a mighty terror,
And the bravest souls were faint,
For the shaven chiefs were mustered
In their scalp-locks and their paint;
And the forest was alive,
And the tramp of warrior men
Scared the eagle from his eyry,
And the gray wolf from his den.

For the bold Burgoyne was marching,
With his thousands marching down,
To do battle with the people,
To do battle for the Crown.
But Starke he lay at Bennington,
By the Hoosick's waters bright,
And Arnold and his forces
Gathered thick on Bemis' height.

Fort Edward on the Hudson,
It was guarded night and day,
By Van Vechten and his woodmen—
Right sturdy woodmen they!
Fort Edward on the Hudson,
It was guarded day and night;
Oh! but in the early morning
It saw a bitter sight.

A bitter sight, and fearful,
And a shameful deed of blood;
All the plain was cleared around,
But the slopes were thick with wood;

113

And a mighty pine stood there,
On the summit of the hill,
And a bright spring rose beneath it,
With a low and liquid trill;

And a little way below,
All with vine-boughs overrun,
A white-walled cot was sleeping—
There that shameful deed was done!
Oh! it was the blithest morning,
In the brilliant autumn time;
The sun shone never brighter,
When the year was in its prime.

But a maiden fair was weeping
In that cottage day by day;
Woe she was, and worn with watching
For her true love far away.
He was bearing noble arms—
Noble arms for England's king;
She was waiting, sad and tearful,
Near the pine-tree, near the spring.

Weary waiting for his coming—
Yet she feared not; for she knew
That her lover's name would guard her,
That her lover's heart was true.
True he was; nor did forget,
As he marched the wild woods through,
Her to whom his troth was plighted,
By the Hudson's waters blue.

He bethought him of the madness
And the fury of the strife;
He bethought him of the peril
To that dear and precious life:

114

So he called an Indian chief,
In his paint and war-array—
Oh! it was a cursèd thought,
And it was a luckless day.

“Go!” he said, “and seek my lady
By Fort Edward, where she lies;
Have her hither to the camp:
She shall prove a worthy prize!”
And he charged him with a letter,
With a letter to his dear,
Bidding her to follow freely,
And that she should nothing fear.

Lightly, brightly rose the sun,
High his heart, and full of mirth;
Gray and gloomy closed the night,
Steamy mists bedewed the earth.
Thence he never ceased to sorrow
Till his tedious life was o'er;
For that night he thought to see her,
But he never saw her more.

By the pine-tree on the hill
Armèd men were at their post,
While the early sun was low,
Watching for the royal host.
Came a rifle's sudden crack,
Rose a wild and fearful yell;
Rushed the Indians from the brake;
Fled the guard, or fought and fell!

Fought and fell! and fiercely o'er them
Rose the hideous death-halloo:
One alone was spared of all—
Wounded he, and pinioned too.

115

He it was the deed that saw,
As he lay the spring beside.
Had his manly arm been free,
He had saved her, or had died!

Up the hill he saw them lead her,
And she followed free from fear,
And her beauty blazed the brighter
As she deemed her lover near.
He could read the joyous hope
Sparkling in her sunny eyes—
Lo! the sudden strife, the rage!
They are battling for the prize!

Guns are brandished, knives are drawn;
Flashed the death-shot, flew the ball;
By the chief who should have saved her
Did the lovely victim fall.
Fell, and breathed her lover's name,
Blessed him with her latest sigh,
Happier than he surviving,
Happier was she to die.

Then the frantic savage seized her
By the long and flowing hair;
Bared the keen and deadly knife,
Whirled aloft the tresses fair,
Yelled in triumph and retreated,
Bearing off that trophy dread:
Think of him who sent them forth,
Who received it—reeking red!

He received it, cold as stone,
With a ghastly, stupid stare;
Shook not, sighed not, questioned not:
Oh, he knew that yellow hair!

116

And he never smiled again,
And was never seen to weep;
And he never spoke to name her,
Save when muttering in his sleep.

Yet he did his duty well,
With a chill and cheerless heart;
But he never seemed to know it,
Though he played a soldier's part.
Years he lived—for grief kills not—
But his very life was dead;
Scarcely died he any more
When the clay was o'er his head!

Would ye farther learn of her?
Visit, then, the fatal spot.
There no monument they raised,
Storied stones they sculptured not;
But the mighty pine is there.
Go, and ye may see it still,
Gray and ghostly, but erect,
On the summit of the hill.

And the little fount wells out,
Cold and clear, beneath its shade,
Cold and clear as when beside it
Fell that young and lovely maid.
These shall witness for the tale,
How, on that accursed day,
Beauty, innocence, and youth
Died in hapless Jane McCrea!

117

ARNOLD'S TREASON.

Night upon the Highland hills,
Night upon the mighty river,
Darkly in the witching calm
Did the breezeless aspen shiver;
Darkly o'er the shrouded moon,
Where the misty vapors flying,
Sadly down the hollow pass
Sighed the night air, softly dying.

Silence, like a heavy shadow,
Brooded over Hudson's breast—
Brooded over Beacon hoary,
Brooded over huge Crow-nest:
Save when, as the tide was making,
Faintly rose its fitful dash;
Save when, all the echoes waking,
Rose the leaping sturgeon's flash.

Once and oft the katydid
Shrilled upon the mountain side,
Once and oft from shoal and shadow
Deep the bullfrog's bass replied.
Mute was all beside and solemn;
Tread of brute, or wild-fowl's flight,
Sounded none i' the stilly woods,
Sounded none i' the starless night.

118

Leagues of wilderness and river,
Countless leagues, lay hushed in sleep;
Scarce a rustle in the trees,
Scarce a ripple on the deep.
Not a sign was there or token,
Not a sign of human life,
Yet those woods and waters lonely
All with armèd foes were rife.

Floated o'er the fortress northward
New-born freedom's clustered stars,
Soon to rank with flags that numbered
Centuries of glorious scars;
Southward o'er the vulture's pinion,
Meteor of a thousand years,
Gleamed old England's red cross glorious,
Known wherever pilot steers.

Noble foemen, southward, northward;
Noble foemen, noble cause:
These for loyalty and fame,
Those for liberty and laws.
Long had been the strife between them,
Long and hard 'twas like to be,
Those the tamers of the forest,
These the rulers of the sea.

Yet was treason in the camp,
Where no treason should have been.
But it has been so forever,
So forever 'twill be seen,
That the highest, holiest cause,
And the purest patriot band,
Number with the good and great
Still the traitor's heart and hand.

119

When the Persian myriads quailed,
Quailed before the hundreds three,
Of the glorious Spartans one
Died not at Thermopylæ:
When the consuls yet were new,
And the Tarquins hardly down,
One in Rome, a Brutus too,
Sold his country to the crown.

And if man the foulest treason
Plot against his fellow clay,
How shall we presume to murmur,
Things whose life is but a day,
When the Lord of earth and heaven
Counted in his chosen fold
Judas, who betrayed his Master
For the filthy lust of gold?

Mark the bullfrog's startled croak,
Mark the teal on sudden pinion
Springing from her watery roost:
What invades their wild dominion?
Lo! with noiseless motion stealing,
In the shadow of the shore,
Not a star its course revealing,
Crawls a boat with muffled oar.

Crawls a boat with muffled oar
Slowly toward an inlet deep,
Where the Long-clove frowns above,
And dark below the eddies sleep.
Not an eagle's eye could pierce
That recess of utter gloom,
Suited well for treason's cradle,
Suited well for a traitor's tomb.

120

Grated on the rocks the keel,
Stepped a stately form to land;
Well could rein the dashing war-horse,
Well could wield the mortal brand.
Nobler spirit, braver hand,
Warmer heart have never met;
Woe betide the wicked hour
When ashore his foot he set!

Not a word had yet been spoken,
For the rowers knew him not;
Knew him not the man who steered him
To that gloomy, guilty spot.
But there waited one ashore,
Shrouded in the shades of night,
Shrouded in the thickest covert—
His were deeds that shun the light.

Yet had he a glorious name:
Deeds of his i' the face of day
Had outgrown all rival laurels,
None so daring-bold as they;
By the wild Dead River's course,
On Megantic's stormy lake,
On the Chaudières's boiling rapids,
In morass, ravine, and brake;

On the plains of Abram glorious,
All beneath the battled wall,
That beheld young Wolfe victorious
In the arms of glory fall
In the weary, weary march
Up the wintry Kennebec,
In the fight where fell Montgomery
By the ramparts of Quebec.

121

Upon Bemis' bloody height,
And the field of grounded arms,
Foremost he, though not their leader,
Led the men i' the fierce alarms;
Foremost when the works were taken,
When the Hessian lines were won,
Fell he, horse and man, i' the port,
Wounded fell, when his work was done.

But it galled his haughty spirit,
And it rankled in his heart:
Others won the meed of praise,
Only he had played the part;
Fame deferred and rank denied
Turned his very soul to gall;
Pride it was that conquered him—
Pride which made an angel fall.

Heavy debt oppressed him too:
Oh! but he was sorely tried!
Oh! that in the battle's hurly
Young and honored he had died!
But he hedged aside from truth,
Held not honor in his eye;
Pray we, then, for grace to fall not,—
Fall not thus, but rather die!

Partly spurred by bitter hate,
Partly driven by sordid need,
He his patriot laurels bartered
Basely for a traitor's meed;
He, in falling, by his sin
Dragged a loftier spirit down—
Spirit that stooped not to treason,
Would not stoop to win a crown.

122

No man knows the words they said,
No man knows the villain's suit;
For the knave escaped his doom,
And the martyr perished mute.
No man knows but only this,
That his post he should betray;—
Near the sun! the work not done!
And they mounted and away.

Hard they galloped up the road;
Up the road through Haverstraw:
Through the village, o'er the bridge;
Their approach the sentry saw,—
Challenged loud—advanced his arms;
“Congress” is the countersign;
“Pass—all's well!” the sentry cried;
He is in the foeman's line.

Heavily it smote his heart!
He, a Briton, thus betrayed;
He, who loathed the name of baseness,
Basely thus a prisoner made!
He had risked his person boldly;
He was clad in his martial dress!
He was perilled, oh, how coldly!
By the traitor knave's address.

To a lonely house was he taken;
Never told he what passed there,
Though he tarried till the morning,
Till the sun shone broad and fair.
Then the traitor turned him home,—
Turned him home, his treason planned:
Little recked he what fell out,
So the guerdon reached his hand.

123

Turned and left his victim there,
Cheated by a specious lie!
Left the true and noble-hearted
By a felon's doom to die!
Sent him not in safety back
To the Vulture, whence he came;
But by dastard artifice
Left him to a death of shame.

Oh! but he resisted strongly,
Ere he laid his dress aside;
Oh! but he consented wrongly,
Or he never so had died.
He had passed the farthest post,
He was riding free from fear;
And the foe was far behind,
And the English lines were near;

When beside a little brook,
Three who lay in ambush nigh
Bade him stand—he 'lighted down,
And they took him for a spy!
Then to Northcastle they led him:
Sheldon's horsemen there they lay,
And his hours they were numbered—
They were numbered on that day.

For the papers they were found,
And the traitor he had fled,
And the victim would not lie!
Lie? no! not to save his head!
Would not lie to save his head!
Would not lie to save his fame!
He had risked his person fairly,—
Never risked his soldier name!

124

Dying, 'twas his only fear
Lest his leader should suppose
That obedience to his orders
Had betrayed him to his foes;
And the fondest, latest wish
Of his noble, noble heart,
Was to save Sir Henry's soul
From that unavailing smart.

Then to his doom they led him,
In a sunny morning's light,
When the muffled drums were beating,
And the bayonets glancing bright;
To his bitter doom they led him;
He had asked a soldier's death—
But he saw the shameful tree,
And the cursèd rope beneath.

Back he started—“Why this shrinking?
And what shakes thy gallant breast?”
“To my death I go all fearless,
But the manner I detest!”
To his death he went all fearless,
With a cheerful heart and high;
Not an eye of all the host,
Not an eye but his, was dry.

Better, better was it far,
So like André to be dying,
With his country mourning o'er him,
And his foemen round him sighing,
Than like Arnold to live on,
Scorn of his adopted land,
Loathed of every noble heart,
Shunned of every honest hand!

125

Heard ye not how England's king,
With his peers in circled state,
Would have made him known to one
Who in every deed was great?
“No, my liege,” the earl replied,
“Rank, and lands, and life are thine;
But no traitor's touch may sully
This untainted hand of mine.”

But the traitor still was brave,
Quailed not he to the old lord's scorn;
Quailed not he to the bravest man
That was e'er of woman born;
Challenged him to deadly field;
Met him sternly face to face;
Levelled, fired,—but erred his ball,—
It may be his soul was touched of grace!

Proudly, coldly stood the peer,—
Proudly, coldly turned away.
“Stand and fire!” the traitor cried;
“Yours, my lord, is the luck to-day!”
“No! I leave you,” sternly spake—
Spake the old and haughty lord;
“Leave you to a fitter doom,—
To the hangman and the cord.”

126

MARION'S FEAST.

“Praise the Lord for the mountains old!”
For the rocks and dark ravine,
Where the plunging torrent's might,
Heard afar, is never seen;
Where the herbless crags on high,
Crowned for aye with trackless snow,
Castles built by Nature's hand,
Frown defiance on the foe.

“Praise the Lord for the mountains old!”
Thus did the early Christian's hymn
Soar aloft from the icy crags,
Soar aloft from the cataract's brim.
“Praise the Lord! for freedom sits
On their huge and earth-fast throne.
Like the eagle upward gazing,
Proud, invincible, alone.”

But no mountains were the rampart
Of our sunny southern strand;
Precipice nor torrent held us
Safe from Tarleton's bloody brand;
Not a hill nor hoary rock
Fenced the calm and level scene,
Carolina's woodland plain,
Georgia's soft savannahs green.

127

Yet as stubbornly and well
Did the sons of freedom stand,
Strove as sternly for the rights
Of that fair and gentle land,
As the bravest mountaineer
Ever plied the broad claymore,
Ever plied the Switzer's halbert
By Luzerne or Leman's shore.

Crag and cliff may tower aloft;
Crag and cliff have oft been taken;
Forts may thunder, strongest forts
Have by the cannon's breath been shaken.
Where, if not in mountain passes,
Nor in trenched and rampired ground,
Where shall help in time of trouble,
Where shall a nation's strength be found?

Not, oh! not i' the highland pass,
Not i' the deep and fordless stream,
Not i' the trenched and rampired rock,
Not i' the serried bayonets' gleam.
But in the hands and hearts that rally
At the first alarum's sound,
Matters not in hill or valley
Where the foe may best be found.

Not a rock or hill was there,
Not a trenched or guarded post;
Yet was every wood a fortress,
Every brake had its armèd host;
Dim morass of cypress gray,
Upland waste of stunted pine,
Tangled swamp of densest bay,
Thorny brier and poisonous vine.

128

Deep bayou and dark lagoon,
Where the stagnant waters sleep;
Where the cayman waits his prey,
Where the venomed serpents creep;
Where the rivers slow and sad
Filter through their oozy banks,
Fenced by walls of verdant gloom,
Matted canes in serried ranks.

There did Marion's bugle muster
Many a friend to the buff and blue;
Oh, but their steeds were swift as wind!
Oh, but their rifles as death were true!
Often, often at dead of night,
When they heard that bugle ring,
The British host in guarded post
To their arms in haste would spring.

Seen no foe, their best lie low,
While the rifle's mortal gleam
Flashes from the nearest covert,
From the marge of the reedy stream;
Every fern-tuft speeds a death-shot,
Every bush a marksman hides;
Through their camps at noon of night
Thus with his men stout Marion rides.

Evening sees a tented plain;
Evening sees a banner fair;
Whitening to the level sun,
Waving to the summer air;
Morning sees a pile of ashes,
Smoking still, though quenched in gore;
Sees a black and shivering staff,
Whence shall wave no banner more;

129

Sees the Britons muster boldly
Boldly march i' the forest shade;
Watchful eyes in every leaf,
Ambushed foes in every glade;
March from dawn to the set of sun,
Meeting not a living thing,
Save the heron on the marsh,
And the wild deer at the spring.

Not a living thing they met
While the sun was in the sky;
Every lonesome hut forsaken,
Moss-grown every well and dry;
Not a woodman in the glade,
Not a fisher by the lake,
Not a ploughman in the furrow,
Not a hunter in the brake.

Not a foeman could they meet
While they mustered in their force,
Though they swept the country over
With their fleet and fearless horse.
But as soon as twilight fell,
'Ere to hoot the owls began,
Over upland, and through swamp,
Fast and far the summons ran.

Fast and far the rifles rallied
To the holloa and the horn,
To the foray and the firing,
As the reapers to the corn;
Fast and far the rifles rallied:
When the early sun came back,
You might trace their wild career
By the havoc in their track.

130

There was care among the chiefs,
There was doubt among the men;
They were perishing by scores
In the forest and the fen;
They were perishing by hundreds—
Not a foe there was to see,
Not a foe to bide a buffet,
From the mountain to the sea.

Came the British chiefs to council:
Rawdon, stately earl, was there,
And Tarleton with the fiery eye,
And the waving lovelocks fair.
Rawdon's brow was black as night,
And his soul was steeped in gloom,
But Tarleton only dallied
With his sword-knot and his plume.

But no plan they might devise,
From his swamp to lure the foe,
And the council all were mute,
For their hearts were sad and low,
Thinking of the British blood
Unavenged and vainly spilt.
But Tarleton only played the more
With his sabre's golden hilt.

Then a mighty oath he sware,
But a mighty oath sware he:
“I will have him to the field,
If a gentleman he be;
I will have him face to face;
I will have him blow to blow:
This Marion and his merry men,
Come weal of it or woe!”

131

Then he called his gallant cornet;
Not a braver man than he
In the glorious little isle,
In the empress of the sea.
“Saddle, saddle straight,” he said,
“Saddle straight your dappled steed,
For I know you well,” he said,
“Tried and true i' the hour of need.

“Tarry not to belt your brand,
But unfurl a flag of white;
We have scoured the country through,
From the dawn of day to night;
Now away and scour it thou,
All from sunset unto morn,
Till you find me Marion out,
With his rifles and his horn.

“Tell him Tarleton greets him well,
Bids him fairly to the fight,
To the field, and not the wood,
To the day, and not the night!
Fit is night for murder foul,
But for gallant deeds the day!
Fit for rapine is the wood,
But the field for open fray!

“If a gentleman he be,
As a gentleman he should,
If a Christian and a soldier,
Let him leave the cursèd wood;
And we'll fight the good fight fairly
For the country and the crown,
With the sun in heaven to see us,
Until one of us is down.”

132

Stayed he not to belt his brand,
Saddled straight his dappled steed,
Rode away into the wild wood—
Oh, but he was true at need!
Long ago the sun had set,
Blacker grew the cypress shade;
Onward, onward still he rode;
Over upland and through glade.

Onward, onward still he rode
Heard no sound and saw no sight,
Till the twilight gleams were lost
In the gloom of utter night.
Sounded then that eldritch horn,
North and south and east and west,
Not an echo near or far,
For the bugle blast had rest.

Sudden from the covert deep
Sprung a hundred forms to life;
Glittered through the murky gloom,
Rifle, sabre, axe, and knife.
But he drew his bridle rein,
And displayed his flag of white,
Showed them how he sought their chief,
Through the mist of the summer night.

He alighted from his steed,
And he bade them bind his eyes;
But they came not to the camp
Till the sun was in the skies.
In the darksome place it was;
Scarce the blessed morning air
Played among the stirless leaves,
Scarce the blessed light shone there.

133

Heavy gloomed the boughs above,
Heavy cypress, giant pine;
Solid grew the brake around,
Cane, and bays, and tangled vine,
Stabled there were a hundred steeds,
A hundred steeds of the noblest strain;
From the branches swung on high
Gun and sabre, selle and rein.

On the greensward here and there
Scattered groups of troopers lay,
Burnishing the rusted blade,
Fealty for the coming fray.
Scouring here the rifle-lock,
Running there the leaden ball,
Dark of aspect, strange of garb,
Stalwart, meagre, gaunt, and tall.

Here a suit of buff and blue,
There a hunting-shirt of green;
Here a horseman's spur and boot,
There an Indian moccasin.
But beneath the soldier's garb,
And beneath the forest gear,
Breathed one soul alive to honor,
Throbbed one bosom void of fear!

Many a son of proudest sires,
Rich with the old patrician blood,
In that wild and woodland camp,
Clad i' the hunter's raiment, stood,
Mustering round their chief adored;
Gallant partisans as ever
Charged, with patriotic hate,
Through morass, ravine, and river.

134

Small was he and slight of limb,
Mild of face and soft of speech,
Yet no fiercer spirit ever
Battled in the deadly breach.
Wild his garb as e'er might deck
Lawless rover of the night,
Crimson trews and jerkin green,
Cap of fur, and crescent bright!

And the rapier on his thigh,
It had ne'er been seen to shine,
Nor had left its scabbard once,
Though he ever led the line,
Though, the foremost in the charge,
And the latest in retreat,
He was still the lucky leader,
Who had never known defeat.

Then the cornet bowed him low,
And his message straight began,
Though he marvelled at the camp,
And the raiment, and the man.
“Tarleton greets you well,” he said,
“Bids you fairly to the fight,
To the field, and not the wood,
In the day, and not the night.

“Fit the night for murder foul,
But for gallant deeds the day;
Fit for rapine is the wood,
But the field for open fray.
If a gentleman you be,
As a gentleman you should,
If a Christian and a soldier,
You will leave this cursèd wood,

135

“That fight you may the good fight,
For the country and the crown,
With the sun in heaven to see you,
Until one of you go down.
Now my message it is given,
So dispatch me on my way,
For my task it must be done
Ere the closing of the day.”

Marion turned him on his heel,
And he smiled a merry smile,
And his answer made he thus,
Loudly laughed his men the while:
“Hie thee back to gallant Tarleton,
Greet him soldierly for me,
I have seen him do his devoir,
And that fearlessly and free.

“And if I be a gentleman,
As I surely think to be,
Pray him read, for me, this riddle
Which I riddle now to thee:
Said the lion to the eagle,
As he floated in the sky,
With the dun deer in his talons,
‘Stoop thy pinion from on high,

“‘And come down and fight me here,
Let the dun deer be the prize.’
'Twas the lion ruled the earth,
But the eagle swayed the skies.
As a Christian and a soldier,
I will meet him face to face;
But 'tis I will choose the weapons,
And 'tis I will name the place.

136

“Let him seek me, if he will,
When the morning skies are bright,
All as I shall seek for him
In the shadow of the night.
If he love the lightsome day.
He must meet me in the wood;
He shall find me in the field,
If he hold the night as good.

“I have spoken all my riddle,
Now repose thee on the grass;
Thou must taste a soldier's meal,
Then in safety shalt thou pass.
Let the board be spread, my comrades,
And bring forth our choicest fare;
Worthy is the gallant guest,
Worthy our repast to share.”

Then the board was spread in haste;
But their board it was the sod,
Where the merry men had mustered,
And the chargers' hoofs had trod;
And their fare it was but water,
Muddy water from the lake,
And the roots from the morass,
And the berries from the brake.

When the choice repast was ended,
And the courtesies were done,
He turned him to the camp again,
And reached it ere the set of sun.
Tarleton waited for him there,
With his hand upon his hilt,
Which he trusted on the morrow
Should with rebel blood be gilt.

137

But his hopes they faded all
When the cornet's tale was told,
Of the leader and his riddle,
Of the troopers and their hold.
“Sure their spirits must be hot,
And determined in the cause,
If their drink be muddy water,
And their food be hips and haws.

“If such fools these rebels be,
On such filthy fare to pine,
Were I King George I'd leave them
To their liberty divine.
There is nothing in the land
To be won by so much slaughter;
I would leave the rogues, by Heaven,
To their roots and muddy water!”

138

THE SURPRISE OF TRENTON.

Eighteen hundred years had passed,
Lacking only twenty-four,
Since the Saviour, one-begotten,
Meek the Virgin Mother bore;
Shepherds on that very night
In the fields their watch did keep,
While the busy world around
Silent lay, and bathed in sleep;

When the angel of the Lord
Came upon them, and a light
Great and glorious shone about
Through the gloom of the wintry night;
And the heavenly host was heard
Singing loud o'er field and fen,
“Glory be to God in the highest,
Peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Lowly in his cradle-manger
Then the infant Saviour slept,
While the maiden mother o'er him
Tears of humble gladness wept;
And the Magi found him there,
Who had followed from afar,
When they saw it in the East,
The Redeemer's holy star;

139

For the star it went before them,
And the wise ones followed on,
Till it stood above the spot,
And their joyous goal was won;
Humbly then they bowed the knee,
Humbly did their gifts unfold,
Gifts of ivory and aloes,
Myrrh and frankincense and gold.

Eighteen hundred years had passed,
Eighteen hundred years and eight,
Since the Saviour, one-begotten,
Bowed him to a felon's fate;
Nailed upon the cursèd free
Suffered then our God and Lord:
Peace to man he came to leave;
“Peace he left not, but a sword.”

Noon it was of Christmas night
On the wintry Delaware;
Sullenly the falling snow
Floated through the murky air;
Sullenly the flooded river
Moaned the whitening shores along;
Sullenly the drifting ice
Groaned and tossed i' the current strong.

Not a star was in the sky,
Not a sound was on the breeze,
Not a voice or stir there was
In the thickly-feathered trees;
Only through the heavy gloom
Muttered low the mournful rushing
Of the deep and dismal stream,
Through its icy fetters gushing.

140

Lonely were the streets of Trenton,
Trenton town by the Delaware;
Quartered there were the British horse,
Quartered the bearded Hessians there.
Deep the snow on the roofs above,
Deep i' the trackless roads below;
Hark to the bell! 'twas midnight chime;
Oh, but the strokes were stern and slow!

Not a guard was on his post;
Not a round its circuit made;
What the risk in such a storm?
Where the foe that should invade?
Far beyond the flooded stream,
Pennsylvania wilds among.
For the patriot army lay,
Frail, disjointed, and unstrung;

Washington, who late so glorious,
Braved in equal arms his king,
Sees the boasted bird victorious
Sadly droop its baffled wing.
“Soldiers, spread the Christmas feast;
Soldiers, fill the bumper fair;
Pass the bottle, pile the hearth,
Cutting cold is the wintry air!

“Let the toast our country be,
From whatever country we:
Sons of German Fatherland,
Britons ever bold and free.
Comrades, troll the jolly stave;
Pass the bottle, fear no wrong!
For the rebel hosts are weak,
And the wintry river strong!

141

“Tush, they dare not! We who drove them,
Weak and weary, faint and few;
Tracked them, weaponless and wounded,
O'er the roads by the bloody dew,
Which to every painful print
Trickled from their shoeless feet—
Tush! the craven dove as soon
Shall the fearless falcon meet!”

Madly raged the jovial rout,
Loud the bursts of loyal song
Rang amid the drifting storm,
Rang the snowy fields along!
Little deemed the roistering crew,
As their revelry they plied,
What avengers stern and sure
Gathered on the icy tide;

Gathered, soon their glee to mar,
Hearts afire and hands on hilt:
Redder liquor far than wine
Long ere morning shall be spilt;
Hark the deep and solemn hum,
Louder than the river's flow,
Rising heavier through the night,
Nearer through the drifting snow.

'Tis the hum of mustered men;
Barges with their burthen brave
Painfully and long are tossing
On the fierce and freezing wave;
Horse and foot and guns are there,
Struggling through the awful gloom;
Soon their din shall rouse the foe,
Rouse him like the trump of doom!

142

Firm as some gigantic oak
Stood their chief on the hither shore,
Marking how his comrades true
Prospered with the laboring oar;
Marking how each barge and boat
Slowly battled to the strand,
Marking how the serried lines
Mustered as they came to land!

Calm his high and noble port,
Calm his mighty face severe;
None had seen it change with doubt,
None had seen it pale with fear;
And it showed as grandly now,
In that wild and perilous hour,
Fraught with wisdom half divine,
Fraught with more than mortal power.

Steadily he stood and gazed,
Not a cloud upon his brow;
Calmer in the banquet-hall
Never had he been than now.
Yet his fate was on the cast,
Life and fame and country all.
Sterner game was never played;
Death or Freedom—win or fall!

Fall he—and his country's hope
Sets, a sun no more to rise!
Win he—and her dawning light
Yet may fill the unfathomed skies!
Fall he—and his name must wane,
Rebel chief of a rebel band;
Win he—it shall live forever,
Father of his native land!

143

Silent stood he, grave and mute,
Listening now the distant roar
From the half-heard town, and now
Gazing on the crowded shore,
Crowded with his patriot host,
Burning for the vengeful fray,
Ear and eye and heart erect,
Waiting for the trumpet's bray.

Silent, till the latest boat
Safe had stemmed the wheeling tide,
Till the latest troop was banded,
Heart to heart, and side by side,
Then he turned his eyes aloft,
Moved his lips for a little space;
Mighty though he was, he bowed him
Meekly to the throne of grace:

“God of battles, Lord of might,
Let my country but be free,
To thy mercies I commend me;
Glory to thy Son and Thee!”
Then he waved his arm aloft
With a martial gesture proud;
“Let your march,” he said, “be silent,
Till your cannon speak aloud.”

Silent was their rapid march
Through the mist of rain and sleet,
For the deep and drifted snow
Gave no sound beneath their feet;
Clashed no musket, beat no drum,
As they fleeted through the gloom,
Liker far than living men
To the phantoms of the tomb.

144

Morn was near, but overcast
In the dim and rayless sky;
Not a gleam foreshowed his coming,
Yet the pallid sun was nigh;
Morn was near, but not a guard
Heard their march or saw them come;
Lo! they form: the very dogs
In the fated town were dumb.

Hark! the bell! the bugle's blast!
Hark! the loud and long alarms!
Beat the drums—but all too late—
All too late they beat to arms!
Forth they rush in disarray,
Forming fast with fearful din:
Open now, ye mouths of flame;
Pour your crashing volleys in!”

See, the sharp and running flash!
Hark, the long and rattling roll!
There the western muskets blaze,
Every shot a mortal soul.
Vain was then the Hessian's yager,
Vain the English horseman's steel;
Vain the German's hardihood,
Vain the Briton's loyal zeal.

Fast they fell, the best and bravest,
Unavenged and helpless fall:
Rallying their men dismayed,
Campbell bold and gallant Rahl.
Then before that murderous hail,
Thick, incessant, sure as death,
Reel the shattered columns back:
Gasp the dying chiefs for breath.

145

Lo, 'tis o'er! their arms they ground:
All that brave men can, did they;
Fought, while fight they could, then yielded.
What avails the hopeless fray?
What avails the horse's might
Though his neck be clothed in thunder?
What the cannon's fiery breath
Riving rock-built forts asunder?

What avails the speed of navies,
Rocking on the subject tide?
Nothing, when the Lord of Hosts
Battles on the righteous side.
He who giveth not the race
To the swift, nor to the strong
War's red honor, but alway
Strengthens those who suffer long,—

Surely He on Trenton's night
Steeled our mighty champion's heart;
Gave him wisdom, gave him power,
So to play his destined part.
Beat the fiercest down before him,
Turned the bravest back to fly;
Covered aye his head in battle
That no hair of it should die.

Held him steadfast in the right
Till his glorious task was o'er,
And no hostile banner waved
On Columbia's hallowed shore;
Till his name was spread abroad,
For a nation's freedom won,
All-honored, from the setting
To the rising of the sun.

146

THE HOSTAGE'S RELEASE.

COMPOSED ON THE LIBERATION OF THE SAC CHIEF, BLACK HAWK.

A warrior still, a chieftain once again,
Back to thy forest-home, old Sagamore!
As the caged panther from his galling chain
To the lone desert and the untrodden shore.
Back to thy forest-home! The eternal roar
Of boundless cataracts, the whispered tone
Of winds unfettered, from the cedars hoar
Waking wild music, shall thy spirit own
The untutored hymns that peal about thy throne!

Dearer to thee the mountain's tangled side,
The lake's blue mirror, or the dim wood glen,
Than pomp of palaces, or gorgeous pride
Of multitudinous roofs. The hum of men,
Swarming and battening in their splendid pen,
Is poison to thy soul; the petty stream
Of daily joys or cares thine eagle ken
With calm derision views—not as they seem,
But fleeting, false, a mockery, or a dream.

What can their letters or their learning give,
These pale usurpers of thy native sway?
Can all their wisdom bid the mortal live,
Restore the halt to strength, the blind to day,
Relume the frenzied mind with reason's ray,
One passion quench that fires the burning breast,
Or quell one pang that rends the fragile clay?
Can music's sweetness yield the mourner rest,
Charm slavery's ills, or make the captive blest?

147

Doth pure religion stride o'er vanquished crime?
Do sinners tremble, and oppressors cease?
Doth every kindred land, and sister clime,
Sheathe the red blade in universal peace?
Doth every keel that ploughs unnumbered seas,
The joyful banners of their faith uphold?
Doth heavenly freedom, hallowed love, increase?
Are Christians—free from cursèd lust of gold—
One flock united in one shepherd's fold?

Hath the Great Spirit given to these alone
A pale-faced passport to His promised land,
Their sole complexion welcome to His throne,
All else sad exiles from the immortal strand?
Are their sons braver, or their maids more bland,
Stronger their arms, their eloquence more bright?
Are their domes consecrate by Virtue's hand,
Purer their dwellings, or their hearths more light,
That they should bask in day, thou lurk in night?

Back to thy forest-home! to ponder there
On Christian precept and on Christian deed;
To bless the power that conquered but to spare,
To teach thy tribe such mercy's fitting meed.
Back to thy forest-home! to preach the need
Of calm submission to the overwhelming foe.
In thee 'twere guilt for man's best rights to bleed;
Guilt to lay privileged oppressors low;
Hence learn to kiss the hand that deals the blow.

Back, murderer and heathen, to thy lair!
The heroic Spartans in their deathless tomb
By the everlasting hills, which saw them dare,
In hopeless strife, their unavailing doom—
They are earth's demigods! The charnel's gloom

148

Shrinks from their clear eternity of praise:
They are immortal; and wouldst thou presume
To claim participation in their bays,
A nameless savage in these latter days?

Leonidas and Washington! Twin names
In the high scroll of glory, save that he,
Columbia's champion, loftier splendor claims
Than Greece's martyr at Thermopylæ:
Both fathers of their country, both the free;
But one successful. Battling for the earth
That bore them; for the hills, the vales, the sea;
The sepulchres of those who gave them birth;
The sacred shrines, and the domestic hearth.

But thou, wild rover of the wilderness,
Hast thou no dwelling in the trackless wood,
No home to cherish, and no babes to bless?
Hast thou no rights to be preserved by blood?
No! The wild-cat may perish for her brood,
The wren to guard her nest may glut the snake.
Their strife is valor, nature's hardihood:
But the red warrior in his native brake
Fights, dies, and is despised for Freedom's sake.

Back to thy forest home, free nature's child!
Back to thy sunburnt mate and lusty boys,
Thy proud dominion in yon central wild,
Thine untaught virtues, and thy guileless joys:
Virtues which thrive not 'midst the effeminate toys
Of polished learning and voluptuous grace,
Unmurmuring patience, love that never cloys;
High soul, that fears no evil but disgrace;
Faith, that nor charms can bend nor time erase.

149

Firm to thy friends, and guileless as the dove
Wise as the serpent, winding on thy foe,
True to thy country, though thy steps may rove;
Swift as the eagle swooping on the roe;
Mute as the fox beneath the torturer's blow:
Last in the war-dance, first in battle's tide,
Unmoved by triumph, unsubdued by woe
Fixed in thy purpose as the mountain's side,
Thy foeman's terror, and thy people's pride.

Mild to the suppliant, haughty to the proud,
To hoary old of reverential mien,
Silent in council, in the death-song loud:
Though grave, determined; scornful, though serene;
True as thine arrow, as thy hatchet keen,
Unscared by peril, and unbought by gold,
Felt as the tempest, as the lightning seen;
As now thou art, such Cato was of old:
Are heroes fashioned in a different mould?

Back to thy forest-home! but not to sleep
Supine and helpless till the storm shall break;
Not in the melting tears that women weep,
Not in pure draughts from thine ancestral lake,
The burning thirst of that deep heart to slake.
No! Slaves who mocked the eagle in his cage,
When his soul's hoarded vengeance shall awake,
And streams of gore his fiery pride assuage,
May curse the reckless shaft that stirred his rage!

And they shall curse it; from the limpid verge
Of inland oceans, from the foreheads high
Of western mountains to the Atlantic surge
Shall ring, with earthquake sound, the battle-cry
Of tribes, appealing to the eternal sky,

150

Battling for freedom! warring for the graves
Of their forefathers, the poor right to die
In their own forests, by their native waves,
Rather than roam as exiles, crouch as slaves!

And thou, old chieftain, when the strife is o'er,
Vanquished in arms, but unsubdued in fight,
A martyred patriot on thy parent shore,
Ere thine undaunted soul shall wing its flight
To the far hunting-grounds of endless light,
Shalt haply joy thou hast not lived to see
Thy nation's glory sunk in utter night;
Knowing that innocent to die, and free,
Is worthier deathless fame than sordid victory.

151

IS THERE DANGER NIGH?

A PROTESTANT BALLAD OF THE DAYS OF THE SPANISH ARMADA.

Warder, stand and tell us why,
From the Nore to Portland Bill,
From the Lizard to Cantire,
Blazes every seaward hill,
Every cape is red with fire;
Why the beacons, fiercely burning,
Toss the lurid light so high,
Midnight into mid-day turning,
Crimsoning the summer sky?
Is there danger nigh?

Warder, stand and tell us why,
In the minster-turrets swinging,
In the watch-towers' giddy height,
Such a peal the bells are ringing
Back and forward all the night?
Why so fast the Flat-caps rally,
To the cry of “Bills and Bows!”
Why through causeway, court, and alley
Thick the crowd and thicker flows?
Is there danger nigh?

Warder, stand and tell us why,
All to Temple-bar from Shene,
All from Chertsey to Whitehall,
To the Tower from Eridge Green,
From St. Albans to the Mall,
Come the couriers clattering in,

152

Go the squadrons clashing out,
Cannon roll with such a din,
Train-bands march with such a shout?
Is there danger nigh?

Warder, stand and tell us why
Such a terror fills the night,
Why so pale the women's faces,
Why such hurryings and fright
In the old familiar places;
Why the brows so darkly bended,
Of each husband, son, and sire;
Why old casques so sternly mended,
Old swords ground by the midnight fire?
Is there danger nigh?

Warder, stand and tell us why
Ancient cities, market towns,
Castle gates and cottage doors,
Fields and forests, dales and downs,
Lonely fells and misty moors,
Southern, midland, northern shires,
Pour their thousands forth in arms,
Nobles, gentles, burghers, squires,
Mustering fast to the loud alarms?
Is there danger nigh?

Warder, stand and tell us why
March the yeomen, stoutly striding,
In their jerkins blue and red,
With that stately woman riding,
All in armor, at their head;
England's king, whate'er betide her,
With her lions on the wind,
And her English peers beside her,
English archery behind?
Is there danger nigh?

153

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
From the shores of Cadiz Bay,
From Arcasson's stormy bight,
From the billows of Biscay,
From Corunna's castled height,
From the wild Cantabrian mountains,
From Alhambra's Moorish bowers.
From the Guadalquivir's fountains,
From San Ildefonso's towers,
Their is danger near.

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
From the crucifix and cope,
From the gibbet and the sack,
From the minions of the Pope,
From the fagot and the rack,
From Loyola's bigot zeal,
From the old Castilian bands,
From the princely Parma's steel,
From Don Philip's ruthless hands,
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
England's southron counties nearing,
O'er the calm and narrow sea,
Spanish war-ships swift are steering,
Ten times ten and fifty-three;
Great Sidonia points them forward,
Thirty thousands in his train,
Mighty galleons to the vaward,
Rich with spoils of the Spanish main.
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
Fierce Martinez de Ricaldo,
With Diego de Tournar,
And the Italian prince Ubaldo;

154

And the Conde of Alvar,
With Toledo's hearts of steel,
And Farnese's musketeers,
'Neath the castles of Castile,
Hitherward the Armada steers.
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
To our kingdom and our queen,
To our soil and to our sod,
To our country's graveyards green,
To our right to worship God,
To our liberties and lives,
To our churches and our altars,
To the honor of our wives,
From the faith that never falters,
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
Hold it now with might and main,
Hold it now or never more!
Lo! the battle-drums of Spain
Roll along our English shore!
In each drum-beat is perdition,
If ye be not men this morn!
From the bloody Inquisition,
To your children yet unborn,
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
Ye remember Bloody Mary;
Ye her savage spouse have seen,
With his whiskerandos hairy,
And his sandalled monks between;
With his Smithfield bishop-burnings,

155

And his Jesuits from Spain.
Will ye have his fagot-turnings?
Will ye have his Pope again?
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
Ye have nothing now to save you
But your own hearts and your hands,
And the hardihood God gave you,
And the temper of your brands.
On, then, Englishmen, for England!
On, then, England, for her Grace!
None shall ever rule in England
But our ancient English race!
There is danger near!

Englishmen, hold fast the spear:
And if slaves your sons must be,
Let it be to an English king
They shall bend the servile knee;
Not to a gilded, wooden thing.
If your necks you must render up,
Let it be to an English rope;
Not to the yoke of cross and cup,
Or the nod of a Roman Pope!
There is danger near!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
By the mothers that us bare;
By the sires we've not forgotten;
By the wives our beds who share;
By the children we've begotten;
By the hills which saw our birth;
Vales in which we hope to lie;
By our chainless English earth,
By our liberal English sky,—
We will do or die!

156

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
By the torch in Oxford lighted
On the day when Ridley burned,
Ne'er in England to be slighted,
Or to heathen darkness turned;
By the souls of those who perished,
Fearless at the fiery stake;
By the tortures which they cherished
For their Lord and Saviour's sake,—
We will do or die!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
Where our royal queen is leading
With her lions in the van,
There will one and all be bleeding,
One and every Englishman.
English ever shall the land,
English shall the ocean be.
Be it on the rocky strand,
Be it on the rolling sea,
We will do or die!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
Never son of savage Spain,
Never bloody Romish beast,
Shall be English king again,
Shall again be English priest.
Better Mahound's crescent wear
Than the cross of Rome adore;
Better serve the Russian bear,
Than the Babylonian whore.
We will do or die!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
Nothing that the Pope can make,
Nothing that Don Philip can,
Shall an Englishwoman shake!
How, then, shake an Englishman?

157

Let them come! we do defy them,
Though their boastings be so brave.
But, whatever we deny them,
We will give an English grave.
We will do or die!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
We've a Raleigh's glorious daring;
We've a Percy's spur of flame;
We've a Blount's chivalric bearing;
We've an Oxford's noble name;
We've a Hawkins and a Howard;
We've a Frobisher and Drake;
And who should be the coward,
Such commanders to forsake?
We will do or die!

Warder,—thus we make reply,—
With a Howard for Recaldo;
With a Hawkins for Tournar;
With a Drake for Prince Ubaldo;
With a Blount for the Count Alvar,—
I trow that we can meet them
In the Straits as on the Main;
I trow as we have beat them,
We can beat them yet again.
We will do or die!

Warder, pass. Our say is said.
Naught of earth can now avail us;
You have heard our last reply;
If our country's fortune fail us,
It is only left to die.
If Don Philip's minions dare,
Dare to try the battle plain,
We will leave it, you may swear,
We will leave it or remain
Conquerors, or dead!

158

SONNET TO A BUTTERFLY.

Forth to thy bright existence of an hour,
Thou painted meteor—floating on the stream
Of summer sunshine, drinking from the beam
New youth, new beauty from the perfumed flower!
Thou type of endless life, thou sign of power,
But now a reptile writhing in the gloom—
The dust of earth! At eve a living tomb;
At morn a spirit blest in Eden's bower.
What are the sons of Adam? Do they soar
In virtue's clear security, or creep
Through tears and labor to the dusky shore
Of cold obstruction and mysterious sleep,
Thence, at the trumpet's peal, to burst on high—
Never to sorrow more, nor doubt, nor die?

159

SONG OF THE FREE COMPANIONS.

Trowl, trowl the brown bowl—
Merrily trowl it, ho!
For the nut-brown ale shall never fail,
However the seasons go.

Drink, drink! He who'll slink
When circling beakers flow,
That knave, I swear, will never dare
Like a man to meet the foe.

Then steep, steep your souls deep
In the wassail cup to-night;
For the next day-spring shall surely bring
The dry and sober flight.

Cho.

Trowl, trowl the brown bowl—
Merrily trowl it, ho!
For the nut-brown ale shall never fail,
However the seasons go.

Wine, wine! comrades, wine!
In wine the pledge must be,
When drink the brave to a soldier's grave,
Or a soldier's victory.

Hence, hence with all offence,
Though foes of old were we!
Our future life shall know no strife,
Save who the first shall be.

160

Then up! up with each cup,
From whatever land ye be!—
Whether knights of the lance from sunny France,
Or old England's archers free.

Cho.

Wine, wine! comrades, wine!
In wine the pledge must be,
When drink the brave to a soldier's grave,
Or a soldier's victory.

161

ANACREONTICS.

I.

On, on with the feast! Fill the goblets of gold
With the blood of old Metternich's vine.
They may boast their Falernian, and Massic of old,
Their Samian, and Cæcuban wine;
But never in vases of classical mould
Did liquor more generous shine
Than the ruby-crowned flagons of Burgundy hold,
Or the grapes of the bacchanal Rhine.

II.

Fill, fill to the river that gladdens our soul
With its joy-giving vintage's birth!
Long, long may the lands, where its bright waters roll,
Be the shrines of contentment and mirth!
Fill up, though the hollow bells haply may toll
For some time-parted offspring of earth!
Shall we be less near to eternity's goal
If we sorrow in silence and dearth?

III.

If care be the province of mortals below,
In their being's allotted career;
If the chances of fortune, the deeds of the foe,
The falsehood or death of the dear,
Should extinguish the star that illumined our brow,
And shadow our spirits while here,—
Sure 'tis wiser in wine to rekindle the glow,
Than to languish in darkness and fear.

162

IV.

On, on with the feast! We will revel to-night
If we never must revel again.
Let the song add its magical thrill of delight,
Till our bosoms exult in the strain.
Bring garlands—the dewy, the perfumed, the bright—
From the rose, with her blood-tinted grain,
To the lily's deep chalice of silvery light,
And the vine's odoriferous chain.

V.

Fill, fill the bright bowl! We are gathered to-day
From the camp, from the court, from the deep;
But to-morrow—what bard or what prophet can say
In what haven our spirits shall sleep?
And if o'er our souls, though their tone may be gay,
Some sad recollections should sweep,
With the wine-cup's enchantment we'll vanquish their sway,
And smile—that we ever should weep.

163

SONNET ON A SLEEPING INFANT.

Sleep's dewy veil hath sealed thy curtained eyes,
And lapped thine earliest cares in peaceful rest,
Fair babe; yet soon all-radiant shalt thou rise,
To smile new rapture on thy mother's breast.
Oh, may no darker clouds obscure the skies
Of thy bright promise!—mayest thou never know
The cold world, stripped from its deceitful guise
Of hollow seeming, and love's empty show;
Nor learn, with heart convulsed and passion-tost,
That parents may forget, and friends grow chill;
That health, home, fortune, country, may be lost;
That mortal idols are but mortal still!
But slumber thus when earth's last woes are o'er;
Thus wake to light and life for evermore.

247

SONNET: REFLECTIONS ON THE DEPARTED YEAR.

Hark! 'Tis the midnight hour: it tolls the knell
Of a departed year. One unit more
Is added to eternity gone by. Full well
It points to loss which time can ne'er restore.
As fades the hours, so human life flies fast;
Of each, the seasons occupy their turn:
They spring, advance; they mellow, droop, are past,—
And leave survivors but their fate to mourn.
Yet are they eloquent: e'en from their grave
A lesson of importance they impart—
To seize the passing hour; prepare the heart
The dreadful curse to shun, the bliss to save.
Oh! let us then be wise: so shall the time,
Still flitting, work us good, and snatch from vice or crime.

248

LAKE GEORGE.

Not in the bannered castle,
Beside the gilded throne,
On fields where knightly ranks have strode,
In feudal halls—alone—
The spirit of the stately mien,
Whose presence flings a spell,
Fadeless, on all around her,
In empire loves to dwell.

Gray piles and moss-grown cloisters
Call up the shadows vast
That linger in their dim domain—
Dreams of the visioned past!
As sweep the gorgeous pageants by,
We watch the pictured train,
And sigh that aught so glorious
Should be so brief and vain.

But here a spell yet deeper
Breathes from the woods, the sky:
Proudlier these rocks and waters speak
Of hoar antiquity.
Here Nature built her ancient realm
While yet the world was young;
Her monuments of grandeur
Unshaken stand, and strong.

Here shines the sun of Freedom
Forever o'er the deep,
Where Freedom's heroes by the shore
In peaceful glory sleep.

249

And deeds of high and proud emprise
In every breeze are told—
The everlasting tribute
To hearts that now are cold.

Farewell, then, scenes so lovely!
If sunset gild your rest,
Or the pale starlight gleam upon
The water's silvery breast,
Or morning on these glad green isles
In trembling splendor grows,
A holier spell than beauty
Hallows your pure repose.

250

STANZAS SUGGESTED BY THE MELODY OF AN ÆOLIAN HARP.

I.

Harp of the viewless air,
Whence springs the power thy trembling wires disclose,
What spirit hand is wildly wandering there,
To steal repose?

II.

Hark to the charmed sound
Impetuous rushing on the prisoned ear,
With shivering symphonies at once unbound
In joy and fear!

III.

Now on night's breast they faint,
And now a parting requiem round they pour,
As moonlight waves which seek with dying plaint
The silent shore.

IV.

Art thou the breath of Hope,
Glad but uncertain in her promise fair—
Hope whose enchanting voice alone may cope
With our despair?

251

V.

Or art thou memory's moan,
When aching hearts on past endearments dwell,
Restoring dreams of bliss too early flown,
And loved too well?

VI.

Vainly I question thee;
Again I hear thy swell, again thy sigh.
O wind-harp wild! must these forever be
Thy sole reply?

University of Virginia Library

COME BACK.

“MY HOME.”

TO ***

THE ETONIAN'S ADIEU.

RECORDS.

SUNSET ON THE HUDSON.

BROWNWOOD FEMALE SEMINARY.

THE SUMMER STORM.

THE FRESHET.

THE WRECK.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

THE MOTHER.

A SONNET.

THE RESCUE.

THE OLDEN TIME.

THE NOONDAY MEAL.

THE INDEPENDENT FARMER.

THE FISHER-BOY.

OBERON.

MARGARET.

SONNETS TO MADELINE.

TO MELANCHOLY.

TO ESPERANZA.

INNOCENZA.

VIRGINIA.

THE MAGNOLIA.—I.

THE MAGNOLIA.—II.

THE MOTHER'S JEWELS.

THE OATH OF HANNIBAL.

CLEOPATRA.

JOAN OF ARC.

MARGARET OF ANJOU.

A LEGEND FROM THE WARS OF THE ROSES.

THE COVENANTER'S GRAVE.

THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS.

JAEL AND SISERA.

Judges, ch. iv., v.

THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY.

St. John, ch. viii., vv. 1–12.

SIR AMELOT DE VERE.

A FRAGMENT OF UNPUBLISHED ROMANCE.

THE HAWKING PARTY.

WELLINGTON.

FUNERAL SONNETS.

[I. Greatest of Englishmen, thine England's heart]

[II. Not that he was the chiefest of her men]

[III. Arthur the great is gone, who saved the land]

[IV. Our mightiest warrior is dead—is dead]

THE BEAUTY OF LIBERTY.

JANE McCREA.

ARNOLD'S TREASON.

MARION'S FEAST.

THE SURPRISE OF TRENTON.

THE HOSTAGE'S RELEASE.

COMPOSED ON THE LIBERATION OF THE SAC CHIEF, BLACK HAWK.

IS THERE DANGER NIGH?

A PROTESTANT BALLAD OF THE DAYS OF THE SPANISH ARMADA.

SONNET TO A BUTTERFLY.

SONG OF THE FREE COMPANIONS.

Cho.

Cho.

ANACREONTICS.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

SONNET ON A SLEEPING INFANT.

SONNET: REFLECTIONS ON THE DEPARTED YEAR.

LAKE GEORGE.

STANZAS SUGGESTED BY THE MELODY OF AN ÆOLIAN HARP.

I.