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 THE LIBRARY 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
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 LAYS OF MELPOMENE. 
 
 Tu senti, ballatetta, che la morte 
 Mi stringe si, che vita m' abbandona. 
 
 Guido Cavalcanit, 
 
 BY SUMNER L. FAIRFIELD. 
 
 PORTLAND : 
 
 PRINTED BY TODD AND SMITH. 
 
 1824.
 
 DISTRICT OF MAUVE, ss. 
 
 FL s l"R E IT REME MBERED, That on this thirteenth day of 
 'J JO November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hun 
 dred and twenty-four, and the forty-ninth year of the Independence of 
 the United States of America, Mr. SUMNEHL. FAIRFIELD, of the District 
 of Maine, has deposited in this Office, the title of a Book the right 
 whereof he claims as Author, in the words following, viz : " LA VS OF 
 MELPOMENE, Tu senti, ballatetta, cne la morte, Mi stringe si, die 
 vita m' abbandona. Guido Cavnlcanti. By Sumner L. Fairfield." 
 
 In conformity to the Act of theOongressof the United States, entitled 
 "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of 
 maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, 
 during the times therein mentioned ;" and also, to an act, entitled "An 
 Act supplementary to an act, entitled, an act for the encouragement of 
 learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the au 
 thors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mention 
 ed, and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving 
 and etching historical and other prints." 
 
 JOHN MUSSEY, 
 
 Clerk of the District Court of Maine, 
 A true copy as of record, 
 
 Attest, J. MUSSEY, Clerk D. C. Maine.
 
 Many of the following Poems have al 
 ready appeared in various literary Journals; 
 and such has been their reception that the 
 timidity natural to a young author, ambi 
 tiously seeking fame, is lessened. Anxiety 
 for the fate of his productions is ever pre 
 dominant in a poet's mind ; and, however 
 sanguinely he may create, in moments of 
 high aspiring, an immortality for himself, 
 experience of earthly mutability chills his 
 ardor and superinduces apprehensions fear 
 ful in proportion to his lofty imaginings. 
 But repeated favors from the public miti 
 gate this dread, and supply in its place a 
 deferential confidence alike agreeable to 
 those who impart and him who receives 
 sincere approbation. In writing these 
 Poems it has been my desire to please ; 
 the fulfilment of that desire remains with 
 a public not unconscious of the author's 
 youth and misfortunes. 
 
 759422
 
 of 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 Lyre of my Love ! for many a lonely hour 
 Thou hast breathed music o'er my sinking mind 
 And I have sought thee, when the world unkind 
 Crushed my fond hopes, in Love's secluded bower. 
 And found thy chords possessed a magic power 
 O'er the dark workings of the soul ; woes bind 
 The Memory unto joys life leaves behind, 
 And Fancy radiates the darkest lower 
 Of stormy being with rich light ; howe'er 
 Rude and unpractised be the hand that strays 
 Thy golden wires among, thy plaintive lays 
 Oft from my soul have banished pain and fear, 
 And I have felt for many a lingering year 
 Of harrowing woe for one so young the days 
 More softly come and go, illumined by rays 
 Brighter than others, when my lyre was near. 
 Thou hast been faithful and I love thee well. 
 Go forth, ye orphan lays ! ye have no guardian spell.
 
 AUTUMN. 
 
 There's beauty in the autumnal sky, 
 And mellow sweetness in the air, 
 But it hath sadness in my eye, 
 And breathes of sorrow and despair; 
 Its softness suits not settled woe, 
 Its richness mocks my poverty, 
 And sunny day's ethereal glow 
 Laughs o'er my dark soul's misery. 
 
 The requiem song of sighing gale 
 With rustling, lifeless foliage playing; 
 The chilling night wind's saddening wail 
 O'er rock-browed hill and wild heath straying ; 
 The mournful sound of lapsing flood 
 Lamenting desert mead and shore, 
 Rather beseem his solitude 
 Who weeps for all b,e did adore. 
 
 1 have long been a wanderer, doomed 
 Life's ills and wrongs and woes to bear, 
 To feel my bosom's loves entombed, 
 To cherish grief and woo despair ! 
 And 1 have been betrayed, oppressed, 
 Belied and mocked in guise so foul, 
 That there dwells not within my breast 
 A hope, nor purpose in my soul. 
 
 No kindred bosom beats with mine, 
 For I am one the world loves not; 
 No hopes around my being twine, 
 For I am doomed to be forgot ; 
 Oh ! had I perished when a child, 
 Ere high aspirings burned to heaven, 
 Devotions blasted, pleasures foiled, 
 And passions ne'er my heart had riven I
 
 I have no friend on this cold earth, 
 No gilded prospect cheers my eye, 
 Despair watched o'er my unwished birth, 
 And woe wept o'er the agony ; 
 My childhood groaned 'neath wrong and ill, 
 AYid I grew sad when others smiled, 
 For ever on joy's rapturing thrill 
 Came sorrows deep and miseries wild. 
 
 My youth has been a scene of woe, 
 And wandering and reproach, and all 
 That loved me in death's overthow 
 Have passed away beyond recal ; 
 And I am left to suffer here 
 Alone, and feel the keenest throes 
 Of pain unpitied, while no tear 
 Gushes to calm my burning woes. 
 
 Pale daughter of the dying year ! 
 1 ever loved thy scenes of death, 
 Thy foliage dropping red and sear, 
 Thy pensive look and nipping breath 
 For thou wert like thy votary son, 
 Fading and dying day by day, 
 And smiling that thy task was done 
 So soon, and life had passed away. 
 
 When, oh, I trace the path of years 
 
 And count the pangs my heart hath borne, 
 
 And number o'er my bosonvs tears, 
 
 And sighs and groans of grief forlorn, 
 
 And think of all the dead behind, 
 
 And what they were in life to me, 
 
 I feel a" wild delight refined 
 
 In holding converse thus with thee.
 
 8 
 
 Oh, I would change my being high 
 Gladly a withered leaf to be, 
 And float on zephyr's pinions by, 
 A thing unknowing misery ! 
 And when the snows of winter fell 
 I should not feel their icy blight, 
 But slumber in the mountain dell 
 Sweetly the livelong northern night 
 
 I ne'er could cringe and crouch to guile, 
 Nor thoughts repress that would arise, 
 Nor visor with a villian smile 
 Ice-featured hatred's demon lies; 
 I ne'er could herd with fashion's throng, 
 And whirl away the unmeaning hours, 
 Nor link with base nefarious wrong 
 My spirit's unpolluted powers. 
 
 And so my mortal life bath passed 
 
 In loneliness and grief anrj woe, 
 
 And I have trod an arid waste 
 
 With measured step, lone, solemn, slow. 
 
 And seen the viper brood of hate 
 
 And baseness crawl around my way. 
 
 And felt my being desolate 
 
 Lit by misfortune's baleful ray. 
 
 Oh, dying Autumn ! would with thee 
 I could lie down and sleep fore'er ; 
 Thou would'st not waken misery 
 In the soft springtime of the year 
 By breaking his undreaming sleep 
 Who never loved its brilliant flowers, 
 But often sighed he could not weep 
 When musing of youth's changeful hoar;
 
 
 
 Cold is the hand that once was prest 
 In passioned rapture to my heart, 
 And colder yet the lovelit breast 
 That felt in all my woes a part : 
 Wild wails the wind o'er many a tomb 
 Which holds full many a dear one bound, 
 And in creation's starless gloom 
 I hear a mournful, dirge-like sound. 
 
 'Tis nothing, Autumn, but thy breeze 
 Amid the leafless forest flying, 
 But yet it comes through bending trees 
 Like the last groan of nature d3 7 ing ; 
 And seems, as low the sun sinks down, 
 Like a sweet voice I loved to hear, 
 Though altered now its charming tone 
 To suit the melancholy year. 
 
 In childhood's hours, a wandering boy 
 Reflective, feeling, sad and wild, 
 I felt it was a glad employ 
 For lonely, visionary child, 
 To rove abroad 'mid hills and woods, 
 And climb the cliff and pluck the flower 
 That flourished -there, and skim the floods, 
 And dare worst danger's utmost power. 
 
 I little thought at that sweet time 
 My heart would ache 'mid scenes like these, 
 Or that the clear brook's lulling chime 
 Would ever fail my soul to please; 
 But, ah, long time has passed away 
 Since I knew not the world's deep woes, 
 And pleasures past around me play 
 Like spectres round the dead's repose.
 
 10 
 
 Since thou, pale widow of the year, 
 Wert here before, strange deeds have been ; 
 Full many a gay heart's quaked with fear, 
 And many a lovely, joyous scene 
 Hath changed to desolation wild; 
 Eyes, that once shone with pleasure's light* 
 Have wept like those of little child, 
 And lost their happy, fairy sight. 
 
 And many a proud and lordly one 
 Hath knelt beside the robbing tomb, 
 And high-born things have heedless gone 
 With creatures nursed in lowly gloom ; 
 All all, O nature ! die with thee, 
 The high, the low, the sad, the gay, 
 And it were joy, in sooth, to me, 
 If I could die like yon sweet day. 
 
 THE ISLAND BOWER. 
 
 Balm-breathing evening's azure eye 
 Its mellow glance o'er nature throws. 
 And, music, melting o'er the sky, 
 Along the vale of Lura flows ; 
 While glory in yon sun-track gleams, 
 Like vision'd hope, rich, faint, and fair, 
 And fanc.y drinks the waning beams, 
 As memory waves her sun-flower hair. 
 
 The arching cliff looks on the stream, 
 That put Is, and trills, and murmurs by, 
 And silence waits o'er youth's fond dream 
 Of bliss, iie thinks not soon will die ;
 
 11 
 
 The tassell'd hill, whose sun-lit brow 
 Returns creation's wavy light, 
 Leans musing o'er the rill below, 
 And sings to hail the vernal night. 
 
 v 
 
 O ! Lura's vale is dear to me ! 
 For every scene is lit with eyes 
 That glow 'mid every blossonrd tree 
 With long-lost hour's ethereal dyes ; 
 And, while the star that lovers love 
 Illumines rapture's tear-gemm'd hour, 
 I'll wander through the 1 nde'n grove, 
 And muse in Ellen's Island Bower. 
 
 The tufted lawn, the bowery way, 
 The arbour's voice, and streamlet's song 
 Are still the same as ere away 
 I roved in exile sad and long ; 
 And I can hear the witch-note still, 
 That breathed the pure soul erst, when love 
 Sung in the breeze, and o'er the hill 
 Danced, while the stars smiled bright above. 
 
 The woven flowers, whose texturing wreaths 
 Clustered around the home of bliss, 
 Zephyr still harps among and breathe^ 
 Their odours o'er the lover's kiss ; 
 And silken chords with rainbow locks, 
 Still link each lovely blooming flower, 
 While gurgling rills, from shelving rocks 
 Flow softly round the Island Bower, 
 
 The sighing groves, the star-lit skies, 
 The water's glow, the boatman's oar, 
 The blushing mead with violet eyes, 
 The fragrant wood, and pebbled shore.,
 
 12 
 
 Yet live the same as in those days 
 When beauty on my young hoart shone s 
 When laughing hope breathed angel lays 
 O'er feeling's lyre from rapture's throne. 
 
 But youthful throbs of new-born love 
 The expansive heart will ever wring, 
 For seraph transport cannot rove 
 On time's unequal, changeful wing. 
 Oh ! years can quell and quench the fire, 
 That lights affection's holy hour, 
 And all we worship will expire, 
 Like love in Ellen's Island Bower. 
 
 Once thrilling heart, and beaming eye, 
 Existence, soul, in rapture met, 
 And nature's priest stood in the sky, 
 The signet of our loves to set ; 
 And fanning airs were singing o'er 
 The uijion of enamoured souls, 
 With strains as sweet as angels pour, 
 When virgin's prayer to Eden rolls. 
 
 Then Housatonic's pale blue stream 
 Sung in the groves of Lura's vale, 
 And radiant eyes were seen to gleam 
 Along the moon-lit flowery dale ; 
 Then soul breathed soul in glowing flood, 
 And bosoms panted fond and true, 
 While Diano'er the islet stood 
 To watch and revel in the view. 
 
 But fate came on with fury's frown, 
 And envy yelled his fell behest, 
 And beauty sunk in madness down, 
 The victim of a wretch unblest ;
 
 13 
 
 The mournful hosts of heaven in tears, 
 Bewailed fair Lura's darling flower ; 
 And, wandering through unhappy years, 
 1 mourned the ruined Island Bower. 
 
 How dear to me is Lura's vale ! 
 O ! every spot is full of love ! 
 For Ellen still walks o'er the dale* 
 And whispers in the willow grove. 
 Her sky blue eye still glows with beams 
 Of love, o'er misery's broken heart, 
 And oft a glance, lone wandering gleams, 
 Along despair's convulsing dart. 
 
 Dark night-shades hover o'er the scene, 
 Like sorrow o'er my bosom's love ; 
 And all the smiles that e'er have been 
 Like spectres round my spirit move ; 
 Oh '. I will linger here and weep 
 The ruin of hope's loveliest flower, 
 And, hushed in sacred silence, keep 
 My sainted Ellen's Island Bower. 
 
 THE TRAITOR SON.* 
 
 'Twas a mournful sound, that trumpet's strain, 
 When its wild notes rung o'er Hebron's plain, 
 For it told of woe and an ingrate son, 
 Of a desolate sire and a child undone. 
 4 Twas a mournful sight by Kidron's flood, 
 That exile-monarch and father good, 
 Hurrying away fiom his palace home 
 To shun captivity's deathful doom, 
 
 > Vide the story of David and Absalom. 
 2
 
 14 
 
 With a stranger chief the brave Ittai, 
 
 To guard him amid disloyal fray 
 
 While his trembling tread was weak and slow, 
 
 And his aged head like the mountain snow, 
 
 And his sighs swelled deep, and his tears fell fast, 
 
 When the rebel clarion's echoed blast 
 
 O'er Salem's hills on the wings of wind 
 
 Came rapid and loud the king behind, 
 
 As, girt by his friends, in sore distress 
 
 He fled the way of the wilderness. 
 
 The traitor-chief in the flush and pride 
 (Giloh's oracle sage by his side,) 
 Of usurped pomp and stolen power, 
 (Acurbe hung o'er that pageant hour,) 
 With his regal train who shout as they come 
 The stale of the death doomed Absalom, 
 Careers to the monarch's empty halls, 
 And wakens the voices of frowning walls 
 With the cries of mirth and the wassail roar 
 Of revel unheard in that dome before, 
 And mounts the throne of his monarch sire, 
 And pollutes his bovvers with fierce desire, 
 While the lonely cry of the centinel 
 Like a malison on his slumbers fell. 
 
 Look ye to Olivet ! Lord of Earth ! 
 For apostate nature's monster birth, 
 A traitor prince and a murderous child, 
 A monarch roams the desart wild ! 
 Those weary steps and those trickling tears, 
 And those hoary locks, the voice of years, 
 That, waving, sighed as he weeping went 
 Up the hill beneath affliction bent, 
 And those longing looks he downward threw, 
 (Perchance the son of his love was in view,) 
 Oh ! Israel, weep ! what can they declare 
 But a father's love and deep despair?
 
 15 
 
 The sun went down o'er Carmel's brow, 
 
 And nightshades dimm'd the world below, 
 
 And David fled fast his son before 
 
 (Was the mother there, that the traitor bore :) 
 
 And Bahurim around in dimness lay, 
 
 When the heir of Gera crossed his way, 
 
 And bann'd the king who had been a shield 
 
 To his home, his loves, Ins hill and field, 
 
 And called him lord of Belial race 
 
 Who had e'er blessed him with kingly grace, 
 
 Till Ithra's son in his wrath wax'd high, 
 
 And shook his lance with a fiery eye, 
 
 And loudly craved his monarch's nod 
 
 To strike thecurser to the sod, 
 
 When David turned with a look like heaven, 
 
 And said to Shemei " thou art forgiven ! 
 
 " If the son of my love doth seek to kill, 
 
 " Can Abishai think his curse is ill ? 
 
 " Let the evil rage on their words are vain, 
 
 " The curses they wish us they surely will gain." 
 
 The outcast king to Mahanaim, 
 
 Weary and sad by morning camo, 
 
 And found loyal hearts 'mid traitor war 
 
 Jn the chiefs of Rogelim andLodebar, 
 
 Who nurtured his frame and pillowed his head, 
 
 And balmed his heait though it ever bled, 
 
 For the exile prince was in sore distress 
 
 While fleeing the way of the wilderness. 
 
 And there he lay while the Archite great 
 Like Giloh's sage in Judah's state 
 Went to die tented field to mar 
 His deadly counsel in the war; 
 And wisdom's words unheeded fell 
 And earth received Ahithophel. 
 
 So the armies met in Ephraim's wood, 
 And the battle raged like an ocean flood-i,-
 
 16 
 
 For libra's sons and the proud Ittai 
 Led Israel's hosts in the gory fray, 
 And the warrior-chief of Salem's bands 
 Brooked not the sire's hut the king's command?,. 
 And the TRAITOR-SON that morning died 
 In his beauty, glory, hope and pride. 
 
 " Who comes from afar?" the monarch said, 
 
 As the watchman looked saw heard the tread 
 
 Of messenger come like hurricane 
 
 " Is the young man safe ?" " I saw the plain 
 
 11 A sea of tumult, but I know no more !" 
 
 " My son hath fled and the battle's o'er." 
 
 The watchman cried to the porter " There 
 
 " Cometh Cushi like a thing of air !" 
 
 " He's a good man and his tidings good !" 
 
 " Peace to my lord !" he said and stood.' 
 
 " Is the young man safe? how fares the fray ?" 
 
 " May thy foes be as thy son to day, 
 
 My lord the king !" That word was death, 
 
 And the father sunk the king beneath. 
 
 He went to his chamber and wept alone, 
 
 And he cried as he wept " my son ! my son !"' 
 
 A DEATH SCENE. 
 
 Glimmering amid the shadowy shapes that floa: 
 
 In sickly Fancy's vision o'er the walls 
 
 Of Death's lone room, the trembling taper burra 
 
 Dimly, and guides my fearful eye to trace 
 
 The wandering track of parting life upon 
 
 The burning brow and sallow cheek of him 
 
 Whose smile was paradise to me and mine. 
 
 The autumnal breeze breathes panthigly anil come: 
 
 With hollow sighs through yon high window o'er
 
 17 
 
 Thy feverish couch, my love ! and seems to sob 
 
 Amid the waving curtains as 't would tell 
 
 My heart how desolate it will become 
 
 When widowed of its blisses and endoomed 
 
 To bleed and agonize at Memory's tale. 
 
 The outward air is chill, but, oh, thy breast, 
 
 My dying love ! is scorching with the fires 
 
 That centre in thy heart, and thy hot breath 
 
 Flows sobbingly, like the sirocco gale 
 
 That heralds death ; and thou art speechless now 
 
 Save what thy glaring eyes can tell, for life 
 
 Is parting from thy bosom and the chill 
 
 Dew of cold dissolution's pangs pours down 
 
 Thy damp and pallid cheek and silently 
 
 Evaporates upon thy panting lips. 
 
 Thy pulse is wild and wandering, and thy frame 
 
 Is writhing in convulsive agony, 
 
 And, while thy spirit hovers o'er the verge 
 
 Of Fate, thou can'st not speak to me nor bid 
 
 Thy chosen one a long farewell! O Heaven! ' 
 
 Let thy sweet mercy wait upon his end 
 
 And life's last struggle close 'tis vain to hope 
 
 For life then take his soul on gentle wing 
 
 Away and let the sufferer rest with thee ! 
 
 Alas ! hath He who rules the universe 
 
 Replied to my wild wish oh, give me back 
 
 The parted spirit, kind heaven ! thou seest how 
 
 I'm left in utter desolation ah ! 
 
 'Tis o'er, my love, my happiness, my hope. 
 
 I sit beside a corse ! How deadly still 
 
 Is the lone chamber he hath left ! The moan , 
 
 Of dyinj nature and the bursting sigh 
 
 Of heart dissolving and the murmuring voice 
 
 Of a delirious spirit all are hushed! 
 
 The eye that kindled love in my young heart 
 
 And told me I was blest, is lustreless 
 
 And those dear lips, that oft illumed ray sou:.
 
 18 
 
 Are stiffening now those features exquisite, 
 
 On which I often gazed as on a mirror 
 
 Lit by affection, genius, feeling all 
 
 That love adores and honor prizes now 
 
 Collapse in expiration and assume 
 
 The ashen deadliness of soulless dust. 
 
 And must it be, my love ! that thou wilt sleep 
 
 Where I can never watch thy wants and glide 
 
 Around, thy gentle minister? No more 
 
 Read voiceless wishes in thy pleading eye 
 
 And soothingly discharge them ? Art thou gone. 
 
 Or is it but a dream? O thou dost d we 1.1 
 
 Within my heart unchangeably as erst 
 
 And ever wilt ! I sit beside the Dead 
 
 (The Dead ! it doth sound awful unto those 
 
 Whose heaven was earth's frail tabernacle !) all 
 
 Atone, while round me the false world is bent 
 
 On pleasure and delight of varying sense. 
 
 The bright-blue wave of Hudson rolls below 
 
 My solitary view and harps of joy 
 
 Fling music o'er its waters and the voice 
 
 Of gaiety is rising on my ear, 
 
 Deepening my dark despair and barbing throes 
 
 Of untold woe with mirth and jubilee. 
 
 the full consciousness of utter loss ! 
 
 The single wretchedness of cureless woe 
 
 When all around ace gay ! The chaos wild 
 
 Of billowy thought, on whose tumultuous tides 
 
 Hopes, powers and passions all the elements 
 
 Of heart and soul in foamy whirlpools toss 
 
 'Till whelmed in ruin ! Lovely babe ! thou hast 
 
 TVo father now, and where, my orphaned child, 
 
 Will close our wanderings ? I have no home 
 
 For thee, dove of the storm of Fate I thy path 
 
 In life is canopied in gloom, and oh ! 
 
 The fires that light it may be lightning-holts. 
 
 Cold, voiceless mansion of my ruined love ! 
 
 Vll close thine eyes and kiss thy blanched lips,
 
 19 
 
 And watch beside thee for the livelong night 
 The last, last night I shall behold thy form ! 
 O agony, and they will bury thee ! 
 Will snatch thee from the pillow of my heart, 
 And lay thee in the damp, unpitying tomb! 
 Sleep, my sweet child ! thou knowest not the pain 
 Of the sad bosom that thou slumberest on. 
 Jt is some joy that thou feel'st not the loss 
 Of him who would have worshipped his first-born.. 
 The world is silent round me ; pale the moon 
 Gleams on the closed eye of him who loved 
 Her gentle light in life, and o'er his cold, 
 Expressionless and melancholy face 
 Plays her transparent beam of love. My heart ! 
 Thy bleeding tears would drown my soul, if yet 
 One being lived not in my life to tell 
 How dear he was to me. Farewell, my Jove ! 
 Our slumbers now will be apart how far ! 
 Yet e'en in paradise thou wilt behold 
 Thy earthly love and bend from heaven to shed 
 Immortal hopes o'er nature's funeral urn. 
 
 A SKETCH. 
 
 Days, weeks and months passed o'er me and were seen 
 
 Vanishing eternally with a smile, 
 
 That formed itself against the spirit's will, 
 
 So glad was I to feel that burden, Time, 
 
 Dropping from my pierced heart; for I did live 
 
 Among, but yet not with the living tears 
 
 Suppressed within the fountains of the soul, 
 
 Hardened like crystal rills in cavern-hall, 
 
 And fell in icy particles upon 
 
 My burning heart, yet melted not but lay 
 
 Unmoving there, and chilled each feeling, hope, 
 
 Desire and aspiration that arose. 
 
 My being passed 'mid shadows, and the things
 
 20 
 
 Familiar once assumed, or unknown fi/m 
 Or appendage, unknown, and to my eye 
 The faces erst beloved appeared like those 
 Imagination images in dreams ; 
 And oft I feared to speak, lest I should be 
 Abandoned to my woe ; and, if I spake, 
 My voice re-echoed round me like the cries 
 Of desperation "mid a dirge. My brain 
 "Was fevered with my dreadful anguish, which 
 Grew by repression, like the camomile, 
 Until it mastered reason, or whate'er 
 Name that observant faculty doth bear 
 Whose power is o'er the visible universe. 
 There was a dread, unmeasured, in my thought, 
 A vague idea of something horrible, 
 Which I dared not examine lest it should 
 Prove real ; and I lived like one in sleep, 
 Forever searching for some lost companion, 
 And wandering in mazes till the eye 
 Refuses to direct, and hope expires. 
 Yet amid all the estranging of my love 
 I still clung to my child ; a mother's heart 
 Retains its deep devotion to her dear 
 And pang-bought offspring, when the woman's tninti 
 Is laid in ruins ; and her bosom burns 
 With love instinctive for an innocent 
 And lovely creature whom her spirit knows 
 Only as something worthy to be loved. 
 Folding the orphan to my heart, I went 
 Abroad the mansion witlessly, and searched 
 Its chambers desolate, and then returned 
 In wildered disappointment that the thing 
 I looked for could no where be found. I sat 
 In the lone winter nights before the dim 
 And melancholy embers, and did hush 
 My breath while listening for the tread of him- 
 Who ever spent his evenings with his lovu
 
 21 
 
 In social conrerse ; but he came not, so 
 
 I sighed and murmured to my prattling babe 
 
 That he would soon return; but then I thought 
 
 That he had gone to a far land and left 
 
 His duties unto me, and that I must 
 
 Discharge them as became our vow of love. 
 
 And so I oped his esctitoir and saw 
 
 His papers, pens and pencils and all things 
 
 Disposed e'en as he left them, and I felt 
 
 That 1 could not arrange them otherwise 
 
 If they were wrong ; his closet then I searched 
 
 And there his vestments hung familiarly 
 
 And appositely arrayed ; I returned 
 
 From such short wanderings sad, and sometimes thought 
 
 My love had told me he should dwell no more 
 
 Upon the earth and then my heart did feel 
 
 As if it floated in a lava sea. 
 
 Thus passed my strange existence from the day 
 
 He died until disease my infant laid 
 
 Upon his suffering couch, and I became 
 
 His sleepless watcher. Long I sat beside 
 
 The lovely one, attending all his wants 
 
 And sick caprices uncomplainingly, 
 
 Yet all unconscious that he was my son, 
 
 Till one said he was dying then there flashed 
 
 Through my dark spirit thoughts of past, and tears 
 
 Profuse quenched the destroying fire that burned 
 
 Within my heart and brain ; I backward looked 
 
 And saw my desolation, and yet felt 
 
 Happy contrasted with the awful state 
 
 I had awaked from ; life hath direful ills 
 
 And woes and sufferings, but the fiercest lie 
 
 In madness, e'er in dread of heaven and earth. 
 
 It cannot weep it doth not think, and yet 
 
 It hath both tears and thoughts, the one of blood, 
 
 Of pangs the other ; all its feelings coil 
 
 Like serpents round the heart and sting the core 
 
 Unceasingly, and all the sweet ideas
 
 Of love and friendship round the racked brain twine 
 Like knotted adders, venomous and blind. 
 Pierce, O Thou Holy One '. the heart but spare 
 The spirit! Let thy judgments fall upon 
 The affections, but preserve the immortal soul ! 
 
 My child was spared me ; and the tale I tell 
 Was gathered from the loved ones who beheld 
 But could not mitigate my woe, and those 
 Impressions I retain of sights and sounds 
 That floated by me in bewilderment. 
 
 THE PROMENADE. 
 
 It was the Sabbath's herald eve ; and pained 
 With melancholy musings, srich as hearts 
 Bleeding with sorrow nourish, forth I went 
 To gaze on nature's pensive face and smile 
 Of virgin softness, and I felt the sweet 
 Sense of her loveliness stealing o'er my woes 
 While watching her pure countenance, now veil'd 
 In raoonligbt and her changeful robes of green 
 Azure and silver blended, while she looked 
 Like one who was to me what angels are 
 To paradise the living fount of joy. 
 A diamond star was gemming o'er the waves 
 Of pearl, that danced along the silver wake 
 Of Dian's bark, and it did seem like love 
 Adorning innocence ; while in the midst 
 Of ether hung the rosy isles of bliss, 
 Where spirits, as they do the bests of heaven 
 And warder Zion's towers, commune with each 
 Other delightedly, and tune the songs 
 That soaring souls forever sing above. 
 The thought of meeting my beloved again, 
 Filled all my soul with gladness ; and there came 
 The blended feeling of devoted Jove 
 Struggling with hope's pale spectres, and despair
 
 23 
 
 Kindling the incense of its orisons 
 At Eden's altar; and I felt a deep 
 Impress cf confidence of happier days 
 On my wrung heart till sorrow came again. 
 
 A sea of voices waked me from ray dreams 
 
 Of holier spheres, and told me of the earth, 
 
 That held in its cold bosom all rny loves, 
 
 Save one sweet babe that gilds its buried sire's 
 
 Image upon his widow's heart ! O Earth ! 
 
 Cold is the couch thy sons must sleep upon, 
 
 And dark the chambers of their slumber deep ; 
 
 I looked around ir.e and the vestal moon 
 
 Was silvering the %vaters, o'er which scud, 
 
 Swanlike, many a silent sail bound afar, 
 
 Perchance, to fathomless eternity ! 
 
 And dazzling lamps, that seemed in the pale moon 
 
 Like crime obtruding his unholy light 
 
 Before rose-beaming virtue, glared above 
 
 The blushing waters as they laughed in scorn. 
 
 And in a sea-dome, studded o'er with lights 
 
 That mocked the diamond, many a voice arose 
 
 In merriment, well-feigned and many a form 
 
 Of outward splendor, glided round to find . 
 
 Something to tell hew happy all must be 
 
 Who 've wooed and won the pleasures of the world. 
 
 Like earth's gay hopes, full oft a column rose 
 
 Of fire far in the azure vault of night, 
 
 And then it burst and vanished, and loud laughs, 
 
 Lunatic, echoed far ; but some did watch 
 
 The glittering fragments till they fell then sighed 
 
 And I sighed too they told me of my joys I 
 
 It was no scene for me the sights I saw 
 
 Were once shared with those eyes that wake no more ; 
 
 The voices that I heard were all unknown ; 
 
 The arm I held was not my loved one's oh ! 
 
 "Tis bitter to compare our passing years !
 
 The Dead! where are they now? The Living! what 
 Are they to tiiose whose hearts are in the tomb ? 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Slow I returned to my lone room, and kissed 
 My sleeping child, and looked to heaven and wept. 
 
 THE YANAR. 
 
 In orient land of wizardry and charms, 
 
 Spells, spirits and romance, there is a fire 
 
 Unchangeably eternal, and it burns 
 
 In undimmed brightness amid mountain snowe 
 
 That hang white, pure, unmelting o'er the flame, 
 
 Which (saith the legend) suddenly appeared 
 
 To the meek prophet whom the princess saved 
 
 In childhood from his watery couch, and nursed 
 
 In all the science of the magic land, 
 
 To warn him of his bondaged nation's wrongs, 
 
 And light his spirit to supernal deeds. 
 
 Round that undying flame in beauty bloom 
 
 Roses in all their pride of fragrancy, 
 
 Diffusing o'er the flame such rich perfumes 
 
 As angels only may inhale and live ; 
 
 And amaranthine flowers in clusters wave 
 
 Around it ever, while the genii hold 
 
 Their magic conclave 'mid the alcove there. 
 
 But, oh, methinks there is an holier fire 
 
 That burns yet richer incense, and a light 
 
 Brighter and lovelier than that o'er which 
 
 Men marvel as a thing beyond their power 
 
 To solve a widowed heart's immortal love ; 
 
 A Love, that followed gladly in the path 
 
 Its idol chose, unquestioning of the good 
 
 Or ill therein, and went unmurmuring on 
 
 Through want and weakness, wretchedness and woe. ?
 
 25 
 
 Disease and weariness, and feared no wrong 
 
 Save one's unkindness and reproach ; oft tried 
 
 Sorely and found unchangeable as truth ; 
 
 A Love, that wedded pleasure, pride and mirth, 
 
 And turned in after-days to sadness, gloom, 
 
 And melancholy poverty with a smile 
 
 That nothing but his censure could displace. 
 
 The heart is Love's dear dwelling-place, and there 
 Around his throne pure thoughts and feelings high 
 Embodied spirits stand or kneel in deep 
 Devotion at the shrine of sweet content, 
 Fanning with dewy breath the incense-wreath 
 Of faithful worship, while the sun-beam eye 
 And angel feature of their lord respond 
 To the fond vows of unalloyed delight. 
 
 The icy look of stranger sympathy 
 
 The blooming sweetness of young loveliness 
 
 Tempest and sun-light and the storm and breeze 
 
 Are all alike to those who feel no hope 
 
 Of better time or season ; all \vhosejoys 
 
 Have perished in the wildest wreck of Fate. 
 
 The inextinguishable lamp of love, 
 
 That burns within the bosom ceaselessly, 
 
 Is lighted at the sepulchre of hope, 
 
 And doth derive its nutriment from pale 
 
 Misery's tears the portress of the tomb. 
 
 TO IANTHE. 
 
 Perchance, desponding maid ! thy plaintive strain. 
 Is echoed by a heart as desolate, 
 And soul as melancholy as thine own. 
 Perchance, should I a shorter life than thine 
 Unfold, it would reveal more dreary scenes 
 Than those thy muse so feelingly portrays ; 
 Fond hopes crushed by the anaconda coil 
 
 3
 
 Of envy, treachery, folly and deceit 
 
 Affections blasted by the breath of scorn 
 
 Loves murdered on the pillow of repose, 
 
 Revelling in dreams of holiness, and rapt 
 
 To ecstasies of passion pure and high ; 
 
 Deep feelings tortured on the rack of doubt, 
 
 Till their engendering fibres, broken, warped, 
 
 Withered and hardened, trembled on the wheel 
 
 That killed them, like a wretched maiden's thoughts 
 
 On the unperjured object of her love ! 
 
 Perchance, thou hast not seen the dew of death 
 
 Gathering upon the brow of him thou loved'st 
 
 Most holily, and felt the life, that was 
 
 Thy heaven, trembling in the unequal pulse 
 
 Till the heart throbbed no more ! Thou hast not seen, 
 
 Perchance, the pallid lip striving in vaiu 
 
 To give the parting spirit speech the eye 
 
 Upturned to thy inanguished view, and bent 
 
 In dying fondness on thee, till it lost 
 
 The light of life and love at once in death ! 
 
 When the dark tomb holds all we loved below, 
 
 'Tis meet to wish us there, that we may blend 
 
 The ashes that in life were warmed by fires 
 
 Ethereal mutually ; and that our souls, 
 
 From earth's thrall freed, might riie together on 
 
 The worlds they loved to hold converse withal. 
 
 But, lovely songstress ! (lovely in thy life 
 
 And poesy alike,) thou hast fond friends 
 
 Who love thee ardently, and would not lose 
 
 Thee tearlessly while I, whom thou hast seen 
 
 Sembling a smile that mocked the lip and eye 
 
 That wore it, have no tie but grief to bind 
 
 My spirit to this sphere ; for none would know 
 
 When I am buried that I e'er had been. 
 
 How little know we \vl,at we are, and less 
 
 What our companions arc ! We toil and pain 
 
 Ourselves to be the things that nature cries 
 
 We are not ; and we rack our souls in days 
 
 Of sunny loveliness to find a cloud
 
 27 
 
 Where fancying sorrow may complain and sigh. 
 
 Oh ! if the grief that rends the silent heart 
 
 In twain, could write in pangs its harrowing tale, 
 
 'Twould shame the moody minstrel's morhid strain, 
 
 And burn the heart that listened to its notes. 
 
 Such woe is mine, and mine will ever be 
 
 Till death, for I have proved the world, and find 
 
 Sickness and sorrow universal here. 
 
 The wave of Arethusa cannot heal 
 
 The soaring soul that laves in its bright stream, 
 
 Nor can Pierian waters cool the heart 
 
 That burns in feverish anguish. To invest 
 
 Our woes in fancy's rainbow robes, and clothe 
 
 Pangs with the spirit's sunlight, is to deck 
 
 A corse in diamonds, and to lay the dead 
 
 Upon a bier of gold vain pageantry ! 
 
 Songstress ! thou can'st not find among thy friends, 
 
 Though full oft near thee, her whose lonely breast 
 
 Broods woes too poorly pictured in this strain ; 
 
 But be it thine to know that a bright fnce 
 
 May often mask a hopeless heart, and forms 
 
 So falsely gay as mine be near the tomb. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 Lord of my bosom's love, a last Farewell ! 
 The tears of Time bedew the burning throes 
 Of agony, and maniac pain compose 
 To sadness, that becomes thoughts magic spell ; 
 The musings drear of hopelessness to tell 
 Would tire the gay ; a tale of bitter woes 
 To mirth doth bring alloy, and pleasure's rose 
 Would vanish at the sound of death's deep knell. 
 The hopes, the fancies and the follies all 
 The subtle means employed to brighten life 
 Shall live and be with sweet delusion rife 
 Long ere I throw o'er them their sable pall. 
 Though brightest feelings and most fond desires,
 
 Aspirings holiest, delights most pure 
 For few brief moments in the view endure, 
 They glitter, while they be, with magic fires 
 And, like the sea the setting sun beneath, 
 Life loveliest looks wnen sinking into Death. 
 
 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 
 
 Empire of Death and nation of the Dead ! 
 
 With trembling awe delightful, tluough thy realm 
 
 Un warring, lighted by a nickering lamp, 
 
 Whose quivering flame just trembles on the verge 
 
 Of darkness, and displays unreal things, 
 
 I tread in silence, and my spirit feels 
 
 A luxury of terror, and a diead 
 
 Sublime in its infinitude, while o'er 
 
 This peaceful land where man hath learned to dwell 
 
 In quiet with his fellow, I with step 
 
 Soundless, wander to muse. 'Tis a dread place 
 
 For those whose puny spirits quail at death, 
 
 And his high attributes ! O'er the damp walls 
 
 Flit shadows spectral, and the startled ear, 
 
 Tensely attentive, doth create wild sounds, 
 
 And tomb-like voices, whose strange language spells 
 
 The daunted heart, and fires the reeling brain 
 
 To agony ; and on each side there stand 
 
 The, mighty congregations of the dead ; 
 
 ]Vot phantoms as their spirits be, but still 
 
 Things of proportion as they were in life, 
 
 Though they move not as erst they did, from sense 
 
 Internal, but are swayed by passing things, 
 
 And speak in voices not their own ; the forms, 
 
 Anciently seen upon the Earth, are now 
 
 Degenerated to that strange state which doth 
 
 Exist between the living and the things 
 
 In the world's creed thought dead. Sensations wild
 
 29 
 
 And agonizing wake within the heart, 
 
 At maddening meditation on the fate 
 
 Mortality involves ; and spirits proud 
 
 Quail at the glance of him whose chilling touch 
 
 Freezes both thought and feeling ; but I feel 
 
 A glory and a majesty, unfelt 
 
 Before, amid the Empire of the Dead. 
 
 Here all is peace ; distinctions die with man, 
 
 And pride and power, and high and low lie down 
 
 Together like fond twins, and slumber here 
 
 Forgetful of degree ; the Cardinal 
 
 And Count with Monk and Peasant sleep, 
 
 Undreaming of to-morrow's festival 
 
 Or hierarchal pomp ; no crosiers here, 
 
 Nor coronets, nor gold cross robes, nor crowns 
 
 Of triple dominance, the humble garb 
 
 Of meek dependence mock ; but lordly prince 
 
 And haughty priest lie side by side with him 
 
 Who chronicled in memory the high 
 
 Distinction, that he digged their 'scutcheoned graves. 
 
 This is the tomb of Nations ; and upon 
 
 Yon broken statue I will sit me down, 
 
 And meditate on death ; burn up, my lamp ! 
 
 No Sun of life lights this vast darkling cave. 
 
 Methinks there is a mighty power within 
 
 My spirit, that I feel such glorious thoughts 
 
 Roll like sun-billows o'er my swelling brain. 
 
 The World, unthinking things, would call me mad I 
 
 And reprobate the act whose affluence 
 
 Of thought e'en Angels would be pioud to own. 
 
 But, oh, thou Father of my soul ! I bless 
 
 And worship thue that I'm not like the \vorld. 
 
 When thy pure Spirit purifies my heart 
 
 From this life's blots, and liberates my soul 
 
 From mortal fardels, and doth place me where 
 
 I may be one of thy own Angel choir, 
 
 My theme of praise to thee shall ever be
 
 30 
 
 That thou didst give to me a soul above 
 The sickening follies of this slaving World. 
 
 This subterranean mansion ages since 
 
 Was made to shield the persecuted race 
 
 Of humble Christian worshippers from rage 
 
 Of pagan bigotry : and oft, perchance, 
 
 The solitary follower of Him, 
 
 Who was the Prince of peace, hath sat alone 
 
 Where I do now in sadness, listening close 
 
 For sound of dread discovery, and the first 
 
 Object that met his wearied eye has been 
 
 A headless, mangled brother, or a child 
 
 Rescued from Vultures. Bitter was the bread 
 
 Of mortal sustenance, but sweet the pain 
 
 Suffered to those who felt a loftier range 
 
 Of being in this dungeon than the crowned 
 
 Despot who reigned o'er Earth-shadowing Rome. 
 
 The cold clay was their couch the dripping rock 
 
 Their pillow, and their food the scant supplies 
 
 Of short occasion or quick passing chance ; 
 
 And the sweet sympathies of life, the pure 
 
 Diffusion of fond tenderness and love, 
 
 The mingling of unwounded feelings, were 
 
 Few and unlasting ; yet the unfaltering sense 
 
 Of Godlike piety cheered their hearts 
 
 And filled their spirits with a strong-winged faithj 
 
 Which rose to paradise amid the gloom 
 
 Of their long banishment. Where are they now ? 
 
 And where their foes, the mighty ones of Rome ? 
 
 They sleep together in yon glittering piles 
 
 Of limbs and sculls, and he, who on the rack, 
 
 Or in the cauldron, or 'mid savage beasts 
 
 Perished, lies now beside his murderer 
 
 And links his bony hand with his who plied 
 
 The torture or the fire, or goaded on 
 
 The frenzied Lion, fiercest. Senators 
 
 And Slaves, and Knights and Servitors, and high 
 
 Dames aod their lowly damsels ; meek and prone'.
 
 The wise man and the fool, and friend and foe, 
 
 The persecutor and the persecuted lie 
 
 Commingled indivisibly ; and all 
 
 Who, living, waged eternal warfare fierce 
 
 Banditti and their victims sleep in peace 
 
 Beside the mitred lords whose curses poured 
 
 Unceasingly against them ; their rude wars 
 
 And bitter feuds, taunts, jeers and scoffings now 
 
 Are past ; we hear of them as tales of death 
 
 Befitting only horror's wild romance. 
 
 And here I sit amid a perished world ; 
 
 And 'tis, methinks, a better place to dwell 
 
 Within, than that polluted one they call 
 
 Land of the living ; for a dead man shows 
 
 More nature and tine tenderness in look, 
 
 Action and attitude, than the base herd, 
 
 Who cannot breathe save in a venomed air. 
 
 Death purifies the tainted heart, and sheds, 
 
 Not aromatic fragiance, but a balm 
 
 Of potency o'er poisoned hearts, and gives 
 
 Feelings of kindness to degraded souls. 
 
 The dead lie not ; their speech and intercourse 
 
 Is silent but 'tis faithful ; no,poor forms 
 
 And ceremonies chain the bleeding heart 
 
 In converse with the slumbering sons of clay. 
 
 Acquaintance long and guarded there is none 
 
 Ere one can speak a thought or do a deed 
 
 That chimes with his desire ; and so F love 
 
 The dead as friends who ever speak the truth ; 
 
 They give me better counsel than this vain 
 
 And prating world ; and he, who lives among 
 
 The buried nations, doth derive his thought 
 
 Of might and grandeur from those fountains whence 
 
 Nor ill, nor wrong, nor malice, ever flow. 
 
 The silent eloquence of this lone place 
 
 Prepares the bodied spirit, which doth groan 
 
 And bleed below, for paradise ; 'tis here 
 
 Man sees and feels the little thing he is.
 
 32 
 
 Since the first hour of rising consciousness, 
 And tortured feeling and corroding thought, 
 "When has the period been we did not wish 
 For Death as for a proud deliverer 
 From woes and agonies he never knew ? 
 When has the time existed spirits high 
 Longed not to throw the fardels off of poor 
 Humanity, and live in glorious climes, 
 Fitting their own glorious nature? None 
 But cowards, slaves and villains dread the hand 
 That doth disrobe us of the blood-wet vest, 
 Which saturates our spirits with the gore 
 Of agony ; the wretch who begs for life 
 1 would contemn as one unfit to live. 
 
 In such a dome as this the sepulchre 
 
 Of ages, it were glorious fate to die, 
 
 Beholding the assembly venerable 
 
 Of Roman lords and mitred saints, and all 
 
 The thorn-crowned martyrs smiling that their son, 
 
 Tired of the pains of time, and wearied out 
 
 With this world's crimes and miseries, had come 
 
 To join the council of the hall of Death. 
 
 Then should we look upon the maddening strife 
 
 For nothing, which corrodes our bleeding hearts, 
 
 With due derision ; and contemplate all 
 
 Our hopes an'l purposes and proud desires, 
 
 And lofty feelings and aspiring thoughts, 
 
 And wasted hours and bitter sufferings, 
 
 As phantoms of a maniac's dream. Alas ! 
 
 We cannot act ourselves; we are chained down 
 
 By fashions and by follies, and made dupes 
 
 Of action artificial; all i. changed. 
 
 Than this delightful wo- Id, no fairer thing 
 
 Sprung from the plastic touch of Deity ; 
 
 Amid the unbounded Unive.se there rolls 
 
 Creation none mure beautiful ; but, oh I 
 
 This miiy palace of delightful things 
 
 A lazaretto has been made by man,
 
 33 
 
 Within whose loathsome porticoes and towers 
 
 Dwell want, disease and wretchedness and crime ; 
 
 The balmy airs, that once flew fanning o'er 
 
 Its gardens of delight, and loved to kiss 
 
 The lovely creatures who, like Peris, roved 
 
 Around its fragrance breathing bowers, now move 
 
 Heavily on leaden wings amid the steam 
 
 Of the wide reeking pestilence ; the songs 
 
 Of gladness that erst rose to Heaven are changed 
 
 To wailings of despairing misery. 
 
 And yet upon this scene of turbulence, 
 
 And war and sin and rank pollution, still 
 
 Heaven smiles as wont ; and Angels ope the gemmed 
 
 Portals of Eden to console this world 
 
 Of self-inflicted pain, while they change not 
 
 From what thjy were in Time's young lovely days, 
 
 Save that they often weep that man should prove 
 
 The deadliest of foes to his own peace. 
 
 Night wanes in her dark circuit ; and my lamp 
 Dimly illumines the lone catacomb. 
 And forth I must depart to live again 
 Among the living of the sun-lit Earth. 
 Yet, oh ye mighty dead ! I shall forget 
 Never your counsels ; ye have been to me 
 Wiser and kinder than the breathing race, 
 And oft arnid the volumed lore which doth 
 Survive all time, I've passed both day and night, 
 And gathered ample stores of knowledge pure 
 And alimental, which have been fo me 
 A counterpoise to all my heart hath borne. 
 
 Farewell, ye dead ! ye once were great, and Time, 
 
 When he watched o'er the growth and perfect glow 
 
 Of energies ye once possessed, beheld 
 
 No mightier things beneath the shadowing sky. 
 
 But ye are nothing now ; and none can tell 
 
 Or name or lineage ; so all must 6e, 
 
 And then be n*>t ; appear and vanish, like 
 
 The foamy wake, which a fleet sailing bark 
 
 Leaves murmuring a moment in its path.
 
 34 
 
 PASSAIC. 
 
 Blue Passaic ! o'er thy mirror stream 
 
 The queen of heaven in beauty flings 
 
 The pearly light of her silver beam, 
 
 While the sky-throned spirits from their wings 
 
 Drop starry gems in the dark blue flood, 
 
 And pensive Eve sits on the shore, 
 
 Wooing the embrace of solitude, 
 
 And watching the dance on heaven's gemm'd floor 
 
 Of the airy shapes who guard young love, 
 
 When pure hearts with affection gush, 
 
 And trill their songs of bliss above, 
 
 When lip meets lip, and beauty's blush 
 
 Fires with a brighter flame the breast 
 
 Of him who breathes the virgin's breath, 
 
 And feels so purely, fondly blest, 
 
 He e'en would court the embrace of death ! 
 
 O Earth ! amid thy cheerless gloom 
 
 There are sunny spots of bliss supreme, 
 
 And if, when the lights of love illume 
 
 Those Edens with joy'-, vosy beam, 
 
 We could lie down upon the mead, 
 
 And die beholding Paradise 
 
 Around, above, within, indeed 
 
 'Twere more than heavsn to close our eyes, 
 
 From which wrung tears so oft have flowed, 
 
 And perish in that blissful hour 
 
 When every hope hath been bestowed, 
 
 And we have drained enjoyment's power. 
 
 Like music heard in young love's dream, 
 
 The chiming waves come dancing on, 
 
 And their spiry cones in the moonlight gleam 
 
 Like memory's thoughts of the dead and gone ; 
 
 And the pebbly beach lies sweetly still, 
 
 Beneath the look of the queen of night, 
 
 Drinking from music's fount its fill, 
 
 And shining ^rnid the pale moonlight
 
 Like budding hopes in blighted bowers 
 Of soul-lit love, when rapture's eye 
 Hath closed in death, and sorrow's hours 
 Link with a dark eternity ! 
 
 Blue Passaic ! on thy verdured shore, 
 
 When the world doth sleep, I sit alone. 
 
 And the deep blue sky I traverse o'er, 
 
 To find where all my hopes have gone ; 
 
 For I once was full of love and glee, 
 
 And felt delight as others do, 
 
 And my voice rung loud and merrily, 
 
 Ere I saw that pleasure was untrue, 
 
 That the melting glance of a fond blue eye, 
 
 And the angel smile of a ruby lip, 
 
 Were as full of guile as witchery, 
 
 And ottered to all who loved to sip 
 
 The venom that burns in the heart forever ; 
 
 The quenchless fire that sears the soul, 
 
 Whose flame will cease its fury never, 
 
 But scorch where'er its billows roll. 
 
 Spirits of night! oh, give me back 
 
 My innocent hours of boyish mirth, 
 
 And blot from my heart the lava track 
 
 My thought hath run o'er this dark earth I 
 
 My childish spirit hut little way 
 
 Flowed in its pure and sweet delight, , 
 
 But, oh, it was a sunlight play 
 
 Of gleaming waves, forever bright; 
 
 While now on billows of lightning rides 
 
 My boundless thought, o'er midnight skies, 
 
 And my spirit rolls in the fieiy tides 
 
 With rending groans and wailing cries. 
 
 My birth star was a meteor-flame, 
 
 And it wanders and burns fore'er like blood ; 
 
 Noi hope nor love can its fvry tame, 
 
 Fo, it dwells in dreadful solitude ; 
 
 'Tis fated the pure and the good to kill, 
 
 And murder the hearts 1 love the best,
 
 36 
 
 And its comet fire burns fiercely still 
 O'er every hope of my lonely breast. 
 
 O, lovely Passaic ! were my heart 
 
 As cairn and bright as thine azure stream, 
 
 In nature's love I would bear a pait, 
 
 And blend with the light my soul's pure beam I 
 
 But ah, I am one by fate oppressed, 
 
 The wandering ghost of the haimless child, 
 
 And my heart hath died within my breast, 
 
 1 have so often been beguiled. 
 
 THE LOVER'S LAMENT. 
 
 Good night ! the last faint hues of day 
 Blend with the sapphire sea on high, 
 
 And anguished rapture with that ray 
 Sinks to despair's deep agony. 
 
 The tinted robes of evening fade 
 O'er the dark welkin's cloudy vest, 
 
 As Hope's long lingering funeral shade 
 Shrouds the lone bovver of love unblest. 
 
 The soul-lit rision of delight 
 Is vestured with a heart-wrung tear, 
 
 And prescient misery's chilling blight 
 Comes from affection's sunny sphere. 
 
 Night, ebon night, veils every scene 
 Where oft we met and mingled souls 
 
 Oh, that thy smiles had never been ! 
 My pulse throbs wild, my mad brain rolls.
 
 37 
 
 A burst of moonlight feeling gleams 
 O'er my fond heart's magnolia bower, 
 
 But memory 'mid the bright flowers screams, 
 While Love weeps o'er the parting hour. 
 
 O'er life's perspective, dim and dun, 
 
 No gilding rays of orient glow, 
 My soul's gem-star, my fancy's sun, 
 
 Burns lurid in the vaults of vvoe> 
 
 Down-winged sylphs no longer dye 
 The pale dead rose of buried love ; 
 
 The air-wove forms of transport's eye 
 Float not o'er sorrow'* cypress grove. 
 
 Upon cerulean pinions borne, 
 'Mid opal waves of spheral light, 
 
 O'er my dark spirit, lost, forlorn, 
 
 Comes one dear shade of dead delight. 
 
 'Tis more than demons could invent 
 To wreak their deadliest hate in pain, 
 
 The broken heart's fierce punishment, 
 To gaze on bliss from cells where reign 
 
 The fiend, whose fangs are fraught with all 
 Love's raptures changed to agony, 
 
 And that foul hag, whose shriek can call 
 The bitterest woss of misery. 
 
 Away away ! my boiling blood 
 Maddens my dizzy brain, whene'er 
 
 I tkink that Envy's hell-born brood 
 Barred me the love of one so dear. 
 
 4
 
 38 
 
 Relax relent ! thou swelling sail ! 
 
 Spare me a moment's thought of her ! 
 O, how my senses faint and fail 
 
 As memory's star-light shades recur. 
 
 I ask not hours to throb and thrill 
 
 With sweet remembrance, sad and wild, 
 
 The sickness of my soul would kill 
 Ere I could dwell on passion foiled. 
 
 1 ask but one last murdered look, 
 
 One glance of that overshadowed spot, 
 
 Where love his purple pinions shook, 
 Where all I valued was is not ! 
 
 Thou cliff ! from whose aerial brow 
 My wild eye drank her sylphic form, 
 
 Oh ! keep the soul-beams on thee now, 
 Through sunny days, and nights of storm ! 
 
 And hear the wailing tones that swell 
 Above thy cloud-capt, azure height ; 
 
 They ring a spirit's funeral knell ; 
 They issue from sepulchral iiight. 
 
 Farewell ! I ne'er shall gaze again 
 On mansion, cliff, or stream, or tree, 
 
 Where centres bliss, converges pain, 
 And wails the lyre of agony ! 
 
 A light gleams from yon casement high, 
 And sparkles in my tearful gaze, 
 
 Oh ! 'tis the lattice meets my eye, 
 
 Where love threw flowers 'mid rapture's rays 
 
 And 'tis her hand that waves the light, 
 For me? Ah, no ! fierce madness tells
 
 39 
 
 She waits the dalliance fond to-night 
 Of how my bosom pants und swells ! 
 
 I will not think HI plunge afar 
 Beneath the ocean's booming wave, 
 
 Where shines nor sun, nor moon, nor star, 
 Where the dead throng, and demons rave- 
 
 Ere I will speak the hated name 
 Of him who, fiend-like, stole my love ; 
 
 Hell's banded demons better claim 
 As brothers, and their deeds approve ! 
 
 But her alas! 1 cannot feel 
 
 One haughty pulse, one hating thought ; 
 My heart will ever basely kneel 
 
 Before the shrine my passion wrought ; 
 
 And I shall stoop to dream of one 
 
 Who ne'er will think nor care for me, 
 
 And madly trace, when all undone, 
 The textured toils of destiny. 
 
 Memory will sit beneath the shade 
 Of sorrow's poison-dropping tree, 
 
 And, as the forms of misery fade, 
 People with fiends immensity. 
 
 Oh ! that her lips would breathe a curse 
 O'er every step of life's wild track, 
 
 That I might ban the universe, 
 
 And hurl my proud defiance back ! 
 
 Then I would ride the lightning's wing, 
 And catch the vollied bolts of heaven, 
 
 'Mid hurricane in triumph sing, 
 
 And shout and yell where they had riven.
 
 40 
 
 And I would brave their maddest power, 
 
 Echo their echoes o'er the sky, 
 And in destruction's whelming hour 
 
 Forget my bosom's agony. 
 
 But ah ! it will not cannot be ! 
 
 Time, fate, chance, foe have done their worst! 
 Earth, ocean, air, are nought to me 
 
 Oh! that my panting heart would burst 1 
 
 Who who can bear a rapier smile ? 
 
 A kiss that dooms the soul to death? 
 Tne anguish of illuding guile ? 
 
 The nectar upas of the breath? 
 
 1 I will bear it fierce and high, 
 Nor stamp my brow with characters 
 
 Each pitying fool can read, and sigh 
 In grief of scorn for him who bears. 
 
 Good Night, ye vales, and hills 'so fair! 
 
 I love to hold converse with you, 
 She claims no parting but despair, 
 
 Nature still wins a fond Adieu ! 
 
 THANKSGIVING ODE. 
 
 When young Time sung in Eden's bower, 
 And angels echoed back his strain, 
 Ere sin mildewed each morning flower 
 Of hope, and pleasure died in pain, 
 Each love-winged thought that rose on high 
 Was man's melodious prayer of praise, 
 And hap,)y hearts threw o'er the sky 
 Blessings, as flowed the sun-waved days, 
 While Heaven benignly smiled and breathed the grateful lays.
 
 41 
 
 No seasons, then, by power assigned, 
 Restricted songs of gratitude, 
 For man's pure heart and pious mind 
 Cherished no thoughts but those of good ; 
 But, his high spirit higher soaring, 
 lie knowledge bought, and was unblest; 
 And, when he should have been adoring, 
 Lost Edeu love's abode of rest, 
 And wandered forth o'er earth, an exile sore distrest. 
 
 There was a jubilee in Heaven, 
 When man to being sprung, and raised 
 His soul iu praise for blessings given, 
 The image of the GOD he praised ; 
 And there are songs of glory swelling 
 O'er Heaven, e'en in these sinning days, 
 When man laments his long-lost dwelling, 
 Yet for earth's joys chants hymns of praise, 
 And sings in Eden's speech, though lost to Eden's ways. 
 
 For sunny skies and balmy showers, 
 And mellow airs, diffusing health, 
 And bloomy meads and dales of flowers, 
 And fields of beauty rife with wealth, 
 And verdured vales and wooded hills, 
 And Plenty smiling o'er each home, 
 Which rose-lipped Love with odour fills, 
 And sweet Content, who scorns to roam ; 
 For blessings such as these, let glad Thanksgiving come. 
 
 No pestilence hath stalked abroad, 
 And thrown o'er bliss the funeral pall ; 
 No sword of crime-avenging GOD 
 Hath marred man's toil-won festival; 
 His earthquake voice hath not been heard 
 Amid the cheerful mirth of life ; 
 But his breeze-wafted smile hath stirred 
 Softly the groves with perfume rife, 
 And blessed again the man who flies soul-jarring strife. 
 
 4*
 
 42 
 
 Pole-Star of Freedom's starry sky ! 
 O Maine ! fair daughter of the North ! 
 Awake thy harp of melody, 
 And, holy Priestess, go thou forth 
 With voice of praise o'er Freedom's land, 
 And bid her happy sons revere 
 The memory of that hallowed band, 
 Who bowed to Heaven in forest drear, 
 And blessed the Almighty One, whose blessing dried each tear. 
 
 VIGILS. 
 
 Thou wert, my sister ! sinless love ! Thou art not now ! Alone 
 I wander sadly far from scenes we loved to call our own, 
 And often breathe a sobbing sigh, and shed a bleeding tear, 
 When, mingling with the icy world, I think of blisses dear. 
 
 Thou wert a sun to light my heart when sadness on it hung, 
 
 And plaintive, pure, and holy were the songs thy spirit sung ; 
 
 Thy dove-like bosom throbbed with love, so gentle, deep and fond, 
 
 That still it dews my burning heart though thou art far beyond 
 
 The scenes we trod, the groves we loved, and thy lone brother's view, 
 For heaven and earth are linked by love, so feeling and so true. 
 Sweet sainted shade ! how happy had thy brother's pathway been 
 If thy soft smile had cheered his soul in many a gloomy scene ! 
 
 I 
 
 But thou art gone, and I am left alone upon the earth, 
 A cloud amid the sunny forms of life but of their worth 
 Or beauty, wit or wisdom, I know nought nor wish to know, 
 They pass, 1 see them not they speak, but know not of my woe. 
 
 They flaunt along in robes so rich, and talk in tones so gay, 
 And plume their hearts so much on earth poor insects of a day ! 
 That I can feel no love for them, though fair and fond they be, 
 Since thou art gone, and I must go, to far eternity.
 
 43 
 
 Oh ! many a year hatli fled afar, since thou wevt'with me, love ! 
 And by my side did'st walk and siug along the eliny grove, 
 And turn thy soft blue eye to mine, and lay thy head upon 
 My love-lit breast and look so fond and now I'm all alone ! 
 
 The melancholy moon so dim, the attracting orb of woe, 
 I view and think on all thy smiles, thy tears, thy words below, 
 And then it seems so strange that old and soulless forms should be 
 Sepulchral shadows o'er the world, and thou so far from me ! 
 
 Where art thou, sister, where ? I know they tell us heaven's above, 
 
 And that it is a holy place the scene of joy and love ; 
 
 But where, oh ! where is that dear spot in yon celestial sky 
 
 Thou dvvell'st upon ? O point it out to my long searching eye ! 
 
 And I will sit the livelong night and gaze upon that p^ace, 
 
 Where thou dost dwell and sing of love and heaven's ethereal grace; 
 
 And I will think thou dost behold thy brother's form below, 
 
 And smil'st upon his gloomy soul, and that will soothe my woe. 
 
 Can'st thou not tell me how they live, the spirits of the sky, 
 And where we go and what we feel when earthly bodies die ? 
 And wilt thou not, my sister love ! when I am sad and lone, 
 Descend upon my brooding soul and tell me where thou'rt gone ? 
 
 The air's so pure that comes froT heaven, the skies around so bright^ 
 
 And all above so holy, it must be of dear delight 
 
 The mansion, and the place where He ascended to prepare 
 
 A palace for the wanderer a refuge from despair. 
 
 And thou art there, in glory, love ! and I in woe am herej 
 
 And thou dost shed a radiant smile, and I a bitter tear ; 
 
 But thou art happy, and I feel that while I live below, 
 
 To think that thou art free from sin, will calm my ceaseless woe !
 
 44 
 
 FAME. 
 
 To gain a name, and be the tiling the world 
 
 Mimics and mocks, delights in and deludes, 
 
 Dooms to despair, and destines for the fane 
 
 Of fame ; to feel the butterflies of earth 
 
 Sucking the essence of almighty thought 
 
 To sate and gorge themselves withal ; to be 
 
 The vassal camel of a mental waste 
 
 Toiling for things detestable, who love 
 
 To goad with gilded lances creatures formed 
 
 To elevate their honor, and to hear 
 
 Groans wrung from bleeding hearts : to toil and sigh 
 
 'Mid vigils of strained thought, and feel the breath 
 
 Of waking nature stealing o'er tiie fires 
 
 Of the hot brain, and hear the morning air 
 
 Chant matin minstrelsy to hopeless woe, 
 
 Mocking the spirit's ear ; to look abroad 
 
 O'er earth and heaven, and weave in sunny web 
 
 Thoughts pure and delicate, conceptions high, 
 
 Creations glorious, and fancies rich, 
 
 Threads spun in paradise and knit and linked 
 
 13 3' magic skill of mighty intellect; 
 
 To think, toil, fancy thus, and yet to know 
 
 That we but frame an Eden for base worms, 
 
 Serpents of venom, reptiles foul, and things 
 
 Beneath all name 'tis vile, oh, very vile ! 
 
 ****** 
 And then the cold neglect, the stinging scorn. 
 The maddening look ol'pit3 r , and the sneer 
 That calls itself a smile ; the taunting speech 
 That words its malice in fair compliment 
 To aggravate its bitterness ; the eye 
 Whose earth-bent gaze doth seem to scorn and laugh 
 At what the cur I'd lip utters ; the oblique leer 
 Of galling envy, telling standers-by 
 That its approval is the baited barb 
 Which all confiding genius swallows down, 
 To its own ruin ! These arc only part
 
 45 
 
 Of what the votary of living fame 
 E'er silently endures! His ocean-thought 
 Commingles with the universe, and rolls 
 In tides sublime along the eternal shore, 
 Its billows swelling amid worlds of light 
 And sounding immortality ! Around 
 Floats music most seraphic, and above 
 Ascend the jetvelled battlements of heaven, 
 Warded by spirits of the sun below 
 Alas ! the cold re-acting waves return 
 Mournfully to earth, and lose their rich 
 Music and brightness in the oozy marsh 
 And slimy pools of folly, vice and sin. 
 
 THE SPIRIT. 
 
 The spirit Cannot die ; it must dilate 
 
 Eteinally, and be a vital part 
 
 Of everlasting ages knitted close 
 
 To absolute infinity and linked 
 
 With the immensity of fate 'tis just 
 
 It should be deathless, for its plastic powers 
 
 No limit know nor bound, e'er shining through 
 
 Creation like the sun ; but, oh, the heart 
 
 Will prey upon its energies and prove 
 
 A mountain on its wings, for subtle thought 
 
 Is but the slave of feeling, and the soul 
 
 Will languish when the bosom aches and be 
 
 The vassal of locality, depressed 
 
 By poor contingencies and habitudes. 
 
 The desecration is most vile and yet 
 
 Life's feeble purposes demand the use 
 
 Of powers almost angelic, for the soul 
 
 Js like the sun, though stationed in the ekies,
 
 4G 
 
 It must look down on earth and light alike 
 Things beautiful and loathsome. Be it so ! 
 Shall man be querulous and dare impugn 
 What Deity hath warranted and done ? 
 
 Spirits of greatness have human form 
 
 And feature, like the veriest thing that gropes 
 
 And grovels in base idiocy ; they pass 
 
 Before the world as other mortal shapes, 
 
 And though the eye may beam unusually, 
 
 The brow wear deeper lines of thought intense 
 
 Than others, and the glow and gloom of hope, 
 
 The sunlight and the darkness of the soul 
 
 Vary the changeful feature, and the tread 
 
 Be more unequal and the outward bearing 
 
 More plainly intellectual than the step 
 
 And look of the great mass, yet deeply dwells, 
 
 Unseen, impalpable, the living beam 
 
 Of star-eyed light that issued from the sun 
 
 Of the Divinity ; and, unbeheld 
 
 By creatures of most ordinary note, 
 
 Beings pass by in silence or they stand 
 
 Apart, in general estimation thought 
 
 Of minor consequence, on vacant air 
 
 Dwelling or veiling their soul-beaming eyes 
 
 From things external, that the soul may close 
 
 The portals of its palace and retire 
 
 To holy counsel with itself who are 
 
 More fitting glory and would wear the robes 
 
 Of angels more to nature than the shapes 
 
 Mortality has burdened them withal. 
 
 Such Spirits fill the universe they live 
 
 In the blue ether and their dwelling-place 
 
 Is the immensity above ; they sit 
 
 Upon the thrones of angels in the stars 
 
 And hold converse with them when gentle nighl 
 
 The gay earth canopies and nature folds
 
 47 
 
 Her moonlight drapery round her and lies down 
 
 By bright Hyperion's side to bridal sleep. 
 
 This world of sin they labour to forget 
 
 And all its crimes and woes, and they become 
 
 Associates with the blest in pure de&iros 
 
 And feelings holy ; and they love to tread 
 
 The verge of paradise though mortal yet, 
 
 Seeking to know the loves that blossom there, 
 
 The joys that never fade in those bright fields, 
 
 Tlie thoughts of bliss expanding ever through 
 
 The panseless ages of unceasing love. 
 
 Such spirits find no thoughts reciprocal 
 
 In earthly beings; none can estimate 
 
 Their greatness rightly; none can feel the same 
 
 Dissolving and absorption of all powers 
 
 In soft elysian visionry they live 
 
 Alone, star-beams round the sun-throne of GOD ! 
 
 The sovereign eagle ever dwells alone 
 
 In solitary majesty, and waves 
 
 His mighty wings in air unbreathed by thing 
 
 Of lowlier nature ; and the lion walks 
 
 The wilderness companionless, and holds 
 
 No converse with the creatures that surround 
 
 His monarch pathway ; so the angel soul, 
 
 The seraph spirit lives in loneliness 
 
 Proud and unbending, and its solitude 
 
 Becomes its empire where it reigns fore'er 
 
 In might and majesty. But when 't is chained 
 
 Down in the world's cold dungeon, and is mocked 
 
 By gazing folly and unholy guile, 
 
 And taunted by the reptile hordes around, 
 
 Madness springs up within the brain and flares 
 
 In deadly fury from the eye and whelms 
 
 The spirit probtrate which could be subdued 
 
 Only by its own potent strength ; the high 
 
 Aspiring intellect doth spurn the poor 
 
 Malice of insect nothingness and live*
 
 Or dies only because it wills it so. 
 
 The boundless universe with all its worlds 
 
 Of stars and suns is but a narrow path 
 
 For the imaiortal spirit ; one bright glance 
 
 Of the soul's eye pervades all space and flies 
 
 Beyond the farthest reckoning of the sage 
 
 Who reads the heavens; the winged thought sublime 
 
 Wanders unresting through creation's worlds 
 
 And searches all their glorious beauties, till 
 
 Yet unsatisfied, it would rove through realms 
 
 E'en angels know not of, when some keen pang, 
 
 Overwhelming want or weakness murders thought, 
 
 And brings the almighty spirit down to earth, 
 
 And all its chilling woe and bitterness. 
 
 THE DEATH OF TIME. 
 
 There was delight among the unconscious sons 
 Of Ea< th when dew-lipped Eve upon the sky 
 In virgin brauty stood and bade adieu 
 To the Sun-Spirit as his crimson wings 
 In the far distance waved like gossamer ; 
 And there was gladness in the look she threw 
 Into the blue infinitude to watch 
 The latest beam of day; and, when she turned 
 Her twilight glance upon this world, and spread 
 Her dusk}' veil o'er nature, there was love 
 In her ethereal attitude, and joy, 
 That had its being in sweet innocence, 
 Illumed her melting features winningly. 
 But Earth's gay habitarts beheld the beams 
 Of Uriel's eye slow fading, and the soft 
 Dimness of eve condensing into night, 
 With feelings unallied to holiness
 
 49 
 
 Or breathing of the pure serenity, 
 
 That flowed from all things ; on false pleasures bent 
 
 Of sense, they waited but the closing night 
 
 To veil their gaiety and mirth and crime. 
 
 But Night, at man's unholy madness wroth, 
 
 And startled at his wassailry, arose 
 
 From her dark couch and shrieked so fearfully 
 
 To heaven that angels on each other gazed 
 
 In deep astonishment, for sinners chained 
 
 In helJ ne'er framed aery so piercing; looks 
 
 Of doubt and trouble passed ere tortured Night 
 
 Creation's guardians saw; but then she raised 
 
 Her thousand voices and invoked the Lord 
 
 Of All that Time might be no more ! A voice 
 
 From heaven's eternal throne of light came fortli 
 
 And angels echoed "Time shall be no more I" 
 
 Then portent stillness stretched her leaden wings 
 
 Immovably o'er earth and nature slept 
 
 In deathful slumbers, save a startling moan 
 
 Involuntary ever and anon, 
 
 When the lascivious song of godless mirth 
 
 And the loud shout of revel rose and went 
 
 Forth, the dread witnesses of sin and crime. 
 
 The stars looked down and wept, and whispers stole 
 
 Along the firmament from each to each, 
 
 Communicating doom, while man's seared eye, 
 
 From which the spirit had retired in shame, 
 
 Read nought but peacefulness and pardon full 
 
 For all his vileness in the arching sky. 
 
 Morn leapt upon the mountains, but the light 
 Was gory crimson, and the lurid vault 
 Seemed panting while the day-break ahs went by, 
 No lyric voice was heard ; the loveliest birds 
 By pairs sat mutely on the trees, nor moved 
 Though the green leaves, all crumbled into dust, 
 Dropped o'er them rapidly ; the wondering herds 
 Wandered unresting e'er the ground and roared
 
 With pain, for the hot earth by inward fires 
 
 Was fast consuming ; the fell reptiles hissed 
 
 Distractingly and thrust their venoined fangs 
 
 Against their rocky dens till their last joy, 
 
 The woe of man, was gone, and their fierce pain 
 
 Augmented by the act that meant relief; 
 
 The finny clans of ocean rose and spread 
 
 Upon its surface to escape the steam 
 
 Of its wide boiling billows, and the loud 
 
 Flapping of tortured bodies numberless 
 
 Frothed o'er the waters for a thousand leagues. 
 
 All nature was in agony rsave man ! 
 
 He slept amid the wailings and the shrieks 
 
 Qf things to whom eternity was nothing. 
 
 What sound will tfake the sleeper ? Hark! 'tis nought. 
 
 'Mid volumes of dark vapour rose the Sun 
 Affnghtingly effulgent, and his glare 
 Changed the dun concave to a sea of blood. 
 The World reeled to and fro and things of life 
 Gasped sobbingly for breath in the thick air. 
 Beneath day's baleful gleam rocks melted down 
 And mountains into lava seas woods felt 
 And crumbled instantly to earth fierce flames 
 Drank up the hissing streams and the hot ground 
 Rung with a hollow moan. Where where was man? 
 Slumbering! What sound will wake the sleeper? Hark! 
 
 Creation, wake ! it is the knell of Time ! 
 
 Attend his burial in Eternity ! 
 
 There sounds the Archangel's clarion ! The skies 
 
 Roll rapidly away ; the Sun hath gone 
 
 Down the abyss of chaos; demons throng' 
 
 The gulf o'er which the world reels fearfully. 
 
 That fiendish laugh, oh, hear it ! See ! the Earth, 
 
 The very dying Earth doth rise and shriek 
 
 As trembling with the dread that hell hath ta'en 
 
 Possession of her beautiful domains. 
 
 Darkness becomes material, and throngs
 
 51 
 
 Of waking wretches grasp its stinging folds 
 
 With the tenacity of utter woe, 
 
 And, though their hearts are bursting, still they cling 
 
 'Till their frames mingle with the hell-fold night 
 
 And they are changed to demons ! Light as pure 
 
 As Him from whom it issues burns above, 
 
 And songs of glory echo yells of pain. 
 
 With one deep, hollow, rending groan the Earth 
 
 Dissolved and fell in fiery particles 
 
 Through the dense darkness of chaotic worlds; 
 
 And 'mid the horror-palsied multitudes 
 
 The fiends passed with infernal laughter while 
 
 Unutterable thoughts of bitter woe 
 
 Thronged many a burning brain and quivering lips 
 
 Strove vainly words of prayer to frame and tongue?, 
 
 Erst eloquent coadjutors of thought, 
 
 Hung agonizing d"own till they became 
 
 Serpents, and fastened on each passer-by 
 
 Convulsively, and desperate bands there stood 
 
 Close woven to each other's agony, 
 
 Yet every moment aggravating pain 
 
 General by private instances of spite. 
 
 Time hurried to a resting-place to die, 
 
 And as he hastened on, prepared to leave 
 
 His mission; Death's keen scythe he downward threw, 
 
 And, flashing in hell's fires, its piercing edge 
 
 Was ever o'er the suffering sinners' heads, 
 
 Menacing vengeance yet protracting dread ; 
 
 The glass, that numbered hours, now poured its sands 
 
 By centuries and 'mid a meteor's glare 
 
 Above, he hung it awfully distinct 
 
 To eyes that wept their owners' bosom blood, 
 
 And, when they asked the close of their fierce pain, 
 
 A. vivid flame flashed upward and displayed 
 
 ETERNITY ! Then Time fell down and died. 
 
 But as he fell, amid the awful scenes 
 
 Of horror and despair, I saw two forms 
 
 Beautiful celestially bend o'er the verge 
 
 Of billowy chaos with a look of woe
 
 52 
 
 And agony, and then in fond embrace 
 Rise upward joyously ; a deadly moan 
 Went through the universe as fleet they fled, 
 For they were Love and Innocence ! 
 
 EVENING. 
 
 The crimson waves of undulating light 
 
 Are blending with the azure sea of Heaven, 
 
 In the sublimity of beauty, while 
 
 The softest, sweetest, balmiest breath of eve 
 
 Fans fleecy clouds with fragrance as along 
 
 The sky's blue arch they sail, like angel wings 
 
 O'er Lebanon and Olivet ; and far 
 
 In the cerulean ether soar the birds 
 
 Of heaven in joyance such as if they felt 
 
 The all-pervading holiness, and knew 
 
 The Deity who rules the universe. 
 
 The whispering breeze amid the twinkling leaves, 
 
 That dance to Zephyr's song, speaks gently sweet 
 
 In answer to the voice of waters far 
 
 Warbling along their pebbled path, beneath 
 
 The purpling light, which shadows out the trees, 
 
 And hills, and rocks, so mirror-like, that eye 
 
 Of wandering solitary could trace the form, 
 
 Being and nature of each object there. 
 
 The mountain's brow is crowned with glory wreaths 
 
 Of purest radiance circle every tree, 
 
 And shrub, and low bush there ; while far below 
 
 In the rock-barred ravine, no lonely ray 
 
 Wanders amid the gloom. The scene is like 
 
 The sun-browed thought of rapture, soaring high 
 
 In intellectual majesty, and full 
 
 Of holiest emotions, while it wings 
 
 its flight through realms empyreal, and then' 
 
 Drooping and falling lifeless on the dark,
 
 53 
 
 Unholy, false and melancholy earth. 
 Hills feathered with their shrubbery redolent, 
 And cliffs with moss and lichens robed, and boughs 
 Of loftiest trees adorned with blushing flowers, 
 Jasmines, lianas and all woodland vines, 
 High precipices, rough and bare as when 
 The rocking earthquake left them ail are shown 
 In mimic beauty, like reality, 
 Upon the mirror by which nature decks 
 Her lovely form yon little sleeping lake. 
 The latest beam of evening slumbers now 
 Upon the crystal waters, and I see 
 A world within the azure depth, so pure, 
 So full of happy peacefulness, I long 
 To plunge and seek out pleasure there, and dwell 
 In that sweet home of waters, ever mid 
 The best of friends woods, rocks and silver waves, 
 Whose speaking silence innocently tells 
 All I can feel of pure beatitude. 
 But woe loves loveliest things, and I might find 
 Sorrow there even, were it as it seems, 
 And not a mockery as 'tis ! The soft, 
 Love-breathing vesper breeze plays o'er the smooth 
 Expanse delightfully, and curls and crisps 
 And crinkles the blue waves, while autumn dew 
 Wets the green leaves that have o'ercanopied 
 The lake the live-long day, untouched by drop 
 Of its serenest waters oh, how sweet 
 Is nature's quietude! the lulling lapse 
 Of purling brook through vales of verdure rich, 
 And generous of their richness, and the sound 
 Most musical of down-winged winds, are songs 
 Of gladness she doth ever raise to Heaven. 
 In gratitude of still devotion; all 
 Her votaries are fond of gentle thoughts, 
 And pure desires, and high imaginings, 
 And noblest aspirations, seeking out 
 A dwelling far from turbulence and strife, 
 And noise, and folly, and corrupting sin. 
 Nature doth teach her lessons in a tongue 
 S*
 
 54 
 
 All can enjoy ; and what she teaches norre 
 
 Of saints and sages past could imitate. 
 
 There is a pure divinity, unwarped 
 
 By damning creed or dogma stern, in all 
 
 Her sacred teachinss, and a holy voice 
 
 Of loftiest wisdom rises from the depth 
 
 Of her most silent solitude to teach 
 
 And counsel her infatuated sons, 
 
 In everlast'fng faithfulness 'twere well 
 
 Man weened and recked of her advisings more. 
 
 .Wight's star-winged angels in the firmament 
 
 Are setting watch, and hastily they come 
 
 Forth in the blup concave, like the fond hopes 
 
 Of young desire o'er the unwounded heart. 
 
 Faintly the dying light of day illumes 
 
 The western horizon, and shadows flit 
 
 O'er grove and dale and stream and hill alike, 
 
 For every object here is beautiful, 
 
 And worthy such rich robes of light and shade. 
 
 Oh, that each scene yon everlasting sun 
 
 Lightens, were worthy his celestial beams! 
 
 On' feudal towers and castles, where the groans 
 
 Of death and bondage worse than death have rung' 
 
 Through dungeon vaults, till every echoed tread, 
 
 For centuries, awoke despairing cries, 
 
 And voices of wild agony ; on mosque, 
 
 Whose shrine's deep font is filled with blood for rite 
 
 Baptismal, and where muftis tell of joys 
 
 Sensual and hellish, as pure delights 
 
 Of after-being in man's paradise ; 
 
 On palaces of pomp and crime, and huts, 
 
 Whose inmates gnaw a crust, and bless the hand 
 
 That gave it ; on despair and hope, delight 
 
 And anguish, tumult, peace, and purposes 
 
 Of noblest pride and meannesses most vile; 
 
 On all things dreadful, sweet, detestable, 
 
 Beautiful and loathsome, thy beams alike 
 
 Shine, fire-robed lord of heaven ! and if from the*
 
 55 
 
 Alone man images thy Maker, how 
 
 Impartially beneficent he is! 
 
 The faintest blushing of departed day 
 
 Hath gone, and russet mantled night glides o'er 
 
 The eternal hills, as softly as the young 
 
 Mother trips round the cradle of her child. 
 
 Oh, that I could divest myself of life 
 
 Corporeal, and leaving this poor load 
 
 Of clay to mingle with its kindred earth, 
 
 Imbibe an elemental being live 
 
 In the blue ether and float joyously 
 
 Through realms of upper air and feast my soul 
 
 On sun-beams t It were godlike fate to dwell 
 
 Amid the unbounded universe and be 
 
 A star or moon-beam, on which angels light 
 
 In their ethereal wanderings, and chant 
 
 Empyreal songs. The infinite desire 
 
 Of such celestial fate doth swell my heart, 
 
 And amplify my spirit to the embrace 
 
 Of thoughts immeasurable feelings so 
 
 Tremblingly glorious, I would not pause 
 
 For one farewell if I could rise and be 
 
 The merest part of those most holy beams 
 
 Whose radiance now gleams o'er another sphere. 
 
 Alas! the bitter, false, ungrateful world 
 
 Doth class me with her multitudes ; and 'mid 
 
 The sinning and the sorrowing, the vile, 
 
 The mean, the wretched, and the grovelling, still 
 
 Must be my dwelling-place. I loathe and hate, 
 
 Avoid and dread the stinging viper brood 
 
 That crawl around ; and were I one like them, 
 
 I would seek out a midnight den to hide 
 
 My person from the sun. O mother Earth ! 
 
 Beautiful daughter of the Spirit-Sire ! 
 
 Thou wert a paradise, till man, the fiend, 
 
 Changed thee to hell by his all-nameless deeds.
 
 56 
 
 THE DREAM. 
 
 Upon the rainbow's prismy pinions, 
 
 When soul was young and airy, 
 
 And dancing o'er the pale-blue sky, 
 
 A wild-tressed little Fairy, 
 
 In azure robes bedecked with gold, 
 
 Came smiling on my eye, 
 
 And breathing o'er my lovelit heart 
 
 The odours of the sky. 
 
 Around her thronged aerial shapes, 
 On her wild eye-beam sailing, 
 And other forms in sapphic notes 
 Among the Pleiads hailing, 
 While wavy music, floating far, 
 Embalmed each hallowed feeling, 
 And the heart's voice in thrilling notes 
 On the soul's ear was stealing. 
 
 Rapture behind the Fairy stood, 
 
 And rolled his sun-beam eye, 
 
 And, as he swept his angel lyre, 
 
 The everlasting sky 
 
 Its golden waves of ether threw 
 
 Along his swelling brow, 
 
 And heavenly choirs their music poured 
 
 Enchantingly below. 
 
 Soft Pleasure twined the Fairy's locks 
 
 Around her silver wires, 
 
 And Echo languished meltingly, 
 
 While all the fond desires 
 
 Came dancing from the palmy isles 
 
 Of rich Hesperides, 
 
 To wanton in the amber waves 
 
 Of music's sounding seas. 
 
 The Fairy sat on rainbow throne, 
 Amid her lovely train,
 
 And as I, spell-bound, gazed on high. 
 
 1 heard a seraph strain ; 
 
 It bore my spirit on its wing 
 
 To realms by man unseen, 
 
 And paradise enraptured lay 
 
 Heaven's pillared fanes between. 
 
 'Twas Psyche's song, the Fairy's voice, 
 And Eden's angel lyre, 
 And every holy strain it tuned 
 Did thrilling love inspire ; 
 Transparent on full many a brow 
 The mighty spirit shone, 
 And rapt Devotion bowed and knelt 
 Before the rainbow throne. 
 
 The strain was past another rose, 
 
 But trembling, trilling, low ; 
 
 Its notes seemed deep, but unexprest, 
 
 And sweet but full of woe ; 
 
 'Twas Eden's lyre I heard, but touched 
 
 By Doubt's distrusting hand, 
 
 And tears were shed and sorrow reigned 
 
 'Mid all the astonished band. 
 
 The music then came mournfully, 
 
 Like panting evening breeze, 
 
 And light shone forth like moon beams waij 
 
 Amid lone willow trees, 
 
 And hearts dissolved in pity's tears 
 
 At Grief's regretful strain, 
 
 While star-winged angels bent from heaven, 
 
 And sadly sung again. 
 
 . My melting eye in sorrow's dew 
 Lost vision for a time, 
 But, when I raised its look again, 
 A Shape in gloom sublime
 
 Was scattering wide the rainbow throne, 
 
 And stamping on the lyre, 
 
 And darting from his meteor eye 
 
 A wild and wasting fire. 
 
 A sable host with eyes of guilt 
 
 Pursued his desert way, 
 
 And lightning flared and thunder crashed, 
 
 But, fiercer still than they, 
 
 Despair went on in fiery gloom 
 
 Through realms once fair afar, 
 
 And Hope, the Fairy's shrieks were heard 
 
 Amid the ruthless war. 
 
 The sunbow bright I stood upon 
 
 In othcv distant sphere 
 
 Dissolved and midnight's fading dream 
 
 Disclosed no cause of fear ; 
 
 But yet, methought, the spirit's lyre 
 
 Will echo music only 
 
 Unto the spirit's magic touch 
 
 Ere sorrow leaves it lonely. 
 
 ADIO. 
 
 Farewell ! the Hope that led me on 
 
 Was sorrow's orphan child, 
 And thou may'st think, when I am gone, 
 
 That, though my love was wild, 
 I did but seek a home for one 
 
 To whom Despair was brother, 
 And prayed that thou would'st kindness OWB 
 
 Since he desired no other,
 
 59 
 
 But them didst kiss the wandering child, 
 
 AnrI fold iiim to thy he;i'-t, 
 And, whuii of -il' IMS sweets beguiled, 
 
 Thou bad'si the boy depart ; 
 Oh ! liadst thou never, never smiled 
 
 Upon his vows of love, 
 His life away had not been whiled 
 
 'Mid passion's dreamy grove. 
 
 Young Hope had lived in orphanage 
 
 His childhood's wandering hours, 
 But he for fair creation's page 
 
 Had culled celestial flowers; 
 
 And, than the scenes that did engage 
 
 His earlier thought, his mind 
 Was purer at his infant age, 
 
 More gentle and refined. 
 
 Farewell ! Young Hope his mournful tale 
 
 Hath eloquently told thee, 
 And thou hast heard his requiem wail 
 
 From those who madly sold thee ; 
 'Tis long, since died the orphan pale, 
 
 And he hath gone forever, 
 But he charged Love when life did fail 
 
 " Forsake her not no, never !" 
 
 MIDNIGHT. 
 
 To sit beneath the moon's translucent beam, 
 And drink her light with melancholy eye ; 
 To hear the music of the bubblins: stream, 
 And read the star-lit volumes of the sky ; 
 To muse on blighted loves and hopes gone by, 
 E'en as the moonlight shadows flit away, 
 And wander o'er the land of memory, 
 And count the pangs of each succeeding day 
 Alas ! the tale is sad more sad the picturing lay.
 
 But 'tis the hour of retrospective thought, 
 When all the past before us lives again ; 
 And loves and pleasures with contentment bought 
 Return upon us like the shapes of pain ; 
 And Hope's gay song and Fancy's syren strain 
 Come with a requiem echo on the soul ; 
 And dead desires, a shadowy, spectral train, 
 The pang-writ record of their fate unroll, 
 And agonize the heart that owned their wild control. 
 
 The pale, pure moon looks innocently down 
 Upon this warring world, with such a smile 
 Of soft derision as her eye may own ; 
 And, as she passes many a starry isle, 
 Pauses to weep at deeds that do defile 
 The lovely earth, and change its young delights 
 To agonies and angels sigh the while 
 That man doth desecrate those glorious nights, 
 When heaven's gem-studded arch refracts seraphic lights, 
 
 The silver stream of Dian's pearly rays 
 Flows o'er this world of crime and sin and war, 
 As erst it did in young creation's days, 
 Ere fiend-like pnssion could the beauty mar 
 Of thought and feeling, and each lovely star 
 Gilds smiling scenes of love and loveliness 
 With the same diamond beams as when from far 
 It looked on Eden, and the soft caress 
 Of innocence beheld its holy joys express. 
 
 The world is beautiful ; the azure arch 
 Is paved with gems for angels' gliding tread, 
 And. when their starry plumes wave back in march, 
 Delicious music, through the concave spread, 
 Floats round the sleeper's softly pillowed head, 
 And dreams of glory o'er his spirit throws; 
 And lovely nature, by devotion led, 
 Like Iran's nightingale beside the rose, 
 On young, untainted spirits holiness be&tovvs.
 
 61 
 
 Holy, delightful and unchanging, Heaven, 
 On sin and sorrow and vicissitude 
 Gazes with grief and pity that 'tis given 
 Man the strange will of his own studied good 
 To be the foe, and kill in sullen mood 
 The rosy hopes that cost him pain to rear ; 
 And white-haired time, while wrath doth deeply brood 
 O'er wrong and its atonement, smiles to hear 
 The deep-laid schemes of hate, whose fruit cannot appear, 
 
 But 'tis the nature of aspiring man 
 To mourn, to sigh, and word in maddened speech 
 His wrongs and sorrows ; what his pride began 
 His hate will finish; what his passions teach 
 His deeds will reverence, till beyond the reach 
 Of rivalry his spirit soars and bears 
 Its honors o'er his fellows ; each from each 
 Of mortal kind his loves, desires and fears 
 Borrows and 'tis not strange the debt is paid in tears. 
 
 The varied brilliance of the chequered beams 
 Falling on stream, grove, rock, and mountain dell, 
 Are like the spirit's momentary gleams 
 Of holy loveliness when upward swell 
 Feelings too raptured their delight to tell, 
 And loves too sweet their sweetness to unfold, 
 That dwell a moment when the night of hell 
 Comes o'er their beauty, and the shuddering cold 
 Of anguish unrepressed chills hopes too soon unrolled. 
 
 The moonlight radiance of the sapphire sky 
 Engenders shadows o'er the dark-robed earth, 
 As the bright gleamings of hope's diamond eye 
 Throw shades o'er all the phantoms of her birth ; 
 The undying light of undissembling worth 
 Derives its beauty from the darkness drear 
 It round illumines; and man wanders forth 
 Alone, the hermit of a desert sphere, 
 To read the flitting lights and shadows that appear 
 -
 
 62 
 
 What is philosophy but abstract thought 
 
 On never-ending sin and woe and crime, 
 
 Meting by method all the sorrows bought 
 
 By wearying years., and classifying time 
 
 In portions of despair ? Howe'er sublime 
 
 Its contemplations are, disease and want 
 
 And grief in generation each and clime 
 
 The nutriment on which it banquets grant, 
 
 And serve to elevate the soul they erst did daunt. 
 
 The world is full of wretchedness, and while 
 The moralizing man doth weep and sigh 
 At sin's foul leprosy, a sneering smile 
 Curls the proud lip and flashes from the eye 
 Of him who cries that none can ever die 
 Save unto ploasure; that the spirit rose 
 From dust and thither will return ; on high 
 Clouds only roll we make and nurse our woes 
 And death brings dreamless sleep, and deep, unwaked repose. 
 
 The argent moon-ray, darting through the dense 
 Cloud of green foliage in yon ravine 
 Of darkness, doth not to the view dispense 
 More sombre hues, than mortal mind, I ween, 
 Throws o'er of moral life each changeful scene ; 
 Nor doth the struggling, fluctuating light 
 More darkly bright the dripping cliffs between 
 Appear, than dying hopes of poor delight 
 Glimmering amid the shades of sorrow's roomless night. 
 
 Alone beneath the starry eyes of Heaven 
 I sit upon the cold rock's moonlit brow, 
 For while soft slumbers to the world are given, 
 Unpitying gfief will none to me allow ; 
 The rushing rill's unceasing lapse and ftow, 
 The twinkling forest where night zephyr sings, 
 Beseem the voiceless solitude of woe ; 
 And thought that maddens, and despair that wrings, 
 Can find relief alone beside tjie woodland springs.
 
 63 
 
 MUSINGS. 
 
 The youthful heart is heir to wealth 
 
 That years can never tell; 
 The youthful soul does deeds by stealth 
 
 That might in triumph swell 
 The thought that tunes a generous mind 
 
 Oft dies upon the wing, 
 And bosoms feeling, fond and kind, 
 
 Writhe oft 'neath torture's sting. 
 
 Gay hope, the night-fire of the brain, 
 
 Allures the heart to woe 
 With beams, that pleasure lends to pain 
 
 This faithless world to show; 
 And we are sped on life's lone way 
 
 By gilded goading spears, 
 While flitting fancy's meteor ray 
 
 Emblazons misery's tears. 
 
 The deepest woes we feel below, 
 
 The wildest throes of pain, 
 From our own fond illusions flow, 
 
 When sanguine passions reign ; 
 For guileful flattery soothes the heart 
 
 That malice turns to sting, 
 And love, full oft, o'er ruin's dart 
 
 Its vermeil veil will fling. 
 
 Anticipations ever glow 
 
 In self-delusion's light, 
 While sorrow's tear and misery's throe 
 
 Sublime the heart's delight; 
 As silver clouds in fleecy wreaths 
 
 A summer sunbeam shade, 
 When breezy music softly breathes 
 Along the waving glade.
 
 64 
 
 Undimmed by time, the youthful eye 
 
 Sheds tears unchilled by all 
 Those wayward feuds, that burst the tie 
 
 Of love when envies call, 
 And in the rudely tilting world 
 
 Engender woe and strife, 
 When friendship from his seat is hurled t 
 
 And pride companions life. 
 
 Darkness, disease and doubt will blight 
 
 The fairest dreams of bliss, 
 And rapture plunge, in sorrow's night, 
 
 To agony's abyss ; 
 The fairy frost-work of an hour 
 
 Decays in misery's flame, 
 And false and vain are pomp and powery 
 
 A,nd fleeting as a name. 
 
 A REVERIE. 
 
 Mora wakes upon the mountain hergh 
 
 And dim and duskily along 
 The woodland dale glides pensive night, 
 
 Listening to nature's matin song ; 
 Her russet robes and tresses dark 
 ' Far floating o'er the pale-blue sky, 
 While arrow-like, the wild-wing'd lark 
 
 Fans heaven with joyous minstrelsy. 
 
 * 
 But why wakes man with drooping eye, 
 
 And burning brow, and heart of gloom * 
 Why comes no soothing melody 
 
 From his dark spirit's breathing tomb ? 
 The bursting sigh, the pallid cheek,
 
 65 
 
 The quivering voice, and look of care, 
 An unblest soul too loudly speak, 
 A heart enthroned by grim despair. 
 
 Morn's glories bring no joy to him, 
 
 Eve's vermil beauties fade unseen, 
 His hopes are gone, his eye is dim, 
 
 The present pictures what has been; 
 Life is a dream of wretchedness, 
 
 The world a prison barr'd by woe, 
 The earth a grave where myriads press, 
 
 And heaven a place that none can know. 
 
 Starting from visions, whose false light, 
 
 Like fire-flies round a cataract, 
 Deludes the wretch to endless night, 
 
 He hurries forth to feel the rack 
 Of ductile malice, and to tread 
 
 Among the snares of villain guile ; 
 To sigh in doubt, and gaze in dread, 
 
 And fall beneath a dagger-smile. 
 
 The spirit that can span the skies, 
 
 And walk divinely realms above, 
 Is torn with sorrow, stung with lies, 
 
 And murdered by the fiends of love ; 
 For angels oft their robes impart 
 
 To shroud a demon's venom'd thrust, 
 And 'tis the madness of the heart 
 
 That makes the world supremely curst. 
 
 The iron mantle, flung by grief 
 
 O'er bosoms scorched by lava tears, 
 'The savage feeling, past relief, 
 
 That centres all the pain of years ; 
 The wild-fire rush of boiling blood, 
 
 The thought that seems to burst the brain, 
 Conquer at last pride's hardihood, 
 
 And time, fate, life and death disdain.
 
 66 
 
 Vain is the searching thought intense,- 
 
 That struggles in the expanding mini}. 
 And vainer still the joys of sense, 
 
 For hell and demons rush behind ; v, 
 Gloomy 'mid mirth, in crowds alone, 
 
 Distrusting good, adopting ill, 
 Man is the thing he dares not own, 
 
 The victim of his own wild will. 
 
 Youth withers 'neath the blight of wrong, 
 
 And minds of mighty birth are doomed 
 To perish in convulsions strong, 
 
 And by earth's reptiles be entombed ; 
 While, lanced by hatred's gory blade, 
 
 And probed by misery's venomed steel, 
 The heavenliest hearts are naked laid 
 
 For vice to balm, and hell to heal. 
 
 A wanderer, seeking hope's pale ghost, 
 
 A shadow in the world's wide blaze, 
 In labyrinthine mazes lost 
 
 For blackening nights and midnight days, 
 Led by delusion, girt by woe, 
 
 Followed by horror and remorse, 
 Man could not render life below 
 
 More dreary, nor the world make worse. 
 
 THE BANQUET HALL. 
 
 Midnight waned in the ebon sky, 
 
 And the deep blue vault of Heaven was still, 
 Save the warning voice of the angel's cry, 
 
 As he watched the fiends on Zion hill. 
 His warder notes in the depths of night 
 
 Are heard alone by the minstrel's ear,
 
 67 
 
 (For the high star-beam, as it gilds the sight, 
 
 Has a voice that fancy's soul may hear ;) 
 And the sleeping earth in silence lay, 
 
 Dreaming of love or hate or wo, 
 And the lulling lapse of a streamlet's play 
 
 Rose faint and far in the moonlight glow ; 
 And I wandered on in reverie lost, 
 
 'Till the brutal roar of a revel rout 
 The circling current of fancy crossed, 
 
 And made the waked sense gaze about ; 
 When the flaring lights of the banquet hall,. 
 
 And the noisy rush of revelry, 
 And the mummery mask, and sparkling ball, 
 
 Burst on my ear, and heart, and eye. 
 And I stood and mused of the forms that there 
 
 Displayed their charms to the losel's view, 
 And the visored smile that masked despair, 
 
 And the scornful laugh that ne'er was true ;. 
 The silent pain of a dazzling breast, 
 
 The feverish throb of a jewelled brow, 
 The painful wish to seem most blest 
 
 When sighing with excess of wo ; 
 And the sight did chill my aching eye 
 As I mused of that gaudy misery. 
 
 The joys that live in a faithful heart, 
 
 Devoted to Heaven and changeless love, 
 Were all unknown in that crowded mart, 
 
 Where pleasure's votaries torture prove 
 The palled pursuit of joyless show, 
 
 The gay resort of gloomy souls, 
 Where truth would count the pulse of wo ; 
 
 Though truth her banner ne'er unrolls 
 In such a masquerade of guile 
 If each dared look beneath a smile. 
 
 The glare waxed dim as I gazed alone, 
 And the fairy forms I saw were gone ; 
 And the rushing sound of mirth and glee
 
 68 
 
 Retired like the waves of a stormy sea. 
 What pillows of fear will the revellers press ? 
 What dreams be their's of happiness? 
 When those gemmed robes are laid aside, 
 Where will their mirth be, pomp and pride ? 
 The beds that ye press, I envy not, 
 Nor your heartless joys and painful lot. 
 
 I entered at morn and it came full soon, 
 
 To the banquet hall and the proud saloon; 
 
 And many a vestige of revelry there 
 
 Told of past pleasure but where, oh where, 
 
 Were the forms and the shadows, so bright and gay .' 
 
 Hide it from earth, both love and lay ! 
 
 The vacant chair, and the goblet broken, 
 
 And scattered viands, were many a token 
 
 Of what had been aud my lonely eye 
 
 Wandered o'er all as a saddened sigh 
 
 Stole from my heart, at the mournful view 
 
 Of the wreck of those joys that man thinks true. 
 
 THE CHICAPEE. 
 
 On a moss-cushioned cliff o'er the stream of Montzeil, 
 
 Far away from the haunts of my loveliest days, 
 When the soft shades of evening in mellowness steal 
 
 O'er lawn, grove and lea amid zephyr's sweet lays, 
 And dewy-lipp'd naiads are scudding the stream, 
 
 While music is waving in their long sunny hair, 
 And sylph forms in moonlight, as they glide atvay, seem 
 
 Like the shapes that we lov'd in the lost days that were ; 
 O then, as the wave of Montzeil trickles on, 
 
 I muse of the hours that smiled brightly o'er me, 
 And I seem once again, with the youth that have gone 
 
 On. the musical shores of the lone Ch icapee.
 
 69 
 
 Since the days of our childhood, when the heart was the throne 
 
 Of affection and feeling by malice unstung, 
 And the spirit aspiring developed in tone 
 
 Each young thought of beauty as brightly it sprung, 
 I have wandered afar from the home of my love, 
 
 And read the false world with the eye of despair, 
 While the green earth below, and the blue sky above 
 
 The pall of my sorrows seem'd ever to wear ; 
 And my pathway has teemed with the vipers of hate, 
 
 The insects of folly, and reptiles of scorn, 
 And the fierce'voice of woe, and the wild shrieks of fate 
 
 Have echoed around me all lonely and lorn. 
 
 On the proud-rolling Hudson full oft I have sailed 
 
 With a father who sleeps in the dust by its shore, 
 By Savarinah's dark stream I have wander'd and wailed 
 
 For the heart-enshrin'd friend who can guide me no more ; 
 Pawtuxet has lost all its charms and its hues, 
 
 For the youth, that once 'thronged its wild woods with me 
 Are scattered afar in their feelings and views, 
 
 Like the leaves of our bowering and revelling tree ; 
 Pale-blue Housatenic chimes the low dirge of love, - 
 
 For Ellen no more tunes its music for me 
 But through the yet blooming and musical grove 
 
 Still lovingly soft flows the lone Chicapee. 
 
 On the green-sloping banks of that beautiful stream, 
 
 Thou slumber' st, my sister, in the sleep of the dead, 
 While zephyrs wave o'er thee, and bright planets beam, 
 
 And roses and violets perfume thy dark bed ! 
 The birds of sweet voices are singing around, 
 
 And the willow I planted has grown far above 
 Thy grave, and the spot has become like the ground 
 
 That embraces no form of unspeakable love. 
 Yet I live in this world of deep sorrow alone, 
 
 And 1 hear those strange voices that tell me of thee, 
 While, mingling with crowds of bright beings, I moan 
 
 For a place by thy side on the lone Chicapee,
 
 70 
 
 RETROSPECTION. 
 
 Love of my sad and lonely Youth ! to thee 
 
 I bowed my spirit in deep ecstacy, 
 
 And when most thrall'd esteemed myself most free 
 From lowly earth's polluting stains, 
 And sorrow's self-engendered pains, 
 
 And all that saints mourn over and regret ; 
 Fci- deep-felt passion purifies the heart, 
 And, when the signet of true love is set, 
 Sublime conception will its thought impart^ 
 
 And noblest virtue ever sway 
 
 The joyous life from day to day. 
 
 Those holy hours of heavenly love we past 
 Their incense yet o'er life's lone path-way cast, 
 And through my being will their influence last, 
 
 Though, like the light of paradise 
 
 To suffering sinner's straining eyes, 
 
 Their pure, unearthly splendor in the gloom 
 Of dark misfortune and unceasing woe, 
 Gleams like the baleful torch-light of the tomb, 
 And haggard shapes and ghastly forms doth show 
 To eyes, that once on beauty shone, 
 And met love true as was their own.. 
 
 Love of my dark and lonely youth ! thy name, 
 Unread, unheard, no mortal power shail claim, 
 For, though I'm changed, yet I am still the same 
 
 To thee, my heart's eternal bride ! 
 
 My spirit's life, and joy and pride ! 
 
 When far retired from earth's unfeeling things 
 I hold communion with the days gone by, 
 And when my soul on high devotion's wings 
 Reads the bright volume of eternity, 
 I think of thee, and whispering tell 
 Thy name to those who loved as well.
 
 71 
 
 Another claimed thy wedded love and thon 
 Didst yield response to his enamoured vow, 
 And on the earth there's nothing left me now 
 
 But coldness, sorrow and neglect, 
 
 (Erst of such fate I little reck'd.) 
 
 But in the pride of suffering I will bear 
 
 The past, the present and the future's ills, 
 
 And only think of thee as one in prayer 
 
 Doth think of heaven and though my heart oft thrills 
 
 At sound of name too like to thine, 
 
 No eye in me snail grief divine. 
 
 I blame thee not, sweet one ! that thou didst spealc 
 Love to my passion, for my heart was weak, 
 And fondly leaned on what was sure to break ; 
 
 I blame thee not the time hath gone 
 
 When I did wish tfiee for my own. 
 
 Back o'er the desert of anterior life 
 
 I gaze in sorrow not with joy unblent, 
 
 For childhood's dreams and youth's enkindling strife 
 
 Have lost the illusion that they whilom lent, 
 
 And guile hath chilled my feelings so 
 
 I would not change for bliss my woe. 
 
 Long time hath past lone, leaden-winged hours, 
 Days, months and years since Housatonic's bowers 
 Heard zephyr wantoning among the flowers 
 
 To lovers' soft and witching lay ; 
 
 And many a lingering, lonely day 
 
 Since then hath hung like mountain on my mind, 
 And seemed eternal as the vault above ; 
 And, though I've lived in misery, yet resigned 
 I could have been to sacrifice my love, 
 
 Hadst thou not lost, the while, thy bloom, 
 
 And wert thou not so near the tomb,
 
 72 
 
 But such is youthful love all passion, fire, 
 Fever and frenzy all beyond desire, 
 Or hope, or aim, save what it doth inspire 
 Of paradise that turns to hell 
 With all who love long, fond and well. 
 
 Moments of bliss no human heart can bear 
 Prelude dark years of misery and pain ; 
 Rapture lends venom unto fierce despair, 
 And youth's gay hopes in age deep sorrows reign. 
 
 The heart that love leaves desolate 
 
 Becomes the seat of settled hate. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 Of Jove and sunny-haired Mnemosyne 
 
 high-souled Daughter ! If in these sad lays 
 Or thought or feeling gleam and live, the pr.aif. 
 Is due, high Priestess of the Lyre ! to thee. 
 E'en in the earliest days of memory 
 
 My undirected musings wandered forth 
 From dull oppression and unmannered mirth, 
 And held high converse, 'neath the old oak tre- 
 
 1 loved, with thee, O tearful Goddess ! Left 
 An infant orphan, and enslaved by those 
 Who, kindred friends, became my bitterest foes ; 
 In childhood of a sister-love bereft, 
 
 And ever haunted by the fiends of ill; 
 Queen of lone hearts ! as then I love thee still !
 
 THE SISTERS OF ST CLARA, 
 
 BY SUMNER L. FAIRFIELD 
 
 PORTLAND: 
 
 PRINTED BX TODD AND SMITH, 
 1825,
 
 TO 
 
 PROFESSOR EVERETT, 
 
 WHOSE EMIJSENT TALENTS 
 
 HAVE VINDICATED AND ADORNED 
 
 AMERICAN LITERATURE, 
 
 IN TESTIMONY OF HIGHEST RESPECT 
 
 FOR HIS 
 
 VARIOUS ERUDITION 
 
 AND ACCOMPLISHED ABILITIES, 
 
 IS DEDICATED BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR,
 
 sestets of 
 
 A PORTUGUESE TALE. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 I. 
 
 r Tis the bridal of nature, the season of spring, 
 When Pleasure flits round on her diamond wing, 
 And the spirit plays brightly and fondly and free, 
 Like gem-dropping beams on a boundless blue sea, 
 And the young heart is lit by the beams of love's eye, 
 Like an altar of perfume by fi.es of the sky. 
 'Tis the heart-blooming season of innocent love, 
 When the green growing mead and the whispering grove 
 And the musical stream as it purls o'er the dale, 
 And the flowers whose lips zephyr woos in the vale, 
 Are seen with the spirit of thrilling delight 
 As visions of beauty too passingly bright, 
 And heard like the songs that come o'er us in dreams 
 When the soul's magic light through infinity gleams. 
 The gay Earth is vestured with verdure and flowers, 
 And Hope sings away the sweet sunny hours, 
 While bathing in sunbeams or over the sky 
 Her star-pinions waving through glories on high. 
 The citron groves throw on the wings of the breeze 
 Their balm-breathing flowers, an;i the green orange trees 
 Harp sweetly in airs from the hill and the sea, 
 Like lyres heard unseen singing joys yet to be. 
 O Eden of beauty ! Lusitania ! the sun 
 Loves to linger awhile, when his journey is done, 
 7
 
 74 
 
 On the lofty twin Pillars, whose brows in the sky 
 Gleam bright when the sun-god rides flash! ngly by, 
 Which stand in their might 'mid the waves of the sea- 
 Abyla and Calpe unconquered and free. 
 And Cintra's dark forests look smilingly on 
 Apollo descending from his chariot throne, 
 While Estrella's lagoon, green Escura receives 
 Sheen tints of his rays from the wood's gilded leaves, 
 AnH Tajo's broad bay like a mirror reposes 
 'Tween a heaven of light and a garden of roses. 
 I 
 
 It 
 
 The sun's last beam of purple light 
 Emblazons Calpe's castle height, 
 And over Lusitania's sea 
 Looks with a smile of melody. 
 The volcan fires of ./Etna glow 
 Brighter as sinks Hyperion low, 
 And, 'mjd the gathering twilight, high 
 Stromboli gazes on the sky, 
 O'er dark-blue ocean's billowy foam 
 To light the wandering sailor home. 
 Child of the sun, the dusky Moor 
 Watches the horizon, bright obscure, 
 And, while the fine-voiced muezzin calls 
 Devotion's hour, from Ceuta's walls 
 Throws his keen eye's far-searching glance 
 O'er the dark billows as they dance 
 Along the Mauritanian shore, 
 And listens to their surging roar 
 Around Abyla's basement deep, 
 Lest in tired nature's twilight sleep 
 The foe upon his guard should steal, 
 And gain the pass ere trumpet peal. 
 Adverse, the gallant Briton stands 
 On Calpe's height, by mortal hands 
 Unbuilt and views with Jofty pride 
 The vast sail gleaming o'er the tide, 
 While every breeze that comes from far
 
 Wafts music from red Trafalgar. 
 
 Evening's dim shadows o'er thee close, 
 
 Fair Lusitania ! and the rose 
 
 Of morning blushes o'er thy plains 
 
 With the same rich and gorgeous light 
 
 As when his warlike, wild Ala>ns, 
 
 O'er forest, flood and vale and height. 
 
 From Volga's banks Respedial led 
 
 To Tajo's darkly wooded shore, 
 
 And made on earth his royal bed 
 
 With those who knew their king no more. 
 
 And the sun rolls his last faint beam 
 
 O'er princely dome, rose-margined stream, 
 
 And almond grove and jasmine bower, 
 
 With the same smile as ere that hour 
 
 When man the heart of nature stained, 
 
 And freedom o'er a despot reigned. 
 
 But Lusitania, oh, thy fate 
 
 Hath changeful been and desolate, 
 
 For leagured by war's ruthless hordes, 
 
 And rent by rival feuds, thy crown 
 
 Hath fall'n between contending swords, 
 
 And none will now Braganza own. 
 
 III. 
 
 The full-orbed moon is gleaming bright 
 On Cintra's dark and rocky height, 
 And on verandah, turret, tower, 
 Palace and fane at this still hour 
 Glows with a radiant smile of love, 
 And gilds the music-breathing grove 
 With those pure beams of light serene, 
 Which consecrate the peaceful scene. 
 From wave and dome and field and grove 
 Rise the soft notes of pleading love, 
 And many a strain is heard from far 
 Of wandering lover's sweet guitar, 
 And in the songs be fondly sings
 
 76 
 
 Sfis glowing heart finds rainbow wings, 
 Which bear his soul's devoted love 
 "To her who would his honor prove. 
 Dian the queen of sighs and tears, 
 Her richest robe of beauty wears, 
 And smiles to hear the vows that rise 
 Beyond her dwelling in the skies, 
 While still she weeps in prescient pain 
 That passioned love is worse than vain. 
 
 IV. 
 
 St Clara's dark and massy dome, 
 Deluded vestals' hopeless home, 
 'Mid the dense cypress grove uprears 
 Its ivied turrets, grey with years, 
 And, where the shadowy moonlight falls, 
 Displays its blackened prison walls, 
 Within whose solitary cells 
 Tearless despair for ever dwells,, 
 And sin, beneath devotion's name, 
 Reposes in its sacred shame, 
 While deeds unweened by him of hell 
 Are done in murder's fatal cell. 
 
 Within St Clara's cloisters doomed 
 
 In living grave to be entombed, 
 
 Two lovely vestals, young and fair, 
 
 In misery dwelt and dark despair. 
 
 Their loves and hopes and feelings chained-,. 
 
 Lone sorrow o'er their being reigned, 
 
 "Till hope arose upon their eye, 
 
 And mighty love's deep witchery 
 
 Woke the fond hearts that had been cruslietL 
 
 And the soul's sun-light current gushed. 
 
 Like roses budding on one stem 
 
 Or blendkig hues of opal gem, 
 
 Lovely they sat within their cell, 
 
 Silent 'till expectation's swell 
 
 Burst o'er each thought and feeling high,.
 
 77 
 
 Like sun-showers from the azure sky. 
 Around them speaking stillness hung, 
 'Till Zulma's glowing feelings sprung 
 To words that flowed like morning's beam, 
 Or song from lips of seraphim. 
 " Sweet Inez ! fast the fearful hour, 
 " When we shall spurn monastic power, 
 "Approaches, and our spirits' might 
 " Must dare the Ordeal of to-night. 
 " The church's power, our father's ire,. 
 " And Heaven perchance, will all conspire 
 " To quell the scheme we venture on ; 
 " Then, Inez, 'till the deed is done, 
 "And we have passed their power's extent, 
 " Let not thy dovelike heart relent 
 "Nor fancy picture punishment." 
 "Oh, lovely Zulma, hope is light 
 " Within my trembling heart to-night, 
 "And fain this aching heart would prove 
 "The silent joys of blissful love. 
 "But, ah ! my path in life has been 
 " So full of woe, and every scene 
 "Of joy so soon has changed to grief, 
 "I fear my heart will find relief 
 "Never 'till life shalhcease to beat 
 "Within the snow-white winding-sheet." 
 The melting beams of Inez' eye 
 Mingled with tears of misery; 
 O'er her pale cheek and blanching brow 
 Hope's feverish hectic ceased to glow, 
 And through her heart the chilling blight 
 Of fear, like gale of northern night, 
 Flew with a deadly freezing breath^ 
 That laid her budding joys in death. 
 
 V. 
 
 ZTTLMA'S high spirit at the view 
 
 Of peril more undaunted grew, 
 
 And glowed 'mid sorrow's gathering gloom,.
 
 78- 
 
 Like angel faith above the tomb. 
 
 In danger's hour she stood alone, 
 
 'Mid fearful things the fearless one, 
 
 And, as her sunlight spirit burned 
 
 O'er the deep darkness of despair, 
 
 The trembling fears of all she turned 
 
 To hopes and left them smiling there. 
 
 Her broad high brow, the throne of thought, 
 
 And features into spirit wrought ; 
 
 Her star beam eye, and look of light, 
 
 And moulded form that chained the sight, 
 
 And swanlike neck, and raven hair, 
 
 And swelling bosom, richly fair, 
 
 Which rose and sunk, like moonlight sea, 
 
 In its deep passion's ecstacy, 
 
 As if her mighty heart were swelling 
 
 In sun-waves for its heavenly dwelling ; 
 
 All spake a spirit proud and high, 
 
 A. wandering seraph of the sky. 
 
 And such was ZCLMA ; sorrow's night 
 
 Might its dark shadows o'er her cast, 
 
 But the deep gloom her spirit's light 
 
 Changed into rose beams as it past ; 
 
 She had one aim and none beside 
 
 Could bend her lofty lightning pride, 
 
 And, eve she drooped, she would have died. 
 
 Vemeira knew his daughter well, 
 
 And chained her spirit in a cell 
 
 Ere she could know the desolate 
 
 And hopeless woe of such a fate, 
 
 And 'twas an elder child's delight 
 
 To serve he quelled that spirit bright. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Timid and fearful as the fawn, 
 That searches ere it treads the glade,. 
 Yet lovely as a springtime dawrr 
 In robes of rosy rays arrayed ; 
 Wai m, feeling, soft and delicate 
 As the last blush of summer eve, 
 Tot trembling at the frown of Fate,.
 
 79 
 
 Lest, while her heart did sadly grieve, 
 Sin should assume the garb of woe, _ 
 And shroud in gloom devotion's glow - r 
 INEZ, though fair as forms that rove 
 Round Fancy's fondest dream of love, 
 Was tender, gentle, fragile, frail, 
 And shrinking as the violet pale 
 Which blooms in solitary vale, 
 By zephyr fanned and breathed alone, 
 Unseen, unsought, unprized, unknown. 
 Feelings suppressed and thoughts untold 
 Flowed silently, like liquid gold, 
 O'er her fond heart, while virtue's sun 
 Threw glory o'er them as they run. 
 Her smiles and tears alike were born 
 In purity of virgin love, 
 And, like bright Eos, child of morn, 
 She drank at streams that gush above ; 
 For sweetness such to her was given, 
 Her faintest prayer was heard in heaven. 
 
 VII. 
 
 When Zulma heard her sister's plaint, 
 
 And saw her gentle spirit sink, 
 
 Her soul arose in power " To faint 
 
 "While standing on dark ruin's brink 
 
 "Were madness worse than mirth in death 
 
 " When love and happiness await 
 
 " Our flight, to droop despair beneath 
 
 "Were folly that deserved the fate." 
 
 " But if we fail" " It cannot be ! 
 
 "Love, like the mountain breeze, is free, 
 
 "And, amid peril, wrong and ill, 
 
 " Strong as the gale that sweeps the hill,. 
 
 "Or severing ocean in its might, 
 
 " Brings long-lost treasures into light." 
 
 "But will beholding heaven approve 
 
 u Our broken vows for earthly love ?" 
 
 "St Mary shrive thee '. would'st thou be
 
 80 
 
 "A Vestal in hypocrisy ? 
 
 "Oh, gentle Inez, guard thy love ! 
 
 "Count Dion's daring quest would prove 
 
 "But folly's dream in evil hour, 
 
 "If thou dost spurn the boy-god's power." 
 
 Inez arose, her blue eye flowed 
 
 In gushing tears of pearly light 
 
 ''-Zulma, my heart were ill bestowed 
 
 " If Dion called me false to-night.'' 
 
 " Vemeira's daughterstill ! O Heaven ! 
 
 "Love's messenger his call has given ! 
 
 " Inez ! that rose, by Dion thrown, 
 
 " Lay on thy heart it is thine own 
 
 "And haste thee, for we must be gone 1" 
 
 The soft strain of a sweet guitar 
 
 Now mellowed came as if from far, 
 
 But, artful in its measured fall, 
 
 It rose by dark St Clara's wall, 
 
 And, mastered by Prince Julian's hand, 
 
 Its sweet notes flowed so richly bland, 
 
 They told unseen the minstrel lover, . 
 
 And Zulma's soaring spirit over 
 
 Threw breathless rapture as she fled 
 
 From her lone cell with footstep light, 
 
 While Inez' heart, at every tread, 
 
 Throbbed with wild fears of deep delight. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Queen of the skies ! why should the beams 
 Of ihy soft eye so richly glow 
 O'er scenes that darkest gloom beseems, 
 As fitting their soul-harrowing woe ? 
 Why should thy smile alike illume 
 Despair and Hope, and Love and Hate, 
 The bridal mansion and the tomb, 
 Hearts full of bliss and desolate ? 
 Empress of Heaven ! oh, thou wort made 
 For blooming hearts and tearless eyes, 
 To light the spirit's serenade,
 
 81 
 
 And high-souled love's fond ecstacies ; 
 And, when young Time in Even's bowers 
 With nature, truth and simple love 
 Dwelt and wove crowns of fragrant flowers, 
 While Innocence with him would rove 
 In soothing shade of fair-leaved grove, 
 And smile and sing in loveliest tone 
 From very fulness of delight, 
 When Angels looked from Glnry's throne 
 And threw around her robes of light ; 
 Ere woe was born of sin, and crime 
 Blotted from man's corrupted heart 
 The fairest name that youthful Time 
 Had written there with magic art ; 
 Ere the sad hour man's father fell, 
 And o'er his fall rose shouts from hell, 
 Thou, sky-throned Isis ! from thy throne 
 In all thy circuit joy alone 
 Didst see with bright, love-beaming eye 
 Beneath the azure arching sky. 
 Alas ! thou art now doomed to gaze 
 Upon a world so dark and fell, 
 That thy most pure and lovely rays 
 Serve but man's midnight heart to tell. 
 
 IX. 
 
 On the young vestals' desperate flight 
 
 Thou didst look down with smile as gay 
 
 As if it was their bridal night, 
 
 And they were led in fair array 
 
 O'er bright saloons and marbled halls ; 
 
 And on ST CLARA'S prison wal's 
 
 Thy gleaming radiance shone as fair 
 
 As if delight were smiling there ; 
 
 And on the lovely INEZ' eye, 
 
 As she and ZCLMA fled in fear, 
 
 Thy rays were thrown from yon blue sky, 
 
 Unconscious that they lit a tear. 
 
 Crossing the cypressed cemetry,
 
 82 
 
 They hurried on with unheard tread 
 
 'Till they had gained the boundary 
 
 Of the lone empire of the Dead, 
 
 When, ere the signal could be given 
 
 To those who watched beyond the wall, 
 
 Inez stretched forth her hands to Heaven, 
 
 Weeping as if the hour when all 
 
 Her hopes should die had come and spread 
 
 Its pall o'er life and thus she said ; 
 
 "Now, ere we part, sweet Zulma, say 
 
 " Thou lov'st me as in childhood's day, 
 
 "When we together fondly st.ayed 
 
 rt Through arboured groves and greenwood shade. 
 
 " And on the mead plucked roseate flowers 
 
 "And chaplets wreathed to crown the hours, 
 
 " When none beneath the laughing sky 
 
 "Were half so gay as thou and I, _ 
 
 " Whose twin delights, like peach flowers thrown 
 
 " On almond boughs, each loved to own, 
 
 "And every smiling, happy year 
 
 " Flowed brightly as our own Zevpre. , 
 
 " Say, Zulma, say thou lov'st me still, 
 
 " And I will suffer every ill 
 
 " That follows broken vows made known 
 
 " So Zulma's love is all my own." 
 
 "Now ere we part a strange prelude, 
 
 41 Fair, fearful sister ! to delight 
 
 " Thy very spirit is imbued 
 
 "With causeless doubts and fears to-night. 
 
 " Wake thee from fright thou hast my love, 
 
 " And shall my fate and fortune prove. 
 
 " They hear our rustling in the shade 
 
 " Here is the cord-wove escalade 
 
 "Now, INEZ, fearless follow me, 
 
 " Doubt not, we must and shall be free." 
 
 Unfaltering ZULMA scaled the height, 
 
 Cheering the lovely nun to speed, 
 
 And then flew down with footstep light
 
 83 
 
 To JULIAN'S arms, most blest indeed. 
 
 The solitary vestal stoi d 
 
 A moment ere she dared to climb, 
 
 And in that moment's solitu 'e 
 
 Hei stolen flight appeared like crime ; 
 
 She was so pure, so lovely, sin 
 
 Tinged not a thought her soul within. 
 
 But Dion's low though passioned call 
 
 Impelled her faltering foot above, 
 
 And she had gained the ivied wall, 
 
 In view of all to whom her love 
 
 Clung with a fondness oniy known 
 
 To feeling hearts that throb alone, 
 
 When the full gush of high delight 
 
 O'erwhelmed her sense and dimmed her sight, 
 
 And her brain reeled in dizziness ; 
 
 She heeded not the cries below, 
 
 She could nor see nor hear nor know 
 
 The insupportable distress 
 
 Of those who saw her fainting there ! 
 
 Count Dion sprung he reached the height* 
 
 But one shrill shriek of wild despair, 
 
 The falling form that met his sight, 
 
 The hollow groan, that rose and fell 
 
 Upon his heart like ruin's knell, 
 
 Told him his loves, joys, hopes had fled, 
 
 And INEZ numbered with the dead. 
 
 X. 
 
 "Away away ! Prince Julian, fly ! 
 "The alarum bell is pealing high, 
 "And ruthless hordes of vestal fiends 
 " Are rushing hither !" Who ascends 
 Again that dreadful wall, so late 
 Scaled with a look that smiled at Fate ? 
 'Tis Zulma "Julian ! leave me now, 
 " For 1 must share the death I wrought, 
 And consummate my yestal vow
 
 84 
 
 "In pain and darkness as I ought." 
 She rose to give her purpose deed, 
 When Dion barred her path and cried 
 " Prince Julian ! as thou wouldst in need, 
 "And when despair hns humbled pride, 
 "Crave mercy of the powers on high, 
 " Seize Zulma quick and fly, fly, fly !" 
 In. passion wild and wildered fear 
 Julian obeyed the wise behest, 
 And grasped the heroic maiden ere 
 She could achieve her purpose ; prest 
 Unto his throbbing heait, her high 
 Spirit lost its wild energy, 
 And, whelmed by mingled love and dread. 
 Left her as passive as the dead ; 
 And, ere a moment more had flown, 
 The high-souled nun and piince had gone. 
 Count Dion watched them out of view, 
 Then seized the bianch of towering yew, 
 And dropped within the cemetry, 
 Where round the lifeless Inez spread 
 Tombs whose white marble mournfully 
 Shone as in mockery of the Dead. 
 He raised the lovely sufferer, 
 And laid her bleeding on his breast, 
 And kissed the death-like cheek of her 
 Who was his spirit's heaven most blest, 
 While, as he gazed in speechless woe 
 O'er her soft, lovely features graven 
 With death's dark lines, he saw below 
 Nor love nor joy, nor hope in heaven. 
 But scarce the space of lightning's glare 
 W T as left to muse of his despair, 
 Or soothe the suffering Inez there ; 
 The cloister horde by Abbess led, 
 Exulting that their venomed iiate 
 Could now be poured on beauty's hee.3 
 And virtue's heart left desolate,
 
 85 
 
 Rushed like hyaena troops upon 
 The gallant Dion bu4, appalled 
 By his proud port, though all alone 
 He stood they paused and shrilly called 
 Their faithful, favored alguazil, 
 To guard the holy cloister's weal. 
 Folding his bosom's suffering bride 
 With one strong arm unto his heart, 
 And with the other waving wide 
 A sword by sage Iberian art 
 Trebly refined and edged, he bade 
 The serpent throng avoid his path, 
 And sprung upon the escalade ; 
 Then came the alguazil in wrath, 
 Dashing the trembling host away, 
 Like war-ship rushing through the spray, 
 And Dion charged in lordly tone 
 To yield and meek submission own. 
 The Lover there that moment stood, 
 Not like proud warrior trained in blood, 
 But like that Spirit who on high 
 His four-edged sword waved o'er the sky, 
 And bade the sinning mortal die. 
 " Yield thee, blasphemer ! Heaven commands." 
 "Chain, then, the bold blasphemer's hands, 
 "And bind his phrenzied spirit down 
 "Low as thy'master's and thine own." 
 "Darestthou the monarch's alguazil ?" 
 " Bid ye the whelp-robbed lion kneel !" 
 "Fell ruffian ! thou wilt rue this hour." 
 " Ruffian ! not while my sword hath power." 
 And with the word the unfailing blade 
 Low at his feet the opposer laid, 
 And Dion seized the escalade. 
 He springs with more than mortal might, 
 He rises almost gains the height 
 His hand is on the moss-grown wall 
 This moment saves or ruins all I
 
 Oh, Dion, nerve thy heart again, 
 One minute, spring thou wilt be freo, 
 And save thy love 'tis vain 'tis vain, 
 Despair hath sealed thy destiny ! 
 They tear away the cord-wove frame, 
 And thou art doomed to woe and shame ! 
 Still Dion bears the double weight 
 With one torn, bleeding, numbing hand 
 Awhile he falls the scroll of Fate 
 Hath rolled its darkest record ! " Stand, 
 "Exulting fiends, oh, stand ye there, 
 "And over heaven your triumph tell, 
 ""And laugh o'er death and dark despair, 
 "For than ye worse reign not in hell !" 
 ****** 
 ****** 
 
 XI. 
 
 'Tis sweet to gaze on a moonlight sea, 
 But sweeter upon its wave to be 
 When the mellow airs of springtime night 
 Come over the heart as it floats in light, 
 And the sleeping flowers exhale perfume, 
 Like a virgin's breath from lips of bloom, 
 And the dark-blue waters curl and gleam 
 In the diamond's star-light's mirrored beam, 
 While the spirit burns o'er the glittering sea 
 'Till it longs a moonlight wave to be. 
 But, ah, there are hearts on a moonlight sea 
 That love not afar from their home to be, 
 Whose pain mellow airs can ne'er assuage, 
 Nor the starlight wave their thoughts engage ; 
 Who sail on the sea with nor hope nor joy, 
 Unloving the beautiful waters and sky, 
 In whose dreary breasts delight never moves, 
 And who turn from the view of rapturous loves, 
 With a sickening burst of coming pain, 
 For they never can feel their hopes again, 
 Oh, spirits that sail on the moonlight sea
 
 87 
 
 Should have thoughts as vast as eternity, 
 And feelings as pure and happy as those 
 Rainbow-winged birds who can dwell in arose, 
 For hearts full of grief, oh, never can be 
 Fond of sailing alone on a moonlight sea. 
 
 XII. 
 
 O'er Lusitania's soft-blue moonlight bay 
 Swells the gay song of reckless gondolier, 
 While his bark dances, a-s the waters play, 
 On the shore waves that glitter bright and clear.. 
 
 Dim in the distance, marked upon the sky, 
 Wave the blue pennon and the glimmering sail, 
 And oft is heard the master's anxious cry 
 While shoreward sea-boy answers to his hail. 
 
 Yet, save his song and their expectant cries, 
 The world is slumbering in a soft repose, 
 And spirits from their star-thrones in the skies 
 Breathe softly as a dew-lipped sleeping rose. 
 
 It is the hour when Love's communion fills 
 Eye, lip and heart with rapture's magic light; 
 When waning Dian, throned on shadowy hills, 
 Smiles o'er young transports from her azure height, 
 
 Pomegranate, orange, lime and citron groves 
 Shadow grey turrets and time-honored towers, 
 And heaven's pale queen amid their arbours roves 
 And counts with tears the melancholy hours. 
 
 But hushed is song of happy gondolier, 
 And fast the shadowy sail ascends on high ; 
 A step, a form, a voice " Prince Julian's here I" 
 '* Alfonso, haste ! this hour we 'scape er die !"
 
 88 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Before the rising, shrill-voiced gale 
 Flies the yard-stretching, mighty sailj 
 Swelling o'er broad Atlantic billow, 
 Like swan upon her wavy pillow, 
 Dashing aside from her high prow 
 The wave, whose hissing foam-wreath? glow 
 Like jewels thrown in floating snow, 
 And hurrying on her watery way, 
 Between two oceans, heaven and earth's, 
 Like war horse through the battle fray, 
 Whose mighty heart would burst his girths 
 In its high swelling, should his lord 
 Or check his speed or sheathe his sword-. 
 With a long sigh, as if from dream 
 Of pain and anguish slowly waking, 
 From Julian's breast, with sudden screara 
 Wild as her bleeding heart were breaking, 
 Zulma arose and gazed around 
 On ocean's sons, on wave and sky, 
 And then fell back and deeply groaned, 
 While gleamed through tears her eagle eye. 
 "Oh, Julian, 'twas a deadly wrong 
 " To save a wretched murderess ; 
 " And her remorseful life prolong 
 " Whom none can love and none will bless." 
 " No, 'twas a deed a saint might do, 
 "An angel glory to achieve, 
 " To save from sorrows ever new 
 " A lovely creature doomed to grieve."" 
 "Oh, dear, lost Inez !" Shudderings came 
 O'er her like sansar's chilling breath, 
 As from her heart flowed that sweet name 
 Which now was linked with woe and death. 
 And, wrapt in silent suffering, 
 She saw nor wave nor sky nor lover, 
 Nor heard the light-winged breezes sing, 
 Like nymphs in sea-shells, ocean over;
 
 All all to her was pain and gloom, 
 Her thoughts of what she left behind, 
 And o'er her angel sister's tomb 
 She heard the lonely wailing wind, 
 With spirit voice of wild distress, 
 Denouncing Inez' murderess ! 
 Darkly with phantoms of her brain 
 Communing, still o'er billowy main 
 Zulma was hurried rapidly, 
 And the low murmuring of the sea 
 Seemed, when she heard the gulfing surge, 
 Hymning the murdered vestal's dirge. 
 No voice of comfort touched her heart,. 
 No solemn pledge of love allayed 
 Her bosom's anguish " oh, depart 
 "And leave the guilty wretch you made!" 
 Prince Julian left but watched her still, 
 And gave her grief unstiffled flow ; 
 " Sorrow at last must drink its fill 
 "And nature calm the pulse of woe." 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The virgin huntress of the skies 
 "With Ocean's daughters flies afar, 
 And Eos and her nymphs arise 
 Above the sun-god's throne, each star, 
 E'en Orion's blazing sword of light, 
 And the twin-martyrs' wreath so bright, 
 And sea-born Beauty's radiance dimming. 
 While blue-zoned Tethys weaves a crown 
 Of pearls and corals brightly swimming 
 Through her empire fathoms down, 
 To deck Aurora's rosy brow 
 As her white steeds o'er ether fly, 
 And proud Hyperion, bright and slow, 
 Rolls unto heaven his glorious eye. 
 The bird of Jove his mighty wings 
 Waves o'er the crimson vault above j 
 And from his eye a radiance flings
 
 Bright as the brightest glance ef love. 
 The white-plumed sea gull scuds the sea r 
 The shrill curlew sports round the bark. 
 And nature sings of liberty 
 And love as when from ancient ark 
 The beasts of earth and birds of heaven 
 To their bright fields and skies were given. 
 
 XV. 
 
 The rushing ship is sailing now 
 O'er the bright wave of Trafalgar, 
 And Morn is blushing o'er the brow 
 Of Algarve's dusky mountains far, 
 With the same smile of living bloom 
 As when to ocean's billowy tomb, 
 Amid the sea-fray's carnage red, 
 Their requiem shouts of victory, 
 Shrouded in glory, England's Dead 
 Sunk with unclosed, war-lightened eye, 
 Whose last, bright glance from gory wave 
 Saw England's banner proudly streaming 
 Victorious o'er their ocean grave, 
 And England's sword triumphal gleaming ; 
 And o'er his sons, with every surge, 
 Bright, billowy ocean sings their dirge. 
 And now the swelling sail is fanned 
 By zephyrs o'er that narrow sea, 
 O'er which on either margin stand 
 Those giant mountain twins which he, 
 Alcmena's son,* with godlike power 
 Severed and poured the sea between, 
 And which, since that rock-sundering hour, 
 The deadliest foes have ever been. ^. 
 
 Thence onward holds the bark her way 
 Through the blue wave in fair array, 
 "While to the northern view arise 
 The Alpine mountains in the skies, 
 O'er whose snow-mantled summits erst 
 
 * Herclrtes,
 
 91 
 
 The Mauritania!! hero led 
 
 His warlike host, by fate accursed. 
 
 To glory, as the warrior said, 
 
 And the proud spoils of mighty Rome 7 
 
 In that soul-stirring hour of pride, 
 
 When his heart rolled in glory's tide T 
 
 Having dread Cannse in his view 
 
 No more than he, whom Waterloo 
 
 Sent to Helena's living tomb, 
 
 Had of that desolating fray 
 
 On Lodi's or Marengo's day. 
 
 Before the view, where sunbeams smile, 
 Rises that rocky mountain isle,* 
 Where he was born, thu mighty one, 
 Whose gory course of fame is run ; 
 And where, perchance, a harmless boy, 
 His fellows' chief, his mother's joy, 
 He wandered oft and played and smiled 
 Amid the mountain's shrubbery wild, 
 An innocent and happy child ; 
 Undreaming of his pomp and power, 
 His crimes, disgrace and exile fate. 
 Ah ! few can tell in childhood's hour 
 What thoughts and deeds their manhood wait 
 Or who will ban or bless the name 
 That blazes on the scroll of Fame ; 
 For many a one hath been carest 
 By those who cursed his place of rest. 
 In him a mighty spirit burned, 
 But with a fierce rolcano glare ; 
 Oh, had that soaring spirit turned 
 To heaven and drank in glory there, 
 Earth would have bowed in rapture free 
 And idolized his memory ! 
 And o'er his glorious monument 
 Heaven's highest spirit might have bent, 
 And read his praise with glad consent ; 
 w The Man, who guides a nation's way 
 
 * Corsica.
 
 92 
 
 " To bloodless glory, o'er his name 
 
 " Throws brighter wreaths of light than they 
 
 "Who deck Earth's highest shrine of Fame." 
 
 But ah ! he fell and with him died 
 
 His empire, power and pomp and pride ; 
 
 And nought remains of all he won 
 
 Quenched is Napoleon's zenith sun. 
 
 Still onward fleet the ship careers, 
 Like rapid lapse of hurrying years, 
 While fades the bright foam of its wake, 
 Like all the joys we give or take, 
 And bears, with sail expanding high, 
 Its course, beneath a glorteus sky, 
 Toward soft Campania's fairy land, 
 Where zephyrs sport with breathings bland 
 O'er ruins erst of pride and fame, 
 And gorgeous domes of crime and shame. 
 And, 'mid the night that robes the skies, 
 Julian directs sad Zulma's view 
 Where ^Etna's fiery columns rise 
 In desolation's lurid hue, 
 And glare between this world and heaven, 
 Like fiends to whom Destruction's given. 
 The baleful light is flaring o'er 
 Trinacria's vine-clad, flowery shore, 
 Where Arethusa once did gush 
 In lucid streams for bards to drink, 
 And Alpheus 'neath the sea did rush 
 To meet his fountain bride the brink 
 Was clothed in amaranthine flowers, 
 And, near,Ortygia's sacred grove', 
 Delayed the rosy-footed hours 
 Of pure delight and raptured Love. 
 A weedy marsh now stagnates there, 
 And taints the thick and sluggish air, 
 As all man's hop.es close in despair.
 
 93 
 
 The lovers' course is almost done, 
 The lovers' goal is nearly won, 
 And how hath Zulma borne the flight ? 
 Like one whose brightest day was night. 
 Like one whose heart hath caught a taint 
 Of crime, though fancied, dark and deep ; 
 Whose dread remorse doth ever paint 
 Horrors, and ne'er is lulled to sleep* 
 Since o'er a spirit proud and high 
 It reigns with threefold energy. 
 Who backward looks and finds despair, 
 And forward, misery bars her there ; 
 Below there sleeps a murderess 
 Above there dwells no Power to bless. 
 The more she thinks, the darker grows 
 The volume of her sins and woes ; 
 No change conies o'er her agony ; 
 Like Etna's fire, it burns within, 
 And, darkening o'er the spirit's sky, 
 Burns ever with the gathering sin. 
 It was not madness ; o'er her brain 
 Coherent thoughts ceased not to flow 1 ; 
 But 'twas that dread, oppressive pain, 
 That mountain weight of crushing woe, 
 Which follows, in a sinless mind, 
 A deed that spirits too refined 
 Brood o'er as done by them though none 
 Other would such arraignment own. 
 Reason was worse than vain and speech 
 The dreadful mania could not reach ; 
 So Julian left to Time the dread 
 Disease which o'er her pure heart shed 
 The baneful death-dew of despair, 
 And fixed its upas fountain there ; 
 For Zulma sought no sympathy, 
 No comfort false as it is free, 
 But leaned upon the penal rod 
 Aud bowed her burning heart to GOD.
 
 94 
 
 XVI. 
 
 The bark hath passed the Tyrrhine sea 
 And anchored in the glorious bay 
 Of proud and base Parthenope,* 
 Where perfumed gales with sunlight play 
 O'er antique fane and tower, 
 And palace proud, whose mirrored dome, 
 Like a bright heaven, o'er many a tomb 
 Of many a mighty one laid low 
 Gleams with a rich, refulgent glow, 
 Like Freedom o'er lost Power. 
 The bark is moored the lovers gone 
 Beyond the once fair Lucrine lake, 
 Where dark-browed Ruin reigns alone 
 O'er Baiae lost in marshy brake, 
 And all the fairy gardens, groves, 
 And meads and dales erst loved so well 
 By himt so reckless luxury proves 
 In one a nation's ruin fell 
 Who, shunning Glory's shrine when he 
 Had gained the fane, left mighty Rome 
 The victim of fierce anarchy, 
 Dreading yet hurrying on her doom. 
 Lucrine the haunt of mirth is gone ; 
 And there volcanoes glare alone ! 
 Baize hath sunk to dust and she, 
 Earth's mistress stands, like ancestry, 
 Scowling o'er sons, degraded, lost 
 In soft, voluptuous ease their boast 
 Their shame while yet her downcast eye 
 Kindles o'er shades of power gone by. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Days, weeks and months have been and gone- 
 And raptures soft have come and flown 
 And lovely Zulma dwells alone 
 In solitary castle high 
 Between fair earth and fairer sky. 
 
 * Neapolis or Naples. f Lucullus.
 
 95 
 
 Julian had been most courteous kind ; 
 Had kneeled and sworn his deathless love ; 
 And, lore-skilled, o'er the vestal's mind 
 Mournful thrown comfort from above ; 
 He had been all a lover is, 
 And would, perchance I will not dwell 
 On man's intent to offer bliss 
 To one who had for him farewell 
 Bidden all thoughts of earth and heaven, 
 And sole to him her full heart given. 
 Prince Julian was Campania's heir, 
 And thus decreed his royal size ; 
 "Thou wed'st proud Austria's daughter fair, 
 " Or never com'st the sceptre nigher." 
 Julian was proud and fond of fame 
 The fair nun could nor raise his name 
 Nor swell his power but she might be 
 The unseen queen of sovereignty ; 
 The empress of his private hours 
 The angel of his palace bowers. 
 So Julian thought, though he had tried 
 Her virtue oft by speech oblique 
 And look lascivious, when his pride 
 And birth and state appeared most weak 
 Before wrong'd Zulma's Juno eye, 
 Whose glance spake pride and purity. 
 From day to day he talked of love, 
 While Zalma would not see his aim, 
 Save when the princely sophist strove 
 To prove all rites a needless came ; 
 Then flashed her eye and glowed her brows 
 And he dared not his aim avow. 
 On love I will not moralize ; 
 It hath more wiles and snares than sighs; 
 Sooth be the Tale and fair I tell 
 His deeds are man's true chronicle.
 
 XVIII. 
 
 'Twas soft Campania's evening houi> 
 And earth and heaven were seas of light, 
 And Zultna in her rose-wove bower 
 Sate gazing on the horizon bright, 
 Where white clouds float and turn to gold, 
 Like garments in campeachy rolled, 
 And fancy pictures angel pinions 
 Far waving o'er those high dominions, 
 'Till, as she thought of pleasures gone, 
 And Inez, tortured, dying, dead, 
 And her own misery there alone, 
 Her hopes destroyed, her true \oves fled, 
 Her bleeding heart left desolate, 
 And all the ills and woes of fate, 
 She seized her harp and mournfully 
 Sung of those joys no more to be. 
 
 THE BANKS OF ZEVERE. 
 
 The bright Sun is sinking o'er Italy's sea, 
 
 And kissing Campania's rich gardens of roses, 
 
 But, oh, his smile brings no pleasure to me, 
 
 For my heart on the thorn-couch of sorrow reposes ; 
 
 Sweetly gay rise the notes of the lover's guitar, 
 
 As he greets his heart's bride in the valley cot near, 
 
 But, ah, all my songs of delight are afar, 
 
 Like a spirit's voice, heard on the banks of Zevere. 
 
 How oft have I sat with sweet Inez upon 
 
 Those rose-cushioned banks in our childhood's gay hours : 
 
 And fancied delights ever new to be won 
 
 In the great World of beauty and music and flowers ! 
 
 How oft, O thou dear one ! 1 slumbered with thee 
 
 In our moon-lighted bower in the spring of the year, 
 
 And heard the birds singing on our apricot tree 
 
 When we 'woke to delight on the banks of Zeme ''
 
 How oft in our eel, \rhen denied all I loved 
 Of nature and art, I found pleasure in thee ; 
 And in vigil and penance and weariness proved 
 That more than devotion thy love was to me ! 
 But, alas ! thou art dead and I am alone, 
 Far from all that on earth or in heaven were dear ; 
 My delights are all o'er for tho, Inez 1 art gone, 
 And our bower blossoms not on the banks of Zevere. 
 
 Julian had stood beside thebower, 
 And heard, unseen, the mournful song, 
 While every blushing, dewy flower 
 Reproached him with fair Zulma's wrong ; 
 But nature's voice, so soft, so still, 
 Fails to o'er-rule ambition's pride, 
 Or with atoning sorrow fill 
 A lordly heart unsanctined. 
 Julian approached, and greeted fair 
 The sad, forsaken, lovely maid, 
 And, eloquent in praise and prayer, 
 Repeating all he oft had said, 
 Implored compliance with his lovey 
 Acceptance of his treasures all 
 And she should ever ever prove 
 The queen of banquet, bower and hall, 
 And be his heart's eternal bride, 
 His life, his sun, his hope, his heaven, 
 And, when he gained his throne of pride, 
 His royal name should soon be given. 
 But, while the Prince besought and prayed, 
 How sat and looked the insulted maid? 
 Like her of Enna's rosy vale* 
 When wooed by him of Acheron ;t 
 Her brow so wan, her cheek so pale, 
 Her tearful eye all brightly shone 
 With pride and shame, disdain and scorn, 
 And thus " Why was I ever born 
 " So to be scoffed at ?" quick began 
 The nun, while fierce her hot blood ran, 
 * Proserpine. f Pluto. 
 
 9
 
 98 
 
 And her small form, dilating, grew 
 
 Like towering angel on the view. 
 
 " Prince Julian, cease ! I charge thee, cease 1 
 
 "Are these thy notes of love and peace ? 
 
 "Art thou to be a nation's king ? 
 
 "Tuou false, deluding, guileful thing ! 
 
 " The thoughts, that lightened spirits high 
 
 " In gallant days of chivalry, 
 
 " Throw not a wandering gleam o'er thee, 
 
 " Thou craven knight of loselry ! 
 
 " Vemeira is a noble name, 
 
 "And it can never be that fame 
 
 " Should Zulma's memory link with shame. 
 
 " Shall I thy leman be ? O no ! 
 
 " Never while 1 can wield a blow, 
 
 " While poison drops or waters flow. 
 
 " Rede thou a woman's spirit well 
 
 "Ere thy own slavery thou dost tell, 
 
 " And know that virtue is her heaven, 
 
 " To things like thee, oh, never given ! 
 
 "O Julian, Julian ! love like mine 
 
 " Is quenchless,' deathless, for 'tis pure ; 
 
 "E'en now it doth around thee twine 
 
 " Fondly and will fore'er endure 
 
 " The same as when thine eye first shone 
 
 "O'er the same mirror as tny own. 
 
 " Had'st thou been what I thought thee erst, 
 
 " As gallant as thou wert at first, 
 
 " Though doomed to groan in poverty, 
 
 "'Mid malice, misery, wrong and ill, 
 
 " The slave of fear a lord to me 
 
 "I would have loved obeyed thee still, 
 
 "And, with unsorrowing brow and eye, 
 
 "Forsaken not and unforsaking, 
 
 "When sleeping, kissed thy misery 
 
 11 Away, and sung to thee when waking.
 
 99 
 
 " But these are dreams of paSsion yet 
 
 " Surviving when its hope hath set ; 
 
 "Vain mockeries of my bosom's sun 
 
 "Quenched ere his journey is begun ! 
 
 "I leave thee, Julian ! and be thou 
 
 " Thy punishment no worse ! and now 
 
 " There are thy gifts !" From neck of snow 
 
 Her carkanet and then her zone 
 
 Of jewels and her chains and rings 
 
 She loosed and threw, disdainful, down ; 
 
 " There, Julian, take the gilded things, 
 
 " For which thou thought's! that I would sell 
 
 " My virtue and now fare thee well 1" 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Bewildered, lost, abashed, oppressed 
 
 By torrent passions wildly warring ; 
 
 Defied, rlespised, disgraced, distressed, 
 
 Each wildfire thought another marring ; 
 
 Prince Julian stood unmoving where, 
 
 In all the grandeur of despair, 
 
 Zulma, like empress throned in power 
 
 More than deserted nun, had left 
 
 Her lover in that sundering hour 
 
 When her proud heart of hope was 'reft, 
 
 Overwhelmed with thoughts and feelings dread, 
 
 Which for one error should atone, 
 
 Since the same heart that error bred 
 
 Throbbed with fond love for one alone. 
 
 Zulma had hurried from his view 
 
 Her form of love, her voice, her smile 
 
 No more enchantment o'er him threw 
 
 No more his sorrows could beguile ; 
 
 She had been his and now was not 
 
 He had been hers in grief and woe 
 
 Now she had gone to be forgot - 
 
 And he was left alone to " No ! 
 
 " By Heaven '. it cannot, shall not be ! 
 
 " Crown, sceptre, kingdom what are ye 
 
 "To love and love's true paradise ? 
 
 " Away, ye baubles ! Honor, rise !
 
 100 
 
 "Ambrose !" "My Lord !" "Caparison 
 " The fleetest steed in all my stalls, 
 " And bring the courser here anon 
 " And guard thon well the castle walls t 
 "I will the maid re-gain or die, 
 " For Honor is man's majesty !" 
 He vaulted on his mettled steed, 
 And vanished in the forest dun, 
 Then rose the hill and o'er the mead 
 Rushed 'neath the last beam of the sun.
 
 of 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 I. 
 
 O Land of my birth ! Thou fair World of the West ! 
 
 "With freedom and glory and happiness blest ! 
 
 Thou nation upspiinging from forest and grove, 
 
 Like wisdom's armed queen from the brain of high Jove ! 
 
 Though thy winds are the coldest the North ever blows, 
 
 And thy mountains the drearest when covered with snows; 
 
 Though the warm fount of feeling is chilled ere it gushes, 
 
 And pleasure's stream frozen while brightly it rushes ; 
 
 Though thy sons like their clime are oft chilling and rude 
 
 And rough as the oak in their own mountain wood ; 
 
 Yet I love thee, my country ! as fondly as Tell 
 
 Loved the Alpine Republic he rescued so well. 
 
 For thy yeomen can circle the winter-eve hearth, 
 
 Undreading oppression, and talk of the Earth, 
 
 Whose bosom yields nurture to father and son, 
 
 Leaving hearts pure and gay when the glad work is done; 
 
 While the paeans they shout over glories by-gone 
 
 Are echoed by virtues forever their own. 
 
 O thou home of the rover o'er ocean's rude wave, 
 
 Asylum of sorrow and fort of the brave ! 
 
 Advance in thy Glory o'er forest and sea, 
 
 Unrivalled, unconquered, heroic and free ! 
 
 Though the rose bloom and fade in its holiday hour, 
 
 And the sun-god be palled in the glory of power, 
 
 And winter's cold breath blanch the blossoms of spring, 
 
 Unlike the bright climes of whose riches I sing; 
 
 Yet thy virtues bend not to each soothing breeze, 
 
 Whose syren song lures through the soft shaded trees, 
 
 Like the gay, grovelling sons of the tropical clime,
 
 103 
 
 Whose skies are all glory whose earth is all crime. 
 My own native Land ! far, oh, far be the day 
 When minstrel, more worthy more fated, his lay 
 Shall attune, of thy shame while his notes sadly swell 
 Tale so tragic as mine with sorrow to tell ! 
 
 II. 
 
 The sunniest rose that ever blowed ^ 
 
 In velvet vale of soft Cashmere ; 
 
 The loveliest light that ever glowed 
 
 O'er heaven in springtime of the year, 
 
 Ne'er blushed and beamed more purely brigh' 
 
 Than gentle Inez' sinless heart 
 
 Upon that dreadful, fated night 
 
 When doomed with all it loved to part. 
 
 No spirit, gazing from above 
 
 With eyes impearled.in pity's tears, 
 
 Cherished more heavenly thoughts of love 
 
 In glory's highest, brightest spheres, 
 
 Than the pure, lovely, dying one, 
 
 Dragged by that fiendlike sisterhood, 
 
 When they had gory triumph won, 
 
 With malice fierce and hate imbued, 
 
 To the dim, dread refectory ; 
 
 Where, telling fast their rosaries, 
 
 And lifting many a saint-like eye 
 
 To heaven with muttered groans and sighs s 
 
 The demon conclave met to doom 
 
 To living grave, to breathing tomb, 
 
 The apostate, suffering, dying nun. 
 
 The word hath passed the deed is done ! 
 
 Ere morn gleams through the painted glass 
 
 Of prison cell, or o'er the wall 
 
 Of dark &t Clara light doth pass 
 
 Dimly and sickening all, ay, all 
 
 Of that most wretched band, save one, 
 
 Are kneeling at the tapered shrinei 
 
 Before the Omniscient's holy throne, 
 
 With zeal and fervor called divine,
 
 103 
 
 V 
 
 To chant their impious prayers to Him 
 
 In whose dread, all-pervading eye 
 
 Not even the heavenliest seraphim 
 
 Are pure in their great piety! 
 
 Alas ! that Heaven's most blessed boon, 
 
 Religion, breathing peace and love, 
 
 In man's polluted heart so soon 
 
 The veriest creed of hell should prove ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Bruised, wounded, bleeding, lost to sense, 
 
 Her wounds unstanched, her arm unset, 
 
 The dying nun was hurried thence 
 
 To that dark dungeon-vault, whence yet 
 
 None hath returned to tell the gloom, 
 
 The anguish of that living tomb. 
 
 Unseen, unfelt, unknown, her fate 
 
 O'er the fair vestal's head had past, 
 
 And she was left all desolate 
 
 Her doom was sealed the die was cast 
 
 Ere, waking from her dreadful dream, 
 
 She faintly said "I heard a scream 
 
 " Of death, methought, O Dion ! say 
 
 "Is Zulma saved ?" Then, .as she lay 
 
 Leaning against the dungeon wall, 
 
 She turned groaned and fell back again; 
 
 "Oh, Dion ! love ! oh, tell me all, 
 
 "Is Zulma safe?" Convulsive pain 
 
 Came o'er her then and dimmed the eye 
 
 Of yesternight's dread memory, 
 
 And through her spirit's drear opaque 
 
 She could not look she could not take 
 
 Perception of her agony ; 
 
 She knew 't was so but how or why 
 
 It baffled her delirious brain 
 
 To tell ; and then she thought again, 
 
 And more distinct her memory grew 
 
 Of what had passed and chill the dew 
 
 Of anguish hung upon her brow,
 
 104 
 
 Like frozen breath on freezing snow, 
 As dim she caught the past and gone ; 
 Yet she could not the dying one, 
 Imagine why she was alone. 
 She spake again, but faint and low 
 " O Dion, thou didst often say 
 " Thy love could master every woe, 
 " And change the spirit's night to day; 
 " It cannot be that thou should'st now 
 " Disdain compliance with thy vow 
 " Now, when I feel O Dion, come 
 "And bear me hence I must go home'.' ; 
 She listened then for some faint sound, 
 And strove to rise and look around ; 
 But all was midnight gloom and she 
 Alone there in her agony. 
 Still memory gathered link by link 
 And still her wounds life's current bled 
 With a death-thirst she longed to drink 
 What flowed around her dungeon bed ; 
 She scooped the fluid in her hand, 
 And bore it to her lips 't was blood I 
 And then her spirit lost command 
 'Mid horror, gloom, and solitude, 
 While sense, beyond mere words to tell, 
 O'er all the past began to swell 
 And well she saw herihopeless doom, 
 There buried in eternal gloom, 
 Whence shrillest shriek and wildest cry 
 Couli^l ne'er be heard, her agouy 
 To tell, beyond her prison walls, 
 Whtre murder's scream all vainly calls. 
 No missal thore nor cross had she, 
 O'er which to breathe her parting breath ; 
 To cheer her in her misery, 
 And balm the piercing dart of death ; 
 For they had banned the dying nun 
 And barred redeeming penitence ! 
 Demons ! their hate her glory won
 
 105 
 
 Her amulet was innocence ! 
 
 So malice works its own reward, 
 
 And weakest proves when most on guard, 
 
 Foi never yet hath hatred wrought 
 
 The deadly ruin which it sought, 
 
 Untended by a deadlier blow 
 
 Than that which laid its victim low. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A sound disturbed her solitude 
 High chanting from the chapelry ; 
 Like waitings from a gloomy wood 
 When echoed by a gloomy sky, 
 The distant swell of cloister strain 
 And matin hymn came o'er her brain, 
 And roused to life her slumbering pain. 
 It was her dirge that morning song, 
 And slowly rolled the nqjes along 
 The cypress groves the vaults the cells- 
 Like murder's midnight groan which tells 
 The fearful deed most fearfully ; 
 And there the lovely Inez lay 
 In suffering's last extremity, 
 While not a solitary ray 
 Of light relieved the heart-felt gloom 
 That palled her spirit in the tomb. 
 It was a mockery of her woe 
 A deadly taunt a spurn at heaven 
 The mass of hell yelled out below 
 A demon shout most madly given 
 That laudatory paan, sent 
 Through farthest vault through deepest cell, 
 To agonize the punishment 
 Of the fair one Heaven loved so well. 
 But, oh, no fiend with things can cope 
 Whom GOD has left to their own will 
 .Giv'n o'er beyond all reach of hope, 
 At hate's hell-cup to drink their fill; 
 The deadliest demon, banned the most,
 
 106 
 
 May fill archangel's holiest throne 
 Ere mortal once forever lost, 
 Can for his damning deeds atone. 
 The light of heaven may beam o'er hell 
 Dimly and touch some demon there ; 
 But man, abandoned, bids farewell 
 To hope, and weds his own despair. 
 
 V. 
 
 Another sound the stillness broke, 
 
 And Inez' bleeding heart awoke ; 
 
 It was the wailing of a clove, 
 
 The death-song of a simple bird 
 
 O'er her who died for heaven and love, 
 
 And gladly were the soft notes heard. 
 
 Perched on a cypress o'er her cell, 
 
 The bird hailed not the glorious sun, 
 
 But sadly sung the last farewell 
 
 Of the pure, sweet, expiring nun, 
 
 To eaith and earthly sins and woes 
 
 And life so early in its close. 
 
 As Inez listened to the strain, 
 
 And longed to waft it back again, 
 
 The shade of death was in her eye, 
 
 The pulses of her being beat 
 
 Faintly and death's last agony 
 
 Came o'er her gently ; she could meet 
 
 With pleasure now her dreadful fate, 
 
 And perish in that fearful state 
 
 Calmly which was so desolate. 
 
 She had no light, -but darkness grew 
 
 Familiar, for her spirit's sun 
 
 Around her mellow lustre threw 
 
 Just when her virgin sands had run, 
 
 And as the fount of being dried, 
 
 And the warm current redly flowed 
 
 Her gory couch of clay beside, 
 
 Her soul's last glance more brightly glowed 
 
 With angel hope of heavenly love
 
 107 
 
 Than ever sandalled saint could prove, 
 
 By all his reverenced holy power, 
 
 In nature's dreadful, dying hour. 
 
 Feebly she sunk the crimson tide 
 
 Gushed forth no more her heart was still ; 
 
 Yet her lips trembled as she died 
 
 " Dion forgive my wrongs !" And 'till 
 
 Her features had collapsed in death 
 
 That name was breathed with every breath. 
 
 VI. 
 
 A taper gleams amid the gloom 
 
 A white-robed form approaches near 
 
 It pauses by the dungeon tomb, 
 
 And listens tensely as in fear, 
 
 Or hope and now it moves again 
 
 And .lifts the iron-bolted grate, 
 
 And gazes o'er the cell of Pain, 
 
 Doubting its lovely tenant's fate, 
 
 Or longing to augment her woe : 
 
 Demon ! go in thy victim's gone ! 
 
 With noLseless footstep, sure and slow, 
 
 Unseen, unheard, and all alone, 
 
 The holy Abbess lists awhile, 
 
 And then descends and with a smile 
 
 Deadly and dark moves round the corse, 
 
 Whose features are an Angel's still ; 
 
 " Dead ? Aye, 'tis well it had been worse 
 
 " For thee if I had gained my will 
 
 "Or thou had'st lived till now '." She turned 
 
 The lovely vestal's body o'er, 
 
 And laughed aloud ; and then she spurned 
 
 The corse upon its gory floor, 
 
 And smiled as if she gave it pain ; 
 
 And then she raised the beauteous nun 
 
 "Aye, 'tis a blessed fate, sweet one ! 
 
 " That thou hast wrought thyself again 
 
 "Thou would'st not do it !" Then she threw 
 
 The pale, cold corse in wrath away,
 
 108 
 
 And yet more dark her features grew, 
 
 As death had robbed her of her prey ; 
 
 And still she stood, with fiendlike eye, 
 
 Revelling in hatred's demon feast, 
 
 And with low curse and muttered cry 
 
 Banning e'en HIM who had released 
 
 The vestal from her deadly power 
 
 And raised the soul to Eden's bower, 
 
 When a loud crash was heard and far 
 
 The echo as of bolt and bar 
 
 Shooting, went forth ! Where art thou now, 
 
 Proud Abbess ? Ah ! theu soon wilt know ! 
 
 The iron portal to the cell, 
 
 The lifted grate had fallen how 
 
 It nought avails for me to tell. 
 
 Perchance, the wind had laid it low ; 
 
 Or death-winged angel might have thrown 
 
 The dreadful bars in anger down, 
 
 Eternal justice to dispense 
 
 To suffering, murdered innocence. 
 
 Howe'er it was the Abbess there 
 
 Was doomed to perish with the dead, 
 
 In silence, darkness and despair, 
 
 And meet the fate her sentence said. 
 
 There could be no relief no, none 
 
 She had gone forth, unseen, alone, 
 
 And from that subterranean cell 
 
 No cry arose to human ear ; 
 
 It was an earthly, mortal hell, 
 
 Beyond hope's sun-illumined sphere. 
 
 She shook the bars but they were fast 
 
 She shrieked but echo mocked her pain ; 
 
 She gazed around buj shadows past 
 
 Like fiends and she sunk down again. 
 
 And then remorse was leagued with fear, 
 
 And both like vipers gnawed her heart ; 
 
 And horrid sounds were in her ear 
 
 That cried " What dost thou here ? depart !" 
 
 Her heart became a globe of fire
 
 Whose flame, unceasing, mounted higher, 
 And maddening horror, in its dread, 
 Sov.l-harrowing sights forever bred, 
 
 V r :':':", her fu-'rre eyes, i^ :v_ .-^.i-.ot strain, 
 
 Ine rr~-r' ; rr madness of her ': 
 
 But i<'-,H' v :- ialed ; so P.-": 
 
 Is crirr-"! v;ien phrenzie:'. Ly i?a?. 
 
 Vli. 
 
 Unshrived, she there must die in all 
 Her unforgiven guilt and woe ; 
 On either side a dungeon wall, 
 And wrath above and death below, 
 Unsoothed, unpitied and alone, 
 Without a single orison, 
 Without a tear to mourn her fate, 
 Or look of grief compassionate, 
 Or holy rite or orris pall 
 Or requiem chanted forth by all 
 The holy vestal sisterhood, 
 Who round her erst admiring stood 
 As if Maria had been given 
 To them in other form from heaven. 
 But such be guilt's dark fate fore'er '. 
 She there must perish there to dust, 
 UIK affined, turn in dungeon drear, 
 Accursed below among the just 
 All entrance barred eternally ! 
 Tortured by terror maddening, 
 She heard e'en now the dread decree 
 Of changeless judgment round her ring, 
 Forestalling suffering's numbered hours 
 And madness sprung from agony ! 
 Darkly the storm of misery lowers, 
 And darker yet it soon will be, 
 For hope hath perished in her heart, 
 And mortal and immortal pain 
 Are mingling, with o'erwhelming art, 
 In writhing breast and whirling biain, 
 19
 
 110 
 
 And Sin uprears her giant form 
 
 And mad Remorse like spectre stands, 
 
 Gnawed by the fangs of venomed worm, 
 
 Outstretching far his gory hands 
 
 To warn too late to tell at last 
 
 The victim that her day hath past ; 
 
 And yet more dreadful thoughts arise, 
 
 More fearful shadows blast her view, 
 
 And wilder are her echoed cries, 
 
 And colder is the dungeon-dew. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Time flies strength fails but madness grows 
 Stronger and darker in its mood, 
 And fevered Fear delirious throws 
 O'er all the gloom a robe of blood ; 
 x And now she sinks beside the nun, 
 There like a song-lulled angel sleeping, 
 And smiling as her woes were done, 
 And she in Heaven was vigils keeping, 
 And grasps her cold and bloodless hand 
 Convulsively, and to her heart 
 Folds it as if the fiends that stand 
 Exulting by would tear apart 
 The living and the dead the dove 
 In sacrifice inhuman slain, 
 And wretch who slew it ! Guilt doth prove 
 A wretched comforter in pain, 
 In fear and death ; it will, perforce, 
 Seek consolation from a corse. 
 She starts as if an adder stung ! 
 A demon voice of mirth had rung 
 Through all the chambers of her brain ; 
 She listens now it comes again, 
 Blended with laughter %vild and rude, 
 And echoes through the fatal cell, 
 And cries aloud "Thy soul's imbrued 
 "With blood of innocence ; 'tis well 
 That on thy victim's lifeless breast
 
 Ill 
 
 u Thou should'st sink in eternal irest !" 
 
 Her bursting heart could hear no more, 
 
 The last extremity had come ; 
 
 She grovelled on the cold clay floor 
 
 In speechless anguish at her doom ; 
 
 Gazed with a maniac look, that told 
 
 What horrors o'er her bosom rolled, 
 
 Upon the nun who slept as still 
 
 As infant that hath drank its fill ; - 
 
 And then with shriek that might appal 
 
 A fiend, against the dungeon wall 
 
 Dashed headlong groaned and died! 'Tispast, 
 
 The more than mortal suffering. 
 
 Alas ! I would it were the last ! 
 
 But earthly minstrel dare not sing 
 
 Of fates beyond the farthest ken 
 Of starry-eyed philosophy ; 
 Among the abodes of mortal men 
 He finds enough of misery 
 To break the heart and rack the brain 
 That feels or thinks of human pain. 
 The scene is past and she is dead ; 
 Perchance, her sufferings could atone, 
 And the blood tears her wrung heart shed, 
 For deeds of death which she had done ; 
 Perchance, they could not but her doom 
 Is sealed fore'er, and through the gloom, 
 That shrouds unknown futurity, 
 I will not pierce ; enough for me, 
 She died in such despair as few 
 Devoid of wretchedness could view. 
 Her fate hath past her soul hath fled 
 And peace attend the unsinning Dead ! 
 
 IX. 
 
 Life scarce had parted and her fate 
 Passed o'er the haughty Abbess there, 
 Ere steps approached the iron grate, 
 And voices, as in last despair,
 
 Echoed above the fatal cell ; > 
 The portal's raised and they descend, 
 The sisterhood ; now note ye well, 
 Fair vestals ! ere ye ween to wend 
 In sin's broad path, sin's vvoful end I 
 The highest boon of heaven may prove 
 Tire bitterest dreg in misery's cup, 
 And spirits born of heaver, and love 
 By guilt be lost and given up 
 To state abhorring and abhorred 
 And not adoring and adored ! 
 Long was the anxious search and quest 
 Ere they coald trace their Abbess there. 
 And anguish probed full many a breas* 
 As they stood gazing in despair 
 On murdered and on murderess ; 
 " Jesu Maria ! give us grace ! 
 " Oh, shield us in our dread distress, 
 "For ah, it is a fearful place t" 
 I pause not now to paint the scene 
 The natural ills of life suffice, 
 Without o'er sorrows that have been 
 Brooding till mortal pleasure dies, 
 To gloom the heart and cloud the way 
 That shone so brightly yesterday. 
 Together from the dungeon cell 
 The corses were in silence borne, 
 Vhile lingering tolled the funeral knei?- 
 \nd sullen echoes moaned forlorn ; 
 :\nd shrouded in their vestments white- 
 fhey laid them side by side, and kept 
 Their vigils through the livelong night; 
 Vhite breathlessly the dead ones slap 11 . 
 \s softly and as peacefully 
 \s twin-bom cherubs e'er could be ! 
 The wakeful sisters watched alone, 
 \.nd many a holy rite was done 
 To foil the fiend and save the soul 
 yf i .,,. ,,.v, oi^ce held hi eh cor'" r>
 
 113 
 
 O'er penance deep and vow austere, 
 
 For many a long and sinful year. 
 
 The lovely innocent, that there 
 
 Lay in her death the loveliest, 
 
 Demanded not a single prayer 
 
 For heaven was on her look imprest. 
 
 They watched they prayed night waned and morn, 
 
 Like holy hope in Eden born, 
 
 Blushed the stained glass and casements through, 
 
 And gave the gloomy scene to view. 
 
 X. 
 
 To die to feel the spirit trembling, 
 Fainting, sinking in the breast, 
 While yet the vivid eye is sembling 
 Life and vigor unpossessed ; 
 To see the mortal frame decaying, 
 The temple's pillars breaking down, 
 And know the soul will soon be straying 
 Over climes and realms unknown ; 
 While warm affection hovers o'er 
 The couch of death, with wailing prayer 
 Imploring lengthened life once more 
 In all the anguish of despair ; 
 And we behold and feel and know 
 All that is felt for us and yet 
 Beside perceive the overthrow 
 Of hopes on which the heart is set, 
 And picture in our dying hour 
 Anguish unknown till we are dead, 
 And conscious, hopeless misery's power, 
 And tears from being's fountains shed ; 
 Oh, this is awful and might make 
 A mighty spirit groan and quake. 
 But, ah, 't is worse to think that we, 
 The proud, high, sentient lords of earth, 
 Must moulder into dust and be 
 Or clay or nothing ! At our birth 
 It was decreed that we should die, 
 10*
 
 114 
 
 iiut not that we should rotting lie 
 With every foul and loathsome thing 
 Blending our ashes ; fling, oh, fling 
 My corse in ocean's booming wave, 
 Or burn item the funeral pyre, 
 But lay it not in reeking grave, 
 To glimmer with corruption's fire ! 
 St Clara's funeral bell is knelling 
 With the solemn voice of death, 
 And far the mournful notes are swelling. 
 While from postern far beneath 
 Issue the white-robed virgin train, 
 Chanting low the requiem strain, 
 Over the dark and dismal tomb 
 Of one in being's roseate bloom, 
 And one in sallow, withered age, 
 Departed from life's tragic stage. 
 Where sorrow never wakes to weep, 
 And ill and wrong torment no more, 
 And homeless wanderers sweetly sleep. 
 And hate and pride and pain are o'er, 
 They lay the vestals finally. 
 Above them waves a cypress tree, 
 Entwined with briar and rosemary, 
 And round them sleep the mighty dead.. 
 Who centuries since forever fled ; 
 A silent nation unannoyed 
 
 By all they suffered or enjoyed. 
 
 The ceremonial pomp is past 
 
 The vestals vanish, one by one 
 
 The holy Father is the last, 
 
 And even he hath slowly gone. 
 
 And stillness reigns o'er all the scene? 
 
 That is so peaceful and serene ; 
 
 A stillness greatly eloquent 
 
 When pious spirits bow and feel 
 
 Delicious melancholy, sent 
 
 Fro-m heaven, o'er all their being stea'. 
 
 With purifying breathings mild;
 
 115 
 
 And they become like little child, 
 
 Gentle and docile, purely good, 
 
 In their communing solitude, 
 
 And look from earth to heaven with eye 
 
 Of sage reflecting piety, 
 
 Comparing man's allotment here 
 
 With glories of a brighter sphere. 
 
 XI. 
 
 O Love ! the holiest name in heaven, 
 The purest, sweetest thing below ! 
 Why are thy joys to torture given? 
 Thy raptures unto wailing woe ? 
 Why should thy fondest votaries prove 
 Faithful even unto death in vain ? 
 Or why, despite thy vows, O Love ! 
 Should all thy blisses close in pain? 
 
 No voice was heard no form was seen 
 
 Within the church-yard's lonely bound, 
 
 And Dion, from his weedy screen, 
 
 Rose mournfully and gazed around. 
 
 Long had he lain unnoted where 
 
 He fell with lovely Inez long 
 
 He wrestled with his wild despair 
 
 When he beheld his deadly wrong. 
 
 He watched each leaden-winged hour 
 
 For some faint note of joy or grief, 
 
 'Till Destiny's most dreaded power 
 
 To him had almost been relief. 
 
 But nought allayed his dread suspense 
 
 'Till Inez and her murderess 
 
 Were borne to that lone mansion, whence 
 
 iNo tenant ever found egress. 
 
 Then flashed the whole revealment dire 
 
 O'er noble Dion's heart and brain, 
 
 And lit a wild and wasting fire 
 
 Of wrath which nothing could restrain, 
 
 Or mitigate, save that sad doom
 
 116 
 
 She met, who laid in neighboring tomb. 
 
 Few vaunt ancestral power and pride, 
 
 And wear a noble blazoned name, 
 
 'Mid war's rich spoils and glory's tide 
 
 Raised to the grandest pitch of fame, 
 
 Who bear such in-born virtue, worth, 
 
 Honor and truth as he whose birth 
 
 Was his least merit ; few could vie 
 
 With Dion in nobility ! 
 
 With rolling eye, and brow of gloom, 
 
 And pallid cheek and trembling tread, 
 
 Dion approached the robbing temb 
 
 Where Inez slept among the Dead, 
 
 And bowed his throbbing head upon 
 
 The golden-lettered tablet stone 
 
 Despairingly, while forth his tears 
 
 Unbidden gushed. "In youthful years 
 
 "I little recked of fate like this ; 
 
 " I weened the world was full of bliss 
 
 " And man most blessed in life Alas I 
 
 "lam not now the thing I was. 
 
 " O Inez ! O my bosom's bride ! 
 
 " Could'st thoa have told me ere thou died 
 
 " Thy love changed not no happier fate 
 
 " Than now to die could me await. 
 
 "But, oh, my love ! the act that proved 
 
 " Thy death told truly how thou loved 
 
 "One to whom thou wert more than heaven- 
 
 " Thy very life for me was given ! 
 
 " Thou art avenged, sweet love ! by ONE 
 
 " With whom the dread right dwells alone, 
 
 " And nought remains for me below 
 
 " To do for thee, my love ! and now 
 
 " It is too late for me to strive 
 
 " With Destiny ; none bid me live 
 
 " To be their comfort thou art gone, 
 
 "And I am lost, undone, alone ! 
 
 " Inez I forgive the murderous deed 
 
 It is to meet thee that I bleed
 
 117 
 
 " And die upon thy virgin tomb 
 " O Inez ! love ! I come I come !" 
 He drew his poniard, looked on high 
 For the last time with gleaming eye, 
 Then laid him down the grave beside 
 And clove his heart ! The purple tide 
 Gushed like a torrent and he died ! 
 The last glance of his spirit turning 
 To her for whom his heart was burning. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The autumnal sun's rich evening beams 
 
 Blush o'er Cantabria's billowy sea, 
 
 And Lusian fields and groves and streams, 
 
 Like angel smiles, celestially ; 
 
 And clustering vines hang purpling o'er 
 
 The shrubbery mantled palisade, 
 
 And golden orange, cypress hoar, 
 
 And cork tree rough and yew, whose shade 
 
 The dead alone doth canopy, 
 
 And sunken glen and dim defile, 
 
 Alike in nature's bounties free, 
 
 Refract the soul-inspiring smile 
 
 Of Autumn queen-muse of the heart ! 
 
 And as soft evening's hues depart, 
 
 Like holy hopes that smile in death, 
 
 And twilight robes the fading sky 
 
 With beauty felt, not seen beneath 
 
 The spreading palm, the lover's eye 
 
 Burns as he tunes his soft guitar, 
 
 And-sees his own dear maid afar, 
 
 Approaching her rose-woven bower 
 
 To solemnize love's sacred hour. 
 
 And lordly prince and shepherd hind, 
 
 And lady proud and simple maid 
 
 Enjoy alike the season kind, 
 
 When flowers grow lovelier as they fade, 
 
 And being's joys and sorrows own, 
 
 And all the heart hath lost or won,
 
 118 
 
 Alike ; to all, be state and name 
 Or high or low, heaven is the same, 
 And nature smiles as sweetly on 
 The cottage as the palace throne. 
 Eve shadows dim the varied scene, 
 And the calm sunlight wanes away, 
 While one lone cloud of lustre sheen 
 Still wears the rays of parting day, 
 And hangs upon the zenith sky, 
 Like hope the sad heart lingering by. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Looming in shadowy twilight o'er 
 
 Tajo's broad bay afar is seen, 
 
 Scudding the wave toward Lusian shore, 
 
 A rapid sailing brigantine ; 
 
 And now it grows upon the eye, 
 
 White sail, dark hulk, and rising prow ; 
 
 And swells upon the evening sky 
 
 Like castle turretted with snow ; 
 
 And now the hurrying Sea-boys crowd 
 
 Round the tall mast and furl each shroud, 
 
 And full the rushing wake is heard 
 
 Blent with command's shrill-uttered word, 
 
 And many a heart throbs fondly now 
 
 To meet its loves and find its home, 
 
 As the light vessel crinkles slow 
 
 The waters which no longer foam. 
 
 The brigantine is moored the crew 
 
 Are busy, boisterous, glad and gay, 
 
 And jovial crowds are there ; but who 
 
 Through the dense throng makes rapid way 
 
 With look so proudly desolate ? 
 
 : Tis ZULMA, who hath borne her fate 
 
 And yet will bear 'till being's close, 
 
 AH she hath lost and still can lose, 
 
 With an unshrinking spirit none 
 
 Can tame or crush ; she is alone 
 
 In desolation but she bears
 
 119 
 
 Her lofty brow unblanched, and throws 
 
 Around an eye undimmed by tears, 
 
 And, as she hurries on, she grows 
 
 Stronger, as if her spirit stood 
 
 Prepared for woe of all degree, 
 
 And agony and solitude, 
 
 And horror, pain and misery. 
 
 She pauses in a hilly grove 
 
 And looks with bitter smile below 
 
 "Ah, such is man's alluring love, 
 
 " And such his faith in lonely woe !" 
 
 Then quick she turned and onward went, 
 
 With hurried footstep, till the towers 
 
 Of her own convent rose and sent 
 
 Their omened shadows o'er her ; hours 
 
 Long past returned and sadness hung 
 
 On Zulma's heart with that dead weight 
 
 Which kills the victim, when a young 
 
 Maid who had known the vestal's flight 
 
 Traversed her way and quickly told 
 
 The tragic tale of what had past. 
 
 Zulma shrieked not, but fiercely rolled 
 
 O'er brain and heart the worst the last 
 
 Wild storm of ruin ; hope fell dead, 
 
 And her high spirit 'neath its own 
 
 Intensity was crushed ; she said 
 
 Nothing responsive sigh nor groan, 
 
 Nor scream nor cry was heard ; she threw 
 
 Her bleeding eye to heaven and bowed 
 
 A moment as in prayer then grew 
 
 As desperation calm ; a crowd, 
 
 As toward St Clara's towers she went, 
 
 Followed in mute astonishment 
 
 That she should thus defy despair 
 
 And heriown certain ruin dare. 
 
 Soon ceased their marvel Zulma came 
 
 Beneath the window of her cell, 
 
 And upward gazed and spake the name 
 
 Most dear of her who once did dwell
 
 120 
 
 In peace and love within that wall ; 
 Then she looked round and dwelt on all 
 Objects and scenes that Inez erst 
 Loved fondly and she heaved a sigh 
 Convulsively ; her heart had burst ! 
 Yet still she gazed with mournful eye 
 On dusky wall and cypress grove 
 In silence, while the crowd came near ; 
 And fast her soul of light and love 
 Was journeying to a holier sphere. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 " Jesu Maria ! who art thou ? 
 "Christ and the Virgin shield us now !" 
 A war-steed dashes through the throng 
 A horseman leaps upon the ground, 
 And rushes like a maniac strong 
 Toward dying Zulma, while around 
 Gather the crowd to mark the scene 
 For one so mournful ne'er had been. 
 Zulma looked up a faint smile passed, 
 Like silvery moonbeam on the wave f 
 O'er lip and eye and then it cast 
 Behind the death hue of the grave. 
 Low bowed the horseman, Julian, there, 
 And fearful was his agony ; 
 He kneeled, like statue of despair, 
 In hopeless, speechless misery ; 
 And long his quivering lips essayed 
 To frame his torturing thoughts in vain, 
 And long he writhed and groaned and prayed 
 In all the energy of pain. 
 " Zulma" he said at last, but wild 
 Came then the memory of his wrong, 
 And how he had the maid beguiled 
 Afar, and held deluded long, 
 And then as wanton thing appraised, 
 And often as his eye he raised
 
 121 
 
 To her calm though unbending look, 
 Whose sad reproof he could not brook, 
 He felt abashed, o'erwhelmed and lost 
 To all he loved and prized the most. 
 But life was ebbing fast away 
 From Zulma's broken heart and now, 
 While yet was left a conscious ray 
 Of soul, or ne'er, his words must flow. 
 "Zulma ! forgive the wretch who kneels 
 "Before wronged virtue ! What he feels 
 '"T were vain to say his last desire 
 " Is pardon from thy lips !" The fire 
 Of being, that had sunk and waned 
 In Zulma's bosom, burned again 
 Brightly a moment and there reigned 
 A majesty 'mid all her pain 
 Which daunted Julian, as she strove 
 To rise upon a maiden's breast ; 
 " Prince Julian ! that thou had'st my love, 
 "And that in thine I was most blest, 
 " 'T is needless now to own ; my doom 
 "Is sealed forever a,nd the tomb 
 "Must be the resting-place of one 
 "Who once who yet loves thee alone ; 
 "Thou hast my pardon while I live 
 " Forgive thyself as I forgive !" 
 Backward she fell faint grew her breath 
 Life left her cheek, her brow, her eye ; 
 Slow o'er her heart came chilling death 
 Zulma is in eternity ! 
 There is no tear for Julian none 
 No purpose, pleasure, hope or aim ; 
 Himself detesting, left alone, 
 And hating all that he had done, 
 A wretch what was to him a throne? 
 Outcast from joy, .bereft of love, 
 Abandoned by his peace of mind, 
 
 11
 
 122 
 
 Wkat should his altered being prove 
 But a deep blot on human kind ? 
 So rolls the tempest of remorse 
 O'er Julian, as beside the corse 
 Of her he loved beyond the scope 
 Of common spirit, feeling, hope, 
 He bows in agony unknown, 
 Save to the few whose hopes and 
 And feelings catch the lofty tone 
 Of thought, that maddens or endears. 
 Night palls the skies, but Julian there 
 Lies broken hearted in Despair. 
 
 r.
 
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