"Thou wert the noblest king
On royal throne ere seen;
And thou didst wear in knightly ring,
Of all, the stateliest mien;
His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went;
He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent;
And thou didst prove, where spears are proved, A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand
In war, the bravest heart,
O, ever the renowned and loved
Thou wert, - and there thou art!
"Thou that my boyhood's guide Didst take fond joy to be! The times I've sported at thy side, And climbed thy parent knee !
A plume waved o'er the noble brow, - the brow | The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, — give was fixed and white; answer, where are they?
He met, at last, his father's eyes, - but in them If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life was no sight!
Up from the ground he sprang and gazed; but who could paint that gaze?
They hushed their very hearts that saw its horror and amaze :
They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood;
For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood.
"Father!" at length, he murmured low, and wept like childhood then :
Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men!
He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown;
He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down.
Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his
"No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift THE CORONATION OF INEZ DE CASTRO.
She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather-stains, hunger, toil, and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.
They were sailing o'er the salt sea-foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot, —
To live forsaken, to die forgot!
She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.
She called me once to her sleeping-place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone,
The sound from mine ear hath never gone !-
"I had last night the loveliest dream:
My own land shone in the summer beam,
I saw the fields of the golden grain,
I heard the reaper's harvest strain;
There stood on the hills the green pine-tree,
And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.
A long and a weary way I had come ;
But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home.
I stood by the hearth, and my father sat there,
With pale, thin face, and snow-white hair!
The Bible lay open upon his knee,
But he closed the book to welcome me.
He led me next where my mother lay,
And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
For it echoed one to my young days dear.
This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead!
We have not spoken, but still I have hung
On the Northern accents that dwell on thy tongue.
To me they are music, to me they recall
The things long hidden by Memory's pall!
Take this long curl of yellow hair,
And give it my father, and tell him my prayer, My dying prayer, was for him."....
Upon the deck a coffin lay;
They raised it up, and like a dirge
The heavy gale swept o'er the surge;
The corpse was cast to the wind and wave,
The convict has found in the green sea a grave.
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
't is a consummation
That flesh is heir to,
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep ; —
To sleep! perchance to dream :-ay, there's the
rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, - puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
THE HUSBAND AND WIFE'S GRAVE.
HUSBAND and wife! no converse now ye hold,
As once ye did in your young days of love,
On its alarms, its anxious hours, delays,
Its silent meditations and glad hopes,
Its fears, impatience, quiet sympathies ;
Nor do ye speak of joy assured, and bliss
Full, certain, and possessed. Domestic cares
Call you not now together. Earnest talk
On what your children may be moves you not.
Ye lie in silence, and an awful silence;
Not like to that in which ye rested once
Most happy, silence eloquent, when heart
With heart held speech, and your mysterious
frames,
Harmonious, sensitive, at every beat
Touched the soft notes of love.
And do our loves all perish with our frames?
Do those that took their root and put forth buds,
And then soft leaves unfolded in the warmth
Of mutual hearts, grow up and live in beauty,
Then fade and fall, like fair, unconscious flowers?
Are thoughts and passions that to the tongue give
speech,
And make it set forth winning harmonies,
That to the cheek do give its living glow,
And vision in the eye the soul intense
With that for which there is no utterance,
Are these the body's accidents, no more?
To live in it, and when that dies go out
Like the burnt taper's flame?
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A voice within us speaks the startling word,
Man, thou shalt never die !" celestial voices
Hymn it around our souls; according harps,
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars
Of morning sang together, sound forth still
The song of our great immortality;
Thick-clustering orbs, and this our fair domain,
The tall, dark mountains and the deep-toned seas,
Join in this solemn, universal song.
O listen, ye, our spirits! drink it in
From all the air! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight;
Is floating in day's setting glories; Night,
Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step
Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears; --
Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtfuleve,
As one great mystic instrument, are touched
A stillness deep, By an unseen, living Hand, and conscious chords
Quiver with joy in this great jubilee.
Insensible, unheeding, folds you round,
And darkness, as a stone, has sealed you in ;
Away from all the living, here ye rest,
In all the nearness of the narrow tomb,
Yet feel ye not each other's presence now;
Dread fellowship!-together, yet alone.
Is this thy prison-house, thy grave, then, Love?
And doth death cancel the great bond that holds
Commingling spirits? Are thoughts that know no
bounds,
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But, self-inspired, rise upward, searching out
The Eternal Mind, the Father of all thought,
Are they become mere tenants of a tomb?-
Dwellers in darkness, who the illuminate realms
Of uncreated light have visited and lived? —
Lived in the dreadful splendor of that throne
Which One, with gentle hand the veil of flesh
Lifting that hung 'twixt man and it, revealed
In glory? -throne before which even now
Our souls, moved by prophetic power, bow down
Rejoicing, yet at their own natures awed? -
Souls that thee know by a mysterious sense,
Thou awful unseen Presence, -are they quenched?
Or burn they on, hid from our mortal eyes
By that bright day which ends not, as the sun
His robe of light flings round the glittering stars?
The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth
Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls
To mingle in this heavenly harmony.
Why is it that I linger round this tomb?
What holds it? Dust that cumbered those I
They shook it off, and laid aside earth's robes,
And put on those of light. They 're gone to dwell
In love, their God's and angels'? Mutual love,
That bound them here, no longer needs a speech
For full communion; nor sensations strong,
Within the breast, their prison, strive in vain
To be set free, and meet their kind in joy.
Changed to celestials, thoughts that rise in each
By natures new impart themselves, though silent.
Each quickening sense, each throb of holy love,
Affections sanctified, and the full glow
Of being, which expand and gladden one,
By union all mysterious, thrill and live
In both immortal frames ;-sensation all,
And thought, pervading, mingling sense and
thought!
Ye paired, yet one! wrapt in a consciousness
Twofold, yet single, - this is love, this life!
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