Page images
PDF
EPUB

Have ye brave sons? Look in the next Thou hast strewn the lordly palace
In ruin o'er the ground,

fierce brawl
To see them die! Have ye fair daughters? And the dismal screech of the owl is heard
Look
Where the harp was wont to sound;
To see them live, torn from your arms, But the selfsame spot thou coverest
With the dwellings of the poor,

distained, Dishonored!

tice,

And if ye dare call for jus- And a thousand happy hearts enjoy

Be answered by the lash! Yet this is Rome, That sat on her seven hills and from her throne

What one usurped before.

'Tis true thy progress layeth
Full many a loved one low,

Of beauty ruled the world! Yet we are And for the brave and beautiful

Romans!

Why, in that elder day to be a Roman
Was greater than a king. And once again-
Hear me, ye walls, that echoed to the tread
Of either Brutus !-once again, I swear,
The Eternal City shall be free!

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

Thou hast caused our tears to flow;
But always near the couch of Death
Nor thou nor we can stay,
And the breath of thy departing wing
Dries all our tears away.

WILLIAM H. TIMROD

[blocks in formation]

He each muscle all its strength,
gave

The mouth, the chin, the nose's length;
His honest pencil touched with truth,
And marked the date of age and youth.
He lost his friends, his practice failed:
Truth should not always be revealed;
In dusty piles his pictures lay,
For no one sent the second pay.
Two bustos fraught with every grace,
A Venus' and Apollo's face,

He placed in view; resolved to please,
Whoever sat, he drew from these;
From these corrected every feature,
And spirited each awkward creature.

All things were set; the hour was come,
His pallet ready o'er his thumb.
My Lord appeared; and, seated right
In proper attitude and light,
The painter looked.

He sketched the piece,
Then dipped his pencil, talked of Greece,
Of Titian's tints, of Guido's air:
"Those eyes, My Lord, the spirit there,
Might well a Raphael's hand require
To give them all the native fire;
The features, fraught with sense and wit,
You'll grant are very hard to hit ;
But yet with patience you shall view
As much as paint and art can do.
Observe the work." My lord replied:
"Till now I thought my mouth was wide;
Besides, my nose is somewhat long;
Dear sir, for me, 'tis far too young.

"Oh, pardon me," the artist cried "In this the painters must decide. The piece even common eyes must strike: I warrant it extremely like."

My lord examined it anew;

No looking-glass seemed half so true.

[blocks in formation]
[graphic]

MARCO BOZZARIS.

T midnight, in his guarded | He woke to die 'midst flame and smoke,
And shout and groan, and sabre-stroke,
And death-shots falling thick and fast
As lightnings from the mountain-cloud,

tent,
The Turk was dreaming of

the hour

When Greece, her knee in And heard, with voice as trumpet loud,

suppliance bent,

Should tremble at his

power:

Bozzaris cheer his band:

"Strike till the last armed foe expires!

Strike for your altars and your fires!

In dreams through camp and Strike for the green graves of your sires,

court he bore

The trophies of a conqueror;

In dreams his song of
triumph heard;

Then wore his monarch's signet-ring,

Then pressed that monarch's throne-a king;
As wild his thoughts, and gay of wing,
As Eden's garden bird.

At midnight, in the forest shades,

Bozzaris ranged his Suliote band, True as the steel of their tried blades,

Heroes in heart and hand.

There had the Persian's thousands stood,
There had the glad earth drunk their blood,
On old Platea's day;

And now there breathed that haunted air
The sons of sires who conquered there,
With arm to strike, and soul to dare,

As quick, as far, as they.

An hour passed on. The Turk awoke;
That bright dream was his last.
He woke to hear his sentries shriek.

God and your native land!"

They fought like brave men, long and well;

They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered, but Bozzaris fell,

Bleeding at every vein.

His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their proud hurrah
And the red field was won,
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly as to a night's repose,

Like flowers at set of sun.

Come to the bridal-chamber. Death!

Come to the mother's when she feels,
For the first time, her first-born's breath;
Come when the blessed seals
That close the pestilence are broke,
And crowded cities wail its stroke;
Come in consumption's ghastly form,
The earthquake shock, the ocean storm;
Come when the heart beats high and warm
With banquet-song and dance and wine,-

"To arms! they come! The Greek! the And thou art terrible: the tear,

Greek!"

The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier,

And all we know or dream or fear

Of agony, are thine.

But to the hero, when his sword

Has won the battle for the free, Thy voice sounds like a prophet's word, And in its hollow tones are heard

The thanks of millions yet to be. Come when his task of fame is wrought, Come with her laurel-leaf, blood-bought,

Come in her crowning hour, and then
Thy sunken eye's unearthly light
To him is welcome as the sight

Of sky and stars to prisoned men;
Thy grasp is welcome as the hand
Of brother in a foreign land;
Thy summons welcome as the cry
That told the Indian isles were nigh

To the world-seeking Genoese

When the land-wind, from woods of palm And orange-groves and fields of balm, Blew o'er the Haytian seas.

Bozzaris! with the storied brave
Greece nurtured in her glory's time
Rest thee there is no prouder grave
Even in her own proud clime.
She wore no funeral weeds for thee,

Nor bade the dark hearse wave its plume,
Like torn branch from death's leafless tree
In sorrow's pomp and pageantry,
The heartless luxury of the tomb;
But she remembers thee as one
Long loved and for a season gone.

For thee her poet's lyre is wreathed,
Her marble wrought, her music breathed;
For thee she rings the birthday-bells;
Of thee her babes' first lisping tells;

For thine her evening prayer is said
At palace, couch and cottage-bed;
Her soldier, closing with the foe,
Gives for thy sake a deadlier blow;
His plighted maiden, when she fears
For him, the joy of her young years,
Thinks of thy fate and checks her tears;

And she, the mother of thy boys,
Though in her eye and faded cheek
Is read the grief she will not speak,

The memory of her buried joys, And even she who gave thee birth, Will, by their pilgrim-circled hearth, Talk of thy doom without a sigh; For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame'sOne of the few, the immortal, names That were not born to die.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK

THE NEW AGE.

THUNDERING and bursting

In torrents, in waves,
Carolling and shouting
Over tombs, amid graves,
See, on the cumbered plain,

Clearing a stage,
Scattering the past about,
Comes the new age.

Bards make new poems;
Thinkers, new schools;
Statesmen, new systems;
Critics, new rules.
All things begin again;

Life is their prize;
Earth with their deeds they fill-
Fill with their cries.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

[graphic]

A VISION OF VIRGINS.

HAD a vision of the night. And in their hands, like a blue star, they

It seemed
There was a long red tract

of barren land
Blocked in by black hills,
where a half moon
dreamed

Of morn, and whitened.
Drifts of dry brown sand,
This way and that, were
heaped below; and flats
Of water glaring shallows where strange

bats

Came and went and moths flickered.

To the right,
A dusty road that crept along the waste
Like a white snake; and farther up I traced
The shadow of a great house far in sight-
A hundred casements all ablaze with light,
And forms that flit athwart them as in haste,
And a slow music such as sometimes kings
Command at mighty revels, softly sent
From viol and flute and tabor, and the strings
Of many a sweet and slumbrous instrument,
That wound into the mute heart of the night
Out of that distance.

[blocks in formation]

A wild star swimming in the lurid air.
The dream was darkened. And a sense of
loss

Fell like a nightmare on the land, because
The moon yet lingered in her cloud-eclipse.
Then, in the dark, swelled sullenly across
The waste a wail of women.

Then I could perceive
A glory pouring through an open door,
And in the light five women. I believe
They wore white vestments, all of them. The moon drew up out of the cloud.

They were

Her blue lips

Quite calm, and each still face unearthly fair, I had a vision on that midnight plain.
Unearthly quiet. So, like statues all,
Waiting they stood without that lighted

hall,

Again

Five women, and the beauty of despair
Upon their faces; locks of wild wet hair,

« PreviousContinue »