Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

"When thou shalt see a darksome man,
"Who boasts him chief of Alpine's clan,
"With tartans broad and shadowy plume,
"And hand of blood, and brow of gloom,
"Be thy heart bold, thy weapon strong,
"And wreak poor Blanche of Devan's wrong!
"They watch for thee by pass and fell....
"Avoid the path......O, God!......farewell!'

A kindly heart had brave Fitz-James,
Fast poured his eye at pity's claims;
And now, with mingled grief and ire,
He saw the murdered maid expire.
"God, in my need, be my relief,
"As I wreak this on yonder chief!"
A lock from Blanche's tresses fair,
He blended with her bridegroom's fair,
The mingled braid in blood he dyed,
And placed it on his bonnet's side:
"By him whose word is truth, I swear,
"No other favour will I wear,

"Till this sad token I embrue

"In the best blood of Roderick Dhu!"

THE AURORA BOREALIS.

THE Heaven was one blue vault, inlaid with gems,
Thick as the concave of a diamond mine,
But from the north now shoot quick phosphor beams,
That o'er the mount their purple net entwine-
The smallest stars through that sweet lustre shine;

Croly.

It shakes, it spreads, its glorious streamers die :

A

Again light quivers on the horizon's line,

surge of violet lustre fills the sky,

Then sinks, still flashing, dancing everlastingly.

But wilder wonder smote their shrinking eyes:
A vapour plunged upon the vale from heaven,
Gloomy as night; it towered of mountain size;
From its high crater columned smokes were driven;"
It heaved within, as if pent flames had striven
With mighty winds to burst their prison hold,
Till from the summit to the vale 'twas riven

With angry light, that seemed in cataracts rolled,
Silver, and sanguine steel, and the fierce burning gold.

The black volcano gave a hollow roar,

An earthquake groan that told convulsion near: Out rushed the burden of its burning core

Myriads of fiery globes, as daylight clear.

The sky was filled with flashing sphere on sphere,
Shooting straight upwards to the zenith's crown.
The stars were blasted in that splendour drear;
The land beneath in wild distinctness shone,
From the far billow to the desert's pale red zone.

The globes have gone to heights above all gaze,
And now returning, look like moonlight rain;
But, half way down, again out flash their rays;
War floods the sky, they cross, whirl, burst in twain,
Scattering the night from mountain, vale, and main;
Or round the concave, as the storm retires,

Like mighty serpents draw the mazy train;
Gigantic sweeps of green, gold, scarlet spires,

With pearl and diamond heads, instinct with living fires.

THE ROMANCE OF YOUTH.

Hamilton.

THERE was a youngster boy of golden mind,
Not many years agone, who with his mother,
In humble house did sweet seclusion find;
No other relative he had-no brother

To link him with mankind; no friend to smother
Fantasies wild and dim; no sister young,

To woo and win, far surer than another,

His nature from its dreams, and with sweet tongue,
To scatter silver sounds his listening thoughts among.

His mother was a gentle woman, one

That could not thwart him, she did love him so; Her hopes did grow like ivy round her son;

And yet his dreaming mind did work her woe; She deemed he would be happier, would he know Less of the essences of things-and less

Of solitary mysteries, that throw

The mind upon itself. And he would press

Her hand, and say he would forsake all loneliness.

But like the certain backward flow of rivers,

His thoughts would course again to their romance;
And as the light upon the water quivers,

So would his mind upon its wonders dance.
And he would sit for hours listening the prance
Of barbed steed - watching the steeled knights
That went, in olden days, with targe and lance
To succour ladies fair; such dazzling sights
Were unto him enchantment-magic to his nights.

Oh, sunn'd romance! spirit of Spenser's song!
Spirit of moonlight wolds of ladies' eyes ;-
Spirit of high ethereal hearts that long

To beat fo ever!-Spirit of golden skies,
And winter cloud, that like a giant lies
Slumbering in heavy gloom the livelong day :-
Spirit of love! sole light from paradise,

Brought by the wandering two :-ah, who shall say
Our dreaming boy was wrong, who loved thy proud array?

Some say that from the cradle he was prone

To strange delights, unlike his simple kind;
That he did love to lie and be alone,

To creep from out his bed, when night was blind,
And listen at the window to the wind,

Singing in lofty elms;-to feed his eyes,

Which then were dark, and deep, and full of mind, With sight of the wan moon in desert skies,

Till tears to those two orbs, like night stars would arise.

And as he grew, when evening meekly came
With dusk feet to the earth, he slily took

His supper to the wood, and ate the same

Beneath some towering pines, that blackly shook
O'er him their raven heads: and he forsook

All thoughts of home in that old forest throng,
Till the air dropt, and the unwearied brook
Told wooing stories as it coiled along,

Winning him from dark thoughts of mystery and wrong.

The colour of his young years did not fade
With later ones, but glowed upon his heart
Even on the edge of manhood, as the braid
Of light on morning's forehead bears its part
In making evening lovely ;-he would start

G

To hear the murmuring pine, as when a child :

Oh, Nature! ever beautiful thou art

To those on whose young eyes thine own have smiled, And of their youth, through thee, they never are beguiled.

He hung, entranced, o'er a few wild books

Of elder time, and made them living things; There was a music in his silent looks,

As left there from his soul's attuned strings;
He gave up all dim walks-wood wanderings,
And in his chamber sat, as he had been

No living boy; but there he framed him wings
To bear him o'er dim flowers and pastoral green,
And float him amid leaves where Joyance lay serene.

His mother grieved;-and he had surely pined
At her depression, but he saw it not,

From his abstraction and romance of mind;
But he did feel as one that wears, I wot,
With an o'erpowering presence; for his lot
Was pain and melancholy;—he did break,

Like one far gone in eld, his hand grew hot And tremulous, and he of nights did wake,

[ocr errors]

Watching the stars their posts on skyey turrets take.

But illness lodged itself within his frame,
And made a leaden thing of his wild eye;

It hung upon him like the thirst of fame,
But worked within him deeper injury;
His cheek grew hollow, and his pressed lips dry,
And o'er his limbs crept slothful lassitude;

He look'd as one that must sink down and die,

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »