Will sink where lie the songs and wars of earth, Yet there will still be bards: though fate is smoke, Song in the world, will seek what then they sought; Thus to their extreme verge the passions brought If in the course of such a life as was At once adventurous and contemplative, And in such colours that they seem to live; LOVE AND GLORY. O LOVE! O Glory! what are ye who fly There's not a meteor in the polar sky Of such transcendent and more fleeting flight. THE MANIAC. A VEIN had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes* O'ercharged with rain; her summon'd handmaids bore Of herbs and cordials they produced their store, But she defied all means they could employ, She had no pulse, but death seem'd absent still; *This is no very uncommon effect of the violence of conflicting and different passions. The Doge Francis Foscari, on his deposition in 1457, hearing the bells of St. Mark announce the election of his successor. "mourut subitement d'une hémorragie causée par une veine qui s'éclata dans sa poitrine" (see Sismondi and Daru, vols. i. and ii.) at the age of eighty years, when "Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him " Before I was sixteen years of age, I was witness to a melancholy instance of the same effect of mixed passions upon a young person, who, however, did not die in consequence, at that time, but fell a victim some years afterwards to a seizure of the same kind, arising from causes intimately connected with agitation of mind. Corruption came not in each mind to kill All hope; to look upon her sweet face bred When exquisitely chisell'd, still lay there, Their energy like life forms all their fame, However dear or cherish'd in their day; They changed from room to room, but all forgot, At length those eyes, which they would fain be weaning Back to old thoughts, wax'd full of fearful meaning; And then a slave bethought her of a harp; The harper came, and tuned his instrument: At the first notes, irregular and sharp, On him her flashing eyes a moment bent, Then to the wall she turn'd as if to warp Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-sent; And he began a long low island song Of ancient days, ere tyranny grew strong. Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall In time to his old tune; he changed the theme, And sung of love; the fierce name struck through all Her recollection: on her flash'd the dream Of what she was, and is, if ye could call To be so being; in a gushing stream The tears rush'd forth from her o'erclouded brain, Short solace, vain relief!-thought came too quick, Avail'd for either; neither change of place, And they who watch'd her nearest could not know The very instant, till the change that cast Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow, Glazed o'er her eyes-the beautiful, the blackOh! to possess such lustre-and then lack! That isle is now all desolate and bare, Its dwellings down, its tenants pass'd away; None but her own and father's grave is there, And nothing outward tells of human clay : Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair, No stone is there to show, no tongue to say What was; no dirge, except the hollow sea's, Mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades. THE BLACK FRIAR. BEWARE! beware! of the Black Friar, For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air, When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville, Made Norman Church his prey, And expell'd the friars, one friar still Would not be driven away. Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right, To turn church lands to lay, With sword in hand, and torch to light Their walls, if they said nay; A monk remain'd, unchased, unchain'd, And he did not seem form'd of clay, For he's seen in the porch, and he's seen in the church, Though he is not seen by day. And whether for good, or whether for ill, But still with the house of Amundeville By the marriage-bed of their lords, 'tis said, And 'tis held as faith, to their bed of death When an heir is born, he's heard to mourn, That ancient line, in the pale moonshine His form you may trace, but not his face But his eyes may be seen from the folds between, But beware! beware! of the Black Friar, But the monk is lord by night; Nor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal, Say nought to him as he walks the hall, He sweeps along in his dusky pall, Then grammercy! for the Black Friar ; And whatsoe'er may be his prayer, NORMAN OR NEWSTEAD ABBEY. To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,- Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke ; The branching stag swept down with all his herd, Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take In currents through the calmer water spread And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed; Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade, Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd, Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw. A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile (While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art: The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil, Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march, Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone; But these had fallen, not when the friars fell, But in the war which struck Charles from his throne, When each house was a fortalice-as tell The annals of full many a line undone,— The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd, The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child, With her Son in her bless'd arms, look'd round, Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd ; She made the earth below seem holy ground. This may be superstition, weak or wild, But even the faintest relics of a shrine Of any worship wake some thoughts divine. Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter; But in the noontide of the moon, and when |