"The secret of thy doom to tell, My name alone suffices well! Stephania! once a hero's bride!
Otho! thou know'st the rest-HE DIed.
Yes! trusting to a monarch's word,
The Roman fell, untried, unheard!
And thou, whose every pledge was vain,
How couldst thou trust in aught again?
"He died, and I was changed—my soul,
A lonely wanderer, spurn'd control.
From peace, and light, and glory hurl'd,
The outcast of a purer world,
I saw each brighter hope o'erthrown,
And lived for one dread task alone.
The task is closed-fulfill'd the vow,
The hand of death is on thee now.
Betrayer! in thy turn betray'd,
The debt of blood shall soon be paid!
Thine hour is come-the time has been
My heart had shrunk from such a scene;
That feeling long is past-my fate
Hath made me stern as desolate.
"Ye, that round me shuddering stand,
Ye chiefs and princes of the land!
Mourn ye a guilty monarch's doom?
-Ye wept not o'er the patriot's tomb!
He sleeps unhonor'd-yet be mine
To share his low, neglected shrine.
His soul with freedom finds a home,
His grave is that of glory-Rome!
Are not the great of old with her,
That city of the sepulchre?
Lead me to death! and let me share
The slumbers of the mighty there!"
The day departs-that fearful day
Fades in calm loveliness away;
From purple heavens its lingering beam
Seems melting into Tiber's stream,
And softly tints each Roman hill
With glowing light, as clear and still,
As if, unstain'd by crime or woe,
Its hours had pass'd in silent flow.
The day sets calmly-it hath been
Mark'd with a strange and awful scene:
One guilty bosom throbs no more,
And Otho's pangs and life are o'er.
And thou, ere yet another sun
His burning race hath brightly run,
Released from anguish by thy foes,
Daughter of Rome! shalt find repose.-
Yes! on thy country's lovely sky
Fix yet once more thy parting eye!
A few short hours-and all shall be
The silent and the past for thee.
Oh! thus with tempests of a day
We struggle, and we pass away,
Like the wild billows as they sweep,
Leaving no vestige on the deep!
And o'er thy dark and lowly bed
The sons of future days shall tread,
The pangs, the conflicts of thy lot,
By them unknown, by thee forgot.
AMIDST the peopled and the regal Isle,
Whose vales, rejoicing in their beauty, smile;
Whose cities, fearless of the spoiler, tower,
And send on every breeze a voice of power;
Hath Desolation rear'd herself a throne,
And mark'd a pathless region for her own?
Yes! though thy turf no stain of carnage wore,
When bled the noble hearts of many a shore,
Though not a hostile step thy heath-flowers bent,
When empires totter'd and the earth was rent ;
Yet lone, as if some trampler of mankind
Had still'd life's busy murmurs on the wind,
And, flushed with power, in daring pride's excess,
Stamp'd on thy soil the curse of barrenness;
For thee in vain descend the dews of heaven,
In vain the sunbeam and the shower are given ;
Wild Dartmoor! thou that, 'midst thy moun-
tains rude,
Hast robed thyself with haughty solitude,
As a dark cloud on summer's clear blue sky,
A mourner circled with festivity!
For all beyond is life!—the rolling sea,
The rush, the swell, whose echoes reach not
Yet who shall find a scene so wild and bare,
But man has left his lingering traces there?
E'en on mysterious Afric's boundless plains,
Where noon with attributes of midnight reigns.
In gloom and silence, fearfully profound,
As of a world unwaked to soul or sound,
Though the sad wand'rer of the burning zone
Feels, as amidst infinity, alone,
And nought of life be near; his camel's tread
Is o'er the prostrate cities of the dead!
Some column, rear'd by long-forgotten hands,
Just lifts its head above the billowy sands-
Some mouldering shrine still consecrates the scene,
And tells that glory's footstep there hath been.
There hath the spirit of the mighty pass'd,
Not without record; though the desert blast,
Borne on the wings of Time, hath swept away
The proud creations rear'd to brave decay.
But thou, lone region! whose unnoticed name
No lofty deeds have mingled with their fame,
Who shall unfold thine annals?-who shall tell
If on thy soil the sons of heroes fell,
In those far ages, which left no trace,
No sunbeam, on the pathway of their race?
Though, haply, in the unrecorded days
Of kings and chiefs, who pass'd without their praise,
Thou might'st have rear'd the valiant and the
In history's page there is no tale of thee.
Yet hast thou thy memorials. Still rise the cairns of yore, all rudely piled, But hallow'd by that instinct which reveres Things fraught with characters of elder years.
Long centuries are flown, Bow'd many a crest, and shatter'd many a throne, Mingling the urn,the trophy, and the bust, With what they hide-their shrined and treasured dust;
Men traverse Alps and oceans, to behold Earth's glorious works fast mingling with her mould;
But still these nameless chronicles of death, 'Midst the deep silence of the unpeopled heath, Stand in primeval artlessness, and wear The same sepulchral mien, and almost share Th' eternity of nature, with the forms Of the crown'd hills beyond, the dwellings of the storms.
Yet, what avails it, if each moss-grown heap Still on the waste its lonely vigils keep, Guarding the dust which slumbers well beneath (Nor needs such care) from each cold season's breath?
Where is the voice to tell their tale who rest,
Thus rudely pillow'd on the desert's breast?
Doth the sword sleep beside them? Hath there
been
A sound of battle 'midst the silent scene
Where now the flocks repose?-did the scythed
Here reap its harvest in the ranks of war?
And raise these piles in memory of the slain,
And the red combat of the mountain-plain?
It may be thus:-the vestiges of strife,
Around yet lingering, mark the steps of life,
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