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The tall, gray forest; and a band
Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers
He stood, in the last moon of flowers,
And thirty snows had not yet shed
Their glory on the warrior's head;
But, as the summer fruit decays,
So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin
Covered the warrior, and within
Its heavy folds the weapons, made
For the hard toils of war, were laid;
The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds,
And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress,

Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread,

And heavy and impatient tread,

He came; and oft that eye so proud

Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief-they freed Beside the grave his battle steed; And swift an arrow cleaved its way To his stern heart! One piercing neigh Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, The rider grasps his steed again.

TRANSLATIONS.

COPLAS DE MANRIQUE.

[Don Jorge Manrique, the author of the following poem, flourished in the last half of the fifteenth century. He followed the profession of arms, and died on the field of battle. Mariana, in his History of Spain, makes honourable mention of him, as being present at the siege of Uclés; and speaks of him as "a youth of estimable qualities, who in this war gave brilliant proofs of his valour. He died young; and was thus cut off from long exercising his great virtues, and exhibiting to the world the light of his genius, which was already known to fame." He was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Canavette, in the year 1479.

The name of Rodrigo Manrique, the father of the poet, Conde de Paredes and Maestre de Santiago, is well known in Spanish history and song. He died in 1476; according to Mariana, in the town of Uclés; but, according to the poem of his son, in Ocana. It was his death that called forth the poem upon which rests the literary reputation of the younger Manrique. In the language of his historian, "Don Jorge Manrique, in an elegant Ode, full of poetic beauties, rich embellishments of genius, and high moral reflections, mourned the death of his father as with a funeral hymn." This praise is not exaggerated. The poem is a model in its kind. Its conception is solemn and beautiful; and, in accordance with it, the style moves on-calm, dignified, and majestic.]

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O LET the soul her slumbers break, Let thought be quickened, and awake;

Awake to see

How soon this life is past and gone,
And death comes softly stealing on,
How silently!

Swiftly our pleasures glide away,

Our hearts recall the distant day

With many sighs;

The moments that are speeding fast

We heed not, but the past,-the past,

More highly prize.

Onward its course the present keeps,

Onward the constant current sweeps,
Till life is done;

And, did we judge of time aright,

The past and future in their flight
Would be as one.

Let no one fondly dream again,

That Hope and all her shadowy train
Will not decay;

Fleeting as were the dreams of old,
Remembered like a tale that's told,

They pass away.

Our lives are rivers, gliding free
To that unfathomed, boundless sea,
The silent grave!

Thither all earthly pomp and boast
Roll, to be swallowed up and lost
In one dark wave.

Thither the mighty torrents stray,
Thither the brook pursues its way,
And tinkling rill.

There all are equal. Side by side
The poor man and the son of pride
Lie calm and still.

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