And his rider howls in the thunder's roar.
O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging heaven.
Pause, as in fear, to strike his head,
The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure,
Yet the wildered peasant that oft passes by,
With wonder beholds the blue flash thro' his form :
And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
The startled passenger shudders to hear,
More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar.
Then does the dragon, who chain'd in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,
And twine his vast wreathes round the forms of the demons; Then in agony roll his death-swimming eye-balls, Though wilder'd by death, yet never to die!
Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares, Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch.
Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead
In horror pause on the fitful gale.
They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,
And scared seek the caves of gigantic
Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake,
And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.
MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES.
ART thou indeed for ever gone,
For ever, ever, lost to me?
Must this poor bosom beat alone,
Or beat at all, if not for thee?
Ah! why was love to mortals given,
To lift them to the height of heaven,
Or dash them to the depths of hell?
Yet I do not reproach thee dear!
Ah! no, the agonies that swell
This panting breast, this frenzied brain
Might wake my -'s slumb'ring tear.
Oh! heaven is witness I did love,
And heaven does know I love thee still,
Does know the fruitless sick'ning thrill,
When reason's judgment vainly strove
To blot thee from my memory;
But which might never, never be.
Oh! I appeal to that blest day
When passion's wildest ecstacy
Was coldness to the joys I knew,
When every sorrow sunk away.
Oh! I had never liv'd before,
But now those blisses are no more.
And now I cease to live again,
I do not blame thee love; ah no!
The breast that feels this anguish'd woe
Throbs for thy happiness alone.
Two years of speechless bliss are gone,
I thank thee dearest for the dream.
'Tis night-what faint and distant scream
Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
It moans for pleasures that are past,
It moans for days that are gone by.
Oh! lagging hours how slow you fly!
I see a dark and lengthen'd vale,
The black view closes with the tomb;
But darker is the lowering gloom
That shades the intervening dale.
In visioned slumber for awhile
I seem again to share thy smile,
I seem to hang upon thy tone.
Again you say, "confide in me,
"For I am thine, and thine alone,
"And thine must ever, ever be."
But oh! awak'ning still anew,
Athwart my enanguish'd senses flew
A fiercer, deadlier agony!
[End of Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson.]
STANZA: "TREMBLE, KINGS!"
ADAPTED FROM THE MARSEILLAISE.
TREMBLE Kings despised of man!
Ye traitors to your Country
Tremble! Your parricidal plan
At length shall meet its destiny..
We all are soldiers fit to fight
But if we sink in glory's night
Our mother EARTH will give ye new
The brilliant pathway to pursue
Which leads to DEATH or VICTORY...
OH take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
In which the warm current of love never freezes,
As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,
Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,
Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,
Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.
Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,
Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,
Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,
Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore
Plants liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore,
With victory's cry, with the shout of the free,
Let it fly, taintless spirit, to mingle with thee.
For I found the pure gem, when the day beam returning,
Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,
When to others the wished-for arrival of morning
Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;
But regret is an insult-to grieve is in vain:
And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair
Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there ?
But still 'twas some spirit of kindness descending
To share in the load of mortality's woe,
Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending
Bade sympathy's tenderest tear-drop to flow.
Not for thee, soft compassion, celestials did know,
But if angels can weep, sure man may repine,
May weep in mute grief o'er thy low-laid shrine.
And did I then say, for the altar of glory,
That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I'd entwi Tho' with millions of blood-reeking victims 'twas go Tho' the tears of the widow polluted its shrine, Tho' around it the orphans, the fatherless pine? Oh! Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a tear To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.
WHY is it said thou canst not live
In a youthful breast and fair,
Since thou eternal life canst give,
Canst bloom for ever there?
Since withering pain no power possest,
Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,
Nor time's dread victor, death, confess'd,
Though bathed with his poison dew,
Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,
Fix'd tranquil, even in the tomb.
And oh when on the blest reviving
The day-star dawns of love,
Each energy of soul surviving
More vivid, soars above,
Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,
Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,
O'er each idea then to steal,
When other passions die?
Felt it in some wild noonday dream,
When sitting by the lonely stream,
Where Silence says, Mine is the dell;
And not a murmur from the plain,
And not an echo from the fell,
Disputes her silent reign.
DARES the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
No! Abandon'd he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,
On the sand flows his life-blood away;
Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.
Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches,
Thirsting-aye, thirsting for blood;
And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
For hunger, not glory, the prey
Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.
Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer's head.
Though weak, as the lama, that bounds on the mountains, And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air, Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains, Though a fiercer than tiger is there.
Though more dreadful than death, it scatters despair, Though its shadow eclipses the day,
And the darkness of deepest dismay
Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,
And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.
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