Awhile o'erpowered her? From the weeper's touch
She shrank-'twas but a moment-yet too much
For that all-humbled one; its mortal stroke

Came down like lightning, and her full heart broke
At once in silence. Heavily and prone

She sank, while o'er her castle's threshold stone,
Those long fair tresses-they still brightly wore
Their early pride, though bound with pearls no more—
Bursting their fillet, in sad beauty rolled,
And swept the dust with coils of wavy gold.

Her child bent o'er her-called her: 'twas too late
Dead lay the wanderer at her own proud gate!
The joy of courts, the star of knight and bard-
How didst thou fall, O bright-haired Ermengarde!

THE MOURNER FOR THE BARMECIDES.

"O good old man! how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times.

As you Like It.

FALLEN was the house of Giafar; and its name,
The high romantic name of Barmecide,

A sound forbidden on its own bright shores,
By the swift Tigris' wave. Stern Haroun's wrath,
Sweeping the mighty with their fame away,

Had so passed sentence: but man's chainless heart
Hides that within its depths which never yet
The oppressor's thought could reach.

'Twas desolate

Where Giafar's halls, beneath the burning sun,
Spread out in ruin lay. The songs had ceased;
The lights, the perfumes, and the genii tales
Had ceased; the guests were gone.

Yet still one voice

Was there the fountain's; through those eastern courts, O'er the broken marble and the grass,

Its low clear music shedding mournfully.

And still another voice! An agèd man,
Yet with a dark and fervent eye beneath
Ilis silvery hair, came day by day, and sate
On a white column's fragment: and drew forth,
From the forsaken walls and dim arcades,
A tone that shook them with its answering thrill,
To his deep accents. Many a glorious tale

He told that sad yet stately solitude,
Pouring his memory's fulness o'er its gloom,
Like waters in the waste and calling up,
By song or high recital of their deeds,
Bright solemn shadows of its vanished race
To people their own halls with these alone,
In all this rich and breathing world, his thoughts
Held still unbroken converse. He had been
Reared in this lordly dwelling, and was now
The ivy of its ruins, unto which

His fading life seemed bound. Day rolled on day,
And from that scene the loneliness was fled;
For crowds around the gray-haired chronicler
Met as men meet, within whose anxious hearts
Fear with deep feeling strives; till, as a breeze
Wanders through forest branches, and is met
By one quick sound and shiver of the leaves,
The spirit of his passionate lament,

As through their stricken souls it passed, awoke
One echoing murmur. But this might not be
Under a despot's rule, and, summoned thence,
The dreamer stood before the Caliph's throne :
Sentenced to death he stood, and deeply pale,
And with his white lips rigidly compressed;
Till, in submissive tones, he asked to speak

Once more, ere thrust from earth's fair sunshine forth.
Was it to sue for grace? His burning heart

Sprang, with a sudden lightning, to his eye,

And he was changed!—and thus in rapid words,

The o'ermastering thoughts, more strong than death, found way:

“And shall I not rejoice to go, when the noble and the brave,
With the glory on their brows, are gone before me to the grave?
What is there left to look on now, what brightness in the land?
I hold in scorn the faded world, that wants their princely band!

"My chiefs! my chiefs! the old man comes that in your halls was nursed-
That followed you to many a fight, where flashed your sabres first-
That bore your children in his arms, your name upon his heart :—
Oh! must the music of that name with him from earth depart?

"It shall not be! A thousand tongues, though human voice were still,
With that high sound the living air triumphantly shall fill;
The wind's free flight shall bear it on as wandering seeds are sown,,
And the starry midnight whisper it, with a deep and thrilling tone.

"For it is not as a flower whose scent with the drooping leaves expires,
And it is not as a household lamp, that a breath should quench its fires;
It is written on our battle-field with the writing of the sword,
It hath left upon our desert sands a light in blessings poured.
"The founts, the many gushing founts which to the wild ye gave,
Of you, my chiefs! shall sing aloud, as they pour a joyous wave;

And the groves, with whose deep lovely gloom ye hung the pilgrim's way, Shall send from all their sighing leaves your praises on the day.

"The very walls your bounty reared for the stranger's homeless head, Shall find a murmur to record your tale, my glorious dead!

Though the grass be where ye feasted once, where lute and cittern rung,
And the serpent in your palaces lie coiled amidst its young.

"It is enough! Mine eye no more of joy or splendor sees-
I leave your name in lofty faith to the skies and to the breeze!
I go, since earth her flower hath lost, to join the bright and fair,
And call the grave a kingly house, for ye, my chiefs! are there."

But while the old man sang, a mist of tears

O'er Haroun's eyes had gathered, and a thought-
Oh! many a sudden and remorseful thought-
Of his youth's once-loved friends, the martyred race,
O'erflowed his softening heart. "Live! live!" he cried,
"Thou faithful unto death! Live on, and still
· Speak of thy lords-they were a princely band!”

THE SPANISH CHAPEL.1

"Weep not for those whom the vale of the tomb,
In life's early morning, hath hid from our eyes,
Ere sin threw a veil o'er the spirit's young bloom,
Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies."

I MADE a mountain brook my guide

Through a wild Spanish glen, And wandered on its grassy side,

Far from the homes of honest men.

It lured me with a singing tone,
And many a sunny glance,
To a green spot of beauty lone-
A haunt for old romance.

A dim and deeply bosomed grove
Of many an agèd tree,
Such as the shadowy violets love,
The fawn and forest bee.

The darkness of the chestnut-bough
There on the waters lay,

The bright stream reverently below
Checked its exulting play;

Moore.

And bore a music all subdued,

And led a silvery sheen
On through the breathing solitude
Of that rich leafy scene.

For something viewlessly around
Of solemn influence dwelt,
In the soft gloom and whispery sound,
Not to be told, but felt;

While sending forth a quiet gleam
Across the wood's repose,
And o'er the twilight of the stream,
A lowly chapel rose.

A pathway to that still retreat
Through many a myrtle wound,
And there a sight-how strangely sweet
My steps in wonder bound.

1 Suggested by a scens beautifully described in the Recollections of the Peninsula.

"Alas!" I cried, "fair faded thing!
Thou hast wrung bitter tears,
And thou hast left a woe, to cling

Round yearning hearts for years! "

But then a voice came sweet and low
I turned, and near me sate
A woman with a mourner's brow,
Pale, yet not desolate.

And in her still, clear, matron face,
All solemnly serene,

A shadowed image I could trace

«Stranger! thou pitiest me," she said
Of that young slumberer's mien.
With lips that faintly smiled,
"As here I watch beside my dead,
My fair and precious child.

"But know, the time-worn heart may be
By pangs in this world riven,
Keener than theirs who yield, like me,
An angel thus to heaven!"

THE KAISER'S FEAST.

[Louis, Emperor of Germany, having put his brother, the Palsgrave Rodolphus, under the ban of the Empire in the twelfth century, that unfortunate prince fled to England, where he died in neglect and poverty. "After his decease, his mother Matilda privately invited his children to return to Germany; and by her mediation, during a season of festivity, when Louis kept wassail in the castle of Heidelberg, the family of his brother presented themselves before him in the garb of suppliants, imploring pity and forgiveness. To this appeal the victor softened."-MISS BENGER'S Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia.]

TASSO AND HIS SISTER.

"Devant vous est Sorrente; là démeuroit la sœur de Tasse, quand il vint en pélérin demander à cette obscure amie un asyle contre l'injustice des princes.-Ses longues douleurs avaient presque egaré sa raison ; il ne lui restoit plus que son génie."-Corinne.