And this is the sweet spirit, that doth fill As a bright image of the light and beauty That stain the wild bird's wing, and flush the clouds The heaven of April, with its changing light, Her hair Is like the summer tresses of the trees, When twilight makes them brown, and on her check Blushes the richness of an autumn sky, With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, It is so like the gentle air of Spring, As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes To have it round us,-and her silver voice Is the rich music of a summer bird, Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence. BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK. ON sunny slope and beechen swell, Far upward in the mellow light One cloud of white, Around a fair uplifted cone, In the warm blush of evening shone; By which the Indian's soul awakes. But soon a funeral hymn was heard But, as the summer fruit decays, A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Before, a dark-haired virgin train Stripped of his proud and martial dress, They buried the dark chief, they freed TRANSLATIONS. COPLAS DE MANRIQUE. FROM THE SPANISH. [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 Canavete, 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.] O LET the soul her slumbers break, Let thought be quickened, and awake; How soon this life is past and gone, Swiftly our pleasures glide away, With many sighs; The moments that are speeding fast Onward its course the present keeps, And, did we judge of time aright, The past and future in their flight Let no one fondly dream again That Hope and all her shadowy train Will not decay; Fleeting as were the dreams of old, Our lives are rivers, gliding free Thither all earthly pomp and boast Thither the mighty torrents stray, There all are equal. Side by side I will not here invoke the throng The deathless few; Fiction entices and deceives, And, sprinkled o'er her fragrant leaves Lies poisonous dew. To One alone my thoughts arise, The Eternal Truth,-the Good and Wise, To Him I cry, Who shared on earth our common lot, But the world comprehended not His deity. This world is but the rugged road So let us choose that narrow way, Our cradle is the starting place, In life we run the onward race, And reach the goal; When, in the mansions of the blest, Death leaves to its eternal rest The weary soul. Did we but use it as we ought, This world would school each wandering thought To its high state. Faith wings the soul beyond the sky, Up to that better world on high, For which we wait. Yes, the glad messenger of love, Born amid mortal cares and fears, A death of shame. Behold of what delusive worth The bubbles we pursue on earth, The shapes we chase, Amid a world of treachery! They vanish ere death shuts the eye, And leave no trace. Time steals them from us,-chances strange, Disastrous accidents, and change, |