Than the sweet flowrets of the fields!
-It is my royal state that yields
This bitterness of woe.
"Yet how!-for I, if there be truth
In the world's voice, was passing fair;
And beauty for confiding youth,
Those shocks of passion can prepare
That kill the bloom before its time,
And blanch, without the owner's crime,
The most resplendent hair.
"Unblessed distinction! showered on me,
To bind a lingering life in chains:
All that could quit my grasp, or flee,
Is gone;-but not the subtle stains
Fixed in the spirit; for e'en here
Can I be proud, that jealous fear
Of what I was remains.
"A woman rules my prison's key:
A sister queen, against the bent
Of law and holiest sympathy,
Detains me-doubtful of th' event;
Great God, who feel'st for my distress,
My thoughts are all that I possess,
Oh, keep them innocent!
"Farewell, desire of human aid,
Which abject mortals vainly court,
By friends deceived, by foes betrayed,
Of fears the prey, of hopes the sport,
Nought but the world-redeeming cross
Is able to supply my loss,
My burthen to support.
"Hark! the death-note of the year
Sounded by the castle-clock!"
From her sunk eyes a stagnant tear
Stole forth, unsettled by the shock;
But oft the woods renewed their green,
Ere the tired head of Scotland's queen
Reposed upon the block!
OBLIGATIONS OF CIVIL TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
UNGRATEFUL Country, if thou e'er forget
The sons who for thy civil rights have bled!
How, like a Roman, Sidney' bowed his head.
1 Sidney, put to death on illegal evidence in the reign of Charles II.
And Russell's milder blood the scaffold wet;
But these had fallen for profitless regret,
Had not thy holy Church her champions bred;
And claims from other worlds inspirited
The Star of Liberty to rise. For yet
(Grave this within thy heart!) if spiritual things
Be lost, through apathy, or scorn, or fear,
Shalt thou thy humbler franchises support,
Howsoe'er hardly won or justly dear?
What came from Heaven, to Heaven by nature clings,
And if dissevered thence, its course is short.
A BARKING Sound the shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;
He halts, and searches with his eyes
Among the scattered rocks;
And now at distance can discern
A stirring in a brake or fern;
And instantly a dog is seen,
Glancing through that covert green.
The dog is not of mountain breed;
Its motions, too, are wild and shy;
With something, as the shepherd thinks,
Unusual in its cry.
Nor is there any one in sight
All round in hollow, or on height;
Nor shout, nor whistle, strikes his ear;
What is the creature doing here?
It was a cove, a huge recess,
That keeps till June December's snow;
A lofty precipice in front,
A silent tarn below!
Far in the bosom of Helvellyn3,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land,
From trace of human foot or hand.
There sometimes doth the leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crag repeats the raven's croak,
In sympathy austere;
1 Russell, executed about the same time as Sidney.
2 Helvellyn, a mountain near the borders of Scotland.
Thither the rainbow comes-the cloud-
And mists that spread the flying shroud;
And sunbeams, and the sounding blast,
That if it could, would hurry past;
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
Not free from boding thoughts, awhile
The shepherd stood; then makes his way
Towards the dog, o'er rocks and stones,
As quickly as he may;
Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
The appalled discoverer, with a sigh,
Looks round to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks
The man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recalled the name,
And who he was, and whence he came ;
Remembered, too, the very day,
On which the traveller passed this way.
But hear a wonder, for whose sake
This lamentable tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words
This wonder merits well.
The dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,
This dog had been through three months' space,
A dweller in that savage place.
Yes, proof was plain, that since the day,
When this ill-fated traveller died,
The dog had watched about the spot,
Or by his master's side:
How nourished here through such long time,
He knows, who gave that love sublime;
And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human estimate.
WHEN Ruth was left half desolate,
Her father took another mate;
And Ruth, not seven years old,
A slighted child, at her own will,
Went wandering over dale and hill,
In thoughtless freedom bold.
And she had made a pipe of straw,
And from that oaten pipe could draw
All sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.
Beneath her father's roof alone
She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;
Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay;
And passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.
There came a youth ftom Georgia's shore;
A military casque he wore,
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze,
And made a gallant crest.
From Indian blood you deem him sprung;
Ah, no! he spake the English tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;
And when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.
With hues of genius on his cheek
In finest tones the youth could speak.
-While he was yet a boy,
The moon, the glory of the sun,
And streams that murmur as they run,
Had been his dearest joy.
He was a lovely youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness
Was not so fair as he;
And, when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay,
Upon the tropic sea.
Among the Indians he had fought;
And with him many tales he brought
Of pleasure and of fear;
Such tales as told to any maid,
By such a youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.
He told of girls-a happy rout!
Who quit their fold with dance and shout,
Their pleasant Indian town,
To gather strawberries all day long;
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.
He spake of plants divine and strange,
That every hour their blossoms change,
Ten thousand lovely hues!
With budding, fading, faded flowers,
They stand the wonder of the bowers,
From morn to evening dews.
He told of the magnolia spread
High as a cloud, high over head!
The cypress and her spire:
-Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire.
The youth of green savannahs spake,
And many an endless, endless lake,
With all its fairy crowds
Of islands that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds.
And then he said, "How sweet it were,
A fisher or a hunter there,
A gardener in the shade,
Still wandering with an easy mind
To build a household fire, and find
A home in every glade!
"What days and what sweet years! Ah me! Our life were life indeed with thee,
So passed in quiet bliss,
And all the while," said he, "to know
That we were in a world of woe,
On such an earth as this!"
And then he sometimes interwove
Dear thoughts about a father's love,
"For there," said he, "are spun
Around the heart such tender ties,
That our own children to our eyes
Are dearer than the sun.
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