The ship has come back from

sea,

She has been signalled from below,
And into the harbor of Bordeaux
She sails with her gallant company.
But among them is nowhere seen
The brave young Baron of St. Castine;
He hath tarried behind, I ween,
In the beautiful land of Acadie!

Shines in the father's gentle eyes,
As fire-light on a window-pane
Glimmers and vanishes again;
But naught he answers; he only sighs,
he only sighs,

Another day, and many a day
And many a week and month depart,
When a fatal letter wings its way
Across the sea, like a bird of prey,
And strikes and tears the old man's
heart.

Lo! the young Baron of St. Castine,
Swift as the wind is, and as wild,
Has married a dusky Tarratine,
Has married Madocawando's child!

The letter drops from the father's hand; Though the sinews of his heart are wrung,

He utters no cry, he breathes no prayer,
No malediction falls from his tongue;
But his stately figure, erect and grand,
Bends and sinks like a column of sand
In the whirlwind of his great despair.
Dying, yes, dying! His latest breath
Of parley at the door of death
Is a blessing on his wayward son.
Lower and lower on his breast
Sinks his gray head; he is at rest;
No longer he waits for any one.

For many a year the old château
Lies tenantless and desolate;
Rank grasses in the courtyard grow,
About its gables caws the crow;
Only the porter at the gate
Is left to guard it, and to wait
The coming of the rightful heir;
No other life or sound is there;
No more the Curate comes at night,
No more is seen the unsteady light,
Threading the alleys of the park;
The windows of the hall are dark,
The chambers dreary, cold, and bare !

At length, at last, when the winter is past,

And birds are building, and woods are green,

With flying skirts is the Curate seen
Speeding along the woodland way,
Humming gayly," No day is so long
But it comes at last to vesper-song.
He stops at the porter's lodge to say
That at last the Baron of St. Castine
Is coming home with his Indian queen,
Is coming without a week's delay;

Alert since first the day began,
The cock upon the village church
Looks northward from his airy perch,
As if beyond the ken of man
To see the ships come sailing on,
And pass the Isle of Oléron,
And pass the Tower of Cordouan.

In the church below is cold in clay
The heart that would have leaped for
joy -

O tender heart of truth and trust!
To see the coming of that day;

In the church below the lips are dust;
Dust are the hands, and dust the feet,
That would have been so swift to meet
The coming of that wayward boy.

At night the front of the old château
Is a blaze of light above and below;
There's a sound of wheels and hoofs in
the street,

A cracking of whips, and scamper of feet,

Bells are ringing, and horns are blown, And the Baron hath come again to his

own.

The Curate is waiting in the hall,
Most
eager and alive of all

To welcome the Baron and Baroness;
But his mind is full of vague distress,
For he hath read in Jesuit books
Of those children of the wilderness,
And now, good, simple man! he looks
To see a painted savage stride
Into the room, with shoulders bare,
And eagle feathers in her hair,
And around her a robe of panther's hide.

Instead, he beholds with secret shame
A form of beauty undefined,
A loveliness without a name,
Not of degree, but more of kind;
Nor bold nor shy, nor short nor tall,
But a new mingling of them all.
Yes, beautiful beyond belief,
Transfigured and transfused, he sees
The lady of the Pyrenees,
The daughter of the Indian chief.

The gold-bronze color of the skin
Seems lighted by a fire within,
As when a burst of sunlight shines
Beneath a sombre grove of pines,
A dusky splendor in the air.
The two small hands, that now are
pressed

In his, seem made to be caressed,
They lie so warm and soft and still,
Like birds half hidden in a nest,
Trustful, and innocent of ill.

And ah! he cannot believe his ears
When her melodious voice he hears
Speaking his native Gascon tongue;
The words she utters seem to be
Part of some poem of Goudouli,
They are not spoken, they are sung!
And the Baron smiles, and says, "You

say,

"Surely this is no heathen lass!" And in course of time they learn to bless

The Baron and the Baroness.

And in course of time the Curate learns
A secret so dreadful, that by turns
He is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.
The Baron at confession hath said,
That though this woman be his wife,
He hath wed her as the Indians wed,
He hath bought her for a gun and a
knife!

And the Curate replies: "O profligate,
O Prodigal Son! return once more
To the open arms and the open door
Of the Church, or ever it be too late.
Thank God, thy father did not live
To see what he could not forgive;
On thee, so reckless and perverse,
He left his blessing, not his curse.
But the nearer the dawn the darker the
night,

And by going wrong all things come right;

Things have been mended that were

worse,

O sun, that followest the night,
In yon blue sky, serene and pure,
And pourest thine impartial light
Alike on mountain and on moor,
Pause for a moment in thy course,
And bless the bridegroom and the bride!
O Gave, that from thy hidden source
In yon mysterious mountain-side
Pursuest thy wandering way alone,
And leaping down its steps of stone,
Along the meadow-lands demure
Stealest away to the Adour,
Pause for a moment in thy course
To bless the bridegroom and the bride

The choir is singing the matin song,
The doors of the church are opened
wide,

The people crowd, and press, and throng
To see the bridegroom and the bride.
They enter and pass along the nave ;
They stand upon the father's grave;
The bells are ringing soft and slow
The living above and the dead below
Give their blessing on one and twain ;
The warm wind blows from the hills of
Spain,

The birds are building, the leaves
green,

And Baron Castine of St. Castine
Hath come at last to his own again.

FINALE.

are

NUNC plaudite!" the Student cried, When he had finished; "now applaud,

At the conclusion of a play";
And rose, and spread his hands abroad,
And smiling bowed from side to side,
As one who bears the palm away.
And generous was the applause and loud,
But less for him than for the sun,
That even as the tale was done
Burst from its canopy of cloud,
And lit the landscape with the blaze
Of afternoon on autumn days,

And filled the room with light, and made

The fire of logs a painted shade.

A sudden wind from out the west
Blew all its trumpets loud and shrill ;
The windows rattled with the blast,
The oak-trees shouted as it passed,
And straight, as if by fear possessed,
The cloud encampment on the hill
Broke up, and fluttering flag and tent
Vanished into the firmament,
And down the valley fled amain
The rear of the retreating rain.

Only far up in the blue sky

A mass of clouds, like drifted snow
Suffused with a faint Alpine glow,
Was heaped together, vast and high,
On which a shattered rainbow hung,
Not rising like the ruined arch
Of some aerial aqueduct,
But like a roseate garland plucked
From an Olympian god, and flung
Aside in his triumphal march.

Like prisoners from their dungeon gloom,
Like birds escaping from a snare,
Like school-boys at the hour of play,
All left at once the pent-up room,
And rushed into the open air ;
And no more tales were told that day.

292

PRELUDE.

THE evening came; the golden vane
A moment in the sunset glanced,
Then darkened, and then gleamed again,
As from the east the moon advanced
And touched it with a softer light;
While underneath, with flowing mane,
Upon the sign the Red Horse pranced,
And galloped forth into the night.

But brighter than the afternoon
That followed the dark day of rain,
And brighter than the golden vane
That glistened in the rising moon,
Within the ruddy fire-light gleamed;
And every separate window-pane,
Backed by the outer darkness, showed
A mirror, where the flamelets gleamed
And flickered to and fro, and seemed
A bonfire lighted in the road.

Amid the hospitable glow,
Like an old actor on the stage,
With the uncertain voice of age,
The singing chimney chanted low
The homely songs of long ago.

The voice that Ossian heard of yore,
When midnight winds were in his hall;
A ghostly and appealing call,

A sound of days that are no more!
And dark as Ossian sat the Jew,
And listened to the sound, and knew
The passing of the airy hosts,
The gray and misty cloud of ghosts
In their interminable flight;
And listening muttered in his beard,
With accent indistinct and weird,
"Who are ye, children of the Night?"

Unseen, but in unbroken line,
From the great fountain-head divine
Through man and beast, through grain
and grass.

Howe'er we struggle, strive, and cry,
From death there can be no escape.
And no escape from life, alas !
Because we cannot die, but pass
From one into another shape:
It is but into life we die.

"Therefore the Manichæan said
This simple prayer on breaking bread,
Lest he with hasty hand or knife
Might wound the incarcerated life,
The soul in things that we call dead:
'I did not reap thee, did not bind thee,
I did not thrash thee, did not grind
thee,

Nor did I in the oven bake thee!
It was not I, it was another

Did these things unto thee, O brother; I only have thee, hold thee, break thee!''

"That birds have souls I can concede,"
The poet cried, with glowing cheeks;
"The flocks that from their beds of reed
Uprising north or southward fly,
And flying write upon the sky
The biforked letter of the Greeks,
As hath been said by Rucellai ;
All birds that sing or chirp or cry,
Even those migratory bands,
The minor poets of the air,
The plover, peep, and sanderling,
That hardly can be said to sing,
But pipe along the barren sands,
All these have souls akin to ours;
So hath the lovely race of flowers :
Thus much I grant, but nothing more.
The rusty hinges of a door

Are not alive because they creak;
This chimney, with its dreary roar,
These rattling windows, do not speak!"
"To me they speak," the Jew replied;
"And in the sounds that sink and soar,
I hear the voices of a tide
That breaks upon an unknown shore ! "

Here the Sicilian interfered: "That was your dream, then, as you dozed

Of a white figure in the twilight air, Gazing intent, as one who with surprise His form and features seemed to recognize;

And in a whisper to the king he said: What is yon shape, that, pallid as the dead,

Is watching me, as if he sought to trace In the dim light the features of my face?"

The king looked, and replied: "I know him well;

It is the Angel men call Azrael, 'Tis the Death Angel; what hast thou to fear?"

And the guest answered: "Lest he should come near,

And speak to me, and take away my breath!

Save me from Azrael, save me from death!

O king, that hast dominion o'er the wind, Bid it arise and bear me hence to Ind."

There came a mighty wind, and seized the guest

And lifted him from earth, and on they passed,

His shining garments streaming in the blast,

A silken banner o'er the walls upreared, A purple cloud, that gleamed and disappeared.

Then said the Angel, smiling: "If this

man

Be Rajah Runjeet-Sing of Hindostan, Thou hast done well in listening to his prayer;

I was upon my way to seek him there."

INTERLUDE.

"O EDREHI, forbear to-night
Your ghostly legends of affright,
And let the Talmud rest in peace;
Spare us your dismal tales of death
That almost take away one's breath;
So doing, may your tribe increase.'

Thus the Sicilian said; then went
And on the spinet's rattling keys
Played Marianina, like a breeze
From Naples and the Southern seas,
That brings us the delicious scent
Of citron and of orange trees,
And memories of soft days of ease
At Capri and Amalfi spent.

'Not so," the eager Poet said; "At least, not so before I tell The story of my Azrael, An angel mortal as ourselves, Which in an ancient tome I found Upon a convent's dusty shelves, Chained with an iron chain, and bound In parchment, and with clasps of brass, Lest from its prison, some dark day, It might be stolen or steal away, While the good friars were singing mass,

“It is a tale of Charlemagne, When like a thunder-cloud, that lowers And sweeps from mountain-crest to coast,

With lightning flaming through its showers,

He swept across the Lombard plain,
Beleaguering with his warlike train
Pavía, the country's pride and boast,
The City of the Hundred Towers."