to me

Vent fearless to the convent, and would toil | He rushed beside her: Towards him gloomily or the pale monks and till their rocky soil, She looked, and then he gasped-"We-list And gain their bounty, (garments coarse and Which he would carry to his cavern rude, And feed the dove that lay within his nest, nd hush her every evening to her rest.

food)

We-we must part-must part, is it not so?"
Woe,
She hung her head and murmured:
oh! woe,

66

That it must be so-nay, Colonna-nay,
Hearken unto me: little can I say,
But sin-(is it not sin?) doth wear my heart

At last she learned the tale-Orsini-Away to death. Alas! and must we part,

How!

iven up and banished from his grave,
below-

Orsini, dark Orsini!-On her soul
he hollow words came like a thunder-roll
pounding at distance over hill and vale:
And Marcian marked her and his cheek grew
pale,
And his hand trembled as he soothed her then,
and thro' his brain a terror flew again.
-Now paused he in his toil and daily walk,
And in the gloom would often idly talk
Of poison and of blood, and tears would

stream

n rivers down his cheeks when he did dream: Sometimes in bitter spleen his tongue would

chide

And then, in anguish that he could not hide,
le wept and prayed her not to leave him
there,

lone man, in his madness,—in despair.
And then he told her of his wretched youth,
And how upon her love and gentle truth
His life had rested;-yet she did not speak,
Save in the pallid hues that sunk her cheek,
And in her heaving breast and rayless eye
Which spoke of some fixed grief that would
not fly.

And will she leave me then who loved her so,
So utterly beyond the love of men)
And pass into a wretch's arms again,
from mine so true-from mine? she shall
not-Oh!

Yet wherefore should I stay her, if her love
Be gone,indeed”—and then at times he strove
To think that he might live and she afar,
The beauty of his life, the hope, the star.
Oh! melancholy thought, and vain and brief:
He felt that like the Autumn's perished leaf
His frame would wither, and from its great
height

His mind must sink and lose itself in night.
No talk was pleasant now; no image fair;
No freshness and no fragrance filled the air;

No music in the winds nor in the sound

The wild birds uttered from the forests round;
The sun had lost its light, and drearily
The morning stole upon his altered eye;
And night with all her starry eyes grew dim
For she was changed-and nought was true
to him.

From pain at length, from pain, (for could he bear The sorrow burning wild without a tear?)

We who have loved long and so truly ?-yes;
Were we not born, (we were) for wretch-
edness?

Oh! Marcian, Marcian, I must go: my road
Leads to a distant home, a calm abode,
Where I may pine my few sad years away,
And die, and make my peace ere I decay."
She spoke no more, for now she saw his soul
Rising in tumult, and his eye-balls roll
Wildly and fiery red, and thro' his check
Deep crimson shot: he sighed but did not
speak.

Keeping a horrid silence there he sate,
A maniac, full of love, and death, and fate:
Again-the star that once his eye shone o'er
Flash'd forth again more fiercely than before:
And thro' his veins the current fever flew
Like lightning, withering all it trembled
through.

He clenched his hands and rushed away,
away,

And looked and laughed upon the opening day,

And mocked the morn with shouts, and

wandered wild

For hours as by some meteor-thing beguiled.
He wandered through the forests sad and
lone,

His heart all fiery and his senses gone;
Till, at the last (for nature sank at last)
The tempest of the fever fell and past,
And he lay down upon the rocks to sleep,
And shrunk into a troubled slumber, deep.
Long was that sleep-long-very long and

strange,

And frenzy suffered then a silent change,
And his heart hardened as the fire withdrew,
Like furnaced iron beneath the Winter's dew.

He gained he gained (why droops my story?) then An opiate deadly from the convent-men, And bore it to his cave: she drank that draught

Of death, and he looked on in scorn, and
laughed,

With an exulting terrible joy, when she
Lay down in tears to slumber, silently.

-She had no after-sleep; but ere she slept Strong spasins and pains throughout her body crept,

And round her brain and tow'rds her heart,
until
They touched that seat of love,- and all was
still.

Away he wandered for some lengthened hour | And thou, the lost Colonna,—thou, wha When the black poison shewed its fiercest

power,

And when he sought the cavern, there she lay,
The young, the gentle,―dying fast away.
He sate and watched her, as a nurse might do,
And saw the dull film steal across the blue,
And saw, and felt her sweet forgiving smile,
That, as she died, parted her lips the while:
Her hand? its pulse was silent-her voice
gone,

But patience in her smile still faintly shone,
And in her closing eyes a tenderness,
That seemed as she would fain Colonna bless.
She died, and spoke no word: and still he

sate

Beside her like an image. Death and Fate
Had done what might be then: The morning-

sun

rail

brain

Was fever-struck with love and jealous p
A wanderer wast thou lonely thro' the ra
Or didst thou tread clad in thy pride of i
With high patrician step the streets of Ra
I know not; no one knew. A heavy gl
Wrapped thy last fortunes, luckless Mar
Some told in after-times that he was is
Dying, within the Inquisition's bound:
Some said that he did roam, a wretchedna
In pilgrimage along the Arabian sands.
And some that he did dwell in the far a
Of vast America, with savage men,
The chase his pastime, and his home at
What object is there now to know? v.
gain?

died.

He passed away and never came again He left his home, his friends, his titles Rose upon him : on him?—his task was done. To stand, or live, or perish in their pr The murderer and the murdered--one as pale | And secking out some unknown countryAs marble shining white beneath the moon, The other dark as storms, when the winds He died, and left no vain memorial Of him or of his deeds, for scorn or pra At the chafed sea,— but not to calm so soon-Nor record for the proud Colonna-race No bitterness, nor hate, nor dread was there; To blot or blazon, cherish or compare, But love still clinging round a wild despair, His fate is lost: his name (like others)-* A wintry aspect and a troubled eye, Mourning o'er youth and beauty born to die. Dead was she, and her mouth had fallen low, But still he watched her with a stedfast brow: Unaltered as a rock he sate, while she Lay changed to clay, and perish'd. Drearily Came all the hues of death across her face: That look, so lovely once, had lost its grace, The eye its light, the cheek its colour, now. -Oh! human beauty, what a dream art thou, That we should cast our life and hopes away, On thee-and dost thou like a leaf decay, In Spring-tide as in Autumn?-Fair and frail, In bud or blossom if a blight prevail, How ready art thou from the world to fly; And we who love thee so are left-to die.

Fairest of all the world, thy tale is told:
Thy name is written in a record old,
And I from out the legend now rehearse
Thy story, shaping it to softer verse.

My tale hath reached its end; yet
there dwells

A superstition in those piny dells,
Near to Laverna. Forms, 'tis said, arre
Beside the cave where once Colonna lay
And shadows linger there at close of co
And dusky shapes amongst the forests!
Pass off like vapours at the break of
And sometimes a faint figure (with a
Crowning her forehead) has been seen -
To haunt the cliff and hang her head for's
And peasants still at the approach of s
Even at distance shun that starry light
And dread The Lady of the Mountains
She rises radiant from her haunted ga
The convent? still it stands: its pile is str
And well it echoes back the tempest's »
And still the cave is there: but they, -
Who made it famous,—they are passtt. *

gone.

A SICILIAN STOR Y.

THERE is a spirit within us, which arrays
The thing we doat upon with colourings
Richer than roses-brighter than the beams
Of the clear sun at morning, when he flings
His showers of light upon the peach, or plays |
With the green leaves of June, and strives
to dart

Into some great forest's heart,
And scare the sylvan from voluptuous dra
There is a spirit that comes upon us
Boyhood is gone,-before we rank as
Before the heart is canker'd, and beler
We lose or cast away that innocent fr
That gives life all its freshness. Never

Half 'rose and gazed, and o'er her tearful That morn they sat upon the sea

green; Drew her white hand to see his raven hair | For in that land the sward springs fred. Come down in masses like the starless night, free And 'neath each shortened mask she strove the while

To catch his sweet inimitable smile,
Opening such lips as the boy Hylas wore;
(He whom the wild and wanton nymphs of

form (a dim and waving shadow) stood, | The Winter-trumpet, 'till its failing breath Ind pointed far up the great Etna's side, Went moaning into silence, every green here, from a black ravine, a dreary wood | And loose leaf of the piny boughs did tell eeps out and frowns upon the storms below, Some trembling story of that mountain-dell. and bounds and braves the wilderness of snow.

s course by lava-rocks and branches broke) | His young limbs mangled on the rocky ging for aye its fierce and noisy song;

there on shattered trunks the lichens And, 'midst the weltering weeds and shallows