The Legends of the Rhine.

BEETLING walls with ivy grown,
Frowning heights of mossy stone;
Turret, with its flaunting flag
Flung from battlemented crag;
Dungeon-keep and fortalice
Looking down a precipice.
O'er the darkly glancing wave
By the Lurline-haunted cave;

Robber haunt and maiden bower,

Home of Love and Crime and Power,

That's the scenery, in fine,

Of the Legends of the Rhine.

One bold baron, double-dyed
Bigamist and parricide,

And, as most the stories run,
Partner of the Evil One;
Injured innocence in white,
Fair but idiotic quite,

Wringing of her lily hands;

Valour fresh from Paynim lands,
Abbot ruddy, hermit pale,

Minstrel fraught with many a tale,—

Are the actors that combine

In the Legends of the Rhine.

Bell-mouthed flagons round a board;
Suits of armour, shield, and sword;
Kerchief with its bloody stain ;
Ghosts of the untimely slain;
Thunder-clap and clanking chain;
Headsman's block and shining axe;
Thumb-screw, crucifixes, racks;
Midnight-tolling chapel bell,
Heard across the gloomy fell,—
These and other pleasant facts
Are the properties that shine
In the Legends of the Rhine.

That Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword;
That Providence has special care
Of gallant knight and lady fair;
That villains, as a thing of course,
Are always haunted by remorse,-
Is the moral, I opine,

Of the Legends of the Rhine.

Songs without Sense,

FOR THE PARLOUR AND PIANO.

1. THE PERSONIFIED SENTIMENTAL.

AFFECTION'S charm no longer gilds
The idol of the shrine;
But cold Oblivion seeks to fill
Regret's ambrosial wine.

Though Friendship's offering buried lies

'Neath cold Aversions snow, Regard and Faith will ever bloom Perpetually below.

I see thee whirl in marble halls,
In Pleasure's giddy train;
Remorse is never on that brow,

Nor Sorrow's mark of pain.
Deceit has marked thee for her own;
Inconstancy the same;

And Ruin wildly sheds its gleam
Athwart thy path of shame.

II. THE HOMELY PATHETIC.

The dews are heavy on my brow;

My breath comes hard and low;
Yet, mother dear, grant one request,
Before your boy must go.

Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks,

And ere my senses fail:

VOL. I.

Place me once more, O mother dear!
Astride the old fence-rail.

The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail !
How oft these youthful legs,
With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung
Across those wooden pegs.
"Twas there the nauseating smoke
Of my first pipe arose :
O mother dear! these agonies
Are far less keen than those.

I know where lies the hazel dell,
Where simple Nellie sleeps ;
I know the cot of Nettie Moore,
And where the willow weeps.
I know the brook side and the mill,
But all their pathos fails
Beside the days when once I sat
Astride the old fence-rails.