"Father!" at length he murmured low-and wept like childhood then,

Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men !— He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown; He flung the falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down.

Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly-mournful brow,

"No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword for now: My king is false, my hope betrayed, my father, oh! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth!

"I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire! beside thee yet;

I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met,

Thou wouldst have known my spirit then,-for thee my fields

were won,

And thou hast perished in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son!"

Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein,

Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier train; And with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led,

And sternly set them face to face,—the king before the dead!—

"Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss?— Be still! and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me, what is this? The voice, the glance, the heart I sought-give answer, where are they?—

If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay!

"Into these glassy eyes put light, be still! keep down thine ire,

Bid these white lips a blessing speak-this earth is not my sire!

Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was

shed,

Thou canst not—and a king ?-His dust be mountains on thy

head!"

с

He loosed the steed; his slack hand fell,-upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place;

His hope was crushed, his after-fate untold in martial strain,His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain. Mrs. Hemans.

TO THE CUCKOO1

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass,
Thy loud note smites my ear!
It seems to fill the whole air's space;
At once far off and near!

I hear thee babbling2 to the vale
Of sunshine and of flowers;
But unto me thou bring'st a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the spring!

Even yet thou art to me

No bird; but an invisible thing,

A voice, a mystery.

1 Some elegant lines on the same subject, by the Scottish poet, Logan, may be found in "Select Poetry for Children" p. 7. The above poem is of a higher order than Logan's-though scarcely superior in point of interest and execution -because it is more suggestive, that is, awakens a less obvious train of thought, though when pointed out, not less natural and pleasing. Many hear the cuckoo and are pleased with that well-known note, which is so associated with the return of spring;-Wordsworth hears it and is reminded, in addition, of "the golden time"-the spring-tide of his youth-when the bird was first an object of intense interest to the boy.

2 Babbling-from Hebrew babel, where confusion of tongues first arose hence to babble is to talk confusedly and inarticulately. There is much beauty in the use of the word here. Thou babblest-confusedly talkest-to the vale, but to me thy language is distinct and definite, reminding me of my early years, which appear, as it were in a vision, and are here called "visionary hours."

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that cry

Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget1
That golden time again.

O blessed bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be

An unsubstantial, fairy place;

That is fit home for thee !2

Wordsworth.

ADDRESS TO AN EGYPTIAN MUMMY.3

AND thou hast walked about ;-how strange a story!-
In Thebes's streets three thousand years ago;
When the Memnonium+ was in all its glory,
And time had not begun to overthrow
Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous,
Of which the very ruins are tremendous.

1 Beget, &c.-recall, and as it were create anew, the scenes of boyhood. This faculty, which the mind possesses of reviving a train of scenes and circumstances, long past, on the recollection of some one of them, is usually called the association of ideas-the above poem is a pleasing illustration of the phenomenon. Akenside (in his "Pleasures of Imagination") thus refers to it:

"A song, a flower, a name, at once restore

Those long-connected scenes where first they moved

The attention."

2 Fit home, &c.-the vision of the "golden time" so fills the mind, that the earth seems to change into a fairy place, well suited to the mysterious and unreal character fancifully attributed to the Cuckoo.

3 This poem has been deservedly admired for its picturesque vigour, combined with richness and felicity of historical allusion:" Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 Memnonium-the name given to a temple now in ruins, supposed to have been dedicated to Memnon, an ancient king of Egypt.

Speak! for thou long enough hast acted dummy;
Thou hast a tongue, come, let us hear its tune;
Thou'rt standing on thy legs, above ground, Mummy!
Revisiting the glimpses of the moon;

Not like thin ghosts, or disembodied creatures,
But with thy bones, and flesh, and limbs, and features.

Tell us for doubtless thou canst recollect-
To whom should we assign the Sphinx's' fame?
Was Cheops,2 or Cephrenes,2 architect

Of either pyramid that bears his name?
Is Pompey's pillar3 really a misnomer?

Had Thebes a hundred gates as sung by Homer?

Perhaps thou wert a Mason,5 and forbidden
By oath, to tell the mysteries of thy trade;
Then say what secret melody was hidden

In Memnon's statue which at sunrise played?
Perhaps thou wert a priest-if so, my struggles
Are vain-Egyptian priests ne'er owned their juggles."

Perchance that very hand, now pinioned flat,

Has hob-a-nobbed with Pharaoh, glass to glass;

1 Sphinx-an Egyptian monster, with a virgin's face and a quadruped's body; said to have proposed riddles, and destroyed those that could not solve them. 2 Cheops, Cephrenes-two ancient kings of Egypt, to whom Herodotus attributes the building of the two largest pyramids.

3 Pompey's pillar-The column at Alexandria, which is thus named, is supposed to have been erected long after Pompey's time-in the reign of Diocletian. The name it bears is, therefore, a misnomer.

4 Thebes-in the Bible called No, or No Ammon--was situated in Upper Egypt. Homer (Iliad ix, 381, &c.) calls it "the city with a hundred gates," each of which, he says, sent out two hundred men, with horses and chariots.

5 Mason-i. e. a freemason; one of a company or society of men calling themselves by that name, and professing to maintain, as a condition of membership, some awful secret, which they are sworn never to divulge.

6 Secret melody, &c.-It seems clear that at sun-rise certain sounds did issue from a particular statue, called Memnon's head, but in what manner the Egyptian priests contrived this "juggle"-for such it doubtless was-is unknown.

"Juggle-probably from the Latin jocus, a joke or sport, whence joculare, joculator, and the old English, jocular and jogelour, (used by Chaucer,) one who plays tricks or makes sport; hence the noun, juggle.

8 Hob-a-nob-supposed to be the same as hab or nab, i. e. have or not have, formerly used in asking a person whether he would have a glass of wine or not, or as above, applied to the fact of drinking together.

Or dropt a halfpenny in Homer's hat,

Or doffed1 thine own to let Queen Dido pass,
Or held, by Solomon's own invitation,
A torch at the great Temple's dedication.

I need not ask thee if that hand, when armed,
Has any Roman soldier mauled2 and knuckled,
For thou wert dead, and buried, and embalmed,
Ere Romulus and Remus had been suckled!
Antiquity appears to have begun

Long after thy primeval race was run.

Thou couldst develope, if that withered tongue
Might tell us what those sightless orbs have seen,
How the world looked when it was fresh and young,
And the great Deluge still had left it green;
Or was it then so old, that History's pages
Contained no record of its early ages?

Still silent, incommunicative elf?

Art sworn to secrecy? then keep thy vows;
But, prythee, tell us something of thyself,
Reveal the secrets of thy prison-house!

Since in the world of spirits thou hast slumbered,
What hast thou seen, what strange adventures numbered?

Since first thy form was in this box extended,

We have, above-ground, seen some strange mutations;
The Roman empire has begun and ended,

New worlds have risen-we have lost old nations,
And countless kings have into dust been humbled,
While not a fragment of thy flesh has crumbled.

Didst thou not hear the pother3 o'er thy head,
When the great Persian conqueror, Cambyses,

1 Doff-to do off, or put off, as don, is to do on, or put on, and dout, to do out, or put out.

2 Mauled to maul is to beat with a mall or large hammer, or in a secondary sense, to beat severely, so as to occasion bruises.

3 Pother-same as pudder or powder, dust, as raised by a horse running swiftly. Shakspere (in Lear) writes:

"Let the great Gods,

That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads,
Find out their enemies now."