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All her smiles and glances wake,
And those opening lips such music make,

As rings from the heart of the hunter boy,

When he springs through the forest, fleet and proud,
And the startled echoes are many and loud,
Loud as the burst of a nation's joy,

In the rocks that girdle the mountain lake.

Now for the touch of a master hand-
See! how she poises and waves her wand,
As if in a dream of busy thought

She sought for visions and found them not.
Now it rises-and look-what power
Springs to life, as she lifts her rod-
Is it a hero, or visible god,

Or bard in his rapt and gifted hour?
What a lofty and glorious brow,
Bent like a temple's towering arch,
As if that a wondering world might march
To the altar of mind, and kneel and bow ;-
And then what a deep and spirited eye,
Quick as a quivering orb of fire,
Changing and shifting from love to ire,
Like the lights in a summer-evening sky ;—
Then the living and breathing grace
Sent from the whole of that magic face,
The eloquent play of his lips, the smile
Sporting in sunbeams there awhile,
Then with the throb of passion pressed
Like a shivering leaf that cannot rest,-

And still as a lake when it waits a storm,
That wraps the mountain's giant form,

When they lie in the shade of his awful frown,
And his gathered brows are wrinkled down.

Such the visions that breathe and live,
The playful touch of her wand can give.

RIZPAH.

And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the Lord; and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of the harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley-harvest.

And Rizpah, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until the water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest upon them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night.

2 Samuel, xxi. 9. 10,

Hear what the desolate Rizpah said,

As on Gibeah's rocks she watched the dead.
The sons of Michel before her lay,

And her own fair children, dearer than they :

By a death of shame they all had died,

And were stretched on the bare rock, side by side.
And Rizpah, once the loveliest of all

That bloomed and smiled in the court of Saul,
All wasted with watching and famine now,
And scorched by the sun her haggard brow,

L

Sat, mournfully guarding their corpses there,
And murmured a strange and solemn air;
The low, heart-broken, and wailing strain
Of a mother that mourns her children slain.

I have made the crags my home, and spread On their desert backs my sackcloth bed; I have eaten the bitter herb of the rocks, And drank the midnight dew in my locks;

I have wept till I could not weep, and the pain
Of my burning eyeballs went to my brain.
Seven blackened corpses before me lie,

In the blaze of the sun and the winds of the sky.
I have watched them through the burning day,
And driven the vulture and raven away;
And the cormorant wheeled in circles round,
Yet feared to alight on the guarded ground.
And, when the shadows of twilight came,
I have seen the hyena's eyes of flame,
And heard at my side his stealthy tread,
But aye at my shout the savage fled;
And I threw the lighted brand, to fright
The jackal and wolf that yelled in the night.

Ye were foully murdered, my hapless sons, By the hands of wicked and cruel ones; Ye fell, in your fresh and blooming prime, All innocent, for your father's crime. He sinned-but he paid the price of his guilt When his blood by a nameless hand was spilt ;

When he strove with the heathen host in vain,
And fell with the flower of his people slain,
And the sceptre his children's hands should sway
From his injured lineage passed away.

But I hoped that the cottage roof would be A safe retreat for my sons and me;

And that while they ripened to manhood fast,

They should wean my thoughts from the woes of the past.
And my bosom swelled with a mother's pride,
As they stood in their beauty and strength by my side,
Tall like their sire, with the princely grace
Of his stately form, and the bloom of his face.

Oh, what an hour for a mother's heart,
When the pitiless ruffians tore us apart!
When I clasped their knees and wept and prayed,
And struggled and shrieked to heaven for aid,
And clung to my sons with desperate strength,
Till the murderers loosed my hold at length,
And bore me breathless and faint aside,
In their iron arms, while my children died.
They died-and the mother that gave them birth
Is forbid to cover their bones with earth.

The barley harvest was nodding white, When my children died on the rocky height, And the reapers were singing on hill and plain, When I came to my task of sorrow and pain. But now the season of rain is nigh,

The sun is dim in the thickening sky,

And the clouds in sullen darkness rest,
When he hides his light at the doors of the west.
I hear the howl of the wind that brings
The long drear storm on its heavy wings;
But the howling wind, and the driving rain
Will beat on my houseless head in vain :
I shall stay, from my murdered sons to scare
The beasts of the desert, and fowls of the air.

SONNET.

Why have ye lingered on your way so long,
Bright visions, who were wont to hear my call,
And with the harmony of dance and song
Keep round my dreamy couch a festival?
Where are ye gone with all your eyes of light,
And where the flowery voice I loved to hear,
When, through the silent watches of the night,
Ye whispered like an angel in my ear?—
O! fly not with the rapid wing of time,
But with your ancient votary kindly stay,
And while the loftier dreams that rose sublime
In years of higher hope, have flown away,
O! with the colours of a softer clime,
Give your last touches to the dying day.

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