Was one brief meeting theirs, one wild farewell?

And died they heart to heart?-Oh! who can

tell?

Freshly and cloudlessly the morning broke

On that sad palace, midst its pleasure-shades; Its painted roofs had sunk—yet black with smoke And lonely stood its marble colonnades:

But yester-eve their shafts with wreaths were bound

Now lay the scene one shrivell'd scroll around!

And bore the ruins no recording trace

Of all that woman's heart had dared and done? Yes! there were gems to mark its mortal place,

That forth from dust and ashes dimly shone! Those had the mother on her gentle breast,

Worn round her child's fair image, there at rest.

F

And they were all !-the tender and the true

Left this alone her sacrifice to prove,

Hallowing the spot where mirth once lightly flew,

To deep, lone, chasten'd thoughts of grief and love. Oh! we have need of patient faith below,

To clear away the mysteries of such wo!

JUANA.

Juana, mother of the Emperor Charles V., upon the death of her husband, Philip the Handsome of Austria, who had treated her with uniform neglect, had his body laid upon a bed of state in a magnificent dress, and being possessed with the idea that it would revive, watched it for a length of time incessantly, waiting for the moment of returning lifes

JUANA.

It is but dust thou look'st upon. This love,
This wild and passionate idolatry,

What doth it in the shadow of the grave?
Gather it back within thy lonely heart,
So must it ever end too much we give
Unto the things that perish.

THE night-wind shook the tapestry round an ancient

palace-room,

And torches, as it rose and fell, waved thro' the

gorgeous gloom,

And o'er a shadowy regal couch threw fitful gleams

and red,

Where a woman with long raven hair sat watching

by the dead.

Pale shone the features of the dead, yet glorious

still to see,

Like a hunter or a chief struck down while his

heart and step were free;

No shroud he wore, no robe of death, but there

majestic lay,

Proudly and sadly glittering in royalty's array.

But she that with the dark hair watch'd by the cold slumberer's side,

On her wan cheek no beauty dwelt, and in her garb no pride;

Only her full impassion'd eyes as o'er that clay she bent, A wildness and a tenderness in strange resplendence

blent.

And as the swift thoughts cross'd her soul, like

shadows of a cloud,

Amidst the silent room of death, the dreamer spoke

aloud ;