That you no more from hungry suppliant
Bending before your doors shall turn away,
Wrapped in yourself, as from Jove's ministrant
Upon this age-to-be-remembered day.

"Behold, you stand convicted at this word,
No doubt authentic in your heart had place,
You knew me by the deep voice that you heard,
You knew me by the anger of my face:
Plain reads the indictment; Jove an order sent,

You knew that from that high king it was come, But to weak pride your worthless heart you lent, And a large blessing lost, and ruined Rome.

"And shall not Jove his time, his manner elect Of giving unto man monitions kind?

May a vain king his utterance neglect

Because the prophet is not to his mind?

Or can lip-service, ceremonies vain,

Where human pride the prayerful soul o'ercrows, Buy any lethe-drop for such disdain

As this of yours, parent of wars and woes?

"For in each page of these now-cindered tomes

Was put a prophesy of future fate,

Which might have saved a hundred tottering Romes When wars were loud and foemen at the gate;

And high presagings how to keep a sphere

Whose conquest your late sorrow still may gain, Hung like a jewelled prize of worth most dear Upon Rome's bosom by a silken chain.

"Of this hope, bright and boundless, your weak mind Has robbed the ages. O! the utter loss ! Potential glory spilt upon the blind

Ocean of waste, where melancholy toss Upon the chilly-sobbing homeless wave

The wrecks of fleets which gaily left the port To find a timeless, waste, ice-girdled grave,Sorrow and solitude which passes thought.

"Can human destiny of such frail tissue

As a weak mind like yours, O king, be wove? Or Jove indeed, wise lord, permit the issue

Of human hopes on kings who worthless prove To hang, as on a rope of strands unsound?

Then dark indeed the path which man must tread On to the future's blank uncertain ground ;— Yet is he wise, of gods and men the head.

"Well may you weep. Such tears are jewels fit
For erring rulers; so weep on, O king;
This hour has seen your sin, O hallow it

Before it dies with plenteous sorrowing;

And all your life both with a humbler heart
Attend the gods' high sacrificial rite,

And more, be ready for Jove's voice to start

From heaven, from earth, in darkness or daylight.

"He speaks not oftenest perhaps when all

The listening congregation waits his word

Before the altar: faint his promptings fall,
Like autumn leaves to earth,—too oft unheard.
Next time his gift a sibyl may not bring,

Rather expect him in some secret place,

When to your silent heart sad thought take wing,
Or in the warning of a loved pained face.

"And now the remnant of my treasure take."
She ceased; and he, uplooking with a brow
Like that of one who has heard lightnings shake
The welkin, in a forest crouching low,
Obeys her, who at length the pain withdraws
Of her appalling passion and is gone.

For hours the whispering crowd that crossed the

doors

Saw the king musing, "silent as a stone."

SONNET.

IN the ripe heyday of the summer's height
A blighting sadness falls from cloudless skies,
And souls which inward peer with curious eyes
Find fairest dreams the prey of foulest night.
Allurement cheats, and like a bubble breaks,

Unstable even in memory, though in sight
How far out-matching absent fancy's might
To paint the contour of her roseate cheeks.
What broken work is this, which breaks the hearts
Of poets in their early manhood? Doom

For generous breath how hard, to leave the bloom Of fond enticing charm eye youth departs, From Juliet's garden through sad Elsinore

Driven to Cordelia's tomb on the lone moor.

ITHURIO.

IN Padua there lived long, long ago

A student, who was called "Ithurio";

The southern ear and speech shrunk from the name
He bare in the cold country whence he came,
Poor, eager, large of heart, o'er Europe wide
Knowledge to find, his longed-for noble bride;
Alone he travelled, and his scholar's eyes
In every ruined tower read histories;
Slow was his passage, for he still must stay
In many a town for many a weary day
And sell his precious book-lore for a crust;
O blithe and long he shouted when the dust
Of France fell from his shoon in Alpine grass,

And from the lofty summit of the pass

He spied the orange-groves of Italy

Steeped in the glory of her burnished sky,
And far away a rim of that famed sea

Whose murmurs have made nations wise and free