THE EFFIGIES

Woman! whose sculptured form at rest

By the armed knight is laid,

With meek hands folded o'er a breast
In matron robes arrayed;

What was thy tale !-O gentle mate
Of him the bold and free,
Bound unto his victorious fate,

What bard hath sung of thee?

He wooed a bright and burning star-
Thine was the void, the gloom,
The straining eye that followed far
His fast-receding plume;

The heart-sick listening while his steed
Sent echoes on the breeze;

The pang-but when did Fame take heed

Of griefs obscure as these?

Thy silent and secluded hours

Through many a lonely day,

While bending o'er thy broidered flowers,
With spirits far away;

Thy weeping midnight prayers for him
Who fought on Syrian plains,

Thy watchings till the torch grew dim-
These fill no minstrel strains.

A still, sad life was thine !-long years
With tasks unguerdoned fraught—

Deep, quiet love, submissive tears,

Vigils of anxious thought;

Prayer at the Cross in fervour poured,

Alms to the pilgrim given

Oh! happy, happier than thy lord,

In that lone path to heaven!

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THE DEPARTED

"Thou shalt lie down

With patriarchs of the infant world-with kings
The powerful of the earth-the wise-the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre."-BRYANT.

I

AND shrink ye from the way

To the spirit's distant shore?Earth's mightiest men, in armed array,

Are thither gone before.

The warrior-kings, whose banner

Flew far as eagles fly,

They are gone where swords avail them not,

From the feast of victory.

And the seers who sat of yore

By Orient palm or wave,

They have passed with all their starry lore-

Can ye still fear the grave?

"We fear! we fear! The sunshine

Is joyous to behold,

And we reck not of the buried kings,
Nor the awful seers of old."

II

Ye shrink! The bards whose lays

Have made your deep hearts burn

They have left the sun and the voice of praise For the land whence none return.

THE DEPARTED

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And the beautiful, whose record

Is the verse that cannot die,

They too are gone, with their glorious bloom,
From the love of human eye.

Would ye not join that throng

Of the earth's departed flowers, And the masters of the mighty song, In their far and fadeless bowers?

"Those songs are high and holy,

But they vanquish not our fear:

Not from our path those flowers are gone-
We fain would linger here!"

III

Linger then yet awhile,

As the last leaves on the bough
Ye have loved the light of many a smile
That is taken from you now.

There have been sweet singing voices
In your walks that now are still;

There are seats left void in your earthly homes,
Which none again may fill.

Soft eyes are seen no more,

That made spring-time in your heart, Kindred and friends are gone before

And ye still fear to part!

"We fear not now, we fear not!

Though the way through darkness bends;

Our souls are strong to follow them,

Our own familiar friends!"

THE PALM-TREE *

IT waved not through an eastern sky,
Beside a fount of Araby;

It was not fanned by southern breeze
In some green isle of Indian seas;
Nor did its graceful shadow sleep
O'er stream of Afric, lone and deep.

But fair the exiled Palm-tree grew
Midst foliage of no kindred hue!
Through the laburnum's dropping gold
Rose the light shaft of Orient mould,
And Europe's violets, faintly sweet,
Purpled the moss-beds at its feet.

Strange looked it there! The willow streamed Where silvery waters near it gleamed;

The lime-bough lured the honey-bee

To murmur by the Desert's tree,
And showers of snowy roses made
A lustre in its fan-like shade.

There came an eve of festal hours-
Rich music filled that garden's bowers;
Lamps, that from flowering branches hung,
On sparks of dew soft colour flung;
And bright forms glanced-a fairy show-
Under the blossoms to and fro.

*This incident is recorded in De Lille's Les Jardins.

THE PALM-TREE

But one, a lone one, midst the throng,
Seemed reckless all of dance or song;
He was a youth of dusky mien,
Whereon the Indian sun had been,
Of crested brow and long black hair-
A stranger, like the Palm-tree, there.

And slowly, sadly, moved his plumes,
Glittering athwart the leafy glooms.
He passed the pale-green olives by,
Nor won the chestnut-flowers his eye:
But when to that sole Palm he came,
Then shot a rapture through his frame !

To him, to him its rustling spoke-
The silence of his soul it broke !
It whispered of his own bright isle,
That lit the ocean with a smile;
Ay, to his ear that native tone

Had something of the sea-wave's moan!

His mother's cabin-home, that lay
Where feathery cocoas fringed the bay;
The dashing of his brethren's oar-
The conch-note heard along the shore;
All through his wakening bosom swept-
He clasped his country's tree and wept !

Oh! scorn him not! The strength whereby
The patriot girds himself to die,

The unconquerable power which fills

The freeman battling on his hills,

These have one fountain deep and clear

The same whence gushed that childlike tear!

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