There woman's voice flows forth in song,
Or childhood's tale is told,
Or lips move tunefully along
Some glorious page of old.

The blessed homes of England!
How softly on their bowers
Is laid the holy quietness

That breathes from Sabbath hours!
Solemn, yet sweet, the church-bell's chime
Floats through their woods at morn;
All other sounds, in that still time,
Of breeze and leaf are born.

The cottage homes of England!

By thousands on her plains

They are smiling o'er the silvery brooks,
And round the hamlet fanes.
Through glowing orchards forth they peep,
Each from its nook of leaves;

And fearless there the lowly sleep,
As the bird beneath their eaves.

The free, fair homes of England!
Long, long, in hut and hall,
May hearts of native proof be reared
To guard each hallowed wall!
And green for ever be the groves,
And bright the flowery sod,
Where first the child's glad spirit loves
Its country and its God!

THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE

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THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE

"I have dreamt thou wert

A captive in thy hopelessness; afar

From the sweet home of thy young infancy,
Whose image into thee is as a dream

Of fire and slaughter. I can see thee wasting,

Sick for thy native air."-L. E. L.

THE champions had come from their fields of war,

Over the crests of the billows far;

They had brought back the spoils of a hundred shores, Where the deep had foamed to their flashing oars.

They sat at their feast round the Norse king's board; By the glare of the torch-light the mead was poured; The hearth was heaped with the pine-boughs high, And it flung a red radiance on shields thrown by.

The Scalds had chanted in Runic rhyme
Their songs of the sword and the olden time;
And a solemn thrill, as the harp-chords rung,

Had breathed from the walls where the bright spears hung.

But the swell was gone from the quivering string :
They had summoned a softer voice to sing;

And a captive girl, at the warriors' call,

Stood forth in the midst of that frowning hall.

Lonely she stood; in her mournful eyes
Lay the clear midnight of southern skies ;
And the drooping fringe of their lashes low
Half-veiled a depth of unfathomed woe.

G

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MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Stately she stood-though her fragile frame
Seemed struck with the blight of some inward flame,
And her proud pale brow had a shade of scorn,
Under the waves of her dark hair worn.

And a deep flush passed, like a crimson haze,
O'er her marble cheek by the pine-fire's blaze-
No soft hue caught from the south wind's breath,
But a token of fever at strife with death.

She had been torn from her home away,
With her long locks crowned for her bridal day,
And brought to die of the burning dreams
That haunt the exile by foreign streams.

They bade her sing of her distant land-
She held its lyre with a trembling hand,

Till the spirit its blue skies had given her woke,
And the stream of her voice into music broke.

Faint was the strain in its first wild flow-
Troubled its murmur, and sad and low;
But it swelled into deeper power ere long,

As the breeze that swept o'er her soul grew strong.

66

They bid me sing of thee, mine own, my sunny land!

of thee!

Am I not parted from thy shores by the mournfulsounding sea?

Doth not thy shadow wrap my soul? In silence let me

die,

In a voiceless dream of thy silvery founts, and thy pure, deep sapphire sky.

THE SICILIAN CAPTIVE

99

How should thy lyre give here its wealth of buried sweetness forth

Its tones of summer's breathings born, to the wild winds of the north?

"Yet thus it shall be once, once more! My spirit shall

awake,

And through the mists of death shine out, my country! for thy sake;

That I may make thee known, with all the beauty and the light,

And the glory never more to bless thy daughter's yearning sight!

Thy woods shall whisper in my song, thy bright streams warble by,

Thy soul flow o'er my lips again—yet once, my Sicily!

"There are blue heavens-far hence, far hence! but oh, their glorious blue !

Its very night is beautiful with the hyacinth's deep

hue!

It is above my own fair land, and round my laughing

home,

And arching o'er my vintage hills, they hang their cloudless dome;

And making all the waves as gems, that melt along the

shore,

And steeping happy hearts in joy-that now is mine no

more.

"And there are haunts in that green land-oh! who may dream or tell

Of all the shaded loveliness it hides in grot and dell?

By fountains flinging rainbow-spray on dark and glossy

leaves,

And bowers wherein the forest-dove her nest untroubled

weaves;

The myrtle dwells there, sending round the richness of its breath,

And the violets gleam like amethysts from the dewy moss beneath.

"And there are floating sounds that fill the skies through night and day

Sweet sounds! the soul to hear them faints in dreams of heaven away;

They wander through the olive woods, and o'er the shining seas

They mingle with the orange scents that load the sleepy breeze.

Lute, voice, and bird are blending there,-it were a bliss

to die,

As dies a leaf, thy groves among, my flowery Sicily!

"I may not thus depart-farewell!

country! no!

Yet no, my

Is not love stronger than the grave? I feel it must be

so!

My fleeting spirit shall o'ersweep the mountains and the

main,

And in thy tender starlight rove, and through thy woods again.

Its passion deepens-it prevails!-I break my chain

I come

To dwell a viewless thing, yet blest-in thy sweet air, my home!"