And his the feeling which, in guilt or grief,
Makes the sin venial, and the sorrow brief.
But there are hearts, that merry deck below,
Of darker error, and of deeper woe,

Children of wrath and wretchedness who grieve
Not for the country, but the crimes they leave,
Who, while for them on many a sleepless bed
The prayer is murmured and the tear is shed,
In exile and in misery, lock within

Their dread despair, their unrepented sin,
And in their madness dare to gaze on heaven,
Sullen and cold, unawed and unforgiven!

There the gaunt robber, stern in sin and shame,
Shows his dull features and his iron frame;
And tenderer pilferers creep in silence by,
With quivering lip, flushed brow, and vacant eye.
And some there are who, in their close of day,
With dropping jaw, weak step, and temples gray,
Go tottering forth, to find, across the wave,
A short sad sojourn, and a foreign grave;
And some, who look their long and last adieu
To the white cliffs that vanish from the view,
While youth still blooms, and vigor nerves the arm,
The blood flows freely, and the pulse beats warm.
The hapless female stands in silence there,
So weak, so wan, and yet so sadly fair,
That those who gaze, a rude untutored tribe,
Check the coarse question and the wounding gibe,
And look, and long to strike the fetter off,
And stay to pity, though they came to scoff.
Then o'er her cheek there runs a burning blush,

And the hot tears of shame begin to rush
Forth from their swelling orbs; she turns away,
And her white fingers o'er her eyelids stray,

And still the tears through those white fingers glide,
Which strive to check them, or at least to hide!
And there the stripling, led to plunder's school,
Ere Passion slept, or Reason learned to rule,
Clasps his young hands, and beats his throbbing brain,
And looks with marvel on his galling chain.
O, you may guess, from that unconscious gaze,
His soul hath dreamed of those far-fading days,
When, rudely nurtured on the mountain's brow,
He tended day by day his father's plough;
Blest in his day of toil, his night of ease,
His life of purity, his soul of peace.
O, yes! to-day his soul hath backward been
To many a tender face and beauteous scene,
The verdant valley and the dark brown hill,
The small fair garden, and its tinkling rill,
His grandame's tale, believed at twilight hour,
His sister singing in her myrtle bower,
And she, the maid, of every hope bereft,
So fondly loved, alas! so falsely left,

The winding path, the dwelling in the grove,
The look of welcome, and the kiss of love,

These are his dreams; but these are dreams of bliss!

Why do they blend with such a lot as his?

And is there naught for him but grief and gloom,

A lone existence, and an early tomb?

Is there no hope of comfort and of rest

To the seared conscience and the troubled breast?

Oh, say not so! In some far distant clime,
Where lives no witness of his early crime,
Benignant Penitence may haply muse
On purer pleasures and on brighter views,
And slumbering Virtue wake at last to claim
Another being, and a fairer fame.

Beautiful land! within whose quiet shore
Lost spirits may forget the stain they bore;
Beautiful land with all thy blended shades
Of waste and wood, rude rocks, and level glades,
On thee, on thee I gaze, as Moslems look
To the blest islands of their Prophet's Book:
And oft I deem that, linked by magic spell,
Pardon and Peace upon thy valleys dwell,
Like two sweet Houris beckoning o'er the deep
The souls that tremble and the eyes that weep!
Therefore on thee undying sunbeams throw
Their clearest radiance and their warmest glow,
And tranquil nights, cool gales, and gentle showers
Make bloom eternal in thy sinless bowers.
Green is thy turf; stern Winter doth not dare
To breathe his blast, and leave a ruin there,
And the charmed ocean roams thy rocks around,
With softer motion and with sweeter sound:
Among thy blooming flowers and blushing fruit
The whispering of young birds is never mute,
And never doth the streamlet cease to well
Through its old channel in the hidden dell.
O, if the Muse of Greece had ever strayed,
In solemn twilight, through thy forest shade,
And swept her lyre, and waked thy meads along

The liquid echo of her ancient song,
Her fabling Fancy in that hour had found
Voices of music, shapes of grace, around;

Among thy trees, with merry step and glance,
The Dryad then had wound her wayward dance,
And the cold Naiad in thy waters fair

Bathed her white breast, and wrung her dripping hair.
Beautiful land! upon so pure a plain

Shall Superstition hold her hated reign?
Must Bigotry build up her cheerless shrine
In such an air, on such an earth as thine?
Alas! Religion from thy placid isles
Veils the warm splendor of her heavenly smiles,
And the wrapt gazer in the beauteous plan
Sees nothing dark except the soul of Man.

Sweet are the links that bind us to our kind,
Meek, but unyielding, felt, but undefined;
Sweet is the love of brethren, sweet the joy
Of a young mother in her cradled boy,
And sweet is childhood's deep and earnest glow
Of reverence for a father's head of snow!
Sweeter than all, ere our young hopes depart,
The quickening throb of an impassioned heart,.
Beating in silence, eloquently still,

For one loved soul that answers to its thrill.
But where thy smile, Religion, hath not shone,
The chain is riven, and the charm is gone;
And, unawakened by thy wondrous spell,
The Feelings slumber in their silent cell.
Hushed is the voice of labor and of mirth,
The light of day is sinking from the earth,

And Evening mantles in her dewy calm
The couch of one who cannot heed its balm.
Lo! where the chieftain on his matted bed
Leans the faint form, and hangs the feverish head!
There is no lustre in his wandering eye,

His forehead hath no show of majesty;

His gasping lip, too weak for wail or prayer,
Scarce stirs the breeze, and leaves no echo there;

And his strong arm, so nobly wont to rear
The feathered target or the ashen spear,

Drops powerless and cold! the pang of death
Locks the set teeth and chokes the struggling breath,
And the last glimmering of departing day
Lingers around to herald life away.

Is there no duteous youth to sprinkle now
One drop of water on his lip and brow?
No dark-eyed maid to bring with soundless foot
The lulling potion or the healing root?
No tender look to meet his wandering gaze?
No tone of fondness, heard in happier days,
To soothe the terrors of the spirit's flight,
And speak of mercy and of hope to-night?

All love, all leave him!-- terrible and slow
Along the crowd the whispered murmurs grow.
"The hand of Heaven is on him! is it ours
To check the fleeting of his numbered hours?
Oh, not to us,—oh, not to us is given

To read the book, or thwart the will, of Heaven!
Away, away!" and each familiar face

Recoils in horror from his sad embrace;

The turf on which he lies is hallowed ground,