Page images
PDF
EPUB

In the midnight still by the taper dim,

Up rose the wings of their heavenward hymn
To the ears of the listening seraphim ;—
Oh! 'twas a melting sight to see
The old man's tremulous exstacy,
And the upturned eyes of Aladine,

That beamed with such a wondrous shine,
Her spirit seemed to be sitting there,
And panting for its heavenly air,

Yet both to leave-e'en heaven to share-
A home already so divine.

In the dun midnight a fire was bright

For the wandering sail on that perilous sea,
That gleamed on the sand of her stormy strand,
When vain was labour and knightly pride,
In the thundering breakers, wild and wide,
In the whirlwind's howling obscurity.
Many a homebound red-cross kinght,
Many a palmer with travel grey,
Had blessed, Aladine! thy beacon height.
On many a captive's lone decay,
She poured the beams of Freedom's light;
Restored the children to the sire,

The husband to the trembling wife;
Sought out men ready to expire,
And smiled them back again to life.

Across the land, across the sea,

Her fame on many a shore they tell.

Echoing church and monastery

Shape to the chaunt and the pealing bell,

As they pray that her soul may be shielded well.
On Rudel's ear the story fell

With the thrill of a heavenly harmony,

No joy, no rest, henceforth had he

Till he goes like a monk to a sainted shrine

To worship the beauty of Aladine,

With her image in thought for his company.

But love is eager, and long the way,

And the days rolled, oh! so wearily!
And the midnight waned with a slow decay,

(For she ever is slowest to pass away
From those who sigh for her rival Day)
Till reason darkened, and on his eyes
Sat crowds of lovesick fantasies,
And the feverish web of a filmy maze,
Such as the shadowy robe of haze
That rests on burning summer skies.

Like the half-heard sigh of a leafless bough
For a rivulet frozen and dead below,

Or the whisper of clouds to a wind, that call
To moan for a moonbeam's funeral,-
Passed the sigh from Bertrand's breast,
His faithful friend, who o'er this rest,
This speechless trance of dreaming madness,
Ever bends with tireless eye,

As bends some angel's sculptured sadness
O'er a warrior's effigy.

Oft his rote he would awaken

To some air all joy-forsaken,
To some old and love-lorn ditty,
Some sigh-woven melody,
Breathing round the eyes of Pity,
Undulating mournfully.

Shades of clouds, the dim eyelashes
Of the silver looks of night,-
Waves, and countless moonlight flashes,
Echoes, faint in their affright,
Startled, hailed the unwonted lay,
That upon the wakened breeze,
Drifting, wandered far away,
Like a snow-wreath, whirling o'er
Its tempest-paved and glistening floor,
Above the hushed Borysthenes.

The dreariest woe at length will die,
And sleep among the things that were,
The beam of Hope's awakening eye
Will melt at last the touch of care;
Though every wave upon Life's sea

* The musical instrument of the Troubadours,

Goes by us with a chilling sigh,
Yet now and then we spy a haven
Of windless waters, calmness-paven,
And then it seems less sad to be
A sharer of mortality!

But Rudel's sickness waned not,
E'en when the weary vessel shot
Within the smooth Egyptian bay;
Senseless, voiceless, hushed he lies
Wan with his withering soul's decay;
Till-gently as after a sorrowing day
Tears into dreamings melt away,
With low, sad step, with heavenly eyes,
O'er which angelic Sympathies
A misty veil of tears had wrought;
The lady Aladine draws nigh,
And, weeping gazes on the eye,
That sunken, fireless, woe-distraught,
Wanders so unconsciously.

She took his hand, she o'er him bent
With a loving look on his love-woe,
As the mournful moon from the firmament

On her image looks in a stream below.
Then the mist fell off his glancing eyes,
Like the mist from a soul's when it espies
Its guardian angel waiting nigh,
Oh the morn of its immortality.
And in her touch such virtue lay,
That gentle thoughts, long fled away,
It brought once more into his breast,-
As April clouds to the sea restore
The glistering drops they stole before.
And hope and joy flew back to will
Some moments more of their unrest
Within their long forsaken nest.
Then ardent words beneath her smile,
Yet sadly boding, 'gan to rise,
As vapours that have sleeping lain
Upon the night-encurtained plain,
Melt upwards into morning skies.

[blocks in formation]

“O weep not, weep not,―e'en thy grief is vain,
I shall sleep now, though a tumultuous flood
Of wildest dreams whelmed my delightless brain
When last (how sick at heart!) calm sleep I wooed.
A shadow of thee was all the weary while
Flitting among the dreams, and now, at last,
Thyself beholding, I fall from thy smile

Into cold Death. O days! O nights gone past!
O misery-laden hours! O Sea! O Time!
Why was I borne so long upon your might,
Borne to this heaven-to this wished-for clime,
Then flung down, wrecked beneath the beacon-light,
Moaning to lie, till some upflowing tide
Sweeps me to nothing? O must I abide
Unresting in dim realms, down, far away,
Beneath the wings of the forgotten past,

And miss the light of thee, and Earth, and Day,
For swarming ages? Clasp! O clasp me fast!
For Death will be afraid to look this way,

If thou art by me.

O bend down those eyes

To fix the wavering spirit of my life!

Ah! look! What see I? Ye old fantasies—

Out! out! with your dark wild of shadowy strife—
I'm here-spell-fenced. I am your food no more!—
Thou hast thou slain, and canst thou not restore?
In whirling thousands on my brain they pour.
Save me! they glare more wildly than before.
Thou art not with them! Now I cannot see thee:-
Phantoms-nothing but phantoms, endlessly!
I sink! I fail! They press like billows on me.
There rises one, whose desolating breath
Beats to and fro a path his feet before.-
Ah! now I cannot feel thee any more!
How wintry cold I am! Methinks my brow
Should be some ice-girt mountain. Now! O now!
I well know who it is-tis Death-chill Death!
Death tearing me from thee-uch -dreaded Death!
Nay-not so dread in the reality-

Farewell! Farewell! My spirit will love thee!"

[blocks in formation]

On the sad breast of a last autumn leaf,
Whereon it sighed to fall from wintry skies,
That lingers for a little while, and soon
With wandering weary, melts in lonely grief;-
His love he found, and finding sinks and dies.

Pale and low, stiff and cold,

Lies the highborn Norman knight;

In the shroud his limbs they fold,

And they bear him down to the chapel grey,
Winding, winding, far away

From the gaisome light and air,
Down beside the dungeon-stair-

And beneath the torch's light,
Many a mass and many a prayer
Said the weeping Aladine.

There his armour hung, and there,
Close below, in touching line
By the trembling hermit hoary
Was engraved his name and story;
And beside that sacred spot
Aladine loved best to pray,
When the world, far far away,
In the midnight slumber lay,
Deeming that his soul in heaven

Had not all Earth's love forgot,
And might watch from thence, or even
Hovering bear her prayer of love,

And with it fly to worlds above.

ART. VII. LETTERS OF ISMENE.

ALL lovers of classic literature must be familiar with the story of Edipus and his ill-fated race. Who cannot recall with pleasure the time when the character of the heroic Antigone was first unfolded to him?

Firm of purpose, undaunted in her filial love, tender towards others, unsparing of herself, a true heroine, yet displaying throughout enough of the distinguishing marks of female character, and some of its weak

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »