And she had made a pipe of straw,
And from that oaten pipe could draw
All sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An infant of the woods.

Beneath her father's roof, alone

She seemed to live; her thoughts her own;
Herself her own delight;

Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay;
And passing thus the live-long day,
She grew to woman's height.

Ten thousand lovely hues!

With bud ing, fading, faded flowers
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.

He told of the magnolia spread
High as a cloud, high over head!
The cypress and her spire:

Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues, and seem
To set the hills on fire.

A military casque he wore,

With splendid feathers drest;

He brought them from the Cherokees;

The feathers nodded in the breeze,

And made a gallant crest.

From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
Ah no! he spake the English tongue,
And bore a soldier's name;

And, when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy,
He 'cross the ocean came.

With hues of genius on his cheek

In finest tones the youth could speak. While he was yet a boy,

The moon, the glory of the sun,

And streams that murmur as they run, Had been his dearest joy.

Ile was a lovely youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness

Was not so fair as he ;

And when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.

Among the Indians he had fought;
And with him many tales he brought
Of pleasure and of fear;
Such tales as told to any maid

By such a youth, in the green shade,
Were perilous to hear.

He told of girls-a happy rout!
Who quit their fold with dance and shout,
Their pleasant Indian town,

To gather strawberries all day long;
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.

He spake of plants divine and strange
That every hour their blossoms change,

Of islands, that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds.

And then he said, "How sweet it were
A fisher or a hunter there,
A gardener in the shade,

Still wandering with an easy mind
To build a household fire, and find
A home in every glade!

Even so they did; and I may say
That to sweet Ruth that happy day
Was more than human life.

Through dream and vision did she sink,
Delighted all the while to think
That on those lonesome floods,
And green savannas, she should share
His board with lawful joy, and bear
His name in the wild woods.

But, as you have before been told,
This stripling, sportive, gay, and bold,
And with his dancing crest

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roamed about, with vagrant bands!
Of Indians in the west.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky,
Might well be dangerous food
For him, a youth to whom was given
So much of earth so much of heaven,
And such impetuous blood.is
Whatever in those climes he fou
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart

found

A kindred impulse, seemed allied To his own powers, and justified The workings of his heart.

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought,
The beauteous forms of nature wrought,
Fair trees and lovely flowers;
The breezes their own languor lent:
The stars had feelings, which they sent
Into those gorgeous bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions linked to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share
Of noble sentiment.

But ill he lived, much evil saw...
With men to whom no better law
Nor better life was known;
Deliberately, and undeceived,
Those wild men's vices he received,
And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame
Were thus impaired, and he became
The slave of low desires:
A man who without self-control
Would seek what the degraded soul
Unworthily admires.

Forth sprang the impassioned queen her lord to clasp!

Again that consummation she essayed; But unsubstantial form eludes her grasp As often as that eager grasp was made. The phantom parts-but parts to re-unite, And re-assume his place before her sight.

"Protesilàus, lo! thy guide is gone!

This is our palace,-yonder is thy throne:

Learn by a mortal yearning to ascend Towards a higher object.-Love was given, Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end:

For this the passion to excess was drivenThat self might be annulled; her bondage prove

The fetters of a dream, opposed to love."

Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes reappears!

Round the dear shade she would have clung 'tis vain.

The hours are past-too brief had they been years;

And him no mortal effort can detain: Swift, toward the realms that know not earthly day,

He through the portal takes his silent way, And on the palace floor a lifeless corse she lay.

By no weak pity might the gods be moved; She who thus perished not without the crime

Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved, Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime, Apart from happy ghosts-that gather flowers

Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers.

Yet tears to human suffering are due;
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown
Are mourned by man, and not by man
alone,

As fondly he believes.-Upon the side
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained)
A knot of spiry trees for ages grew
From out the tomb of him for whom she
died;

And ever, when such stature they had gained That Ilium's walls were subject to their view,

The trees' tall summits withered at the sight; A constant interchange of growth and blight! *

The sun has burnt her coal-black hair; HER eyes are wild, her head is bare, And she came far from over the main. Her eyebrows have a rusty stain,

For the account of these long-lived trees, see Pliny's Natural History, lib. 16, cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesilaus see the "Iphigenia in Aulis " of Euripides.-Virgil places the shade of Laodamia in a mournful region, among unhappy lovers.