THE TROUBADOUR'S SONG.

"Thine hour is come, and the stake is set," The Soldan cried to the captive knight, "And the sons of the Prophet in throngs are met To gaze on the fearful sight.

"But be our faith by thy lips professed,

The faith of Mecca's shrine,

Cast down the red-cross that marks thy vest,
And life shall yet be thine."

'I have seen the flow of my bosom's blood,
And gazed with undaunted eye;

I have borne the bright cross through fire and flood And think'st thou I fear to die?

"I have stood where thousands, by Salem's towers, Have fallen for the name Divine;

And the faith that cheered their closing hours
Shall be the light of mine."

"Thus wilt thou die in the pride of health,
And the glow of youth's fresh bloom?

Thou art offered life, and pomp, and wealth,
Or torture and the tomb."

"I have been where the crown of thorns was twined For a dying Saviour's brow;

He spurned the treasures that lure mankind,

And I reject them now!"

"Art thou the son of a noble line

In a land that is fair and blest?

And doth not thy spirit, proud captive! pine,
Again on its shores to rest?

"Thine own is the choice to hail once more
The soil of thy father's birth,

Or to sleep, when thy lingering pangs are o'er,
Forgotten in foreign earth."

"Oh! fair are the vine-clad hills that rise
In the country of my love;

But yet, though cloudless my native skies,
There's a brighter clime above!

The bard hath paused-for another tone
Blends with the music of his own;

And his heart beats high with hope again,
As a well-known voice prolongs the strain.
"Are there none within thy father's hall,
Far o'er the wide blue main,

Young Christian! left to deplore thy fall
With sorrow deep and vain?"

"There are hearts that still, through all the past, Unchanging have loved me well;

There are eyes whose tears were streaming fast
When I bade my home farewell.

Better they wept o'er the warrior's bier
Than the apostate's living stain;

There's a land where those who loved when here,
Shall meet to love again."

'Tis he! thy prince-long sought, long lost, The leader of the red-cross host!

Tis he!--to none thy joy betray,
Young Troubadour! away, away!
Away to the island of the brave,
The gem on the bosom of the wave;
Arouse the sons of the noble soil,
To win their Lion from the toil;
And free the wassail-cup shall flow,
Bright in each hall the hearth shall glow;
The festal board shall be richly crowned,
While knights and chieftains revel round,
And a thousand harps with joy shall ring,
When merrv England hails her king.

["La défaite de Conradin ne devoit mettre une terme ni à ses malheurs, ni aux vengeances du roi (Charles d'Anjou). L'amour du peuple pour l'héritier légitime du trône, avoit éclaté d'une manière effrayante; il pouvoit causer de nouvelles révolution, si Conradin demeuroit en vie: et Charles, revêtant sa défiance et sa cruauté des formes de la justice, resolut de faire périr sur l'échafaud le dernier rejeton de la Maison de Souabe, l'unique espérance de son parti. Un seul juge provençal et sujet de Charles, dont les historiens n'ont pas voulu conserver le nom, osa voter pour la mort, d'autres se renfermèrent dans un timide et coupable silence; et Charles, sur l'autorité de ce seul juge, fit prononcer, par Robert de Bari, protonotaire du royaume, la sentence de mort contre Conradin et tous ces compagnons. Cette sentence fut communiquée à Conradin, comme il jouoit aux échecs; on lui laissa peu de temps pour se preparer à son exécution, et le 26 d'Octobre il fut conduit, avec tous ses amis, sur la Place du Marché de Naples, le long du rivage de la mer. Charles étoit présent, avec toute sa cour, et une foule immense entouroit le roi vainqueur et le roi condamné. Conradin étoit entre les mains des bourreaux; il détacha lui-même son manteau, et s'étant mis à genoux pour prier, il se releva en s'écriant: 'Oh, ma mère, quelle profonde douleur te causera la nouvelle qu'on va te porter de moi!' Puis il tourna les yeux sur la foule qui l'entouroit; il vit les larmes, il entendit les sanglots de son peuple; alors, détachant son gant, il jeta au milieu de ses sujets ce gage d'un combat de vengeance, et rendit sa tête au bourreau. Après lui, sur le même echafaud, Charles fit trancher la tête au Duc d'Autriche, aux Comtes Gualferano et Bartolommeo Lancia, et aux Comtes Gerard et Galvano Donoratico de Pise. Par un rafinement de cruauté, Charles voulut que le premier, fils du sécond, précédât son père, et mourût entre ses bras. Les cadavres, d'après ses ordres, furent exclus d'une terre sainte, et inhumés sans pompe sur le rivage de la Charles II., cependant fit dans la suite, bâtir sur le même lieu une église de Carmelites, comme pour appaiser ces ombres irritées."]

iner.

No cloud to dim the splendour of the day
Which breaks o'er Naples and her lovely bay,
And lights that brilliant sea and magic shore
With every tint that charmed the great of yore-
The imperial ones of earth, who proudly bade
Their marble domes e'en Ocean's realm invade.

That race is gone-but glorious Nature here
Maintains unchanged her own sublime career,
And bids these regions of the sun display
Bright hues, surviving empires passed away.

The beam of heaven expands-its kindling smile
Reveals each charm of many a fairy isle,

Whose image floats, in softer colouring drest,
With all its rocks and vines, on Ocean's breast.
Misenum's cape hath caught the vivid ray,
On Roman streamers there no more to play;
Still, as of old, unalterably bright,
Lovely it sleeps on Posilippo's height,
With all Italia's sunshine to illume
The ilex canopy of Virgil's tomb.

Campania's plains rejoice in light, and spread
Their gay luxuriance o'er the mighty dead;
Fair glittering to thine own transparent skies,
Thy palaces, exulting Naples ! rise;

While, far on high, Vesuvius rears his peak,
Furrowed and dark with many a lava streak.

Oh, ye bright shores of Circe and the Muse!
Rich with all Nature's and all fiction's hues ;
Who shall explore your regions, and declare
The poet erred to paint Elysium there?

Call up his spirit, wanderer! bid him guide
Thy steps, those siren-haunted seas beside;
And all the scene a lovelier light shall wear,
And spells more potent shall pervade the air.
What though his dust be scattered, and his urn
Long from its sanctuary of slumber torn,
Still dwell the beings of his verse around,
Hovering in beauty o'er the enchanted ground:
His lays are murmured in each breeze that roves
Soft o'er the sunny waves and orange-groves;
His memory's charm is spread o'er shore and sea,
The soul, the genius of Parthenope;

Shedding o'er myrtle shade and vine-clad hill
The purple radiance of Elysium still.

Yet that fair soil and calm resplendent sky
Have witnessed many a dark reality.

Oft o'er those bright blue seas the gale hath borne
The sighs of exiles never to return.

There with the whisper of Campania's gale
Hath mingled oft affection's funeral-wail,
Mourning for buried heroes-while to her
That glowing land was but her sepulchre.
And there, of old, the dread mysterious moan
Swelled from strange voices of no mortal tone!
And that wild trumpet, whose unearthly note
Was heard, at midnight, o'er the hills to float
Around the spot where Agrippina died,
Denouncing vengeance on the matricide.

Passed are those ages--yet another crime,
Another woe, must stain the Elysian clime.
There stands a scaffold on the sunny shore-

It must be crimsoned ere the day is o'er !
There is a throne in regal pomp arrayed,—
A scene of death from thence must be surveyed.
Marked ye the rushing throngs?—each mien is pale,
Each hurried glance reveals a fearful tale :
But the deep workings of the indignant breast,
Wrath, hatred, pity, must be all suppressed;
The burning tear awhile must check its course,
The avenging thought concentrate all its force;
For tyranny is near, and will not brook
Aught but submission in each guarded look.

Girt with his fierce Provençals, and with mien
Austere in triumph, gazing on the scene,
And in his eye a keen suspicious glance
Of jealous pride and restless vigilence,
Behold the conqueror! Vainly in his face,
Of gentler feeling hope would seek a trace:
Cold, proud, severe, the spirit which hath lent
Its haughty stamp to each dark lineament;
And pleading mercy, in the sternness there,
May read at once her sentence-to despair!

But thou, fair boy! the beautiful, the brave,
Thus passing from the dungeon to the grave,
While all is yet around thee which can give
A charm to earth, and make it bless to live;
Thou on whose form hath dwelt a mother's eye,
Till the deep love that not with thee shall die
Hath grown too full for utterance-Can it be?
And is this pomp of death prepared for thee?
Young, royal Conradin ! who shouldst have known
Of life as yet the sunny smile alone!

Oh! who can view thee, in the pride and bloom
Of youth, arrayed so richly for the tomb,

Nor feel, deep swelling in his inmost soul,

Emotions tyranny may ne'er control?

Bright victim! to Ambition's altar led,

Crowned with all flowers that heaven on earth can shed,

Who, from the oppressor towering in his pride,

May hope for mercy-if to thee denied?

There is dead silence on the breathless throng,
Dead silence all the peopled shore along,
As on the captive moves-the only sound,
To break that calm so fearfully profound,
The low, sweet murmur of the rippling wave,
Soft as it glides, the smiling shore to lave;
While on that shore, his own fair heritage,
The youthful martyr to a tyrant's rage
Is passing to his fate: the eyes are dim

Which gaze, through tears that dare not flow, on him.
He mounts the scaffold-doth his footstep fail?