When forth, along their thousand rills,
The mountain people come,

Join thou their worship on those hills
Of glorious martyrdom.

And while the song of praise ascends,
And while the torrent's voice,

Like the swell of many an organ, blends,
Then let thy soul rejoice.

Rejoice, that human hearts, through scorn,
Through shame, through death, made strong,
Before the rocks and heavens have borne
Witness of God so long!

SONG OF THE SPANISH WANDERER.

PILGRIM! oh say, hath thy cheek been fanned
By the sweet winds of my sunny land?
Knowest thou the sound of its mountain pines?
And hast thou rested beneath its vines?

Hast thou heard the music still wandering by,
A thing of the breezes, in Spain's blue sky,
Floating away o'er hill and heath

With the myrtle's whisper, the citron's breath?

Then say, are there fairer vales than those

Where the warbling of fountains for ever flows?

Are there brighter flowers than mine own, which wave O'er Moorish ruin and Christian grave?

O sunshine and song! they are lying far

By the streams that look to the western star ;
My heart is fainting to hear once more
The water-voices of that sweet shore.

Many were they that have died for thee,

And brave, my Spain ! though thou art not free;
But I call them blest-they have rent their chain-
They sleep in thy valleys, my sunny Spain !

THE CONTADINA.

WRITTEN FOR A PICTURE.

NOT for the myrtle, and not for the vine,

Though its grape, like a gem, be the sunbeam's shrine ;
And not for the rich blue heaven that showers

Joy on thy spirit, like light on the flowers;
And not for the scent of the citron trees-
Fair peasant! I call thee not blest for these.

Not for the beauty spread over thy brow,

Though round thee a gleam, as of spring, it throw;
And not for the lustre that laughs from thine eye,
Like a dark stream's flash to the sunny sky,
Though the south in its riches nought lovelier sees—
Fair peasant! I call thee not blest for these.

But for those breathing and loving things-
For the boy's fond arm that around thee clings,
For the smiling cheek on thy lap that glows,
In the peace of a trusting child's repose-
For the hearts whose home is thy gentle breast,
Oh! richly I call thee, and deeply blest!

TROUBADOUR SONG.

THE warrior crossed the ocean's foam
For the stormy fields of war;
The maid was left in a smiling home
And a sunny land afar.

His voice was heard where javelin showers
Poured on the steel-clad line;

Her step was midst the summer flowers,
Her seat beneath the vine.

His shield was cleft, his lance was riven,
And the red blood stained his crest;
While she-the gentlest wind of heaven
Might scarcely fan her breast!

Yet a thousand arrows passed him by,
And again he crossed the seas;

But she had died as roses die

That perish with a breeze

As roses die, when the blast is come
For all things bright and fair:

There was death within the smiling home-
How had death found her there?

The deer across their greensward bound,
Through shade and sunny gleam;

And the swan glides past them with the sound
Of some rejoicing stream.

The merry homes of England!
Around their hearths by night,

What gladsome looks of household love
Meet in the ruddy light!

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 thev 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.

"I have dreamt thou wert

A captive in thy hopelessness; afar

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

Of fire and slaughter; I can see thee wasting,
Sick of 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.

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.

"THEY bid me sing of thee, mine own, my sunny land! of thee! Am I not parted from thy shores by the mournful-sounding 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,

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 faint. in dreams of heaven away;

They wander through the olive woods, and o'er the shining seas--
They mingle with the orange scents that loed 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! Yet no, my country! no
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!"

And her pale arms dropped the ringing lyre-
There came a mist o'er her eye's wild fire--
And her dark rich tresses in many a fold,

Loosed from their braids, down her bosom rolled.

For her head sank back on the rugged wall

A silence fell o'er the warrior's hall;

She had poured out her soul with her song's last tone :
The lyre was broken, the minstrel gone!