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The Traveller at the Source of the Nile.

The depths of that green solitude

Its torrents could not tame;

Though stillness lay, with eve's last smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile.

Night came with stars. Across his soul
There swept a sudden change:
E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal,
A shadow dark and strange

Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall
O'er triumph's hour-And is this all?

No more than this!

What seemed it now

First by that spring to stand?

A thousand streams of lovelier flow

Bathed his own mountain land!

Whence, far o'er waste and ocean track,
Their wild, sweet voices, called him back.

They called him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,

Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanced away;

They called him, with their sounding waves,
Back to his fathers' hills and graves.

But, darkly mingling with the thought

Of each familiar scene,

Rose up a fearful vision, fraught

With all that lay between-
The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,

The whirling sands, the red simoom!

The Effigies.

Where was the glow of power and pride?

The spirit born to roam ?
His altered heart within him died
With yearnings for his home!
All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.

He wept! The stars of Afric's heaven
Beheld his bursting tears,

E'en on that spot where fate had given
The meed of toiling years!-

O Happiness! how far we flee

Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!

THE EFFIGIES.

"Der rasche Kampf verewigt einen Mann:
Er falle gleich, so preiset ihn das Lied.
Allein die Thranen, die unendlichen
Der uberbliebnen, der verlass'nen Frau,
Zahlt keine Nachwelt."-Goethe.

W

WARRIOR! whose image on thy tomb,

With shield and crested head,

Sleeps proudly in the purple gloom
By the stained window shed;
The records of thy name and race
Have faded from the stone,

Yet, through a cloud of years, I trace
What thou hast been and done.

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316

The Effigies.

A banner, from its flashing spear,
Flung out o'er many a fight;
A war-cry ringing far and clear,
And strong to turn the flight;
An arm that bravely bore the lance
On for the holy shrine;

A haughty heart and a kingly glance—
Chief! were not these things thine ?

A lofty place where leaders sate
Around the council-board;
In festive halls a chair of state

When the blood-red wine was poured;
A name that drew a prouder tone
From herald, harp, and bard:

Surely these things were all thine own—
So hadst thou thy reward.

Woman! whose sculptured form at rest
By the armed knight is laid,

With meek hands folded o'er a breast
In matron robes arrayed;
What was thy tale?-O gentle mate

Of him, the bold and free,

Bound unto his victorious fate,

What bard hath sung of thee?.

He wooed a bright and burning star-
Thine was the void, the gloom,
The straining eye that followed far
His fast-receding plume;

The heart-sick listening while his steed
Sent echoes on the breeze;

The pang-but when did Fame take heed
Of griefs obscure as these?

Parting Words.

Thy silent and secluded hours

Through many a lonely day

While bending o'er thy broidered flowers,
With spirits far away;

Thy weeping midnight prayers for him
Who fought on Syrian plains,

Thy watchings till the torch grew dim-
These fill no minstrel strains.

A still, sad life was thine!-long years
With tasks unguerdoned fraught—
Deep, quiet love, submissive tears,
Vigils of anxious thought;

Prayer at the cross in fervour poured,
Alms to the pilgrim given—
Oh! happy, happier than thy lord,
In that lone path to heaven!

317

L'

PARTING WORDS.

"One struggle more, and I am free."-BYRON.

EAVE me! oh, leave me!

Unto all below

Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell; Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go, Too mighty in their loveliness. Farewell,

That I may part in peace!

Leave me !-thy footstep, with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,

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Parting Words.

Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,

Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear—
Oh! bid the conflict cease!

I hear thy whisper-and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bid'st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart:
Dear one! this must not be.

The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky—
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit's gaze
Thou art all earth to me!

Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine's breath, the murmur of the bee;
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,

Too much-and death is here!

Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?

Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray

From the dread hour so near!

If I could but draw courage from the light

Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!

-Not now! 'twill not be now!-my aching sight,
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,

Bearing all strength away!