Last Rites.

By the drum's dull muffled sound,
By the arms that sweep the ground,
By the volleying muskets' tone,
Speak ye of a soldier gone

In his manhood's pride.

By the chanted psalm that fills
Reverently the ancient hills,

Learn, that from his harvests done,
Peasants bear a brother on

To his last repose.

By the pall of snowy white

Through the yew-trees gleaming bright;
By the garland on the bier,

Weep! a maiden claims thy tear-
Broken is the rose !

Which is the tenderest rite of all?—
Buried virgin's coronal,

Requiem o'er the monarch's head,
Farewell gun for warrior dead,

Herdsman's funeral hymn?

Tells not each of human woe?
Each of hope and strength brought low?
Number each with holy things,

If one

chastening thought it brings
Ere life's day grow dim!

79

80

The Wreck.

A

THE WRECK.

LL night the booming minute-gun
Had pealed along the deep,
And mournfully the rising sun
Looked o'er the tide-worn steep.
A bark from India's coral strand,
Before the raging blast,

Had vailed her topsails to the sand,

And bowed her noble mast.

The queenly ship!-brave hearts had striven,
And true ones died with her!

We saw her mighty cable riven,

Like floating gossamer.

We saw her proud flag struck that morn—

A star once o'er the seas,

Her anchor gone, her deck uptorn,
And sadder things than these!

We saw her treasures cast away,
The rocks with pearls were sown ;
And, strangely sad, the ruby's ray
Flashed out o'er fretted stone.

And gold was strewn the wet sands o'er,
Like ashes by a breeze;

And gorgeous robes-but oh! that shore
Had sadder things than these!

We saw the strong man still and low,
A crushed reed thrown aside;

Yet, by that rigid lip and brow,
Not without strife he died.

The Wreck.

And near him on the sea-weed lay-
Till then we had not wept-
But well our gushing hearts might say,
That there a mother slept !

For her pale arms a babe had pressed
With such a wreathing grasp,

Billows had dashed o'er that fond breast,
Yet not undone the clasp.

Her very tresses had been flung

To wrap the fair child's form,

Where still their wet long streamers hung
All tangled by the storm.

And beautiful, midst that wild scene,
Gleamed up the boy's dead face,
Like slumber's, trustingly serene,
In melancholy grace.

Deep in her bosom lay his head,
With half-shut violet-eye-
He had known little of her dread,
Naught of her agony !

O human love! whose yearning heart,
Through all things vainly true,

So stamps upon thy mortal part
Its passionate adieu—

Surely thou hast another lot:

There is some home for thee,

Where thou shalt rest, remembering not
The moaning of the sea!

81

F

82

The Trumpet.

THE TRUMPET.

HE trumpet's voice hath roused the land—

THE

Light up the beacon pyre!

A hundred hills have seen the brand,

And waved the sign of fire.

A hundred banners to the breeze

Their gorgeous folds have cast-
And, hark! was that the sound of seas?
A king to war went past.

The chief is arming in his hall,

The peasant by his hearth;

The mourner hears the thrilling call,

And rises from the earth.
The mother on her first-born son
Looks with a boding eye—

They come not back, though all be won,
Whose young hearts leap so high.

The bard hath ceased his song, and bound

The falchion to his side;

E'en, for the marriage altar crowned,

The lover quits his bride.

And all this haste, and change, and fear,

By earthly clarion spread !—

How will it be when kingdoms hear

The blast that wakes the dead?

Gertrude; or, Fidelity till Death.

83

GERTRUDE; OR, FIDELITY TILL DEATH.

[The Baron Von der Wart, accused—though it is believed unjustly— as an accomplice in the assassination of the Emperor Albert, was bound alive on the wheel, and attended by his wife Gertrude, throughout his last agonising hours, with the most heroic devotedness.]

"Dark lowers our fate,

And terrible the storm that gathers o'er us;

But nothing, till that latest agony

Which severs thee from nature, shall unloose

This fixed and sacred hold. In thy dark prison-house,
In the terrific face of armed law,

Yea, on the scaffold, if it needs must be,

I never will forsake thee."-JOANNA BAILLIE.

H

ER hands were clasped, her dark eyes raised,

The breeze threw back her hair;

Up to the fearful wheel she gazed—

All that she loved was there.

The night was round her clear and cold,

The holy heaven above,

Its pale stars watching to behold

The might of earthly love.

"And bid me not depart," she cried;

"My Rudolph, say not so!
This is no time to quit thy side-

Peace! peace! I cannot go.
Hath the world aught for me to fear,
When death is on thy brow?

The world! what means it? Mine is here---
I will not leave thee now.