Cassandra Southwick

I've wandered wide from shore to shore,

And by the Holy Sepulchre

I've pledged my knightly sword
To Christ, His blessed Church, and her,
The Mother of our Lord.

'O faithless priest! O perjured knight!' I hear the Master cry;

'Shut out the vision from thy sight, Let Earth and Nature die.

In vain! This heart its grief must know,
Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow
The lover and the priest !

O pitying Mother! souls of light,
And saints and martyrs old!
Pray for a weak and sinful knight,
A suffering man uphold.

Dragged to their place of market, and

bargained for and sold,

15 Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!

Sore from their cart-tail scourgings, and from the pillory lame,

Rejoicing in their wretchedness, and glorying in their shame.

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Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there,And what a fate awaits thee !-a sadly

'Where be the smiling faces, and voices soft and sweet,

Seen in thy father's dwelling, heard in the pleasant street?

Where be the youths whose glances, the summer Sabbath through,

Turned tenderly and timidly unto thy To feel, O Helper of the weak! that Thou father's pew?

indeed wert there!

'Why sit'st thou here, Cassandra?-Be- I thought of Paul and Silas, within

Thy happy schoolmates gather around the warm, bright hearth;

Philippi's cell, And how from Peter's sleeping limbs the prison shackles fell,

50 How the crimson shadows tremble on Till I seemed to hear the trailing of an foreheads white and fair,

angel's robe of white,

On eyes of merry girlhood, half hid in And to feel a blessed presence invisible golden hair.

to sight.

Bless the Lord for all His mercies !-for the peace and love I felt,

Like dew of Hermon's holy hill, upon my spirit melt;

'Not for thee the hearth-fire brightens, not for thee kind words are spoken, Not for thee the nuts of Wenham woods by laughing boys are broken; 30 No first-fruits of the orchard within thy lap are laid, 55 For thee no flowers of autumn the youthful And I felt the Evil Tempter with all his hunters braid.

When 'Get behind me, Satan!' was the language of my heart,

doubts depart.

'O weak, deluded maiden !-by crazy Slow broke the gray cold morning; again fancies led, the sunshine fell,

With wild and raving railers an evil path Flecked with the shade of bar and grate

Cassandra Southwick

I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see,

How, from every door and window, the

people gazed on me.

And doubt and fear fell on me, shame burned upon my cheek, 65 Swam earth and sky around me, my trembling limbs grew weak:

21

Go light the dark, cold hearth-stones,— go turn the prison lock

Of the poor hearts thou hast hunted, thou wolf amid the flock !'

Dark lowered the brows of Endicott, and with a deeper red

O'er Rawson's wine-empurpled cheek the flush of anger spread;

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'O Lord! support thy handmaid; and 'Good people,' quoth the white-lipped from her soul cast out

The fear of man, which brings a snare,

the weakness and the doubt.'

priest, 'heed not her words so wild, Her Master speaks within her, -the Devil owns his child!'

Then the dreary shadows scattered, like But gray heads shook, and young brows

a cloud in morning's breeze,

And a low deep voice within me seemed

whispering words like these:

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knit, the while the sheriff read That law the wicked rulers against the poor have made,

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"Though thy earth be as the iron, and Who to their house of Rimmon and idol thy heaven a brazen wall, Trust still His loving-kindness whose No bended knee of worship, nor gainful power is over all.'

We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke

On glaring reach of shining beach, and shingly wall of rock;

The merchant-ships lay idly there, in hard
clear lines on high,
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Tracing with rope and slender spar their
network on the sky.

And there were ancient citizens, cloak-
wrapped and grave and cold,
And grim and stout sea-captains with
faces bronzed and old,

priesthood bring

offering.

kind words met my ear,—

-no

And on his horse, with Rawson, his cruel But I felt a hard hand press my own, and clerk at hand, Sat dark and haughty Endicott, the 'God bless thee, and preserve thee, my ruler of the land.

And poisoning with his evil words the A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a ruler's ready ear, pitying friend was nigh,105 The priest leaned o'er his saddle, with I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw

laugh and scoff and jeer;

it in his eye;

It stirred my soul, and from my lips the And when again the sheriff spoke, that seal of silence broke, voice, so kind to me,

As if through woman's weakness a warning Growled back its stormy answer like the

I looked on haughty Endicott; with weapon half-way drawn,

Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn;

The Lord shall smite the proud, and lay
His hand upon the strong.

Fiercely he drew his bridle-rein, and Woe to the wicked rulers in His avenging

turned in silence back,

hour!

And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode Woe to the wolves who seek the flocks to murmuring in his track.

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raven and devour!

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in But let the humble ones arise, the poor 145

bitterness of soul;

Thrice smote his staff upon the ground,

and crushed his parchment roll.

'Good friends,' he said, 'since both have

fled, the ruler and the priest,

in heart be glad,

And let the mourning ones again with robes of praise be clad.

For He who cooled the furnace, and smoothed the stormy wave,

Judge ye, if from their further work I be And tamed the Chaldean lions, is mighty

As, with kind words and kinder looks, he bade me go my way;

For He who turns the courses of the

streamlet of the glen,

And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men.

Oh, at that hour the very earth seemed

changed beneath my eye,

A holier wonder round me rose the blue walls of the sky,

A lovelier light on rock and hill

stream and woodland lay,

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.

The following ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends connected with the famous General M—, of Hampton, New Hamp

shire, who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. I give the story, as I heard it when a child, from a venerable family visitant 3.

DARK the halls, and cold the feast, Gone the bridemaids, gone the priest. and All is over, all is done,

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Twain of yesterday are one!

And softer lapsed on sunnier sands the Blooming girl and manhood gray,

waters of the bay.

Autumn in the arms of May!

Thanksgiving to the Lord of life! to Him Hushed within and hushed without,
Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout;

all praises be,

Who from the hands of evil men hath set Dies the bonfire on the hill;

His handmaid free;

All is dark and all is still,

10

'Nay, a dream,-an idle dream.'
But before the lamp's pale gleam
Tremblingly her hand she raises.
There no more the diamond blazes,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,—

45 Ah!' she sighs, 'her hand was cold!'

Broken words of cheer he saith,
But his dark lip quivereth,

And as o'er the past he thinketh,

50 From his young wife's arms he shrinketh; Can those soft arms round him lie, Underneath his dead wife's eye?