THE LEGEND OF THE HAUNTED TREE.

"DEEP is the bliss of the belted knight,

When he kisses at dawn the silken glove, And rides, in his glittering armour dight,

To shiver a lance for his Lady-love!

Lightly he couches the beaming spear;

His mistress sits with her maidens by,

Watching the speed of his swift career,

With a whispered prayer and a murmured sigh.

"Far from me is the gazing throng,

The blazoned shield, and the nodding plume;

Nothing is mine but a worthless song,

A joyless life, and a nameless tomb."

"Nay, dearest Wilfrid, lay like this
On such an eve is much amiss:

Our mirth beneath the new May moon
Should be echoed by a livelier tune.
What need to thee of mail and crest,

Of foot in stirrup, spear in rest?

Over far mountains and deep seas,

Earth hath no fairer fields than these;

And who, in Beauty's gaudiest bowers,

Can love thee with more love than ours ?"

The minstrel turned with a moody look
From that sweet scene of guiltless glee;
From the old who talked beside the brook,
And the young who danced beneath the tree :
Coldly he shrank from the gentle maid,

From the chiding look and the pleading tone;
And he passed from the old elm's hoary shade,
And followed the forest path alone.

One little sigh, one pettish glance,

And the girl comes back to her playmates now, And takes her place in the merry dance,

With a slower step and a sadder brow.

"My soul is sick," saith the wayward boy,
"Of the peasant's grief, and the peasant's joy ;
I cannot breathe on from day to day,

Like the insects, which our wise men say

In the crevice of the cold rock dwell,

Till their shape is the shape of their dungeon's cell;

In the dull repose of our changeless life,

I long for passion, I long for strife,
As in the calm the mariner sighs

For rushing waves and groaning skies.
Oh for the lists, the lists of fame!

Oh for the herald's glad acclaim ;

For floating pennon and prancing steed,
And Beauty's wonder at Manhood's deed!"

Beneath an ancient oak he lay;

More years than man can count, they say,
On the verge of the dim and solemn wood,
Through sunshine and storm, that oak had stood.
Many a loving, laughing sprite,

Tended the branches by day and by night;

And the leaves of its age were as fresh and green

As the leaves of its early youth had been.
Pure of thought should the mortal be

Who sleeps beneath the Haunted Tree;
That night the minstrel laid him down
Ere his brow relaxed its sullen frown;
And Slumber had bound its eyelids fast,
Ere the evil wish from his soul had passed.

And a song on the sleeper's ear descended,

A song it was pain to hear, and pleasure, So strangely wrath and love were blended In every tone of the mystic measure.

“I know thee, child of earth :

The morning of thy birth

In through the lattice did my chariot glide;
I saw thy father weep

Over thy first wild sleep,

I rocked thy cradle when thy mother died.

“And I have seen thee gaze

Upon these birks and braes,

Which are my kingdoms, with irreverent scorn; And heard thee pour reproof

Upon the vine-clad roof,

Beneath whose peaceful shelter thou wert born.

"I bind thee in the snare

Of thine unholy prayer;

I seal thy forehead with a viewless seal :