That hold their iron sway within yon city,

The bloodiest!

MIRIAM.

Oh cease! I pray thee cease!

Javan! I know that all men hate my father;
Javan! I fear that all should hate my father;
And therefore, Javan, must his daughter's love,
Her dutiful, her deep, her fervent love,
Make up to his forlorn and desolate heart
The forfeited affections of his kind.

Is't not so written in our Law? and He
We worship came not to destroy the Law.
Then let men rain their curses, let the storm
Of human hate beat on his rugged trunk,
I will cling to him, starve, die, bear the scoffs
Of men upon my scatter'd bones with him.

JAVAN.

Oh, Miriam! what a fatal art hast thou!

Of winding thought, word, act, to thy sole purpose; The enamouring one even now too much enamour'd!

I must admire thee more for so denying,
Than I had dared if thou hadst fondly granted.
Thou dost devote thyself to utterest peril,
And me to deepest anguish; yet even now
Thou art lovelier to me in thy cold severity,
Flying me, leaving me without a joy,

Without a hope on earth, without thyself;
Thou art lovlier now than if thy yielding soul
Had smiled on me a passionate consent.
Go! for I see thy parting homeward look,
Go in thy beauty! like a setting star,

The last in all the thick and moonless heavens,
O'er the lone traveller in the trackless desert.
Go! if this dark and miserable earth

Do jealously refuse us place for meeting,

There is a heaven for those who trust in Christ.
Farewell!

And thou return'st!—

MIRIAM.

I had forgot

The fruit, the wine- -Oh! when I part from thee, How can I think of ought but thy last words!

JAVAN.

Bless thee! but we may meet again even here!
Thou look'st consent, I see it through thy tears.
Yet once again that cold sad word, Farewell!

The House of Simon.

MIRIAM.

Oh God! thou surely dost approve mine act,
For thou didst bid thy soft and silver moon
To light me back upon my intricate way.

Even o'er each shadowy thing at which I trembled
She pour'd a sober beauty, and my terror

Was mingled with a sense of calm delight.

How changed that way! when yet a laughing child, It was my sport to thread that broken stair

That from our house leads down into the vale,
By which, in ancient days, the maidens stole
To bathe in the cool fountain's secret waters.
In each wild olive trunk, and twisted root
Of sycamore, with ivy overgrown,

I have nestled, and the flowers would seem to wel

come me.

I loved it with a child's capricious love,
Because none knew it but myself. Its loneliness
I loved, for still my sole companions there,
The doves, sate murmuring in the noonday sun.
Ah! now there broods no bird of peace and love!
Even as I pass'd a sullen vulture rose,

And heavily it flapp'd its huge wings o'er me,
As though o'ergorged with blood of Israel.

Miriam, Salone.

Sister, not yet at rest?

MIRIAM.

SALONE.

At rest! at rest!

The wretched and the desperate, let them court
The dull, the dreamless, the unconscious sleep,
To lap them in its stagnant lethargy.

But oh! the bright, the rapturous disturbances
That break my haunted slumbers! Fast they come,
They croud around my couch, and all my chamber
Is radiant with them. There I lie and bask
In their glad promise, till the oppressed spirit
Can bear no more, and I come forth to breathe
The cool free air.

MIRIAM.

Dear sister, in our state

So dark, so hopeless, dreaming still of glory!

SALONE.

Low-minded Miriam! I tell thee, oft

I have told thee, nightly do the visitations Break on my gifted sight, more golden bright Than the rich morn on Carmel. Of their shape, Sister, I know not; this I only know,

That they pour o'er me like the restless waters