Woke and started up in affright,
And kicked and screamed with all her might,
And finally fainted away outright,

For she dreamed she had married the Devil!

HER MISERY.

Who hath not met with home-made bread, A heavy compound of putty and leadAnd home-made wines that rack the head, And home-made liquors and waters? Home-made pop that will not foam,

And tears are falling that catch a gleam So bright as they drop in the sunny beam, That tears of aqua regia they seem,

The water that gold dissolves in !

Yet, not in filial grief were shed

Those tears for a mother's insanity; Nor yet because her father was dead, For the bowing Sir Jacob had bowed his head, To Death-with his usual urbanity; The waters that down her visage rilled Were drops of unrectified spirit distilled From the limbec of Pride and Vanity.

Without relief, and without respect,
Like the fabled pearls that the pigs neglect,
When pigs have that opportunity-
And of all the griefs that mortals share,
The one that seems the hardest to bear
Is the grief without community.

How blessed the heart that has a friend
A sympathizing ear to lend

To troubles too great to smother!
For as ale and porter, when flat, are restored
Till a sparkling bubbling head they afford,
So sorrow is cheered by being poured
From one vessel into another.

That he "swindled, intrigued, and gambled.”

How he kissed the maids, and sparred with John,

And came to bed with his garments on;

With other offences as heinous-
And brought strange gentlemen home to dine,
That he said were in the Fancy Line,
And they fancied spirits instead of wine,
And called her lap-dog "Wenus!"

Of "making a book " how he made a stir,
But never had written a line to her,

Once his Idol and Cara Sposa :
And how he had stormed and treated her ill,
Because she refused to go down to a mill,
She didn't know where, but remembered still
That the Miller's name was Mendoza.

How he often waked her up at night,
And oftener still by the morning light,

Reeling home from his haunts unlawful; Singing songs that shouldn't be sung, Except by beggars and thieves unhungOr volleying oaths, that a foreign tongue Made still more horrid and awful!

How oft, instead of otto of rose,
With vulgar smells he offended her nose,
From gin, tobacco, and onion!
And then how wildly he used to stare!
And shake his fist at nothing, and swear-
And pluck by the handful his shaggy hair,

Now the Precious Leg while cash was flush,
Or the Count's acceptance worth a rush,
Had never excited dissension;
But no sooner the stocks began to fall,
Than, without any ossification at all,
The limb became what people call
A perfect bone of contention.

For altered days brought altered ways,
And instead of the complimentary phrase,
So current before her bridal-
The Countess heard, in language low,
That her Precious Leg was precious slow,
A good 'un to look at but bad to go,

And kept quite a sum lying idle.
That instead of playing musical airs,
Like Colin's foot in going up-stairs-

As the wife in the Scottish ballad declares

It made an infernal stumping.

Whereas a member of cork, or wood,

Would be lighter and cheaper and quite as good,

Without the unbearable thumping.

Perhaps she thought it a decent thing
To show her calf to cobbler and king,

But nothing could be absurder-
While none but the crazy would advertise
Their gold before their servants' eyes,
Who of course some night would make it a prize,
By a Shocking and Barbarous Murder.

But spite of hint, and threat, and scoff,
The Leg kept its situation:
For legs are not to be taken off

By a verbal amputation.
And mortals when they take a whim,
The greater the folly the stiffer the limb
That stands upon it or by it-

So the Countess, then Miss Kilmansegg,
At her marriage refused to stir a peg,
Till the Lawyers had fastened on her Leg,
As fast as the Law could tie it.

Firmly then-and more firmly yet-
With scorn for scorn, and with threat for threat,.
The Proud One confronted the Cruel:
And loud and bitter the quarrel arose,
Fierce and merciless-one of those,
With spoken daggers, and looks like blows,
In all but the bloodshed a duel!

Rash, and wild, and wretched, and wrong, Were the words that came from Weak and Strong,

Till maddened for desperate matters,
Fierce as tigress escaped from her den,
She flew to her desk-'twas opened-and then,
In the time it takes to try a pen,

Or the clerk to utter his slow Amen,
Her Will was in fifty tatters!

But the Count, instead of curses wild,
Only nodded his head and smiled,
As if at the spleen of an angry child;

But the calm was deceitful and sinister ! A lull like the lull of the treacherous seaFor Hate in that moment had sworn to be The Golden Leg's sole Legatee,

And that very night to administer !

HER DEATH.

'Tis a stern and startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving:
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife,
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and Death is living!

Ay, Beauty the Girl, and Love the Boy,
Bright as they are with hope and joy,

How their souls would sadden instanter, To remember that one of those wedding bells,

Which ring so merrily though the dells, Is the same that knells

Our last farewells,

Only broken into a canter!

But breath and blood set doom at nought-
How little the wretched Countess thought,

When at night she unloosed her sandal,
That the Fates had woven her burial-cloth,
And that Death, in the shape of a Death's-Head
Moth,

Was fluttering round her candle!

As she looked at her clock of or-molu,

For the hours she had gone so wearily through
At the end of a day of trial-

How little she saw in her pride of prime
The dart of Death in the Hand of Time-
That hand which moved on the dial!

As she went with her taper up the stair,
How little her swollen eye was aware

That the Shadow which followed was double!
Or when she closed her chamber-door,
It was shutting out, and for evermore,

The world-and its worldly trouble!

Little she dreamed, as she laid aside Her jewels after one glance of pride

They were solemn bequests to VanityOr when her robes she began to doff That she stood so near to the putting off Of the flesh that clothes humanity.

And when she quenched the taper's light, How little she thought as the smoke took flight,

That her day was done and merged in a night

Of dreams and duration uncertain

Or, along with her own,

That a Hand of Bone

Was closing mortality's curtain!

But life is sweet, and mortality blind,
And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind
In concealing the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil-
For this world is, to all, a stiffish soil-
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil
From the debts not due till to-morrow.

And still the golden light of the sun
Through her golden dream appeared to run,
Though the night that roared without was one
To terrify seamen or gypsies-
While the moon, as if in malicious mirth,
Kept peeping down at the ruffled earth,
As though she enjoyed the tempest's birth,
In revenge of her old eclipses.

But vainly, vainly, the thunder fell,

For the soul of the Sleeper was under a spell
That time had lately embittered—
The Count, as once at her foot he knelt-
That foot which now he wanted to melt!
But-hush!-'twas a stir at her pillow she felt-
And some object before her glittered.

'Twas the Golden Leg!-she knew its gleam!
And up
she started, and tried to scream-
But even in the moment she started-
Down came the limb with a frightful smash,
And, lost in the universal flash

That her eyeballs made at so mortal a crash, The Spark, called Vital, departed!

Spurned by the young, but hugged by the old
To the very verge of the churchyard mould-
Price of many a crime untold:
Gold! Gold ! Gold! Gold!

Good or bad a thousand-fold!

How widely its agencies vary

To save to ruin-to curse-to bless

As even its minted coins express,

77

All times and tides were lost in one long term Of stagnant desolation.

The wren had built within the Porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn-within its turfy mound-
The rabbit made his burrow.

The thistle and the stock together grew,
The hollyhock and bramble.

The bear-bine with the lilac interlaced,

The sturdy burdock choked its slender neighbor,
The spicy pink. All tokens were effaced
Of human care and labor.

The very yew Formality had trained
To such a rigid pyramidal stature,
For want of trimming had almost regained
The raggedness of nature.

The Fountain was a-dry-neglect and time
Had marred the work of artisan and mason,
Aud efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime,
Sprawled in the ruined bason.

The Statue, fallen from its marble base,
Amidst the refuse leaves, and herbage rotten,
Lay like the Idol of some bygone race,
Its name and rites forgotten.

On every side the aspect was the same
All ruined, desolate, forlorn, and savage:
No hand or foot within the precinct came
To rectify or ravage.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

PART II.

Oh, very gloomy is the House of Woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities which show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room

Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles, But smitten by the common stroke of doom, The Corpse lies on the trestles!

But House of Woe, and hearse, and sable pall, The narrow home of the departed mortal, Ne'er looked so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall, With its deserted portal!

The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding-sheet the maggot slept,
At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps had old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.

As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider's tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.

O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

Howbeit, the door I pushed-or so I dreamedWhich slowly, slowly gaped-the hinges creaking

With such a rusty eloquence, it seemed
That Time himself was speaking.

But Time was dull within that Mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners
That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners.

Those tattered flags, that with the open door, Seemed the old wave of battle to remember, While fallen fragments danced upon the floor Like dead leaves in December.

The startled bats flew out-bird after bird-
The screechowl overhead began to flutter,
And seemed to mock the cry that she had
heard

Some dying victim utter!

A shriek that echoed from the joisted roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aloof
It ceased its tale of murther!

Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,
The banner shuddered, and the ragged streamer-
All things the horrid tenor of the sound
Acknowledged with a tremor.

The antlers, where the helmet hung and belt,
Stirred as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The bloodhound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbled frame, And through its many gaps of destitution Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came, Like those of dissolution.

The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.

The subtle spider that from overhead Hung like a spy on human guilt and error, Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread Ran with a nimble terror.

The very stains and fractures on the wall, Assuming features solemn and terrific, Hinted some tragedy of that old Hall, Locked up in hieroglyphic.

Some tale that might perchance have solved the doubt,

Where, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the BLOODY HAND shone out,
So ominously vivid.

Some key to that inscrutable appeal,

Which made the very frame of Nature quiver;
And every thrilling nerve and fibre feel
So ague-like a shiver.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted