Melodious in its fleeting beauty dim,
The Lady of the Sea!

O weak of faith!

Who, in that desolation of her soul,

Turn'd not to God, and to the Son of God,

And in their Word found joy. She turn'd to both,
Prostrate; but both refused to hear her cry.
From the deaf earth, and the remorseless sea,
Her misery now asked nothing; but of heaven

She asked for peace; and there did come from heaven

No answer; then she prayed imploringly

For death, and stronger in her bosom burned

The fire of life; all prayers were heard but hers;

Of all poor creatures she alone was left

To pine unpitied with a broken heart!

She clasped, she kissed, and when that she could weep,
With tears she washed the crucifix; but cold,
Oh! cold and hard to lip and bosom now
That image! whose dear touch, once so divine,
Did fill her soul with bliss ineffable.
Then of God's very being, and his Son's,
Doubt grew out of despair. The Merciful
Was but a name-a mockery; Jesus' self
A mortal man, no more; the Bible black
With drear delusion; and the narrow house
Appointed for all living, dismal name

The grave! what was it but an earthern dark,
Vain tears aye swallowing up, and vainer prayers,
Still drenched and still insatiate; from whose jaws
Ne'er shall the dust, misnamed a soul, arise.

O mortal man! whose troubled days are few,
And yet can hold within their little span
Unnumbered miseries; or with one wild wo,
As if it were a ghost no spell can lay,

Not even the cross of Christ, may day and night
Be haunted, till the dreariness of Time
Doth seem Eternity; condemn not her
Who in her sore distraction thus denied

Her Saviour! He beside the throne in heaven,
Did pity her for whom on earth He died,
And sent two Blessed Spirits at her bed
To minister! Of mortal mould were they,
But innocent as saints, as angels fair.
And when, out of the windows of the cell
Of its insanity, her stricken soul

Look'd on their heavenly faces and their eyes,
After a little while, dismay subsiding
Into sweet awe, and awe into delight,
And then delight into exceeding love,
It was made whole! Then did Religion,
Like a scared dove returning to her nest,
Glide back into the silence of her heart.
Into diviner holiness revived

All thoughts that had been holy, and all things
That had been sacred into sanctity
More sacred still; and, as upon her knees
Weeping she sank before the Crucifix
Between her daughters, so she still did call
The duteous beings, all the Saints in heaven
Rejoiced to hear them at their orisons.

VISION FOURTH.

THE SISTERS.

Two Spirits at the childless widow's bed,
Childless no more, have by the pitying heavens
Been sent to minister; and where do they,
In hut or shieling, in the central gloom
Of woods, or on the mountain's secret top
Now linger? With bright rays of happiness,
Kindling a fire upon the poor man's hearth,
Or lending lustre unto nature's light,
Unto her shade a sweeter pensiveness?
For life and nature love their presence; life
Relieved by the white hands of charity,
And nature in her desert places made
Beneath their eyes to blossom like the rose!

Lo! down the glen they come, the long blue glen
Far off enveloped in aërial haze

Almost a mist, smooth gliding without step,
So seems it, o'er the greensward, shadow-like,
With light alternating, till hand in hand
Upon a knoll, distinctly visible,

The sisters stand awhile, then lay them down
Among a weeping birch-tree's whisperings,
Like fawns, and fix their mild eyes steadfastly
Upon the clouded loch!

One face is pale

In its own pensiveness, but paler seems

Beneath the nun-like braidings of that hair
So softly black, accordant with the calm

Divine that on her melancholy brow

Keeps deepening with her dreams! The other bright, As if in ecstasies, and brighter glows

In rivalry of all those sun-loved locks,

Like gold wire glittering, in the breath of joy

Afloat, on her smooth forehead momently

Kindling with gladder smile-light. Those dark eyes!

With depths profound, down which the more you gaze,

Stiller and stiller seems the spiritual world

That lies sphered in their wondrous orbs, beyond

New thoughtful regions opening far beyond,

And all embued with the deep hush of heaven.
There quiet clouds, there glimpses quieter

Of stainless ether, in its purity

There a lone star! But other eyes are swimming
With such a lovely, such a loving light,
Breathed o'er their surface, imperceptible

The colour of the iris lost awhile

In its own beauty, and then all at once

Perceived to be, as some faint fleeting cloud
Doth for a moment overshadow them,

Of that same hue in which the heaven delights,
And earth religious looking up to heaven
In unwill'd happiness; when Awe retires,
In some dim cave her mute solemnities
To lead along unwitness'd, and abroad
O'er hill and valley hymning as they go,
In worship of glad Nature, Joy and Love
Stand side by side upon the mountain-top.

Them roaming o'er the wilderness, the Bard Whose genius gives unto his native glens

A beauty and a glory not their own,

Peopling the mists with phantoms, the wild Bard
Whom Morven, in her sacred memories
Dreaming of Ossian, aye will link with pride
To that great Son of Song, saw from the cliff
Whence, like an eagle from his eyry, he
Look'd in his inspiration far and wide
O'er the black heather in its purple bloom;
And in his many-measured odes and hymns,
To sunshine calms and storms of thunder-gloom
Did celebrate their virtues, and the Forms

In which they were enshrined-oh grief of griefs!
That Heaven should ever steal them from the earth!

"Like the May-Morning,"-so that Poet sang In Gaelic lyrics untranslateable,—

"Is she the younger Sister, when the sun
With dropping flowers adorns his dewy hair;
And with a roseate robe of light, the God
Involves his silent feet how beautiful

Upon the mountains! She the while, his Bride,
Veil'd with fine shadows that may not conceal
Love blushes kindled by the genial eye
That overcomes all Nature, murmurs low,
As if awaking in her innocence

From sleep into a more delightful world

Than sleep e'er dreamt, a song that sounds at first
Like that of living water from some spring
Soft, softly welling, till her virgin fears
Becalm'd by her own gracious Luminary,
She unreluctant meets her lord's embrace
In their still cloud-pavilion, while from woods
And cliffs, and lochs and seas, fair flights of birds
Rise circling in the air around their bliss,
And the song-gifted, Nature's choristers,
In deep dells, half-way up the mountain-side,
All rustling restlessly, till earth and sky
Is music all, their hymeneal sing."

"Or look ye on the Rainbow"- -so he sang
That wild-eyed bard, sole-sitting on his rock,
There haunted by all loveliest images-
"Oh! look ye on the Rainbow, in its first
Exceeding faintness, like a rising Thought,
Or a fine Feeling of the Beautiful,
An Evanescence! So you fear must be
The slight-tinged silence of the showery sky,

Nor yet dare name its name; till breathing out
Into such colours as may not deceive,

And undelusive in their heavenliness,

O'er all the hues that happy Nature knows
Although it be the gentlest of them all
Prevailing the celestial violet,

To eyes by beauty made religious, lo!
Brightening the house by God inhabited,

The full-form'd Rainbow glows! Beneath her arch
The glittering earth once more is paradise;
Nor sin nor sorrow hath her dwelling there,
Nor death; but an immortal happiness
For us made angels! Swifter than a dream

It fades-it flies-and we and this our earth
Are disenchanted back to mortal life;
Earth to its gloom, we to our miseries.
So may that Virgin like the Rainbow die!"

Then sang the poet-" Different as is Morn

From Night, with day's bright joyance dreamt between
And Eve's dim meekness, yet, when summer treads
The pathway of the spring, the same in both

The spirit of pervading purity,

Their gentleness the same; even so is She,
The blue-eyed Sister with the golden hair,
In beauty kindred, as in birth, with Her
Whose locks are only darker than her eyes,
Where joy resembles grief! Then image Thou,
O Night! aye melancholy in thy bliss,
That raven-tressed Lady. Thou who walk'st
With silent steps the sky, then loveliest sure
For most serenely simple, when the moon
Needs no star-train to light thy visage up,
Herself, perhaps one planet burning near,
To Thee, oh Night! in thy still pensiveness
Sufficient beauty for the whole of heaven!

"And there are Rainbows, lady! like to thee.
Lo! on the soft spray of the waterfall,
The lovely lunar phantom! All at once,
No warning given by some uncertain light,
The Apparition spans the black abyss,
And it is lustrous; Fancy dreams she sees
A golden palace rise; the gorgeous walls
Are pictured o'er with mosses many-died;
Bright as in day the clustering wild-flowers hang,
Only their glory softer; and such trees
Outstanding there in green and yellow air,
As if their leaves and branches delicate

Were of that air composed, in some sweet clime
May well be growing, where no sunshine comes,
But bathed by moonlight in perpetual peace!
That Lunar Rainbow on the water-flow

Smiles, fades, and dies-and such thy doom may be."

Oh! mourn not, that in nature transitory
Are all her fairest and her loveliest things;
And frail the tenure as a web of dew
By which they hold to life. For therein lies
The might of the refulgent rose, the power
Of the pale lily's leaf. The sweetest smile
That glides along the face of innocence
Is still the saddest, and the sadness comes
From dim forebodings of an early death.
Those sudden goings-down into the grave
Of the young beautiful, do sanctify
The light surviving in the precious orbs
Of eyes permitted yet awhile to shine;
And fathers seeing in their daughters' eyes
A cloudless heaven of sweet affection,
Sometimes will shudder, as they think upon,
They know not why, a Maiden's Funeral!

Like Shadows in the sunshine, softening all
We look on, till we love it, and revealing

VOL. XXX. NO. CLXXXIII.

L

Fair sights in dimness only visible,

Now fall such mournful thoughts upon the heads
Of these Twin-Orphans, and their character
Opens before us in a holier light

Congenial with their beauty, both divine.
Orphans they have been since the hour of birth ;
Soon as their mother knew that they were born,
And as her eyes could see them, did she die.
Of seven bright brothers that for their country fell,
The brightest he who one short year before
Had made her his blest bride. A broken heart
She might have had; but of a broken heart
It was not that she died. Consumption prey'd
On her pure blood with a low-burning fire
Unquenchable, and nature's holy law,
For sake of that sweet offspring, did allow
The beatings of her heart to linger on,
After her pulse was imperceptible,

And some fear'd she was dead. The infants grew,
Flowers not untended, orphans though they were,
Their mother's mother was their guardian,
Into the loveliest children ever seen,

(Such whisper came from all who look'd on them) So like to one another in all things,

Lips, cheeks, eyes, forehead, figure, motion, voice,
That, when the one was absent, few could tell
The other's name; but when they smiling stood
Together side by side, and hand in hand,
Proud in their glee of such comparisons,
There was new beauty in the difference
Which even then was rather felt than seen,
And left to each an equal share of love.

But as the light of childhood waned away
From their expanding foreheads, the fair Twins,
No more before affection's eyes confused
In such intense similitude, stood out
In the clear air, each clothed with loveliness
Unto herself peculiar; liker still
Than other sisters, and at times as like
Almost as ever; most so when they pray'd;
And wondrous like when they together sang,
Each with a white arm on the other's neck,
The gladdest words to melancholy tunes,
Or listen'd to some story of distress,
Or gave together alms unto the poor.

Their guardian died, and in calm grief they gazed
Upon her grave, and then look'd up to heaven.
Oh! kith and kin! ye are but homely names,
Homely, and therefore holy. Few are they,
Alas! who in this hard world choose to care,
Themselves surrounded with all happiness,
Ever so little for the orphan's head.
Icecold the hand misnamed of Charity,
That while some common want it half relieves,
Doth chill the blood in the receiver's heart,
Making a sin of gratitude!