HIGH rolled the day—all smiling sheen,
With beams and bowers of ever-green,
Lay stretched in light the land;
Glowed to the sun's unclouded glow
The billows' breast, whose heavings slow
Came parleying towards the strand;
As if in reconcilement sweet,
To clasp and kiss the dark rocks feet,
And pardon and oblivion pray
For rude assault of stormier day.
The signal" ready!" instant flies;
Ship answering ship with ardent breath,
Rung out that prelude note of death,
And "ready!" all the line replies.
To quarters stood in lion-mood,
The Christian rulers of the flood.
Throbbed every breast; —each thought that came
Was thought of duty, or of fame;
And reckless brow, and burning eye,
Spoke careless choice to live or die.
The thrilling pause which battle knows,
Ere havoc hails the earthquake close,—
Such grim and deathly pause did pass,--
One shot the Moslem sent;-again,
And hush! forth-furnacing amain,
Twice, thrice an hundred throats of brass,
Like thunder-clap, and hurricane,
Fling blazing fire, and shattering shower
Round mole and rampart, mosque and tower;
Trembles the firm earth, based on rock,
Beneath the huge projectile shock:
As Etna's self whirled high through air,
Had poured his blazing entrails there,
In floods of flame-such flame as rolled
O'er Canaan's cities twain, of old;
Leap from their seats the alarmed hills, With all their woods, and cliffs, and rills; And the wide welkin, sea and shore, Remultiply the hollow roar.
The battle deepens, heavier squall
Envelopes man, and mast, and wall;
Like the tall palm beneath the axe,
Staggers each battlement, and cracks;
Down, down, the loose stones whirling go,
Crushing the Arab, screened below; -
Above, beneath, new thunders swell,
While under cope of smoke and shell,
The Moor, above his rampart's wreck,
The Briton on his reeling deck,
With equal daring, one and all,
Cheer to the volley-cheering, fall!
Encountering spheres of living fire
From either host alternate driven,
Through clouds careering high and higher,
Clash, burst, and thunder in mid-heaven!
And the red fragments mar the sight
With forked hideousness of light.
Thou wert too like a dream of heaven
For earthly love to merit thee.
WE parted, and we knew it was for ever
We knew it, yet we parted; then each thought And inmost feeling of our souls, which never
Had else been breathed in words, rushed forth and sought
Their sweet home in each other's hearts, and there
They lived and grew 'mid sadness and despair.
It was not with the bonds of common love
Our hearts were knit together; they had been
Silent companions in those griefs which move
And purify the soul, and we had seen
Each other's strength and truth of mind, and hence
We loved with passion's holiest confidence.
And virtue was the great bond that united
Our guileless hopes in love's simplicity;
And in those higher aims we meekly slighted
The shallow feelings and weak vanity
Which the world calls affection, for our eyes
Had not been caught with smiles, our hearts with sighs.
We parted (as our hearts had loved) in duty
To heaven and virtue, and we both resigned
Our cherished trust;-I all her worth and beauty,
And she the untold devotion of my mind;
We parted in mute anguish, but we bent
Lowly to Him whose love is chastisement.
It was, perchance, her spirit had been goaded
With suffering past its bearing—that her frail
But patient heart had been so deeply loaded
With sorrow, that its chords were forced to fail:
Severed by more than distance, I was told
Her heart amid its troubles had grown cold.
She rests in heaven, and I-I could not follow;
My soul was crushed, not broken;-and I live To think of all her love; and feel how hollow
Are the sick gladnesses the world can give.
I live in faith and holy calm to prove
My heart was not unworthy of such love.
New Monthly Magazine.
ALONG, along, thou gallant Ship!—
She walks the ocean well;
Her bowsprit in the flashing foam,
Her bow upon the swell.
Along, along, thou gallant Ship!—
She bravely rides the brine;
Her sails bright as the floating swan
In noon's unclouded shine.
The breezes bear her bravely on
Over the waste of waves,
Art's triumph, to the furthest shore
That father Ocean laves.
The symbol of the great and free,
The blue heaven o'er her head ;-
Like the wild wing of Liberty,
Her sails exulting spread.
From clime to clime, from line to pole,
Far sweeps her reinless prow;
A trackless thought, her course she steers
O'er plumbless gulfs below.
Along, along, thou gallant Ship;
Still fresh the breezes be
With which thou glidest along the foam,
A spirit of the sea!
New Monthly Magazine.
WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun,
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,—
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went:
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.
And so she moved under the bridal veil,
Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth ; -
And of the gold and jewels glittering there
She scarce felt conscious,-but the weary glare
Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
Vexing the soul with gorgeous undelight.
A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
Was less serenely fair- her face was bowed,
And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
Were mirrorred in the polished marble stair
Which led from the cathedral to the street;
And ever as she went her light fair feet
Erased these images,
The bride-maidens who round her thronging came, Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame, Envying the unenviable; and others
Making the joy which should have been another's
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