And lightly floats the pendent vine,

That swings beneath her slender bow, Arch answering arch, whose rounded line

Seems mirrored in the wreath below.

How patient Nature smiles at Fame!

The weeds, that strewed the victor's way,

Feed on his dust to shroud his name,

Green where his proudest towers decay.

See, through that channel, empty now,
The scanty rain its tribute pours,
Which cooled the lip and laved the brow
Of conquerors from a hundred shores.

Thus bending o'er the nation's bier,

Whose wants the captive earth supplied,

The dew of Memory's passing tear

Falls on the arches of her pride!

THE LAST PROPHECY OF CASSANDRA.

THE sun is fading in the skies

And evening shades are gathering fast;

Fair city, ere that sun shall rise,

Thy night hath come, thy day is past!

-

Ye know not, but the hour is nigh;
Ye will not heed the warning breath;

No vision strikes your clouded eye,

To break the sleep that wakes in death.

Go, age, and let thy withered cheek

Be wet once more with freezing tears;

And bid thy trembling sorrow speak,
In accents of departed years.

Go, child, and pour thy sinless prayer
Before the everlasting throne;

And He who sits in glory there,

May stoop to hear thy silver tone.

Go, warrior, in thy glittering steel,

And bow thee at the altar's side; And bid thy frowning gods reveal

The doom their mystic counsels hide.

Go, maiden, in thy flowing veil,

And bare thy brow, and bend thy knee; When the last hopes of mercy fail, Thy God may yet remember thee.

Go, as thou didst in happier hours,

And lay thine incense on the shrine; And greener leaves, and fairer flowers, Around the sacred image twine.

I saw them rise, the buried dead, –

From marble tomb and grassy mound;

I heard the spirits' printless tread,
And voices not of earthly sound.

I looked upon the quivering stream,

And its cold wave was bright with flame;

And wild, as from a fearful dream,

The wasted forms of battle came.

80

THE LAST PROPHECY OF CASSANDRA.

Ye will not hear,-ye will not know,
Ye scorn the maniac's idle song;
Ye care not! but the voice of woe

Shall thunder loud, and echo long.

Blood shall be in your marble halls,

And spears shall glance, and fires shall glow; Ruin shall sit upon your walls,

Ay, none shall live to hear the storm
Around their blackened pillars sweep;

To shudder at the reptile's form,

Or scare the wild bird from her sleep.

TO A CAGED LION.

POOR conquered monarch! though that haughty glance Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,

And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread

Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime; Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar, Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor!

Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk

Before the thunders of thine awful wrath;
The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar,
Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path!
The famished tiger closed his flaming eye,
And crouched and panted as thy step went by!

Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man

Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing; His nerveless arms thine iron sinews bind,

And lead in chains the desert's fallen king; Are these the beings that have dared to twine Their feeble threads around those limbs of thine?