The American Library of Art, Literature and Song

And forged their fetters into swords,
On equal terms to fight their lords,
And what insurgent rage had gained
In many a mortal fray maintained.
Marshalled once more at Freedom's call,
They came to conquer or to fall,
When he who conquered, he who fell,
Was deemed a dead or living Tell.

Such virtue had that patriot breathed,
So to the soil his soul bequeathed,
That wheresoe'er his arrows flew
Heroes in his own likeness grew,
And warriors sprang from every sod
Which his awakening footstep trod.

And now the work of life and death
Hung on the passing of a breath;
The fire of conflict burned within,
The battle trembled to begin.

Yet, while the Austrians held their ground,
Point for attack was nowhere found;
Where'er the impatient Switzers gazed,
The unbroken line of lances blazed;
The line 'twere suicide to meet,
And perish at their tyrants' feet.
How could they rest within their graves,
And leave their homes the homes of slaves?
Would they not feel their children tread
With clanking chains above their head?

It must not be! This day, this hour,
Annihilates the oppressor's power.
All Switzerland is in the field;
She will not fly, she cannot yield;
She must not fall: her better fate
Here gives her an immortal date.
Few were the numbers she could boast,
But every freeman was a host.

PARRHASIUS.

ARTIST AND CAPTIVE.

"PARRHASIUS, a painter of Athens, among those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man, and when he had him at his house put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint." -Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

HERE stood an unsold captive | 'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipped with a golden fire the many domes

in the mart,

A gray-haired and majestical
old man,

Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Chained to a pillar. It was Through which the captive gazed. He had
borne up

almost night,

gone,

And the last seller from his With a stout heart that long and weary day,
place had
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,
And not a sound was heard But now he was alone, and from his nerves.
but of a dog
The needless strength departed, and he leaned
Crunching beneath the stall Prone on his massy chain and let his thoughts
a refuse bone,
Throng on him as they would. Unmarked

Or the dull echo from the pavement rung

As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

of him,

Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,
Gazing upon his grief. Th' Athenian's cheek

He had stood there since morning, and had Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye

Passed on; and when, with weariness o'er- Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

spent,

He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,

Th' inhuman soldier smote him, and with
threats

Of torture to his children summoned back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.

The walls were hung with armor, and about, In the dim corners, stood the sculptured forms

Of Cytheris and Dian and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away

"So! let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick! my good pencil

now.

What a fine agony works upon his brow! Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and How fearfully he stifles that short moan!

true,

And like a veil of filmy mellowness
The lint-spects floated in the twilight air.
Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,

Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,

The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh; And as the painter's mind felt through the dim,

Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth With its far-reaching fancy, and with form And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl

Of his thin nostril and his quivering lip

Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"Hereafter'! Ay, hereafter !

A whip to keep a coward to his track. What gave Death ever from his kingdom back

To check the sceptic's laughter? Come from the grave to-morrow with that story,

Were like the winged god's, breathing from And I may take some softer path to glory.

his flight.

"No, no, old man! We die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe

away

Our life upon the chance wind even as they. Strain well thy fainting eye;

For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er, The light of heaven will never reach thee

more.

"Yet there's a deathless name,

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn,
And, though its crown of flame
Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars, I'd bind it on!

Ay, though it bid me rifle

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first,

Though it should bid me stifle

The heart to ashes, and, with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,
We look upon our splendor and forget
The thirst of which we perish. Yet hath life
Many a falser idol. There are hopes

The yearning in my throat for my sweet Promising well, and love-touched dreams for child,

some;

And taunt its mother till my brain went And passions, many a wild one; and fair wild

"All-I would do it all

Sooner than die like a dull worm, to rot, Thrust foully into earth to be forgot,

Oh heavens! But I appal

schemes

For gold and pleasure; yet will only this Balk not the soul: ambition only gives, Even of bitterness, a beaker full. Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream, Troubled at best; love is a lamp unseen,

Your heart, old man forgive. Ha! on Burning to waste, or, if its light is found,
your lives
Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken;
Let him not faint! Rack him till he revives. Gain is a grovelling care, and folly tires,

And quiet is a hunger never fed;

And from love's very bosom, and from gain,
Or folly, or a friend, or from repose-
From all but keen ambition-will the soul
Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness
To wander like a restless child away.

Oh, if there were not better hopes than these

Were there no palm beyond a feverish fame;
If the proud wealth flung back upon the heart
Must canker in its coffers; if the links
Falsehood hath broken will unite no more;
If the deep-yearning love that hath not found
Its like in the cold world must waste in tears;
If truth and fervor and devotedness,
Finding no worthy altar, must return
And die of their own fulness; if beyond
The grave there is no heaven in whose wide