The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE WORLD'S
BEST POETRY

IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED

Editor-in-Chief

BLISS CARMAN

Associate Editors

John Vance Cheney   Charles G. D. Roberts
Charles F. Richardson  Francis H. Stoddard

Managing Editor

John R. Howard

JOHN D. MORRIS AND COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA

Copyright, 1904, by
John D. Morris & Company

JOHANN WOLFGANG von GOETHE.

Photogravure after portrait by Stieler.

The World's Best Poetry Vol. IX

Of TRAGEDY:
of HUMOR

THE OLD CASE OF
POETRY
IN A NEW COURT

By FRANCIS A. GUMMERE

JOHN D. MORRIS AND COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA

Copyright, 1904, by
John D. Morris & Company

NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.

——
I.

American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright are used by the courteous permission of the owners,—either the publishers named in the following list or the authors or their representatives in the subsequent one,—who reserve all their rights. So far as practicable, permission has been secured, also for poems out of copyright.

Publishers of THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.

1904.

The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis.—F. L. Stanton: "Plantation Ditty."

The Century Co., New York.—I. Russell: "De Fust Banjo," "Nebuchadnezzar."

Messrs. Harper & Brothers, New York.—W. A. Butler: "Nothing to Wear;" Will Carleton: "The New Church Organ."

Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.—W. H. Brownell: "Lawyer's Invocation to Spring;" J. T. Fields: "The Nantucket Skipper;" Bret Harte: "Dow's Flat," "Jim," "Plain Language from Truthful James," "To the Pliocene Skull," "Ramon," "The Society upon the Stanislaus;" J. Hay: "Banty Tim," "Jim Bludso," "Little Breeches;" O. W. Holmes: "Ode for a Social Meeting," "One-Horse Shay," "Rudolph the Headsman;" H. W. Longfellow: "The Wreck of the Hesperus;" J. R. Lowell: "America," "The Grave-Yard," "What Mr. Robinson Thinks;" J. J. Roche: "The V-A-S-E;" C. Scollard: "Khamsin."

The J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.—G. H. Boker: "Countess Laura."

Mr. David MacKay, Philadelphia.—C. G. Leland: "Hans Breitmann's Party," "Ritter Hugo."

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.—R. Bridges (Droch): "For a Novel of Hall Caine's."

Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.—Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "A Conservative."

II.

American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission, which for the present work has been courteously granted.

Publishers of THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY.

1904.

C. F. Adams; C. T. Brooks (Mrs. Harriet Lyman Brooks); F. G. Burgess; R. W. Chambers; N. H. Dole; S. W. Foss; I. Wallace; J. W. Riley.

THE OLD CASE OF POETRY
IN A NEW COURT.

BY FRANCIS BARTON GUMMERE.

Although hailed as queen of the arts and hedged about by a kind of divinity, Poetry seems to sit on an always tottering throne. In nearly every age known to human records, some one has chronicled his forebodings that the days of Poetry were numbered; and again the critic, or the Poet himself, has plucked up his courage and uttered a fairly hopeful defence. Yet even this hope has been absent from periods which now seem poetic in the highest degree. Michael Drayton could find scant consolation for his art, dedicating certain poems to gentlemen who "in these declining times.... love and cherish neglected poesy." The enemies of poetry are always alert, and often come disguised as friends. When, at the end of the Middle Ages, moralists ceased to attack the poets, there appeared the man of science, a far more formidable person; and, under cover of the dust and smoke in strong battle waged between these open foes, poetry has been spoiled of one cherished possession after another at the hands of a professedly ardent ally. Horace Walpole's alternative neatly implied the whole question under debate: "Poetry," he complained, "is gone to bed, or into our prose,"—an odd speech for one who helped to ring the romantic rising-bell. Bulwer, writing ponderously "On Certain Principles of Art in Works of the Imagination," was sure that Prose had come to be the only medium of artistic narrative. Malicious people point even now to a language which never had any prose, and yet has lost its splendid heritage of verse: barring Grillparzer, silent long before his death, Germany has not seen a poet for the last fifty years. But, answers the optimist, who knows what ambulando argument for poetry is not now preparing somewhere in the fatherland? And as for Bulwer, his ink was hardly dry when Tennyson began those charming and miscalled Idylls of the King. If epic poetry seems dead just now, it seemed quite as dead four hundred years ago in France. So this harmless war is waged. What comes of it all? What has been done? What progress? Other causes come up, find a hearing on the evidence, get a verdict more or less in agreement with facts, and go upon record; this case lies hopeless in chancery. Why must it wait there, along with all the old metaphysical questions, for a decision that never can be handed down? If one may do nothing else, one may at least take the case to a different court, demand fresh evidence, and appeal to another code of laws.

Before all things, it behooves both parties to this argument to come at the facts in the case.

Barring a threat or so of historical treatment, as in Macaulay's famous essay on Milton, writers who handle this matter of the decline of poetry invariably pass either into critical discussion of more or less value in itself, or else into amiable hysterics. To speak brutal truth, hysterics are preferred, and little else is recognized. It is all very well to say that the study of poetry has been put on a scientific basis; the mass of readers who are interested in poetry, the mass of reviewers,—and one finds this true in quite unexpected quarters,—care for no scientific basis at all. In other words, they exclude from their study of poetry a good half of the facts of poetry.

In any living science one begins by finding and grouping all the facts, high and low alike; and one then proceeds to establish the relations of these facts on lines of record and comparison. The facts of poetry should be conterminous with the whole range of poetic material; and when one faces this material, one has to do with an element in human life, although the ordinary writer seems to think that he degrades his subject by taking such an attitude. He searches for the cause and fact of poetry in a sphere outside of human life, removed from ordinary human conditions, and touching only an infinitesimal part of the sum of poetic material. True, there is nothing nobler than the effort to reckon with great poetry, and competent critics who succeed in this must always hold a conspicuous place in letters; but great poetry and the great critic are not all. Poetry, high or low, as product of a human impulse and as a constant element in the life of man, belongs to that history which has been defined of late as "concrete sociology"—the study of human society itself; and it is on this ground, and not in criticism, that the question of the decline of poetry must be asked and answered.

The task of poetics, as yet almost untried, is to make clear the relations between higher and lower forms. Like war, marriage, worship, magic, personal adornment, and a dozen other institutions of this sort, poetry is an element in human life which seems to go back to the beginnings of society. Trustworthy writers even say it was one of the more conspicuous factors in the making of society; and when one is asked whether poetry, that is, emotional rhythmic utterances, must be regarded as a decreasing factor in contemporary social progress, one faces a question of sociological as well as of literary interest, and one must answer it on broader ground than biographical criticism, in clearer terms than can be furnished by those old hysterics about genius. To treat the question as it is almost invariably treated, to make it an ingenious speculation whether any more great poets can arise under our modern conditions, whether Goethe, if he were born now, would not be simply a great naturalist, and whether Robert Browning or Huxley better solved the riddle of the painful earth,—all this is to keep up an unwholesome separation of poetics from vital and moving sciences, and to make the discussion itself mere chatter.

The advantage in this sociological study of poetry is that it can keep abreast of other sciences. The oars dip into actual water, the boat moves, whether with the current of opinion or against it, and the landscape changes for one's pains; anything is better than the old rowing-machines, or rather than the theatrical imitation of a boat, with the sliding scenery and the spectators that pay to be fooled. Moreover, it is wide scientific work, not laboratory methods, so called, like countings of words, curves of expression, and all such pleasant devices that rarely mount above the mechanical in method and the wholly external in results; in sociological poetics one is dealing with the life of the race and with the heart of man. F. Schlegel's famous word about art in general holds firm here; the science of poetry is the history of poetry, history in its widest and deepest sense. The futile character of poetic studies springs from that fatal ease with which a powerful thinker sets down thoughts about poetry, and from the reluctance to under-take such hard work as confronts even our powerful thinker when he is minded to know the facts. To get the wide outlook, one must climb; to get the deep insight, one must analyze and order and compare. Now the pity of it is that this outlook and this insight, this appreciation of a masterpiece and this knowledge of the vast material of which it is part, are not only rarely achieved in themselves, but are seldom if ever united. The great poems are studied apart; and as a group, more or less stable, they form what is known as poetry. Detached from the mass of verse, and so from the social medium where all poetry begins and grows, they are referred to those conditions of genius which can tell at best but half the tale; while that very mass of verse which one concedes to the social group, that unregarded rhythmic utterance of field and festival in which communal emotion—the agitating joys and sorrows of the common people—found and still finds vent, is left as a fad of ethnologists and folk-lore societies. But the material thus divided belongs together; each half should explain the other half; and such an unscientific rejection of material must take poetics hopelessly out of the running.

This plea for a more comprehensive range of material holds good not only in the discussion of poetry in general, its origins, history, future, but in the study of the great poem itself. Take something that every one reads, and even Macaulay's schoolboy studies—the Lycidas of Milton. Reader, critic, biographer, have long since come to terms with the poem; it stirs heart and mind, it belongs to the masterpieces, it voices the genius of Milton, it echoes Puritan England. Here one usually stops; but here one should not stop. Lycidas, as a poem, is the outcome of human emotion in long reaches of social progress; it is primarily a poem of grief for the dead, a link in that chain of evolution in rhythmic utterance which leads from wild gestures and inarticulate cries up to the stately march of Milton's verse and the higher mood of his thought. So far from degrading one's conception of great poetry, the comparison of rough communal verse should throw into strongest relief the dignity and the majesty of a poet's art. One has taken this poet from his parochial limits, and set him strongly lighted, at the front of a great stage, with its dim background full of half-seen, strangely moving figures; his song is now detached from a vast chorus of human lamentation, and now sinks back into it as into its source. In certain great elegies, as also in the hymeneal, this chorus actually lingers as a refrain. True, the individuals of the chorus are seldom interesting in themselves. The black fellow of Australia shall not soothe our grief with his howlings for his dead, nor even the Corsican widow with her vocero. But the chorus as chorus is impressive enough; it is a part of the piece; heard or unheard, it belongs with the triumphs of individual art. Somewhere in every great poem lurks this legacy of communal song. It may better be called the silent partner, without whose capital, at the least, no poet can now trade in Parnassian ware; and as for lyric verse, there the partner is not even silent. All amorous lyric, whether of German Walther or of Roman Catullus, holds an echo of festal throngs singing and dancing at the May. The troubadours come down to us with proud names, yet they are only spokesmen of an aristocratic guild; and this again was but a sifting and a refinement of the throngs which danced about their regine Avrillouse a thousand years ago. It was once lad and lass in the crowd; it comes to be lover and high-born dame at daybreak, with a warning from the watcher on the castle walls; then that vogue passes, with all its songs that seem to sing themselves; the situation has grown deplorably unconventional, and the note is false. Amorous lyric waxes mere grave, taking on a new privacy of utterance, and a new individuality of tone. It is now the subtle turn of thought, and not the cadence of festal passion, which sets off Lovelace's one perfect song from all its kind; yet, without that throb of passion, that rhythm as of harmonious steps, one of them a piece of human nature, and the other a legacy from the throng, Lovelace had never made his verses and there would be no lyric in the world.

Poetry is thus a genesis in the throng, then an exodus with the solitary poet, then—though this is too often forgotten—a return to the throng. At least it is so with the great poets. Not the poet, but the verse-smith, the poetaster, is anxious to deny his parentage in communal song, and to set for his excellent differences. He will daze the editor and force his way into the magazine by tricks of expression, a new adjective, a shock of strange collocations. In a steamboat on the Baltic I once met a confidential soul who told me of his baffled designs upon the vogue of modern fiction. He had written, it seemed, a novel without a woman in it; and he had printed this novel in red ink. "And I am not famous yet," he sighed. So with one kind of minor poet. He works through eccentricities and red ink. He is like Jean Paul's army chaplain Schmelzle, who, when a boy in church, was so often tempted to rise and cry aloud, "Here am I, too, Mr. Parson!" It is not so with the great poets, not so even with those poets whom one may not call great, but who know how to touch the popular heart. All the masters, Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe, even Dante, win their greatest triumphs by coming back to simplicity in form and diction as to the source of all poetic expression. Or, to put it more scientifically, in any masterpiece one will find the union of individual genius with that harmony of voices and sympathy of hearts achieved by long ages of poetic evolution working in the social mass.

If such a range of poetic material is needed even in criticism, how strictly must it be demanded in any question about the art as a whole! One may turn from history to prophecy; but poetry must still be studied even more rigidly in its full range and with regard to all human elements in the case. Because the communal elements, once so plain and insistent, now elude all but the most searching gaze, that is no reason for leaving them out of the account. Hennequin saw that simply for critical purposes one must reckon not only with the maker of poetry, but with the consumer as well; and the student of poetry at large must go still farther. It is after all only a remnant who choose and enjoy great poetry, just as it is only a remnant who follow righteousness in private life and probity in civic standards.

But what of the cakes and ale? What of the uncritical folk? What stands now, since people have come indoors, for the old ring of dancers, the old songs of May and Harvest Home? Does the lapse of these mean a lapse in poetry at large? Or what has taken their place? How shall one dispose of the room over a village store, the hot stove, the folk in Sunday dress, and the young woman who draws tears down the very grocer's cheek as she "renders" Curfew Shall Not Ring To-Night? What of the never-ending crop of songs in street and concert-hall, and on the football field, verses that still time the movements of labor and the steps of a marching crowd? What of homely, comfortable poetry, too, commonplace perhaps, but dear to declaiming youth? Only a staff cut from Sophoclean timber will support your lonely dreamer as he makes his way over the marl; but the common citizen, who does most of the world's work, and who has more to do with the future of poetry than a critic will concede, finds his account in certain smooth, didactic, and mainly cheerful verses which appear in the syndicate newspapers, and will never attain a magazine or an anthology. If singing throngs keep rhythm alive, it is this sort of poets that must both make and mend the paths of genius. Commonplace is a poor word. Horace gives one nothing else; but a legion of critics shall not keep us from Horace, and even Matthew Arnold, critic as he was, fell back for his favorite poem on that seventh ode of the fourth book,—as arrant commonplace as Gray's Elegy itself. Members of a Browning society have been known to descend earthward by reading Longfellow. If minor poets and obvious, popular poems ever disappear, and if crowds ever go dumb, then better and best poetry itself will be dead as King Pandion. No "Absent-Minded Beggar," no "Recessional."

Whoever, then, will tell the truth about poetry's part in the world of to-day and to-morrow must not only know the course of all poetry through all the yesterdays, but must keep all its present manifestations, all its elements, sources, and allies at his command. Not only the lords of verse are to advise him; he shall take counsel with scullions and potboys. It is that poet in every man, about whom Sainte-Beuve discoursed, who can best tell of the future of poetry. The enormous heed paid to the great and solitary poets, as if there could be a poet without audience or reader, has distorted our vision until we think of poetry as a quite solitary performance, a refuge from the world. Is not poetry really a flight from self and solitude to at least a conventional, imaginative society? Poetry by its very form is a convention, an echo of social consent; with its aid one may forget personal debit and credit in the great account of humanity. Now, as in the beginning, poetry is essentially social; its future is largely a social problem. How far, then, has man ceased to sing in crowds, and taken to thinking by himself? What is the shrinkage, quality as well as quantity, in the proportion of verse to prose since the invention of printing? Is the loss of so much communal song in daily toil, in daily merriment, like the cutting away of those forests which hold the rains and supply the great rivers?

Waiting for complete and trustworthy studies of humanity which shall answer some of those queries, one may venture an opinion on the general case. Just as one feels that forests may vanish, and yet in some way the mighty watercourses must be fed, so with poetry. Nothing has yet been found to take the place of rhythm as sign of social consent, the union of steps and voices in common action; and whatever intellectual or spiritual consolation may reach the lonely thinker, emotion still drives him back upon the sympathy of man with man.

Human sympathy is thus at the heart of every poetic utterance, whether humble or great; rhythm is its outward and visible, once audible sign; and poetry, from this point of view, would therefore seem to be an enduring element in our life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

————————

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

————————

FRANCESCA DA RIMINI.

The tale of the fated lovers, Francesca and Paolo, whose fleeting spirits Dante saw in his visit to the realms of the dead, will always live in poetry and in art. His brief story of their approach in mutual sympathy, over the reading of a book, is given in our second volume: the scene of their tragic death at the hand of her enraged husband is the subject of this painting by Alexandre Cabanel, the French artist.

POEMS OF TRAGEDY.

IPHIGENEIA AND AGAMEMNON.

Iphigeneia, when she heard her doom At Aulis, and when all beside the king Had gone away, took his right hand, and said: "O father! I am young and very happy. I do not think the pious Calchas heard Distinctly what the goddess spake; old age Obscures the senses. If my nurse, who knew My voice so well, sometimes misunderstood, While I was resting on her knee both arms, And hitting it to make her mind my words, And looking in her face, and she in mine, Might not he, also, hear one word amiss, Spoken from so far off, even from Olympus?" The father placed his cheek upon her head, And tears dropt down it; but the king of men Replied not. Then the maiden spake once more: "O father! sayest thou nothing? Hearest thou not Me, whom thou ever hast, until this hour, Listened to fondly, and awakened me To hear my voice amid the voice of birds, When it was inarticulate as theirs, And the down deadened it within the nest?" He moved her gently from him, silent still; And this, and this alone, brought tears from her, Although she saw fate nearer. Then with sighs: "I thought to have laid down my hair before Benignant Artemis, and not dimmed Her polished altar with my virgin blood; I thought to have selected the white flowers To please the nymphs, and to have asked of each By name, and with no sorrowful regret, Whether, since both my parents willed the change, I might at Hymen's feet bend my clipt brow; And (after these who mind us girls the most) Adore our own Athene, that she would Regard me mildly with her azure eyes,— But, father, to see you no more, and see Your love, O father! go ere I am gone!" Gently he moved her off, and drew her back, Bending his lofty head far over hers; And the dark depths of nature heaved and burst. He turned away,—not far, but silent still. She now first shuddered; for in him, so nigh, So long a silence seemed the approach of death, And like it. Once again she raised her voice: "O father! if the ships are now detained, And all your vows move not the gods above, When the knife strikes me there will be one prayer The less to them; and purer can there be Any, or more fervent, than the daughter's prayer For her dear father's safety and success?" A groan that shook him shook not his resolve. An aged man now entered, and without One word stepped slowly on, and took the wrist Of the pale maiden. She looked up, and saw The fillet of the priest and calm, cold eyes. Then turned she where her parent stood, and cried: "O father! grieve no more; the ships can sail."

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

THE SACRIFICE OF POLYXENA. FROM "HECUBA."

[It had been determined by the victorious Greeks to sacrifice Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, King of Ilium, and his wife Hecuba, on the tomb of the slain Achilleus. Odysseus, sent by the Greeks to fetch the maiden, turned a deaf ear to the entreaties of the mother, and Polyxena herself addresses the Greek:]

"I see thee, how beneath thy robe, O King, Thy hand is hidden, thy face turned from mine, Lest I should touch thee by the beard and pray: Fear not: thou hast escaped the god of prayers For my part. I will rise and follow thee, Driven by strong need; yea, and not loth to die. Lo! if I should not seek death, I were found A cowardly, life-loving, selfish soul! For why should I live? Was my sire not King Of all broad Phrygia? Thus my life began; Then I was nurtured on fair bloom of hope To be the bride of kings; no small the suit, I ween, of lovers seeking me: thus I Was once—ah, woe is me! of Idan dames Mistress and queen, 'mid maidens like a star Conspicuous, peer of gods, except for death; And now I am a slave: this name alone Makes me in love with death—so strange it is."

[Later in the drama follows the account of the heroic death of Polyxena, described to the unhappy Hecuba by the herald Talthybius.]

"The whole vast concourse of the Achaian host Stood round the tomb to see your daughter die. Achilleus' son, taking her by the hand, Placed her upon the mound, and I stayed near; And youths, the flower of Greece, a chosen few, With hands to check thy heifer, should she bound, Attended. From a cup of carven gold, Raised full of wine, Archilleus' son poured forth Libation to his sire, and bade me sound Silence throughout the whole Achaian host. I, standing there, cried in the midst these words:— 'Silence, Achaians! let the host be still! Hush, hold your voices!' Breathless stayed the crowd; But he:—'O son of Peleus, father mine, Take these libations pleasant to thy soul, Draughts that allure the dead: come, drink the black Pure maiden's blood wherewith the host and I Sue thee: be kindly to us; loose our prows, And let our barks go free; give safe return Homeward from Troy to all, and happy voyage,' Such words he spake, and the crowd prayed assent. Then from the scabbard, by its golden hilt, He drew the sword, and to the chosen youths Signalled that they should bring the maid; but she, Knowing her hour was come, spake thus, and said: 'O men of Argos, who have sacked my town, Lo, of free will I die! Let no man touch My body: boldly will I stretch my throat. Nay, but I pray you set me free, then slay; That free I thus may perish: 'mong the dead, Being a queen, I blush to be called slave.' The people shouted, and King Agamemnon Bade the youths loose the maid, and set her free; She, when she heard the order of the chiefs, Seizing her mantle, from the shoulder down To the soft centre of her snowy waist Tore it, and showed her breasts and bosom fair As in a statue. Bending then with knee On earth, she spake a speech most piteous:— 'See you this breast, O youth? If breast you will, Strike it; take heart: or if beneath my neck, Lo! here my throat is ready for your sword!' He, willing not, yet willing,—pity-stirred In sorrow for the maiden,—with his blade Severed the channels of her breath: blood flowed; And she, though dying, still had thought to fall In seemly wise, hiding what eyes should see not. But when she breathed her life out from the blow, Then was the Argive host in divers way Of service parted; for some, bringing leaves, Strewed them upon the corpse; some piled a pyre, Dragging pine trunks and boughs; and he who bore none, Heard from the bearers many a bitter word:— 'Standest thou, villain? hast thou then no robe, No funeral honors for the maid to bring? Wilt thou not go and get for her who died Most nobly, bravest-souled, some gift?' Thus they Spake of thy child in death:—O thou most blessed Of women in thy daughter, most undone!"

From the Greek of EURIPIDES. Translation of JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.

PARRHASIUS.

There stood an unsold captive in the mart, A gray-haired and majestical old man, Chained to a pillar. It was almost night, And the last seller from the place had gone, And not a sound was heard but of a dog Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone, Or the dull echo from the pavement rung, As the faint captive changed his weary feet. He had stood there since morning, and had borne From every eye in Athens the cold gaze Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came And roughly struck his palm upon his breast, And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer Passed on; and when, with weariness o'erspent, He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep, The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats Of torture to his children, summoned back The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

'T was evening, and the half-descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up With a stout heart that long and weary day, Haughtily patient of his many wrongs, But now he was alone, and from his nerves

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

From an engraving of the portrait by C. L. Elliott.

The needless strength departed, and he leaned Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood, Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye The moving picture. The abandoned limbs, Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair, Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes; And as a thought of wilder bitterness Rose in his memory, his lips grew white, And the fast workings of his bloodless face Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

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 Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true, And like a veil of filmy mellowness, The lint-specks 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 Were like the winged god's breathing from his flight.

"Bring me the captive now! My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift From my waked spirit airily and swift, And I could paint the bow Upon the bended heavens—around me play Colors of such divinity to-day.

"Ha! bind him on his back! Look—as Prometheus in my picture here! Quick—or he faints!—stand with the cordial near! Now—bend him to the rack! Press down the poisoned links into his flesh! And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"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! How fearfully he stifles that short moan! Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"'Pity' thee! So I do! I pity the dumb victim at the altar— But does the robed priest for his pity falter? I'd rack thee though I knew A thousand lives were perishing in thine— What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"'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, And I may take some softer path to glory.

"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 yearning in my throat for my sweet child, And taunt its mother till my brain went wild—

"All—I would do it all— Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot, Thrust foully into earth to be forgot! Oh heaven!—but I appall Your heart, old man! forgive—ha! on your lives Let him not faint!—rack him till he revives!

"Vain—vain—give o'er! His eye Glazes apace. He does not feel you now— Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow! Gods! if he do not die But for one moment—one—till I eclipse Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

"Shivering! Hark! he mutters Brokenly now—that was a difficult breath— Another? Wilt thou never come, oh Death! Look! how his temple flutters! Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head! He shudders—gasps—Jove help him!—so—he's dead."

How like a mounting devil in the heart Rules the unreigned ambition! Let it once But play the monarch, and its haughty brow Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought And unthrones peace forever. Putting on The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns 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 Promising well; and love-touched dreams for some; And passions, many a wild one; and fair 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, Burning to waste, or, if its light is found, Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken; 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 air The spirit may find room, and in the love Of whose bright habitants the lavish heart May spend itself—what thrice-mocked fools are we!

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

LUCIUS JUNIUS BRUTUS OVER THE BODY OF LUCRETIA. FROM "BRUTUS."

Would you know why I summoned you together? Ask ye what brings me here? Behold this dagger, Clotted with gore! Behold that frozen corse! See where the lost Lucretia sleeps in death! She was the mark and model of the time, The mould in which each female face was formed, The very shrine and sacristy of virtue! Fairer than ever was a form created By youthful fancy when the blood strays wild, And never-resting thought is all on fire! The worthiest of the worthy! Not the nymph Who met old Numa in his hallowed walks, And whispered in his ear her strains divine, Can I conceive beyond her;—the young choir Of vestal virgins bent to her. 'T is wonderful Amid the darnel, hemlock, and base weeds, Which now spring rife from the luxurious compost Spread o'er the realm, how this sweet lily rose,— How from the shade of those ill-neighboring plants Her father sheltered her, that not a leaf Was blighted, but, arrayed in purest grace, She bloomed unsullied beauty. Such perfections Might have called back the torpid breast of age To long-forgotten rapture; such a mind Might have abashed the boldest libertine And turned desire to reverential love And holiest affection! O my countrymen! You all can witness when that she went forth It was a holiday in Rome; old age Forgot its crutch, labor its task,—all ran, And mothers, turning to their daughters, cried, "There, there's Lucretia!" Now look ye where she lies! That beauteous flower, that innocent sweet rose, Torn up by ruthless violence,—gone! gone! gone! Say, would you seek instruction? would ye ask What ye should do? Ask ye yon conscious walls, Which saw his poisoned brother,— Ask yon deserted street, where Tullia drove O'er her dead father's corse, 't will cry, Revenge! Ask yonder senate-house, whose stones are purple With human blood, and it will cry, Revenge! Go to the tomb where lies his murdered wife, And the poor queen, who loved him as her son, Their unappeased ghosts will shriek, Revenge! The temples of the gods, the all-viewing heavens, The gods themselves, shall justify the cry, And swell the general sound, Revenge! Revenge! And we will be revenged, my countrymen! Brutus shall lead you on; Brutus, a name Which will, when you're revenged, be dearer to him Than all the noblest titles earth can boast. Brutus your king!—No, fellow-citizens! If mad ambition in this guilty frame Had strung one kingly fibre, yea, but one,— By all the gods, this dagger which I hold Should rip it out, though it intwined my heart. Now take the body up. Bear it before us To Tarquin's palace; there we'll light our torches, And in the blazing conflagration rear A pile, for these chaste relics, that shall send Her soul amongst the stars. On! Brutus leads you!

JOHN HOWARD PAYNE.

THE ROMAN FATHER. FROM "VIRGINIA"

Straightway Virginius led the maid A little space aside, To where the reeking shambles stood, Piled up with horn and hide; Close to yon low dark archway, Where, in a crimson flood, Leaps down to the great sewer The gurgling stream of blood.

Hard by, a flesher on a block Had laid his whittle down: Virginius caught the whittle up, And hid it in his gown. And then his eyes grew very dim, And his throat began to swell, And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake, "Farewell, sweet child! Farewell!

"O, how I loved my darling! Though stern I sometimes be, To thee, thou know'st, I was not so,— Who could be so to thee? And how my darling loved me! How glad she was to hear My footstep on the threshold When I came back last year!

"And how she danced with pleasure To see my civic crown, And took my sword, and hung it up, And brought me forth my gown! Now, all those things are over,— Yes, all thy pretty ways, Thy needlework, thy prattle, Thy snatches of old lays;

"And none will grieve when I go forth, Or smile when I return, Or watch beside the old man's bed, Or weep upon his urn. The house that was the happiest Within the Roman walls, The house that envied not the wealth Of Capua's marble halls,

"Now, for the brightness of thy smile, Must have eternal gloom, And for the music of thy voice, The silence of the tomb. The time is come! See how he points His eager hand this way! See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, Like a kite's upon the prey!

"With all his wit, he little deems That, spurned, betrayed, bereft, Thy father hath, in his despair, One fearful refuge left. He little deems that in this hand I clutch what still can save Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows, The portion of the slave;

"Yea, and from nameless evil, That passes taunt and blow,— Foul outrage which thou knowest not, Which thou shalt never know. Then clasp me round the neck once more, And give me one more kiss; And now, mine own dear little girl, There is no way but this."

With that he lifted high the steel, And smote her in the side, And in her blood she sank to earth, And with one sob she died. Then, for a little moment, All people held their breath; And through the crowded forum Was stillness as of death;

And in another moment Brake forth, from one and all, A cry as if the Volscians Were coming o'er the wall. Some with averted faces Shrieking fled home amain; Some ran to call a leech; and some Ran to lift up the slain.

Some felt her lips and little wrist, If life might there be found; And some tore up their garments fast, And strove to stanch the wound. In vain they ran, and felt, and stanched; For never truer blow That good right arm had dealt in fight Against a Volscian foe.

When Appius Claudius saw that deed, He shuddered and sank down, And hid his face some little space With the corner of his gown; Till, with white lips and bloodshot eyes, Virginius tottered nigh, And stood before the judgment-seat, And held the knife on high.

"O dwellers in the nether gloom, Avengers of the slain, By this dear blood I cry to you Do right between us twain; And even as Appius Claudius Hath dealt by me and mine, Deal you by Appius Claudius, And all the Claudian line!"

So spake the slayer of his child, And turned and went his way; But first he cast one haggard glance To where the body lay, And writhed, and groaned a fearful groan, And then, with-steadfast feet, Strode right across the market-place Unto the Sacred Street.

Then up sprang Appius Claudius: "Stop him; alive or dead! Ten thousand pounds of copper To the man who brings his head." He looked upon his clients; But none would work his will. He looked upon his lictors; But they trembled, and stood still.

And as Virginius through the press His way in silence cleft, Ever the mighty multitude Fell back to right and left. And he hath passed in safety Onto his woful home, And there ta'en horse to tell the camp What deeds are done in Rome.

THOMAS BABINGTON, LORD MACAULAY.

MARK ANTONY, OVER THE BODY OF CÆSAR. FROM "JULIUS CÆSAR,"  ACT III. SC. 2.

Antony.—O mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure?—Fare thee well.—

(To the people.)

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones; So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault; And grievously hath Cæsar answered it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, (For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men,) Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransom did the general coffers fill: Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honorable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honorable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once,—not without cause! What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him? O judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason!—Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar, And I must pause till it come back to me.
————

But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might Have stood against the world! now lies he there And none so poor to do him reverence. O masters! if I were disposed to stir Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong, Who, you all know, are honorable men: I will not do them wrong; I rather choose To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you, Than I will wrong such honorable men. But here 's a parchment, with the seal of Cæsar,— I found it in his closet,—'tis his will. Let but the commons hear this testament, (Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read,) And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds, And dip their napkins in his sacred blood: Yea, beg a hair of him for memory, And, dying, mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it, as a rich legacy, Unto their issue.

4 Citizen.—We'll hear the will: read it, Mark Antony.

Citizens.—The will, the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.

Antony.—Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read it; It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And, being men, hearing the will of Cæsar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad: 'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs, For if you should, O, what would come of it!

4 Citizen.—Read the will; we'll hear it, Antony; You shall read us the will,—Cæsar's will.

Antony.—Will you be patient? Will you stay awhile? I have o'ershot myself to tell you of it. I fear I wrong the honorable men Whose daggers have stabbed Cæsar; I do fear it.

4 Citizen.—They were traitors: honorable men!

Citizens.—The will! the testament!

2 Citizen.—They were villains, murderers: the will! read the will!

Antony.—You will compel me, then, to read the will! Then make a ring about the corse of Cæsar, And let me show you him that made the will. Shall I descend? and will you give me leave?

Citizens.—Come down.

Antony.—Nay, press not so upon me; stand far off.

Citizens.—Stand back; room; bear back.

Antony.—If you have tears, prepare to shed them now. You all do know this mantle: I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on; 'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent; That day he overcame the Nervii:— Look, in this place ran Cassius' dagger through: See what a rent the envious Casca made: Through this the well-belovèd Brutus stabbed; And, as he plucked his cursed steel away, Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it, As rushing out of doors, to be resolved If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no; For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him! This was the most unkindest cut of all; For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart; And, in his mantle muffling up his face, Even at the base of Pompey's statua, Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell. O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down, Whilst bloody treason flourished over us. O, now you weep; and I perceive you feel The dint of pity: these are gracious drops. Kind souls, what, weep you when you but behold Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here, Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors.
————

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honorable;— What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it;—they are wise and honorable, And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you. I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts; I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man, That love my friend; and that they know full well That gave me public leave to speak of him: For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know; Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths, And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus, And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In every wound of Cæsar, that should move The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.

All.—We'll mutiny.

1 Citizen.—We'll burn the house of Brutus.

3 Citizen.—Away, then! come, seek the conspirators.

Antony.—Yet hear me, countrymen; yet hear me speak.

All.—Peace, ho! Hear Antony, most noble Antony.

Antony.—Why, friends, you go to do you know not what. Wherein hath Cæsar thus deserved your loves? Alas, you know not!—I must tell you, then. You have forgot the will I told you of.

All.—Most true;—the will!—let's stay and hear the will.

Antony.—Here is the will, and under Cæsar's seal:— To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas.

2 Citizen.—Most noble Cæsar!—we'll revenge his death.

3 Citizen.—O royal Cæsar!

Antony.—Hear me with patience.

Citizens.—Peace, ho!

Antony.—Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbors, and new-planted orchards On this side Tiber; he hath left them you, And to your heirs forever,—common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Cæsar! when comes such another?

1 Citizen.—Never, never!—Come away, away! We 'll burn his body in the holy place, And with the brands fire the traitors' houses. Take up the body...... [Exeunt Citizens, with the body.]

Antony.—Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt.

SHAKESPEARE.

THE SACK OF THE CITY.

Thy will, O King, is done! Lighting but to consume, The roar of the fierce flames drowned even the shouts and shrieks; Reddening each roof, like some day-dawn of bloody doom, Seemed they in joyous flight to dance above their wrecks.

Slaughter his thousand giant arms hath tossed on high, Fell fathers, husbands, wives, beneath his streaming steel; Prostrate the palaces huge tombs of fire lie, While gathering overhead the vultures scream and wheel.

Died the pale mothers;—and the virgins, from their arms, O Caliph, fiercely torn, bewailed their young years' blight; With stabs and kisses fouled, all their yet quivering charms At our fleet coursers' heels were dragged in mocking flight.

Lo, where the city lies mantled in pall of death! Lo, where thy mighty arm hath passed, all things must bend! As the priests prayed, the sword stopped their accursèd breath,— Vainly their sacred book for shield did they extend.

Some infants yet survived, and the unsated steel Still drinks the life-blood of each whelp of Christian hound. To kiss thy sandal's foot, O King, thy people kneel, With golden circlet to thy glorious ankle bound.

From the French of VICTOR-MARIE HUGO.

THE SLAYING OF SOHRAB. FROM "SOHRAB AND RUSTUM."

He spake; and Rustum answered not, but hurled His spear. Down from the shoulder, down it came— As on some partridge in the corn, a hawk, That long has towered in the airy clouds, Drops like a plummet. Sohrab saw it come, And sprang aside, quick as a flash. The spear Hissed, and went quivering down into the sand, Which it sent flying wide. Then Sohrab threw In turn, and full struck Rustum's shield. Sharp rang The iron plates, rang sharp, but turned the spear. And Rustum seized his club, which none but he Could wield—an unlapped trunk it was, and huge, Still rough; like those which men, in treeless plains, To build them boats, fish from the flooded rivers, Hyphasis or Hydaspes, when, high up By their dark springs, the wind in winter-time Has made in Himalayan forests wrack, And strewn the channels with torn boughs—so huge The club which Rustum lifted now, and struck One stroke; but again Sohrab sprang aside, Lithe as the glancing snake, and the club came Thundering to earth, and leapt from Rustum's hand. And Rustum followed his own blow, and fell To his knees, and with his fingers clutched the sand. And now might Sohrab have unsheathed his sword, And pierced the mighty Rustum while he lay Dizzy, and on his knees, and choked with sand; But he looked on, and smiled, nor bared his sword; But courteously drew back, and spoke, and said:— "Thou strik'st too hard; that club of thine will float Upon the summer floods, and not my bones. But rise, and be not wroth; not wroth am I. No, when I see thee, wrath forsakes my soul. Thou sayest thou art not Rustum; be it so. Who art thou then, that canst so touch my soul? Boy as I am, I have seen battles too; Have waded foremost in their bloody waves, And heard their hollow roar of dying men; But never was my heart thus touched before. Are they from heaven, these softenings of the heart? O thou old warrior, let us yield to Heaven! Come, plant we here in earth our angry spears, And make a truce, and sit upon this sand, And pledge each other in red wine, like friends; And thou shalt talk to me of Rustum's deeds. There are enough foes in the Persian host Whom I may meet, and strike, and feel no pang; Champions enough Afrasiab has, whom thou May'st fight: fight them, when they confront thy spear. But oh, let there be peace 'twixt thee and me!" He ceased. But while he spake Rustum had risen, And stood erect, trembling with rage. His club He left to lie, but had regained his spear, Whose fiery point now in his mailed right hand Blazed bright and baleful—like that autumn star, The baleful sign of fevers. Dust had soiled His stately crest, and dimmed his glittering arms. His breast heaved; his lips foamed; and twice his voice Was choked with rage. At last these words broke way:— "Girl! nimble with thy feet, not with thy hands! Curled minion, dancer, coiner of sweet words! Fight! Let me hear thy hateful voice no more! Thou art not in Afrasiab's gardens now With Tartar girls, with whom thou art wont to dance; But on the Oxus sands, and in the dance Of battle, and with me, who make no play Of war. I fight it out, and hand to hand. Speak not to me of truce, and pledge, and wine! Remember all thy valor; try thy feints And cunning; all the pity I had is gone; Because thou hast shamed me before both the hosts, With thy light skipping tricks, and thy girl's wiles." He spoke; and Sohrab kindled at his taunts, And he too drew his sword. At once they rushed Together; as two eagles on one prey Come rushing down together from the clouds, One from the east, one from the west. Their shields Dashed with a clang together; and a din Rose, such as that the sinewy woodcutters Make often in the forest's heart at morn, Of hewing axes, crashing trees; such blows Rustum and Sohrab on each other hailed. And you would say that sun and stars took part In that unnatural conflict; for a cloud Grew suddenly in heaven, and darkened the sun Over the fighters' heads; and a wind rose Under their feet, and moaning swept the plain, And in a sandy whirlwind wrapped the pair. In gloom they twain were wrapped, and they alone; For both the on-looking hosts on either hand Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And laboring breath. First Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out. The steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin: And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away; and that proud horse-hair plume, Never till now defiled, sunk to the dust; And Rustum bowed his head. But then the gloom Grew blacker; thunder rumbled in the air, And lightnings rent the cloud; and Ruksh, the horse, Who stood at hand, uttered a dreadful cry. No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pained desert lion, who all day Has trailed the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand. The two hosts heard the cry, and quaked for fear; And Oxus curdled as it crossed his stream. But Sohrab heard, and quailed not—but rushed on, And struck again; and again Rustum bowed His head. But this time all the blade, like glass, Sprang in a thousand shivers on the helm, And in his hand the hilt remained alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted "Rustum!" Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amazed; back he recoiled one step, And scanned with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewildered; and he dropped His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. He reeled, and staggering back, sunk to the ground. And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all The cloud; and the two armies saw the pair— Saw Rustum standing, safe upon his feet, And Sohrab wounded, on the bloody sand. Then with a bitter smile, Rustum began:— "Sohrab, thou thoughtest in thy mind to kill A Persian lord this day, and strip his corpse, And bear thy trophies to Afrasiab's tent; Or else that the great Rustum would come down Himself to fight, and that thy wiles would move His heart to take a gift, and let thee go. And then all the Tartar host would praise Thy courage or thy craft, and spread thy fame, To glad thy father in his weak old age. Fool! thou art slain, and by an unknown man! Dearer to the red jackals shalt thou be, Than to thy friends, and to thy father old." And with a fearless mien Sohrab replied:— "Unknown thou art; yet thy fierce vaunt is vain. Thou dost not slay me, proud and boastful man! No! Rustum slays me, and this filial heart. For were I matched with ten such men as thou, And I were he who till to-day I was, They should be lying here, I standing there. But that belovèd name unnerved my arm— That name, and something, I confess, in thee, Which troubles all my heart, and made my shield Fall; and thy spear transfixed an unarmed foe. And now thou boastest, and insult'st my fate. But hear thou this, fierce man—tremble to hear! The mighty Rustum shall avenge my death! "My father, whom I seek through all the world, He shall avenge my death, and punish thee!"
————

So Rustum knew not his own loss; but stood Over his dying son, and knew him not. But with a cold, incredulous voice, he said:— "What prate is this of fathers and revenge? The mighty Rustum never had a son." And, with a failing voice, Sohrab replied:— "Ah yes, he had! and that lost son am I. Surely the news will one day reach his ear— Reach Rustum, where he sits, and tarries long, Somewhere, I know not where, but far from here; And pierce him like a stab, and make him leap To arms, and cry for vengeance upon thee— Fierce man, bethink thee—for an only son! What will that grief, what will that vengeance be! Oh, could I live till I that grief had seen! Yet him I pity not so much, but her, My mother, who in Ader-baijan dwells With that old king, her father, who grows gray With age, and rules over the valiant Koords. Her most I pity, who no more will see Sohrab returning from the Tartar camp, With spoils and honor, when the war is done, But a dark rumor will be bruited up, From tribe to tribe, until it reach her ear; And then will that defenceless woman learn That Sohrab will rejoice her sight no more; But that in battle with a nameless foe, By the far-distant Oxus, he is slain."
————

And Rustum gazed on him with grief, and said: "O Sohrab, thou indeed art such a son Whom Rustum, wert thou his, might well have loved! Yet here thou errest, Sohrab, or else men Have told thee false—thou art not Rustum's son. For Rustum had no son. One child he had— But one—a girl; who with her mother now Plies some light female task, nor dreams of us; Of us she dreams not, nor of wounds, nor war." But Sohrab answered him in wrath; for now The anguish of the deep-fixed spear grew fierce, And he desired to draw forth the steel, And let the blood flow free, and so to die. But first he would convince his stubborn foe; And, rising sternly on one arm, he said: "Man, who art thou, who dost deny my words? Truth sits upon the lips of dying men; And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. I tell thee, pricked upon this arm I bear That seal which Rustum to my mother gave, That she might prick it on the babe she bore." He spoke: and all the blood left Rustum's cheeks; And his knees tottered; and he smote his hand Against his breast, his heavy mailèd hand, That the hard iron corselet clanked aloud; And to his heart he pressed the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake, and said: "Sohrab, that were a proof which could not lie. If thou show this, then art thou Rustum's son." Then, with weak, hasty fingers, Sohrab loosed His belt, and near the shoulder bared his arm, And showed a sign in faint vermilion points Pricked. As a cunning workman, in Pekin, Pricks with vermilion some clear porcelain vase, An emperor's gift; at early morn he paints, And all day long; and, when night comes, the lamp Lights up his studious forehead and thin hands: So delicately pricked the sign appeared On Sohrab's arm—the sign of Rustum's seal. It was that griffin, which of old reared Zal, Rustum's great father, whom they left to die, A helpless babe, among the mountain rocks, Him that kind creature found and reared and loved. Then Rustum took it for his glorious sign. And Sohrab bared that figure on his arm, And himself scanned it long with mournful eyes, And then he touched it with his hand and said: "How sayest thou? Is that sign the proper sign Of Rustum's son, or of some other man's?" He spoke: but Rustum gazed, and gazed, and stood Speechless; and then he uttered one sharp cry— "O, boy—thy father!"—and his voice choked there, And then a dark cloud passed before his eyes, And his head swam, and he sank down to earth. But Sohrab crawled to where he lay, and cast His arms about his neck, and kissed his lips. And with fond, faltering fingers stroked his cheeks, Trying to call him back to life. And life Came back to Rustum, and he oped his eyes, And they stood wide with horror; and he seized In both his hands the dust which lay around, And threw it on his head, and smirched his hair— His hair, and face, and beard, and glittering arms; And strong, convulsive groanings shook his breast, And his sobs choked him; and he clutched his sword To draw it, and for ever let life out. But Sohrab saw his thought, and held his hands; And with a soothing voice he spoke, and said: "Father, forbear! for I but meet to-day The doom that at my birth was written down In heaven, and thou art heaven's unconscious hand. Surely my heart cried out that it was thou, When first I saw thee; and thy heart spoke too, I know it. But fate trod those promptings down Under its iron heel; fate, fate engaged The strife, and hurled me on my father's spear. But let us speak no more of this—I find My father; let me feel that I have found. Come, sit beside me on this sand, and take My head betwixt thy hands, and kiss my cheeks, And wash them with thy tears, and say, 'My son!' Quick! quick! for numbered are my sands of life, And swift; for like the lightning to this field I came, and like the wind I go away— Sudden, and swift, and like a passing wind. But it was writ in heaven that this should be." So said he: and his voice released the heart Of Rustum, and his tears broke forth; he cast His arms round his son's neck, and wept aloud, And kissed him. And awe fell on both the hosts When they saw Rustum's grief; and Ruksh, the horse, With his head bowing to the ground, and mane Sweeping the dust, came near, and in mute woe, First to the one, then to the other moved His head, as if inquiring what their grief Might mean; and from his dark, compassionate eyes, The big, warm tears rolled down, and caked the sand. But Rustum chid him with stern voice, and said: "Ruksh, now thou grievest; but, O Ruksh, thy feet Should then have rotted on thy nimble joints, When first they bore thy master to this field." But Sohrab looked upon the horse, and said: "Is this then Ruksh? How often, in past days, My mother told me of thee, thou brave steed— My terrible father's terrible horse! and said That I should one day find thy lord and thee. Come, let me lay my hand upon thy mane. O Ruksh, thou art more fortunate than I; For thou hast gone where I shall never go, And snuffed the breezes of my father's home, And thou hast trod the sands of Seïstan, And seen the river of Helmund, and the lake Of Zirrah; and the aged Zal himself Has often stroked thy neck, and given thee food— Corn in a golden platter soaked with wine— And said—'O Ruksh! bear Rustum well!' But I Have never known my grandsire's furrowed face, Nor seen his lofty house in Seïstan, Nor slaked my thirst at the clear Helmund stream; But lodged among my father's foes, and seen Afrasiab's cities only, Samarcand, Bokhara, and lone Khiva in the waste, And the black Toorkmun tents; and only drunk The desert rivers, Moorghab and Tejend, Kohik, and where the Kalmuks feed their sheep, The northern Sir; and this great Oxus stream— The yellow Oxus, by whose brink I die." And, with a heavy groan, Rustum replied: "Oh that its waves were flowing over me! Oh that I saw its grains of yellow silt Roll tumbling in the current o'er my head!" And, with a grave, mild voice, Sohrab replied: "Desire not that, my father! Thou must live; For some are born to do great deeds, and live; As some are born to be obscured, and die. Do thou the deeds I die too young to do, And reap a second glory in thine age; Thou art my father, and thy gain is mine. But come! thou seest this great host of men Which follow me; I pray thee, slay not these! Let me entreat for them—what have they done? They followed me, my hope, my fame, my star. Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. But me thou must bear hence, not send with them, But carry me with thee to Seïstan, And place me on a bed, and mourn for me— Thou, and the snow-haired Zal, and all thy friends. And thou must lay me in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above my bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all; That so the passing horseman on the waste May see my tomb a great way off, and say: Sohrab, the mighty Rustum's son, lies there, Whom his great father did in ignorance kill— And I be not forgotten in my grave." And, with a mournful voice, Rustum replied: "Fear not! as thou hast said, Sohrab, my son, So shall it be; for I will burn my tents, And quit the host, and bear thee hence with me, And carry thee away to Seïstan, And place thee on a bed, and mourn for thee, With the snow-headed Zal, and all my friends. And I will lay thee in that lovely earth, And heap a stately mound above thy bones, And plant a far-seen pillar over all; And men shall not forget thee in thy grave; And I will spare thy host—yea, let them go— Let them all cross the Oxus back in peace. What should I do with slaying any more? For would that all whom I have ever slain Might be once more alive—my bitterest foes, And they who were called champions in their time, And through whose death I won that fame I have— And I were nothing but a common man, A poor, mean soldier, and without renown; So thou mightest live too, my son, my son! Or rather, would that I, even I myself, Might now be lying on this bloody sand, Near death, and by an ignorant stroke of thine. Not thou of mine; and I might die, not thou; And I, not thou, be borne to Seïstan; And Zal might weep above my grave, not thine; And say—O son, I weep thee not too sore, For willingly, I know, thou met'st thine end!— But now in blood and battles was my youth, And full of blood and battles is my age; And I shall never end this life of blood." Then at the point of death, Sohrab replied:— "A life of blood indeed, thou dreadful man! But thou shalt yet have peace; only not now, Not yet. But thou shalt have it on that day When thou shalt sail in a high-masted ship, Thou and the other peers of Kai-Khosroo, Returning home over the salt, blue sea, From laying thy dear master in his grave." And Rustum gazed on Sohrab's face, and said:— "Soon be that day, my son, and deep that sea! Till then, if fate so wills, let me endure." He spoke: and Sohrab smiled on him, and took The spear, and drew it from his side, and eased His wound's imperious anguish. But the blood Came welling from the open gash, and life Flowed with the stream; all down his cold white side The crimson torrent ran, dim now, and soiled— Like the soiled tissue of white violets Left, freshly gathered, on their native bank By romping children, whom their nurses call From the hot fields at noon. His head drooped low; His limbs grew slack; motionless, white, he lay— White, with eyes closed; only when heavy gasps, Deep, heavy gasps, quivering through all his frame, Convulsed him back to life, he opened them, And fixed them feebly on his father's face. Till now all strength was ebbed, and from his limbs Unwillingly the spirit fled away, Regretting the warm mansion which it left, And youth and bloom, and this delightful world. So, on the bloody sand, Sohrab lay dead. And the great Rustum drew his horseman's cloak Down o'er his face, and sate by his dead son. As those black granite pillars, once high-reared By Jemshid in Persepolis, to bear His house, now, mid their broken flights of steps, Lie prone, enormous, down the mountain-side— So in the sand lay Rustum by his son. And night came down over the solemn waste, And the two gazing hosts, and that sole pair, And darkened all; and a cold fog, with night, Crept from the Oxus.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

KHAMSIN.

Oh, the wind from the desert blew in!— Khamsin, The wind from the desert blew in! It blew from the heart of the fiery south, From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth, And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth; The wind from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough, And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree; The wizened dervish breathed no vow, So weary and parched was he. The lean muezzin could not cry; The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky; The hot sun shone like a copper disk, And prone in the shade of an obelisk The water-carrier sank with a sigh, For limp and dry was his water-skin; And the wind from the desert blew in.

The camel crouched by the crumbling wall, And oh the pitiful moan it made! The minarets, taper and slim and tall, Reeled and swam in the brazen light; And prayers went up by day and night, But thin and drawn were the lips that prayed. The river writhed in its slimy bed, Shrunk to a tortuous, turbid thread; The burnt earth cracked like a cloven rind; And still the wind, the ruthless wind, Khamsin, The wind from the desert blew in.

Into the cool of the mosque it crept, Where the poor sought rest at the Prophet's shrine; Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine; It fevered the brow of the maid who slept, And men grew haggard with revel of wine. The tiny fledglings died in the nest; The sick babe gasped at the mother's breast. Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread From a tremulous whisper, faint and vague, Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread, The plague! the plague! the plague!— Oh the wind, Khamsin, The scourge from the desert, blew in!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

THE DIVER.

"Oh, where is the knight or the squire so bold, As to dive to the howling charybdis below?— I cast into the whirlpool a goblet of gold, And o'er it already the dark waters flow: Whoever to me may the goblet bring, Shall have for his guerdon that gift of his king."

He spoke, and the cup from the terrible steep, That rugged and hoary, hung over the verge Of the endless and measureless world of the deep, Swirled into the maelstrom that maddened the surge. "And where is the diver so stout to go— I ask ye again—to the deep below?"

And the knights and the squires that gathered around, Stood silent—and fixed on the ocean their eyes; They looked on the dismal and savage profound, And the peril chilled back every thought of the prize. And thrice spoke the monarch—"The cup to win, Is there never a wight who will venture in?"

And all as before heard in silence the king— Till a youth, with an aspect unfearing but gentle, 'Mid the tremulous squires, stept out from the ring, Unbuckling his girdle, and doffing his mantle; And the murmuring crowd, as they parted asunder, On the stately boy cast their looks of wonder.

"Hark! a shriek from the crowd rang aloft from the shore, And behold: he is whirled in the grasp of the main." —Schiller.— From a photogravure after drawing by A. Michaelis.

As he strode to the marge of the summit, and gave One glance on the gulf of that merciless main; Lo! the wave that for ever devours the wave, Casts roaringly up the charybdis again; And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, Rushes foamingly forth from the heart of the gloom.

And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commixed and contending; And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending. And it never will rest, nor from travail be free, Like a sea that is laboring the birth of a sea.

And at last there lay open the desolate realm! Through the breakers that whitened the waste of the swell, Dark—dark yawned a cleft in the midst of the whelm, The path to the heart of that fathomless hell. Round and round whirled the waves—deep and deeper still driven, Like a gorge thro' the mountainous main thunder-riven.

The youth gave his trust to his Maker! Before That path through the riven abyss closed again— Hark! a shriek from the crowd rang aloft from the shore, And, behold! he is whirled in the grasp of the main! And o'er him the breakers mysteriously rolled, And the giant-mouth closed on the swimmer so bold.

O'er the surface grim silence lay dark and profound, But the deep from below murmured hollow and fell; And the crowd, as it shuddered, lamented aloud— "Gallant youth—noble heart—fare-thee-well, fare-thee-well!" And still ever deepening that wail as of woe, More hollow the gulf sent its howl from below.

If thou should'st in those waters thy diadem fling, And cry, "Who may find it shall win it, and wear;" God's wot, though the prize were the crown of a king— A crown at such hazard were valued too dear. For never did lips of the living reveal, What the deeps that howl yonder in terror conceal.

Oh many a ship, to that breast grappled fast, Has gone down to the fearful and fathomless grave; Again crashed together, the keel and the mast, To be seen, tossed aloft in the glee of the wave.— Like the growth of a storm ever louder and clearer, Grows the roar of the gulf rising nearer and nearer.

And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars, As when fire is with water commixed and contending; And the spray of its wrath to the welkin up-soars, And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending, And, as with the swell of the far thunder-boom, Rushes roaringly forth from the heart of the gloom.

And lo! from the heart of that far-floating gloom, What gleams on the darkness so swanlike and white? Lo! an arm and a neck, glancing up from the tomb!— They battle—the Man with the Element's might. It is he—it is he!—In his left hand behold, As a sign—as a joy! shines the goblet of gold!

And he breathèd deep, and he breathèd long, And he greeted the heavenly delight of the day. They gaze on each other—they shout as they throng— "He lives—lo, the ocean has rendered its prey! And out of the grave where the Hell began, His valor has rescued the living man!"

And he comes with the crowd in their clamor and glee, And the goblet his daring has won from the water, He lifts to the king as he sinks on his knee; And the king from her maidens has beckoned his daughter, And he bade her the wine to his cup-bearer bring, And thus spake the Diver—"Long life to the king!

"Happy they whom the rose-hues of daylight rejoice, The air and the sky that to mortals are given! May the horror below never more find a voice— Nor Man stretch too far the wide mercy of Heaven! Never more—never more may he lift from the mirror, The Veil which is woven with Night and with Terror!

"Quick-brightening like lightning—it tore me along, Down, down, till the gush of a torrent at play In the rocks of its wilderness caught me—and strong As the wings of an eagle, it whirled me away. Vain, vain were my struggles—the circle had won me, Round and round in its dance the wild element spun me.

"And I called on my God, and my God heard my prayer, In the strength of my need, in the gasp of my breath— And showed me a crag that rose up from the lair, And I clung to it, trembling—and baffled the death. And, safe in the perils around me, behold On the spikes of the coral the goblet of gold!

"Below, at the foot of that precipice drear, Spread the gloomy, and purple, and pathless obscure! A silence of horror that slept on the ear, That the eye more appalled might the horror endure! Salamander—snake—dragon—vast reptiles that dwell In the deep—coiled about the grim jaws of their hell!

"Dark-crawled—glided dark the unspeakable swarms, Like masses unshapen, made life hideously; Here clung and here bristled the fashionless forms, Here the Hammer-fish darkened the dark of the sea, And with teeth grinning white, and a menacing motion, Went the terrible Shark—the hyena of Ocean.

"There I hung, and the awe gathered icily o'er me, So far from the earth where man's help there was none! The one Human Thing, with the Goblins before me— Alone—in a loneness so ghastly—ALONE! Fathom-deep from man's eye in the speechless profound, With the death of the main and the monsters around.

"Methought, as I gazed through the darkness, that now A hundred-limbed creature caught sight of its prey, And darted.—O God! from the far-flaming bough Of the coral, I swept on the horrible way; And it seized me, the wave with its wrath and its roar, It seized me to save—King, the danger is o'er!"

On the youth gazed the monarch, and marvelled—quoth he, "Bold Diver, the goblet I promised is thine, And this ring will I give, a fresh guerdon to thee, Never jewels more precious shone up from the mine; If thou'll bring me fresh tidings, and venture again, To say what lies hid in the innermost main!"

Then outspake the daughter in tender emotion, "Ah! father, my father, what more can there rest? Enough of this sport with the pitiless ocean— He has served thee as none would, thyself hast confest. If nothing can slake thy wild thirst of desire, Be your knights not, at least, put to shame by the squire!"

The king seized the goblet—he swung it on high, And whirling, it fell in the roar of the tide; "But bring back that goblet again to my eye, And I'll hold thee the dearest that rides by my side, And thine arms shall embrace as thy bride, I decree, The maiden whose pity now pleadeth for thee."

In his heart, as he listened, there leapt the wild joy— And the hope and the love through his eyes spoke in fire, On that bloom, on that blush, gazed, delighted, the boy; The maiden she faints at the feet of her sire! Here the guerdon divine; there the danger beneath; He resolves!—To the strife with the life and the death!

They hear the loud surges sweep back in their swell; Their coming the thunder-sound heralds along! Fond eyes yet are tracking the spot where he fell— They come, the wild waters, in tumult and throng, Rearing up to the cliff—roaring back as before; But no wave ever brought the lost youth to the shore.

From the German of JOHANN C. F. SCHILLER.

GOD'S JUDGMENT ON A WICKED BISHOP.

[Hatto, Archbishop of Mentz, in the year 914, barbarously murdered a number of poor people to prevent their consuming a portion of the food during that year of famine. He was afterwards devoured by rats in his tower on an island in the Rhine.—Old Legend.]

The summer and autumn had been so wet, That in winter the corn was growing yet: 'Twas a piteous sight to see all around The grain lie rotting on the ground.

Every day the starving poor Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door; For he had a plentiful last-year's store, And all the neighborhood could tell His granaries were furnished well.

At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day To quiet the poor without delay; He bade them to his great barn repair, And they should have food for the winter there.

Rejoiced the tidings good to hear, The poor folks flocked from far and near; The great barn was full as it could hold Of women and children, and young and old.

Then, when he saw it could hold no more, Bishop Hatto he made fast the door; And whilst for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.

"I' faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he; "And the country is greatly obliged to me For ridding it, in these times forlorn, Of rats that only consume the corn."

So then to his palace returned he, And he sate down to supper merrily, And he slept that night like an innocent man; But Bishop Hatto never slept again.

In the morning, as he entered the hall, Where his picture hung against the wall, A sweat like death all over him came, For the rats had eaten it out of the frame.

As he looked, there came a man from his farm— He had a countenance white with alarm: "My lord, I opened your granaries this morn, And the rats had eaten all your corn."

Another came running presently, And he was pale as pale could be. "Fly! my lord bishop, fly!" quoth he, "Ten thousand rats are coming this way,— The Lord forgive you for yesterday!"

"I'll go to my tower in the Rhine," replied he; "'T is the safest place in Germany,— The walls are high, and the shores are steep, And the tide is strong, and the water deep."

Bishop Hatto fearfully hastened away; And he crossed the Rhine without delay, And reached his tower, and barred with care All the windows, doors, and loop-holes there.

He laid him down and closed his eyes, But soon a scream made him arise; He started, and saw two eyes of flame On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.

He listened and looked,—it was only the cat; But the bishop he grew more fearful for that, For she sate screaming, mad with fear, At the army of rats that were drawing near.

For they have swum over the river so deep, And they have climbed the shores so steep, And now by thousands up they crawl To the holes and the windows in the wall.

Down on his knees the bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did he tell, As louder and louder, drawing near, The saw of their teeth without he could hear.

And in at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls, by thousands they pour; And down from the ceiling and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below,— And all at once to the bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones, And now they pick the bishop's bones; They gnawed the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him!

ROBERT SOUTHEY.

COUNTESS LAURA.

It was a dreary day in Padua. The Countess Laura, for a single year Fernando's wife, upon her bridal bed, Like an uprooted lily on the snow, The withered outcast of a festival, Lay dead. She died of some uncertain ill, That struck her almost on her wedding day, And clung to her, and dragged her slowly down, Thinning her cheeks and pinching her full lips, Till in her chance, it seemed that with a year Full half a century was overpast. In vain had Paracelsus taxed his art, And feigned a knowledge of her malady; In vain had all the doctors, far and near, Gathered around the mystery of her bed, Draining her veins, her husband's treasury, And physic's jargon, in a fruitless quest For causes equal to the dread result. The Countess only smiled when they were gone, Hugged her fair body with her little hands, And turned upon her pillows wearily, As though she fain would sleep no common sleep, But the long, breathless slumber of the grave. She hinted nothing. Feeble as she was, The rack could not have wrung her secret out. The Bishop, when he shrived her, coming forth, Cried, in a voice of heavenly ecstasy, "O blessed soul! with nothing to confess Save virtues and good deeds, which she mistakes— So humble is she—for our human sins!" Praying for death, she tossed upon her bed Day after day; as might a shipwrecked bark That rocks upon one billow, and can make No onward motion towards her port of hope. At length, one morn, when those around her said, "Surely the Countess mends, so fresh a light Beams from her eyes and beautifies her face,"— One morn in spring, when every flower of earth Was opening to the sun, and breathing up Its votive incense, her impatient soul Opened itself, and so exhaled to heaven. When the Count heard it, he reeled back a pace; Then turned with anger on the messenger; Then craved his pardon, and wept out his heart Before the menial; tears, ah me! such tears As love sheds only, and love only once. Then he bethought him, "Shall this wonder die, And leave behind no shadow? not a trace Of all the glory that environed her, That mellow nimbus circling round my star?" So, with his sorrow glooming in his face, He paced along his gallery of art, And strode among the painters, where they stood, With Carlo, the Venetian, at their head, Studying the Masters by the dawning light Of his transcendent genius. Through the groups Of gayly vestured artists moved the Count, As some lone cloud of thick and leaden hue, Packed with the secret of a coming storm, Moves through the gold and crimson evening mists, Deadening their splendor. In a moment still Was Carlo's voice, and still the prattling crowd; And a great shadow overwhelmed them all, As their white faces and their anxious eyes Pursued Fernando in his moody walk. He paused, as one who balances a doubt, Weighing two courses, then burst out with this: "Ye all have seen the tidings in my face; Or has the dial ceased to register The workings of my heart? Then hear the bell, That almost cracks its frame in utterance; The Countess,—she is dead!" "Dead!" Carlo groaned. And if a bolt from middle heaven had struck His splendid features full upon the brow, He could not have appeared more scathed and blanched. "Dead!—dead!" He staggered to his easel-frame, And clung around it, buffeting the air With one wild arm, as though a drowning man Hung to a spar and fought against the waves. The Count resumed: "I came not here to grieve, Nor see my sorrow in another's eyes. Who'll paint the Countess, as she lies to-night In state within the chapel? Shall it be That earth must lose her wholly? that no hint Of her gold tresses, beaming eyes, and lips That talked in silence, and the eager soul That ever seemed outbreaking through her clay, And scattering glory round it,—shall all these Be dull corruption's heritage, and we, Poor beggars, have no legacy to show That love she bore us? That were shame to love, And shame to you, my masters." Carlo stalked Forth from his easel stiffly as a thing Moved by mechanic impulse. His thin lips, And sharpened nostrils, and wan, sunken cheeks, And the cold glimmer in his dusky eyes, Made him a ghastly sight. The throng drew back As though they let a spectre through. Then he, Fronting the Count, and speaking in a voice Sounding remote and hollow, made reply: "Count, I shall paint the Countess. 'T is my fate,— Not pleasure,—no, nor duty." But the Count, Astray in woe, but understood assent, Not the strange words that bore it; and he flung His arm round Carlo, drew him to his breast, And kissed his forehead. At which Carlo shrank; Perhaps 't was at the honor. Then the Count, A little reddening at his public state,— Unseemly to his near and recent loss,— Withdrew in haste between the downcast eyes That did him reverence as he rustled by. Night fell on Padua. In the chapel lay The Countess Laura at the altar's foot. Her coronet glittered on her pallid brows; A crimson pall, weighed down with golden work, Sown thick with pearls, and heaped with early flowers, Draped her still body almost to the chin; And over all a thousand candles flamed Against the winking jewels, or streamed down The marble aisle, and flashed along the guard Of men-at-arms that slowly wove their turns, Backward and forward, through the distant gloom. When Carlo entered, his unsteady feet Scarce bore him to the altar, and his head Drooped down so low that all his shining curls Poured on his breast, and veiled his countenance. Upon his easel a half-finished work, The secret labor of his studio, Said from the canvas, so that none might err, "I am the Countess Laura." Carlo kneeled, And gazed upon the picture; as if thus, Through those clear eyes, he saw the way to heaven. Then he arose; and as a swimmer comes Forth from the waves, he shook his locks aside, Emerging from his dream, and standing firm Upon a purpose with his sovereign will. He took his palette, murmuring, "Not yet!" Confidingly and softly to the corpse, And as the veriest drudge, who plies his art Against his fancy, he addressed himself With stolid resolution to his task, Turning his vision on his memory, And shutting out the present, till the dead, The gilded pall, the lights, the pacing guard, And all the meaning of that solemn scene Became as nothing, and creative Art Resolved the whole to chaos, and reformed The elements according to her law: So Carlo wrought, as though his eye and hand Were Heaven's unconscious instruments, and worked The settled purpose of Omnipotence. And it was wondrous how the red, the white, The ochre, and the umber, and the blue, From mottled blotches, hazy and opaque, Grew into rounded forms and sensuous lines; How just beneath the lucid skin the blood Glimmered with warmth; the scarlet lips apart Bloomed with the moisture of the dews of life; How the light glittered through and underneath The golden tresses, and the deep, soft eyes Became intelligent with conscious thought, And somewhat troubled underneath the arch Of eyebrows but a little too intense For perfect beauty; how the pose and poise Of the lithe figure on its tiny foot Suggested life just ceased from motion; so That any one might cry, in marvelling joy, "That creature lives,—has senses, mind, a soul To win God's love or dare hell's subtleties!" The artist paused. The ratifying "Good!" Trembled upon his lips. He saw no touch To give or soften. "It is done," he cried,— "My task, my duty! Nothing now on earth Can taunt me with a work left unfulfilled!" The lofty flame, which bore him up so long, Died in the ashes of humanity; And the mere man rocked to and fro again Upon the centre of his wavering heart. He put aside his palette, as if thus He stepped from sacred vestments, and assumed A mortal function in the common world. "Now for my rights!" he muttered, and approached The noble body. "O lily of the world! So withered, yet so lovely! what wast thou To those who came thus near thee—for I stood Without the pale of thy half-royal rank— When thou wast budding, and the streams of life Made eager struggles to maintain thy bloom, And gladdened heaven dropped down in gracious dews On its transplanted darling? Hear me now! I say this but in justice, not in pride, Not to insult thy high nobility, But that the poise of things in God's own sight May be adjusted; and hereafter I May urge a claim that all the powers of heaven Shall sanction, and with clarions blow abroad.— Laura you loved me! Look not so severe, With your cold brows, and deadly, close-drawn lips! You proved it, Countess, when you died for it,— Let it consume you in the wearing strife It fought with duty in your ravaged heart. I knew it ever since that summer day I painted Lilla, the pale beggar's child, At rest beside the fountain; when I felt— O Heaven!—the warmth and moisture of your breath Blow through my hair, as with your eager soul— Forgetting soul and body go as one— You leaned across my easel till our cheeks— Ah me! 't was not your purpose—touched, and clung! Well, grant 't was genius; and is genius naught? I ween it wears as proud a diadem— Here, in this very world—as that you wear. A king has held my palette, a grand-duke Has picked my brush up, and a pope has begged The favor of my presence in his Rome. I did not go; I put my fortune by. I need not ask you why: you knew too well. It was but natural, it was no way strange, That I should love you. Everything that saw, Or had its other senses, loved you, sweet, And I among them. Martyr, holy saint,— I see the halo curving round your head,— I loved you once; but now I worship you, For the great deed that held my love aloof, And killed you in the action! I absolve Your soul from any taint. For from the day Of that encounter by the fountain-side Until this moment, never turned on me Those tender eyes, unless they did a wrong To nature by the cold, defiant glare With which they chilled me. Never heard I word Of softness spoken by those gentle lips; Never received a bounty from that hand Which gave to all the world. I know the cause. You did your duty,—not for honor's sake, Nor to save sin, or suffering, or remorse, Or all the ghosts that haunt a woman's shame, But for the sake of that pure, loyal love Your husband bore you. Queen, by grace of God, I bow before the lustre of your throne! I kiss the edges of your garment-hem, And hold myself ennobled! Answer me,— If I had wronged you, you would answer me Out of the dusty porches of the tomb:— Is this a dream, a falsehood? or have I Spoken the very truth?" "The very truth!" A voice replied; and at his side he saw A form, half shadow and half substance, stand, Or, rather, rest; for on the solid earth It had no footing, more than some dense mist That waves o'er the surface of the ground It scarcely touches. With a reverent look The shadow's waste and wretched face was bent Above the picture; as though greater awe Subdued its awful being, and appalled, With memories of terrible delight And fearful wonder, its devouring gaze. "You make what God makes,—beauty," said the shape. "And might not this, this second Eve, console The emptiest heart? Will not this thing outlast The fairest creature fashioned in the flesh? Before that figure, Time, and Death himself, Stand baffled and disarmed. What would you ask More than God's power, from nothing to create?" The artist gazed upon the boding form, And answered: "Goblin, if you had a heart, That were an idle question. What to me Is my creative power, bereft of love? Or what to God would be that self-same power, If so bereaved?" "And yet the love, thus mourned, You calmly forfeited. For had you said To living Laura—in her burning ears— One half that you professed to Laura dead, She would have been your own. These contraries Sort not with my intelligence. But speak, Were Laura living, would the same stale play Of raging passion tearing out its heart Upon the rock of duty be performed?" "The same, O phantom, while the heart I bear Trembled, but turned not its magnetic faith From God's fixed centre." "If I wake for you This Laura,—give her all the bloom and glow Of that midsummer day you hold so dear,— The smile, the motion, the impulsive soul, The love of genius,—yea, the very love, The mortal, hungry, passionate, hot love, She bore you, flesh to flesh,—would you receive That gift, in all its glory, at my hands?" A smile of malice curled the tempter's lips, And glittered in the caverns of his eyes, Mocking the answer. Carlo paled and shook; A woful spasm went shuddering through his frame, Curdling his blood, and twisting his fair face With nameless torture. But he cried aloud, Out of the clouds of anguish, from the smoke Of very martyrdom, "O God, she is thine! Do with her at thy pleasure!" Something grand, And radiant as a sunbeam, touched the head. He bent in awful sorrow. "Mortal, see—" "Dare not! As Christ was sinless, I abjure These vile abominations! Shall she bear Life's burden twice, and life's temptations twice, While God is justice?" "Who has made you judge Of what you call God's good, and what you think God's evil? One to him, the source of both, The God of good and of permitted ill. Have you no dream of days that might have been, Had you and Laura filled another fate?— Some cottage on the sloping Apennines, Roses and lilies, and the rest all love? I tell you that this tranquil dream may be Filled to repletion. Speak, and in the shade Of my dark pinions I shall bear you hence, And land you where the mountain-goat himself Struggles for footing." He outspread his wings, And all the chapel darkened, as though hell Had swallowed up the tapers; and the air Grew thick, and, like a current sensible, Flowed round the person, with a wash and dash, As of the waters of a nether sea. Slowly and calmly through the dense obscure, Dove-like and gentle, rose the artist's voice: "I dare not bring her spirit to that shame! Know my full meaning,—I who neither fear Your mystic person nor your dreadful power. Nor shall I now invoke God's potent name For my deliverance from your toils. I stand Upon the founded structure of his law, Established from the first, and thence defy Your arts, reposing all my trust in that!" The darkness eddied off; and Carlo saw The figure gathering, as from outer space, Brightness on brightness; and his former shape Fell from him, like the ashes that fall off, And show a core of mellow fire within. Adown his wings there poured a lambent flood, That seemed as molten gold, which plashing fell Upon the floor, enringing him with flame; And o'er the tresses of his beaming head Arose a stream of many-colored light, Like that which crowns the morning. Carlo stood Steadfast, for all the splendor, reaching up The outstretched palms of his untainted soul Towards heaven for strength. A moment thus; then asked, With reverential wonder quivering through His sinking voice, "Who, spirit, and what, art thou?" "I am that blessing which men fly from,—Death." "Then take my hand, if so God orders it; For Laura waits me." "But, bethink thee, man, What the world loses in the loss of thee! What wondrous art will suffer with eclipse! What unwon glories are in store for thee! What fame, outreaching time and temporal shocks, Would shine upon the letters of thy name Graven in marble, or the brazen height Of columns wise with memories of thee!" "Take me! If I outlived the Patriarchs, I could but paint those features o'er and o'er: Lo! that is done." A smile of pity lit The seraph's features, as he looked to heaven, With deep inquiry in his tender eyes. The mandate came. He touched with downy wing The sufferer lightly on his aching heart; And gently, as the skylark settles down Upon the clustered treasures of her nest, So Carlo softly slid along the prop Of his tall easel, nestling at the foot As though he slumbered; and the morning broke In silver whiteness over Padua.

GEORGE HENRY BOKER.

OTHELLO'S REMORSE. FROM "OTHELLO," ACT V. SC. 2.

Behold, I have a weapon; A better never did itself sustain Upon a soldier's thigh: I have seen the day, That, with this little arm and this good sword, I have made my way through more impediments Than twenty times your stop:—but, O vain boast! Who can control his fate? 't is not so now.— Be not afraid, though you do see me weaponed; Here is my journey's end, here is my butt, And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. Do you go back dismayed? 't is a lost fear; Man but a rush against Othello's breast, And he retires:—where should Othello go?— Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starred wench! Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt, This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven, And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl? Even like thy chastity—O, cursèd slave!— Whip me, ye devils, From the possession of this heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur! Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!— O Desdemona! Desdemona! dead? O! O!

SHAKESPEARE.

THE TRIAL OF BEATRICE. FROM "THE CENCI," ACT V.

Scene II.—A Hall of Justice. Camillo, Judges, etc., are discovered seated; Marzio is led in.

First Judge.—Accused, do you persist in your denial? I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty? I demand who were the participators In your offence? Speak truth and the whole truth.

Marzio.—My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing; Olimpio sold the robe to me from which You would infer my guilt.

Second Judge.—Away with him!

First Judge.—Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner, That you would bandy lovers' talk with it Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!

Marzio.—Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.

First Judge.—Then speak.

Marzio.—I strangled him in his sleep.

First Judge.—Who urged you to it?

Marzio.—His own son, Giacomo, and the young prelate Orsino sent me to Petrella; there The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I And my companion forthwith murdered him. Now let me die.

First Judge.—This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, Lead forth the prisoner!

Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, Giacomo, guarded.

Look upon this man; When did you see him last?

Beatrice.—We never saw him.

Marzio.—You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.

Beatrice.—I know thee! How? where? when?

Marzio.—You know 't was I Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes To kill your father. When the thing was done You clothed me in a robe of woven gold And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see. You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, You know that what I speak is true. (Beatrice advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back.) O, dart The terrible resentment of those eyes On the dead earth! Turn them away from me! They wound: 't was torture forced the truth. My Lords, Having said this let me be led to death.

Beatrice.—Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.

Camillo.—Guards, lead him not away.

Beatrice.—Cardinal Camillo, You have a good repute for gentleness And wisdom: can it be that you sit here To countenance a wicked farce like this? When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart And bade to answer, not as he believes, But as those may suspect or do desire Whose questions thence suggest their own reply: And that in peril of such hideous torments As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now The thing you surely know, which is that you, If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, And you were told: "Confess that you did poison Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child Who was the lodestar of your life:"—and tho' All see, since his most swift and piteous death, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time And all the things hoped for or done therein Are changed to you, thro' your exceeding grief, Yet you would say, "I confess anything:" And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, The refuge of dishonorable death. I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert My innocence.

Camillo (much moved).—What shall we think, my Lords? Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul That she is guiltless.

Judge.—Yet she must be tortured.

Camillo.—I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep) As that most perfect image of God's love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy!

Judge.—Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, If you forbid the rack. His Holiness Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime By the severest forms of law; nay even To stretch a point against the criminals. The prisoners stand accused of parricide Upon such evidence as justifies Torture.

Beatrice.—What evidence? This man's?

Judge.—Even so.

Beatrice (to Marzio).—Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth Out of the multitude of living men To kill the innocent?

Marzio.—I am Marzio, Thy father's vassal.

Beatrice.—Fix thine eyes on mine; Answer to what I ask. (Turning to the Judges.) I prithee mark His countenance: unlike bold calumny Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks, He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends His gaze on the blind earth. (To Marzio.) What! wilt thou say That I did murder my own father?

Marzio.—Oh! Spare me! My brain swims round ... I cannot speak ... It was that horrid torture forced the truth. Take me away! Let her not look on me! I am a guilty miserable wretch; I have said all I know; now, let me die!

Beatrice.—My Lords, if by my nature I had been So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged, Which your suspicions dictate to this slave, And the rack makes him utter, do you think I should have left this two-edged instrument Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife With my own name engraven on the heft, Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, For my own death? That with such horrible need For deepest silence, I should have neglected So trivial a precaution, as the making His tomb the keeper of a secret written On a thief's memory? What is his poor life? What are a thousand lives? A parricide Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives! (Turning to Marzio.) And thou ...

Marzio.—Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more! That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, Wound worse than torture.

(To the Judges.) I have told it all; For pity's sake lead me away to death.

Camillo.—Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice; He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf From the keen breath of the serenest north.

Beatrice.—O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me; So mayst thou answer God with less dismay: What evil have we done thee? I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years And so my lot was ordered, that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul; And my untainted fame; and even that peace Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart; But the wound was not mortal; so my hate Became the only worship I could lift To our great Father, who in pity and love, Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off; And thus his wrong becomes my accusation; And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth: Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart. If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path Over the trampled laws of God and man, Rush not before thy Judge, and say: "My maker, I have done this and more; for there was one Who was most pure and innocent on earth; And because she endured what never any Guilty or innocent endured before: Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought; Because thy hand at length did rescue her; I with my words killed her and all her kin." Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay The reverence living in the minds of men Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame! Think what it is to strangle infant pity, Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, Till it become a crime to suffer. Think What 't is to blot with infamy and blood All that which shows like innocence, and is, Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent, So that the world lose all discrimination Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt, And that which now compels thee to reply To what I ask: Am I, or am I not A parricide?

Marzio.—Thou art not!

Judge.—What is this?

Marzio.—I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. 'T is I alone am guilty.

Judge.—Drag him away to torments; let them be Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not Till he confess.

Marzio.—Torture me as ye will: A keener pain has wrung a higher truth From my last breath. She is most innocent! Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me; I will not give you that fine piece of nature To rend and ruin. (Exit Marzio, guarded.)

Camillo.—What say ye now, my Lords?

Judge.—Let tortures strain the truth till it be white As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.

Camillo.—Yet stained with blood.

Judge (to Beatrice). —Know you this paper, Lady?

Beatrice.—Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he, Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge, What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name; Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what, And therefore on the chance that it may be Some evil, will ye kill us?

(Enter an Officer.)

Officer.—Marzio's dead.

Judge.—What did he say?

Officer.—Nothing. As soon as we Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us, As one who baffles a deep adversary; And holding his breath, died.

Judge.—There remains nothing But to apply the question to those prisoners, Who yet remain stubborn.

Camillo.—I overrule Further proceedings, and in the behalf Of these most innocent and noble persons Will use my interest with the Holy Father.

Judge.—Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile Conduct these culprits each to separate cells; And be the engines ready: for this night If the Pope's resolution be as grave, Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. (Exeunt.)