At evening dashed the laurelled bust,

And spurned the wreaths themselves had strewn ;

The shout of triumph echoed wide,

The self-stung reptile writhed and died!

A PORTRAIT.

STILL, sweet, placid, moonlight face,
And slightly nonchalant,

Which seems to claim a middle place
Between one's love and aunt,
Where childhood's star has left a ray
In woman's sunniest sky,
As morning dew and blushing day
On fruit and blossom lie.

And yet,

and yet I cannot love

Those lovely lines on steel;

They beam too much of heaven above,
Earth's darker shades to feel;
Perchance some early weeds of care
Around my heart have grown,
And brows unfurrowed seem not fair,
Because they mock my own.

Alas! when Eden's gates were sealed,
How oft some sheltered flower

Breathed o'er the wanderers of the field,
Like their own bridal bower;

Yet, saddened by its loveliness,
And humbled by its pride,

Earth's fairest child they could not bless, -
It mocked them when they sighed.

-

A ROMAN AQUEDUCT.

HE sun-browned girl, whose limbs recline
When noon her languid hand has laid
Hot on the green flakes of the pine,

Beneath its narrow disk of shade;

As, through the flickering noontide glare
She gazes on the rainbow chain

Of arches, lifting once in air

The rivers of the Roman's plain ;

Say, does her wandering eye recall

The mountain-current's icy wave,

Or for the dead one tear let fall,

Whose founts are broken by their grave?

From stone to stone the ivy weaves

Her braided tracery's winding veil,

And lacing stalks and tangled leaves
Nod heavy in the drowsy gale.

And lightly floats the pendent vine,

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

Seems mirrored in the wreath below.

How patient Nature smiles at Fame!

The weeds, that strewed the victor's way, Feed on his dust to shroud his name,

Green where his proudest towers decay.

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

Thus bending o'er the nation's bier,

Whose wants the captive earth supplied,
The dew of Memory's passing tear
Falls on the arches of her pride!

THE LAST PROPHECY OF CASSANDRA.

HE sun is fading in the skies

And evening shades are gathering fast; Fair city, ere that sun shall rise,

Thy night hath come,-thy day is past!

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

No vision strikes your clouded eye,

To break the sleep that wakes in death.

Go, age, and let thy withered cheek

Be wet once more with freezing tears;

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

Go, child, and pour thy sinless prayer
Before the everlasting throne;
And He who sits in glory there

May stoop to hear thy silver tone.

Go, warrior, in thy glittering steel,

And bow thee at the altar's side; And bid thy frowning gods reveal The doom their mystic counsels hide.

Go, maiden, in thy flowing veil,

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

Go, as thou didst in happier hours,
And lay thine incense on the shrine;
And greener leaves, and fairer flowers,
Around the sacred image twine.

I saw them rise, the buried dead,
From marble tomb and grassy mound;

I heard the spirits' printless tread,

And voices not of earthly sound.

I looked upon the quivering stream,

And its cold wave was bright with flame; And wild, as from a fearful dream,

The wasted forms of battle came.

Ye will not hear, ye will not know,
Ye scorn the maniac's idle song;

Ye care not! but the voice of woe

Shall thunder loud, and echo long.

Blood shall be in your marble halls,

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

But ye shall lie in death below.

Ay, none shall live to hear the storm

Around their blackened pillars sweep;

To shudder at the reptile's form,

Or scare the wild bird from her sleep.

TO A CAGED LION.

OOR conquered monarch! though that haughty glance

Still speaks thy courage unsubdued by time,

And in the grandeur of thy sullen tread

Lives the proud spirit of thy burning clime;

Fettered by things that shudder at thy roar, Torn from thy pathless wilds to pace this narrow floor!

Thou wast the victor, and all nature shrunk

Before the thunders of thine awful wrath;
The steel-armed hunter viewed thee from afar,

Fearless and trackless in thy lonely path!
The famished tiger closed his flaming eye,
And crouched and panted as thy step went by!

Thou art the vanquished, and insulting man

Bars thy broad bosom as a sparrow's wing;