Better far the red pile blazing
With the spicy Indian wood, Incense unto heaven raising
From the sandal oil's sweet flood.
In the bright pyre's kindling flashes,
Let my yielded soul ascend;
Fling to the wild winds my ashes
"Till with mother earth they blend.
Not so,-let the pale urn keep them;
Touch'd with spices, oil, and wine; Let there be some one to weep them; Wilt thou keep that urn? Love mine!
THIS celebrated Italian was essentially the painter of beauty. Of the devotion with which he sought its inspiration in its presence, a remarkable instance is recorded. He either could not or would not paint without the presence of his lovely mistress, LA FORNARINA.
[AH! not for him the dull and measured eye, Which colours nothing in the common sky, Which sees but night upon the starry cope, And animates with no mysterious hope. Which looks upon a quiet face, nor dreams If it be ever tranquil as it seems; Which reads no histories in a passing look, Nor on the cheek which is the heart's own book, Whereon it writes in rosy characters Whate'er emotion in its silence stirs.
Such are the common people of the soul, Of whom the stars write not in their bright scroll. These, when the sunshine at the noontide makes Golden confusion in the forest brakes,
See no sweet shadows gliding o'er the grass, Which seems to fill with wild flowers as they
These, from the twilight music of the fount
Ask not its secret and its sweet account;
These never seek to read the chronicle
Which hides within the hyacinth's dimlit bell:
They know not of the poetry which lies
Upon the summer rose's languid eyes;
They have no spiritual visitings elysian,
They dream no dreamings, and they see no vision.
The young Italian was not of the clay,
That doth to dust one long allegiance pay.
No; he was temper'd with that finer flame,
Which ancient fables say from heaven came;
The sunshine of the soul, which fills the earth
With beauty borrow'd from its place of birth.
Hence has the lute its song, the scroll its line; Hence stands the statue glorious as its shrine; Hence the fair picture, kings are fain to win, The mind's creations from the world within.]
NOT without me !-alone, thy hand
Forgot its art awhile;
Thy pencil lost its high command,
Uncherish'd by my smile.
It was too dull a task for thee
To paint remember'd rays;
Thou, who were wont to gaze on me,
And colour from that gaze.
I know that I am very fair,
I would I were divine,
To realize the shapes that share
Those midnight hours of thine.
Thou sometimes tellest me, how in sleep
What lovely phantoms seem;
I hear thee name them, and I weep,
Too jealous of a dream.
But thou didst pine for me, my love,
Aside thy colours thrown;
"Twas sad to raise thine eyes above,
Unanswer'd by mine own:
Thou who art wont to lift those eyes,
And gather from my face
The warmth of life's impassion'd dyes,
Its colour and its grace.
Ah! let me linger at thy side,
And sing some sweet old song, That tells of hearts as true and tried,
As to ourselves belong.
The love whose light thy colours give,
Is kindled at the heart;
And who shall bid its influence live, My Raphael, if we part?
Why should I seek these scenes again, the past Is on yon valley like a shroud ?
WEEP for the love that fate forbids,
Yet loves unhoping on,
Though every light that once illumed
Its early path be gone.
"Among the mountains which form the southern boundary of Haweswater is Mardale Head, a wild and solitary region, wherein nature, working with a master hand, seems to have produced the very beau ideal of romantic grandeur and sublimity."
Weep for the love that must resign
The heart's enchanted dream, And float, like some neglected bark, Adown life's lonely stream.
Weep for the love these scenes recall,
Like some enduring spell;
It rests within the soul which loved
Too vainly, and too well.
Weep for the breaking heart condemn'd
To see its youth pass by,
Whose lot has been in this cold world
To dream, despair, and die.
"Now as they were going along, and talking, they spied a boy feeding his father's sheep. The boy was in very mean clothes, but of a fresh and well-favoured countenance; and as he sat by himself, he sung. Then said the guide, Do you hear him? I will dare to say, this boy lives a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called heart's. ease in his bosom, than he that is clad in silk and velvet." -Pilgrim's Progress.
LIKE some vision olden
Of far other time,
When the age was golden,
In the young world's prime;
Is thy soft pipe ringing,
O lonely shepherd boy, What song art thou singing, In thy youth and joy?
Or art thou complaining
Of thy lowly lot,
And thine own disdaining,
Dost ask what thou hast not?
Of the future dreaming,
Weary of the past,
For the present scheming,
All but what thou hast.
No, thou art delighting
In thy summer home; Where the flowers inviting Tempt the bee to roam; Where the cowslip bending, With its golden bells, Of each glad hour's ending With a sweet chime tells.
All wild creatures love him
When he is alone,
Every bird above him
Sings its softest tone.
Thankful to high Heaven,
Humble in thy joy Much to thee is given, Lowly shepherd boy.
"THESE celebrated Caves are situated in the beautiful island of their own name. It is composed of two hills, with a narrow valley between them. Ascending the narrow path where the two hills are knit together, there lies below the superb prospect of the sea and the adjacent shores. Gradually an open space is gained, and we come suddenly on the grand entrance of a magnificent temple, whose huge massy columns seem to give support to the whole mountain which is above. The entrance into the temple, which is entirely hewn out of a stone resembling porphyry, is by two massy pillars forming three openings, under a steep rock overhung by reeds and wild shrubs."
WHAT know we of them? Nothing-there they stand,
Gloomy as night, inscrutible as fate.
Altars no more divine, and shrines which know
Nor priests, nor votaries, nor sacrifice;
The stranger's wonder all their worship now.
And yet coeval as the native rock
Seem they with mother earth-immutable.
Time-tempest-warfare-ordinary decay,
Is not for these. The memory of man
Has lost their rise-although they are his work.
Two senses here are present; one of Power,
And one of Nothingness; doth it not mock
The mighty mind to see the meaner part,
The task it taught its hands, outlast itself?
The temple was a type, a thing of stone,
Built by laborious days which made up years;
The creed which hallow'd it was of the soul;
And yet the creed hath past-the temple stands.
The high beliefs which raised themselves to
The general truths on which religions grow;
The strong necessity of self-restraint;
The needful comfort of some future hope
Than that whose promise only binds to-day,
And future fear, parent of many faiths:
Those vast desires, unquenchable, which sweep
Beyond the limits of our little world,
And know there is another by themselves;
These constitute the spiritual of man.
"Tis they who elevate and who redeem,
By some great purpose, some on-looking end,
The mere brute exercise of common strength.
Yet these have left no trace. The mighty
shrine,
Undeified, speaks force, and only force,
Man's meanest attribute.
THE FAIRY OF THE FOUNTAINS.
THE legend, on which this story is founded, is immediately taken from Mr. Thoms's most interesting collection. I have allowed myself some license, in my arrangement of the story; but fairy tales have an old-established privilege of change; at least, if we judge by the various shapes which they assume in the progress of time, and by process of translation.
WHY did she love her mother so? It hath wrought her wondrous wo.
Once she saw an armed knight
In the pale sepulchral night;
When the sullen starbeams throw
Evil spells on earth below;
And the moon is cold and pale,
And a voice is on the gale,
Like a lost soul's heavenward cry,
Hopeless in its agony.
He stood beside the castle gate,
The hour was dark, the hour was late;
With the bearing of a king
Did he at the portal ring,
And the loud and hollow bell
Sounded like a Christian's knell.
That pale child stood on the wall
Watching there, and saw it all.
Then she was a child as fair
As the opening blossoms are:
But with large black eyes, whose light
Spoke of mystery and might.
The stately stranger's head was bound
With a bright and golden round;
Curiously inlaid, each scale
Shone upon his glittering mail;
His high brow was cold and dim,
And she felt she hated him.
Then she heard her mother's voice,
Saying, ""Tis not at my choice!
Wo forever, wo the hour,
When you sought my secret bower,
Listening to the word of fear,
Never meant for human ear
Thy suspicion's vain endeavour,
Wo! wo! parted us forever."
Still the porter of the hall
Heeded not that crown'd knight's call.
When a glittering shape there came,
With a brow of starry flame;
And he led that knight again
O'er the bleak and barren plain.
He flung, with an appalling cry,
His dark and desperate arms on high;
And from Melusina's sight
Fled away through thickest night.
Who has not, when but a child,
Treasured up some vision wild;
Haunting them with nameless fear,
Filling all they see or hear,
In the midnight's lonely hour,
With a strange mysterious power?
So a terror undefined
Enter'd in that infant mind;
A fear that haunted her alone,
For she told her thought to none.
Years pass'd on, and each one threw
O'er those walls a deeper hue;
Large and old the ivy leaves
Heavy hung around the eaves,
Till the darksome rooms within
Daylight never enter'd in.
And the spider's silvery line
Was the only thing to shine.
Years past on,-the fair child now
Wore maiden beauty on her brow-
Beauty such as rarely flowers
In a fallen world like ours.
She was tall; a queen might wear
Such a proud imperial air;
She was tall, yet when unbound,
Swept her bright hair to the ground,
Glittering like the gold you see
On a young laburnum tree.
Yet her eyes were dark as night,
Melancholy as moonlight,
With a fierce and wilder ray
Of a meteor on its way.
Lonely was her childhood's time,
Lonelier was her maiden prime;
And she wearied of the hours
Wasted in those gloomy towers;
Sometimes through the sunny sky
She would watch the flowers fly,
Making of the air a bath,
In a thousand joyous rings;
She would ask of them their path,
She would ask of them their wings.
Once her stately mother came,
With her dark eyes funeral flame,
And her cheek as pale as death,
And her cold and whispering breath;
With her sable garments bound
By a mystic girdle round,
Which, when to the east she turn'd,
With a sudden lustre burn'd.
Once that ladye, dark and tall,
Stood upon the castle wall;
And she mark'd her daughter's eyes
Fix'd upon the glad sunrise,
With a sad yet eager look,
Such as fixes on a book
Which describes some happy lot,
Lit with joys that we have not.
And the thought of what has been,
And the thought of what might be, Makes us crave the fancied scene,
And despise reality.
'Twas a drear and desert plain
Lay around their own domain;
But, far off, a world more fair
Outlined on the sunny air;
Hung amid the purple clouds,
With which early morning shrouds
All her blushes, brief and bright,
Waking up from sleep and night.
In a voice so low and dread,
As a voice that wakes the dead;
Then that stately lady said:
"Daughter of a kingly line,-
Daughter, too, of race like mine,—
Such a kingdom had been thine;
For thy father was a king,
Whom I wed with word and ring.
But in an unhappy hour,
Did he pass my secret bower,—
Did he listen to the word,
Mortal ear hath never heard;
From that hour of grief and pain
Might we never meet again.
"Maiden, listen to my rede,
Punish'd for thy father's deed,
Here, an exile, I must stay,
While he sees the light of day.
Child, his race is mix'd in thee,
With mine own more high degree.
Hadst thou at Christ's altar stood,
Bathed in his redeeming flood;
Thou of my wild race had known
But its loveliness alone.
Now thou hast a mingled dower,
Human passion-fairy power.
But forefend thee from the last :
Be its gifts behind thee cast.
Many tears will wash away
Mortal sin from mortal clay.
Keep thou then a timid eye
On the hopes that fill yon sky;
Bend thou with a suppliant knee,
And thy soul yet saved may be ;-
Saved by Him who died to save
Man from death beyond the grave."
Easy 'tis advice to give,
Hard it is advice to take.
Years that lived-and years to live,
Wide and weary difference make.
To that elder ladye's mood,
Suited silent solitude:
For her lorn heart's wasted soil
Now repaid not hope's sweet toil.
Never more could spring flowers grow
On the worn-out soil below;
But to the young Melusine,
Earth and heaven were yet divine. Still illusion's purple light
Was upon the morning tide, And there rose before her sight
The loveliness of life untried.
Three sweet genii,-Youth, Love, Hope,Drew her future horoscope.
Must such lights themselves consume?
Must she be her own dark tomb?
But far other thoughts than these-
Life's enchanted fantasies,
Were, with Melusina now,
Stern and dark, contracts her brow;
And her bitten lip is white,
As with passionate resolve.
Mutter'd she,-"It is my right;
On me let the task devolve:
Since such blood to me belongs
I shall seek its own bright sphere;
I will well avenge the wrongs
Of my mother exiled here."
Two long years are come and past,
And the maiden's lot is cast ;-
Cast in mystery and power,
Work'd out by the watching hour,
By the word that spirits tell,
By the sign and by the spell.
Two long years have come and gone,
And the maiden dwells alone.
For the deed which she hath done,
Is she now a banish'd one ;-
Banish'd from her mother's arms,
Banish'd by her mother's charms,
With a curse of grief and pain,
Never more to meet again.
Great was the revenge she wrought,
Dearly that revenge was bought.
When the maiden felt her powers,
Straight she found her father's towers.
With a sign, and with a word,
Pass'd she on unseen, unheard.
One, a pallid minstrel born
On Good Friday's mystic morn,
Said she saw a lady there,
Tall and stately, strange and fair,
With a stern and glittering eye,
Like a shadow gliding by.
All was fear and awe next day,
For the king had pass'd away.
He had pledged his court at night,
In the red grape's flowing light.
All his pages saw him sleeping;
Next day there was wail and weeping.
Halls and lands were wander'd o'er,
But they saw their king no more.
Strange it is, and sad to tell,
What the royal knight befell.
Far upon a desert land,
Does a mighty mountain stand;
On its summit there is snow,
While the bleak pines moan below;
And within there is a cave
Open'd for a monarch's grave.
Bound in an enchanted sleep
She hath laid him still and deep.
She, his only child, has made
That strange tomb where he is laid:
Nothing more of earth to know,
Till the final trumpet blow.
Mortal lip nor mortal ear,
Were not made to speak nor hear
That accursed word which seal'd,—
All those gloomy depths conceal'd.
With a look of joy and pride,
Then she sought her mother's side.
Whispering, on her bended knee,
"O! my mother, joyous be;
For the mountain torrents spring
O'er that faithless knight and king."
Not another word she spoke,
For her speech a wild shriek broke;
For the widow'd queen upsprung,
Wild her pale thin hands she wrung.
With her black hair falling round,
Flung her desperate on the ground;
While young Melusine stood by,
With a fix'd and fearful eye.
When her agony was past,
Slowly rose the queen at last;
With her black hair, like a shroud,
And her bearing high and proud;
With the marble of her brow,
Colder than its custom now:
And her eye with a strange light,
Seem'd to blast her daughter's sight.
And she felt her whole frame shrink,
And her young heart's pulses sink;
And the colour left her mouth,
As she saw her mother signing,
One stern hand towards the south,
Where a strange red star was shining. With a mutter'd word and gaze, Fix'd upon its vivid rays; Then she spoke, but in a tone, Hers, yet all unlike her own."Spirit of our spirit-line, Curse for me this child of mine. Six days yield not to our powers, But the seventh day is ours. By yon star, and by our line, Be thou cursed, maiden mine." Then the maiden felt hot pain Run through every burning vein.
Sudden, with a fearful cry,
Writhes she in her agony;
Burns her cheek as with a flame,
For the maiden knows her shame.
By a lovely river's side,
Where the water-lilies glide,
Pale, as if with constant care
Of the treasures which they bear;
For those ivory vases hold
Each a sunny gift of gold.
And blue flowers on the banks,
Grow in wild and drooping ranks,
Bending mournfully above,
O'er the waters which they love;
But which bear off, day by day,
Their shadow and themselves away.
Willows by that river grow
With their leaves half green, half snow,
Summer never seems to be
Present all with that sad tree.
With its bending boughs are wrought
Tender and associate thought,
Of the wreaths that maidens wear
In their long-neglected hair.
Of the branches that are thrown
On the last, the funeral stone.
And of those torn wreaths that suit
Youthful minstrel's wasted lute.
But the stream is gay to-night
With the full moon's golden light,
And the air is sweet with singing,
And the joyous horn is ringing,
While fair groups of dancers round
Circle the enchanted ground.
And a youthful warrior stands
Gazing not upon those bands,
Not upon the lovely scene,
But upon its lovelier queen,
Who with gentle word and smile
Courteous prays his stay awhile.
The fairy of the fountains, she
A strange and lovely mystery,
She of whom wild tales have birth,
When beside a winter hearth,
By some aged crone is cold,
Marvel new or legend old.
But the ladye fronts him there,
He but sees she is so fair,
He but hears that in her tone
Dwells a music yet unknown;
He but feels that he could die
For the sweetness of her sigh.
But how many dreams take flight
With the dim enamour'd night;
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