To Herodias young Salome fondly turns, with grateful smiles: Gold of Ophir, pearls of ocean, nard and spice of happier isles, What of choice and costly treasures, choicest, costliest, shall she claim? Then a glare of fiendish triumph in that cruel cold eye came; And the queen's heart heaved with vengeance; and she gasp'd with quicken'd breath Brief words of envenom'd malice, warrant of the prophet's death. Why that sudden ashy pallor? why that passionate caress? Bends the sapling in the tempest: weakness yields to wickedness. Musing still his past, the captive on his watch nor slept nor stirr'd, And the dawn drew on unheeded, and the cock crew thrice unheard. Of the sentinels of morning, shining over Abarim, Only one was left, the day-star; and its lamp was growing Hark! the bolt is drawn, how slowly see! the dungeon door flung wide: Weapons gleam along the passage: armed men are by his side. In their looks he read his sentence, and he knew his hour was come, And his proud neck meekly offer'd to the stroke of mar tyrdom: And, as flash'd the headsman's broadsword, rose the sun on Pisgah's height; And the morning star was hidden in the flood of golden 1868. light. 7* THE FAVORITISMS OF HEAVEN. In the evening we can longest tarry by the twilight shore, For at even dreams float on for ever and for evermore: In the evening stars that glimmer one by one from out the sky Tell in tones that touch us nearly how in silence time fleets by: And a voice like none beside them have the winds of fall ing night, Hurrying on our spirits with them up to Memory's cloudy height. In the evening, too, ariseth Hope with all her faëry train, Turning from the roseate Past to tell us such shall come again. And at chiming of the vespers, as it chanced, my thoughts I cast, Half awake and half in dreamings, over my far-crowded Past. And is't mine then?- Some one answers, 66 How or what is it to thee? Nothing but a train of memories like a silver mist at sea: Here and there a glory scatter'd from the starlight or the moon, Rising like all things of time,— enthusiast! vanishing as But the Past is nothing, nothing but the shadow of a shade." Ceased the voice, and much I wonder'd, but I scarcely dared to doubt. When another spirit answer'd from the silence speaking out, "Brother, nay - the Past seems vanish'd save to Memory's listless eye: No-no-no high." the Past is deathless and its record is on List! it rose a heaving landscape, scarce defined yet won drous strange, Gloom and glory like a moon-trance flitting o'er in cease less change. There were springs of crystal rapture, rivulets of sorrow too, Passion with her storm-tost surges, Peace a lake of softest blue. Long my musings like a wanderer wandering o'er the haunts of youth, Slow retraced each by-gone feeling in their lucid depths of truth, Till upon love's fount they centred, purest of all waves that flow, Fed itself of heaven, yet feeding all the myriad flowers below. Lean thy heart on mine, beloved, — listen - I have heard men say That the fondnesses of earth will pass with earthly things away; All the silent eloquence of clasped hands and falling tears, All the musical low whispers like the music of the spheres, All the thrilling strange entrancement fluttering over cheek and eye, |