That at last the Baron of St. Castine
Is coming home with his Indian queen,
Is coming without a week's delay;

And all the house must be swept and clean,
And all things set in good array!

And the solemn porter shakes his head;
And the answer he makes is: "Lackaday!
We will see, as the blind man said!"

Alert since first the day began,
The cock upon the village church
Looks northward from his airy perch,
As if beyond the ken of man,
To see the ships come sailing on
And pass the Isle of Oléron,
And pass the Tower of Cordouan.
In the church below is cold in clay
The heart that would have leaped for iov-
O tender heart of truth and trust!—
To see the coming of that day;

In the church below the lips are dust,
Dust are the hands, and dust the feet,
That would have been so swift to meet
The coming of that wayward boy.

At night the front of the old château

Is a blaze of light above and below;

There's a sound of wheels and hoofs in the street,
A cracking of whips, and scamper of feet,
Bells are ringing, and horns are blown.
And the Baron hath come again to his own.

The Curate is waiting in the hall,
Most eager and alive of all

To welcome the Baron and Baroness;
But his mind is full of vague distress,
For he hath read in Jesuit books

Of those children of the wilderness,
And now, good, simple man! he looks
To see a painted savage stride
Into the room with shoulders bare,
And eagle feathers in her hair,

And around her a robe of panther's hide.

Instead, he beholds with secret shame
A form of beauty undefined,
A loveliness without a name,
Not of degree, but more of kind;
Nor bold nor shy, nor short nor tall,
But a new mingling of them all.

Yes, beautiful beyond belief,
Transfigured and transfused, he sees
The lady of the Pyrenees,

The daughter of the Indian chief.
Beneath the shadow of her hair
The gold-bronze colour of the skin
Seems lighted by a fire within,
As when a burst of sunlight shines
Beneath a sombre grove of pines,—
A dusky splendour in the air.

The two small hands, that now are pressed
In his, seem made to be caressed,
They lie so warm and soft and still,
Like birds half hidden in a nest,
Trustful and innocent of ill.

And ah! he cannot believe his ears
When her melodious voice he hears
Speaking his native Gascon tongue;
The words she utters seem to be
Part of some poem of Goudouli,
They are not spoken, they are sung!
And the Baron smiles, and says, "You see,

I told you but the simple truth;

Ah, you may trust the eyes of youth!"

Down in the village day by day
The people gossip in their way,
And stare to see the Baroness pass
On Sunday morning to early Mass;
And when she kneeleth down to pray,

They wonder, and whisper together, and say, "Surely this is no heathen lass!"

And in course of time they learn to bless
The Baron and the Baroness.

And in course of time the Curate learns
A secret so dreadful, that by turns
He is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.
The Baron at confession hath said,
That though this woman be his wife,
He hath wed her as the Indians wed,
He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!

And the Curate replies: "O profligate,
O Prodigal Son! return once more
To the open arms and the open door
Of the Church, or ever it be too late.
Thank God, thy father did not live
To see what he could not forgive;
On thee, so reckless and perverse,
He left his blessing, not his curse.

But the nearer the dawn the darker the night,
And by going wrong all things come right;
Things have been mended that were worse,
And the worse, the nearer they are to mend.
For the sake of the living and the dead,
Thou shalt be wed as Christians wed,
And all things come to a happy end."

O sun, that followest the night,
In yon blue sky, serene and pure,
And pourest thine impartial light
Alike on mountain and on moor,
Pause for a moment in thy course,
And bless the bridegroom and the bride!
O Gave, that from thy hidden source
In yon mysterious mountain-side
Pursuest thy wandering way alone,
And leaping down its steps of stone,
Along the meadow-lands demure
Stealest away to the Adour,
Pause for a moment in thy course
To bless the bridegroom and the bride!

The choir is singing the matin song, The doors of the church are opened wide, The people crowd, and press, and throng To see the bridegroom and the bride. They enter and pass along the nave; They stand upon the father's grave; The bells are ringing soft and slow; The living above and the dead below Give their blessing on one and twain; The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain, The birds are building, the leaves are green, The Baron Castine of St. Castine

Hath come at last to his own again.

FINALE.

"Nunc plaudite!" the Student cried,
When he had finished; "now applaud,
As Roman actors used to say
At the conclusion of a play;"
And rose, and spread his hands abroad,
And smiling bowed from side to side,

As one who bears the palm away.

And generous was the applause and loud,
But less for him than for the sun,
That even as the tale was done
Burst from its canopy of cloud,
And lit the landscape with the blaze
Of afternoon on autumn days,

And filled the room with light, and made
The fire of logs a painted shade.

A sudden wind from out the west
Blew all its trumpets loud and shrill;
The windows rattled with the blast,
The oak-trees shouted as it passed,
And straight, as if by fear possessed,
The cloud encampment on the hill
Broke up, and fluttering flag and tent
Vanished into the firmament,
And down the valley fled amain
The rear of the retreating rain.

Only far up in the blue sky

A mass of clouds, like drifted snow
Suffused with a faint Alpine glow,
Was heaped together, vast and high,
On which a shattered rainbow hung,
Not rising like the ruined arch
Of some aerial aqueduct,

But like a roseate garland plucked

From an Olympian god, and flung
Aside in his triumphal march.

Like prisoners from their dungeon gloom,

Like birds escaping from a snare,

Like school-boys at the hour of play,
All left at once the pent-up room
And rushed into the open air;

And no more tales were told that day.

Translations.

TRANSLATIONS FROM THE SPANISH AND

PORTUGUESE.

COPLAS DE MANRIQUE.