Or if, upon the moment smote,
She died by tortures less remote ;
Like him she saw upon the block,

With heart that shared the headsman's shock,
In quickened brokenness that came,

In pity, o'er her shattered frame,

None knew and none can ever know:

But whatsoe'er its end below,

Her life began and closed in woe!
XX.

And Azo found another bride,
And goodly sons grew by his side;
But none so lovely and so brave
As him who withered in the grave;
Or if they were — on his cold eye
Their growth but glanced unheeded by,
Or noticed with a smothered sigh.
But never tear his cheek descended,
And never smile his brow unbended;
And o'er that fair broad brow were wrought
The intersected lines of thought;

Those furrows which the burning share
Of sorrow ploughs untimely there;

Scars of the lacerating mind

Which the Soul's war doth leave behind.
He was past all mirth or woe;
Nothing more remained below
But sleepless nights and heavy days,
A mind all dead to scorn or praise,
A heart which shunned itself - and yet
That would not yield. nor could forget)
Which when it least appeared to melt,
Intently thought-intensely felt :
The deepest ice which ever froze
Can only o'er the surface close
The living stream lies quick below,
And flows - and cannot cease to flow.
Still was his sealed - up bosom hauuted
By thoughts which Nature hath implanted;

Too deeply rooted thence to vanisb,
Howe'er our stifled tears we banish;
When, struggling as they rise to start,
We check those waters of the heart,
They are not dried- those tears unshed,
But flow back to the fountain head,
And resting in their spring more pure,
For ever in its depth endure,

Unseen, unwept, but uncongealed,
And cherished most where least revealed.
With inward starts of feeling left,
To throb o'er those of life bereft ;
Without the power to fill again

The desert gap which made his pain;
Without the hope to meet them where
United souls shall gladness share,
With all the consciousness that he
Had only passed a just decree;
That they had wrought their doom of ill;
Yet Azo's age was wretched still.
The tainted branches of the tree,
If lopped with care, a strength may give,
By which the rest shall bloom and live
All greenly fresh and wildly free :
But if the lightning, in its wrath,
The waving boughs with fury scathe,
The massy trunk the ruin feels,
And never more a leaf reveals.

I.

'Twas after dread Pultowa's day,
When fortune left the royal Swede:
Around a slaughter'd army lay,
No more to combat and to bleed.
The power and glory of the war,
Faithless as their vain votaries, men,
Had pass'd to the triumphant Czar,
And Moscows walls were safe again,
Until a day more dark and drear,
And a more memorable year,
Should give to slaughter and to shame
A mightier host and haughtier name;
A greater wreck; a deeper fall,

A shock to one a thunderbolt to all.

II.

Such was the hazard of the die;
The wounded Charles was taught to fly
By day and night through field and flood
Stain'd with his own and subjects' blood;
For thousands fell that fltght to aid :
And not a voice was heard t'upbraid
Ambition in his humbled hour,

When truth had nought to dread from power. His horse was slain, and Gieta gave

His own

and died the Russians'slave.

This too sinks after many a league
Of well sustain'd, but vain fatigue;
And in he depth of forests, darkling
The watch fires in the distance sparkling -
The beacons of surrounding foes

A king must lay his limbs at length.
Are these the laurels and repose

For which the nations strain their strength?
They laid him by a savage tree,

In out-worn nature's agony;

His wounds were stiff bis limbs were stark
The heavy hour was chill and dark;
The fever in his blood forbade
A transient slumber's fitful aid:
And thus it was; but yet through all
Kinglike the monarch bore his fall,
And made; in this extreme of ill,
His pangs the vassals of his will;
All silent and subdued were they,
As once the nations round him lay.
III.

A band of chiefs! alas! how few,
Since but the fleeting of a day

Had thinn'd it; but this wreck was true
And chivalrous: upon the clay

Each sate him down, all sad and mute,
Beside his monarch and his steed;
For danger levels man and brute,
And all are fellows in their need.
Among the rest, Mazeppa made
His pillow in an old oak's shade
Himself as rough, acd scarce less old,
The Ukraine's betman, calm and bold;
But first, outspent with this long course,
The Cossack prince rubb'd down his horse,
And made for him a leafy bed,

And smooth'd his fetlocks and his mane
And slack'd his girth, and stripp'd his rein,

And joy'd to see how well he fed;

For until now he had the dread

His wearied courser might refuse

To browse beneath the midnight dews:

But he was hardy as his lord,

And little cared for bed and board,

But spirited and docile too;
Whate'er was to be done, would do.
Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb,
All Tartar-like he carried him;
Obey'd his voice, and came at call,
And knew him in the midst of all:

Though thousands were around, and Night,
Without a star, pursued her flight,-
That steed from sunset until dawn
His chief would follow like a fawn.

IV.

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak,
And laid his lance beneath his oak,
Felt if his arms in order good

The long day's march had well withstood
If still the powder fill'd the pan,
And flints unloosen'd kept their lock -
His sabre's hilt and scabbard felt,
And whether they had chafed his belt-
And next the venerable man

From out his haversack and can,
Prepared and spread his slender stock;
And to the monarch and his men
The whole or portion offer'd then
With far less of inquietude

Than courtiers at a banquet would.
And Charles of this his slender share
With smiles partook a moment there,
To force of cheer a greater show,
And seem above both wounds and woe ;-
And then he said-« Of all our band,

Though firm of heart and strong of hand, In skirmish, march, or forage, none Can less have said or more have done << Than thee, Mazeppa! On the earth «So fit a pair had never birth, «Since Alexander's days till now «As thy Bucephalus and thou :

« All Scythia's fame to thine should yield