But now the green leaves of the tree, Casa Wappy! Revive again For aye remain ? Casa Wappy! Thus man could die, And truth a lie ; Casa Wappy ! With beam of love, Smiling above ! Casa Wappy! Fond, fairest boy, With him in joy; Casa Wappy! Pride of my heart ! Thus torn apart. Casa Wappy! What art 's for a woman ! To hold on her knees Both darlings ! to feel all their arms round her throat Cling, struggle a little ! to sew by degrees And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat! To dream and to dote. v. To teach them. .... It stings there. I made them indeed Speak plain the word "country," I taught them, no doubt, That a country's a thing men should die forat need. I I prated of liberty, rights, and about . The tyrant turned out. VI. | And when their eyes flashed.... O my beautiful eyes !.... I exulted ! nay, let them go forth at the wheels of the guns, and denied not. — But then the sur prise, then one kneels! VII. With my kisses, of camp-life, and glory, and how They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled, In return would fan off every fly from my brow With their green laurel-bough. DAVID MACBETH MOIR. MOTHER AND POET. VIII. TURIN, - AFTER NEWS FROM GAETA. 1861. [This was Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose Then was triumph at Turin. “Ancona was free!" sons were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.) And some one came out of the cheers in the street | With a face pale as stone, to say something to me. DEAD! one of them shot by the sea in the east, - My Guido was dead! - I fell down at his feet, And one of them shot in the west by the sea. While they cheered in the street. I. XI. XII. “ Shot. IX. Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men ? I bore it ;- friends soothed me: my grief looked When your guns at Cavalli with final retort sublime Have cut the game short, As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained XVII. To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time when Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When the first grew immortal, while both of us When your flag takes all heaven for its white, strained green, and red, To the height he had gained. When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy'scrown on his head, And letters still came, — shorter, sadder, more (And I have my dead,). strong, XVIII. Writ now but in one hand. “I was not to faint. What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your One loved me fortwo... would be with me erelong: 1 bells low And · Viva Italia' he died for, our saint, And burn your lights faintly!— My country Who forbids our complaint.” is there, Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow, My Nanni would add “he was safe, and aware My Italy 's there, — with my brave civic pair, Of a presence that turned off the balls ... was To disfranchise despair. imprest XIX. It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear, Forgive me. Some women bear children in And how ’t was impossible, quite dispossessed, strength, To live on for the rest." And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn. But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at On which without pause up the telegraph line length Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :-) Into such wail as this ! -- and we sit on forlorn When the man-child is born. Tell his mother.” Ah, ah, “his,” “their” mother ; xx. not “mine.” Dead ! one of them shot by the sea in the west, Novoice says “my mother" again to me. What! And one of them shot in the east by the sea! You think Guido forgot ? : | Both ! both my boys!- If in keeping the feast XIII. You want a great song for your Italy free, Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven, Let none look at me! THE TWO APRIL MORNINGS. Uprose the morning sun; A village schoolmaster was he, With hair of glittering gray ; As blithe a man as you could see And on that morning, through the grass. keep one. And by the steaming rills We travelled merrily, to pass A day among the hills. “Our work,” said I, “was well begun; So sad a sigh has brought ?" ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING, A month or more hath she been dead, And her together. A springy motion in her gait, That flushed her spirit; She did inherit. Her parents held the Quaker rule, Which doth the human feeling cool; But she was trained in nature's school, Nature had blessed her. A second time did Matthew stop; And, fixing still his eye To me he made reply: Brings fresh into my mind Full thirty years behind. Such colors, and no other, Of this the very brother. Which that sweet season gave, And, coming to the church, stopped short Beside my daughter's grave. “Nine summers had she scarcely seen, The pride of all the vale ; And then she sang ;- she would have been A very nightingale. And yet I loved her more — I e'er had loved before. Beside the churchyard yew With points of morning dew. Her brow was smooth and white : To see a child so very fair, It was a pure delight ! “No fountain from its rocky cave E'er tripped with foot so free; She seemed as happy as a wave That dances on the sea. Which I could ill confine ; And did not wish her mine!” A waking eye, a prying mind, Ye could not Hester. My sprightly neighbor, gone before Some summer morning, . CHARLES LAMA THE LOST LOVE. SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove; And very few to love. Half hidden from the eye! Is shining in the sky. She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be ; But she is in her grave, and o The difference to me! - Matthew is in his grave, yet now Methinks I see him stand WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. HESTER. WHEN maidens such as Hester die, Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try, With vain endeavor. THE LOST SISTER. THEY waked me from my sleep, I knew not why, And bade me hasten where a midnight lamp | Gleamed from an inner chamber. There she lay, Fresh roses in thy hand, Buds on thy pillow laid, Haste from this dark and fearful land, Where flowers so quickly fade. With brow so pale, who yester-morn breathed forth Through joyous smiles her superflux of bliss Into the hearts of others. By her side Her hoary sire, with speechless sorrow, gazed Upon the stricken idol,- all dismayed Beneath his God's rebuke. And she who nursed That fair young creature at her gentle breast, And oft those sunny locks had decked with buds Of rose and jasmine, shuddering wiped the dews Which death distils. Thesufferer just had given Her long farewell, and for the last, last time Touched with cold lips his cheek who led so Ere sin had seared the breast, Or sorrow woke the tear, Rise to thy throne of changeless rest, In yon celestial sphere ! Because thy smile was fair, Thy lip and eye so bright, Because thy loving cradle-care Was such a dear delight, late Shall love, with weak embrace, Thy upward wing detain ? No! gentle angel, seek thy place Amid the cherub train. ANONYMOUS. HISTORY OF A LIFE. Her footsteps to the altar, and received Its gathered film Morn after morn LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY. Day dawned ; within a curtained room, BARRY CORNWALL, O, WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD ? (The following poem was a particular favorite with Mr. Lincoln. Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the artist, writes that while engaged in paint. ing his picture at the White House, he was alone one evening with the President in his room, when he said: “There is a poem which has been a great favorite with me for years, which was first shown to me when a young man by a friend, and which I afterwards saw and cut from a newspaper and learned by heart. I would," he continued, "give a great deal to know who wrote it, but have never been able to ascertain."] GO TO THY REST. Go to thy rest, fair child ! Go to thy dreamless bed, While yet so gentle, undefiled, With blessings on thy head. O, why should the spirit of mortal be proud ? Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud, A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave, Man passes from life to his rest in the grave. The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade, | Who make in their dwelling a transient abode, Be scattered around and together be laid ; Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage And the young and the old, and the low and the road. high, Shall moulder to dust and together shall lie. Yea ! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain, We mingle together in sunshine and rain ; The infant a mother attended and loved, And the smiles and the tears, the song and the The mother that infant's affection who proved ; dirge, The husband that mother and infant who blessed, Still follow each other, like surge upon surge. Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest. T'T is the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath, The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in From the blossom of health to the paleness of death, whose eye, Shone beauty and pleasure, -hertriumphs are by;! From the gilded saloon to the bierand the shroud, And the memory of those who loved herand praised, odio, why should the spirit of inortal be proud ? , WILLIAM KNOX. Are alike from the minds of the living erased. The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne ; ELEONORA. ELEGY ON THE COUNTESS OF ABINGDON. The peasant, whose lot was to sow and to reap ; No single virtue we could most commend, The herdsman, who climbed with his goats up the Whether the wife, the mother, or the friend; steep; For she was all, in that supreme degree, The beggar, who wandered in search of his bread, That as no one prevailed, so all was she. Have faded away like the grass that we tread. The several parts lay hidden in the piece ; The occasion but exerted that, or this. uint who enjoyed the communion of heaven, / A wife as tender, and as true withal, The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven, As the first woman was before her fall : The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just, Made for the man, of whom she was a part ; Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust. | Made to attract his eyes, and keep his heart. A second Eve, but by no crime accursed; So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed As beauteous, not as brittle, as the first. That withers away to let others succeed; Had she been first, still Paradise had been, So the multitude comes, even those we behold, And death had found no entrance by her sin. To repeat every tale that has often been told. So she not only had preserved from ill Her sex and ours, but lived their pattern still. For we are the same our fathers have been; Love and obedience to her lord she bore ; We see the same sights our fathers have seen, She much obeyed him, but she loved him more : We drink the same stream and view the same sun, Not awed to duty by superior sway, Aud run the same course our fathers have run. But taught by his indulgence to obey. Thus we love God, as author of our good. The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think ; From the death we are shrinking our fathers would | Yet unemployed no minute slipped away ; shrink, Moments were precious in so short a stay. To the life we are clinging they also would cling; The haste of Heaven to have her was so great But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing. That some were single acts, though each complete; But every act stood ready to repeat. They loved, but the story we cannot unfold ; Her fellow-saints with busy care will look They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold: For her blest name in fate's eternal book ; They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers And, pleased to be outdone, with joy will see will come ; Numberless virtues, endless charity : They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is But more will wonder at so short an age, dumb. To find a blank beyond the thirtieth page : And with a pious fear begin to doubt They died, ay ! they died: and we things that The piece imperfect, and the rest torn out. are now, But 't was her Saviour's time ; and could there be Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow, ! A copy near the original, 't was she. |
