All was still, save, by fits, when the eagle was And more stately thy couch by this desert lake yelling,
And starting around me the echoes replied. On the right, Striden Edge round the Red Tarn was bending,
And Catchedicam its left verge was defending,
One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending,
When I marked the sad spot where the wan-
derer had died.
Dark green was that spot mid the brown mountain heather,
Thy obsequies sung by the gray plover flying,
With one faithful friend but to witness thy dying,
In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedicam.
COEUR DE LION AT THE BIER OF HIS
FATHER.
[The body of Henry the Second lay in state in the abbey-church of Fontevraud, where it was visited by Richard Cœur de Lion, who
Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in on beholding it, was struck with horror and remorse, and bitterly
But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature,
To lay down thy head like the meek mountain
lamb,
reproached himself for that rebellious conduct which had been the
means of bringing his father to an untimely grave.]
TORCHES were blazing clear,
Hymns pealing deep and slow,
Where a king lay stately on his bier
In the church of Fontevraud.
Banners of battle o'er him hung,
And warriors slept beneath,
And light, as noon's broad light was flung
On the settled face of death.
On the settled face of death
A strong and ruddy glare,
Though dimmed at times by the censer's breath,
Yet it fell still brightest there;
As if each deeply furrowed trace
Of earthly years to show,—
Alas! that sceptred mortal's race
Had surely closed in woe !
The marble floor was swept
By many a long dark stole,
As the kneeling priests, round him that slept,
Sang mass for the parted soul;
And solemn were the strains they poured
Through the stillness of the night,
With the cross above, and the crown and sword,
And the silent king in sight.
There was heard a heavy clang,
As of steel-girt men the tread,
And the tombs and the hollow pavement rang
With a sounding thrill of dread ;
And the holy chant was hushed awhile,
As, by the torch's flame,
A gleam of arms up the sweeping aisle
With a mail-clad leader came.
He came with haughty look,
An eagle glance and clear;
But his proud heart through its breastplate shook
When he stood beside the bier!
When, wildered, he drops from some cliff huge He stood there still with a drooping brow,
in stature,
And clasped hands o'er it raised ;-
And draws his last sob by the side of his For his father lay before him low,
It was Cœur de Lion gazed!
His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went ;
He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismounting, bent;
And thou didst prove, where spears are proved, A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand
In war, the bravest heart,
0, ever the renowned and loved
Thou wert, "Thou that my boyhood's guide Didst take fond joy to be! The times I've sported at thy side,
and there thou art!
And climbed thy parent knee!
A plume waved o'er the noble brow, — the brow | The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, — give was fixed and white; answer, where are they?
He met, at last, his father's eyes, - but in them If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life was no sight! through this cold clay;
"No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift THE CORONATION OF INEZ DE CASTRO.
She still was young, and she had been fair;
But weather-stains, hunger, toil, and care,
That frost and fever that wear the heart,
Had made the colors of youth depart
From the sallow cheek, save over it came
The burning flush of the spirit's shame.
They were sailing o'er the salt sea-foam,
Far from her country, far from her home;
And all she had left for her friends to keep
Was a name to hide and a memory to weep!
And her future held forth but the felon's lot,
To live forsaken, to die forgot!
She could not weep, and she could not pray,
But she wasted and withered from day to day,
Till you might have counted each sunken vein,
When her wrist was prest by the iron chain;
And sometimes I thought her large dark eye
Had the glisten of red insanity.
She called me once to her sleeping-place,
A strange, wild look was upon her face,
Her eye flashed over her cheek so white,
Like a gravestone seen in the pale moonlight,
And she spoke in a low, unearthly tone,
The sound from mine ear hath never gone!
"I had last night the loveliest dream :
My own land shone in the summer beam,
I saw the fields of the golden grain,
I heard the reaper's harvest strain;
There stood on the hills the green pine-tree,
And the thrush and the lark sang merrily.
A long and a weary way I had come ;
But I stopped, methought, by mine own sweet home.
I stood by the hearth, and my father sat there,
With pale, thin face, and snow-white hair!
The Bible lay open upon his knee,
But he closed the book to welcome me.
He led me next where my mother lay,
And together we knelt by her grave to pray,
And heard a hymn it was heaven to hear,
For it echoed one to my young days dear.
This dream has waked feelings long, long since fled,
And hopes which I deemed in my heart were dead!
- We have not spoken, but still I have hung On the Northern accents that dwell on thy tongue. To me they are music, to me they recall The things long hidden by Memory's pall! Take this long curl of yellow hair,
And give it my father, and tell him my prayer, My dying prayer, was for him."....
Upon the deck a coffin lay;
They raised it up, and like a dirge
The heavy gale swept o'er the surge;
The corpse was cast to the wind and wave,
The convict has found in the green sea a grave.
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, - 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep ; —
To sleep! perchance to dream :-ay, there's the
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
rub;
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
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