"_I have lived three hundred years!_ In that time--in all that time, I
have never seen the glorious sun descend, but followed still its rolling
course through the regions of illimitable space. I have shivered on the
frozen mountains of the icy north, and fainted beneath the sultry skies of
the blazing east: the swift winds have been my viewless chariot, and on
their careering wings I have been hurried from clime to clime. But, nor
light, nor air, nor heat, nor cold, have been to me as to the rest of my
species; for I was doomed to find in their extremes a perpetual torment.
I howled, under the sharp, pinching pangs of the icy north; I panted with
agony, in the scorching fervour of the blazing east; and when mine eyes
have ached, with vain efforts, to pierce the darkness of the earth's
centre, they have been suddenly blasted with excessive and intolerable
delight.
"All the currents of human affection--all that makes the past delightful,
the present lovely, and the future coveted, were dried up within me. My
heart was like the sands of the desert, parched and barren. No living
stream of hope, of gladness, or of desire, quickened it with human
sympathies. It was a bleak and withered region, the fit abode of
ever-during sorrow and comfortless despair. I was as a blighted tree, that
perishes not at the root, but is withered in all its branches. Tears, I
had none. One gracious drop, falling from my seared orbs, would have been
the blessed channel of pent-up griefs that seemed to crush my almost
frenzied brain. Sighs, I breathed not. They would have heaved from my
bursting heart some of that misery, which loaded it to anguish. Sleep
never came. I was denied the common luxury of the common wretched, to lose,
in its sweet oblivion, its brief forgetfulness, the sense of what I was.
Death, natural death, closed his many doors against me. All that lived,
except myself--the persecuted, the weary, and the heavily laden of man's
race--could find a grave! I, alone, looked upon the earth, and felt that
it had no resting place for me! God! God! what a forlorn and miserable
creature is man, when, in his affliction, he cannot say to the worm, I
shall be yours! I might have cast away, indeed, the YENARKON--the Giver of
Life--the elixir of the Sibyl--but that would have been to subject myself
to a power of darkness, in whose fell wrath I should have suffered the
casting away of mine eternal soul!
"Thus the stream of time rolled on, burying beneath its dark waves, our
little span of present, in the huge ocean of a perpetual past, and
devouring, as the food of both, our swift decaying future. But I floated
on its surface, and beheld whole generations flourish and fade away, while
age and silver hairs, growing infirmities, and the closing sigh that ends
them all, mocked me with a horrible exemption. I remained, and might have
remained, for ages yet to come, the fixed and unaltered image of what I
was, when in Mauritania I encountered the potent Amaimon, the damned
magician of the den, but for that--woman's faith, and man's
fidelity--which have made me what I AM!
"This _was_ my destiny. Now mark, how I became enthralled to it; and how
it befell, that at last I shook it off, and found redemption.
"In my middle manhood, when scarcely forty summers had glowed within my
veins, I left my native Italy, and journeyed to the Holy Land, upon the
strict vow of a self-imposed penance. It was for no sin committed in my
days of youth, but for the satisfaction of an ardent piety, and the
growing spirit of a long enkindled devotion. I had patrimonial wealth in
Apulia; I had kindred; I had friends. I renounced them all, to dedicate
myself, thenceforth, to the service of THE CROSS. My purpose was blessed,
by a virtuous mother's prayers, that I might approve myself a worthy
soldier of Christ; and it was sanctified by a holy priest at the altar.
"Even now, the recollection is strong within me, of the feelings with
which, as the rising sun illumined the tops of the surrounding hills, I
approached the once glorious, and still sacred, city of Jerusalem--that
chosen seat of the Godhead--that Queen among the nations. Eclipsed, though
it was, and its majestic head trodden into the dust, by the foot of the
infidel, my gladdened eyes dwelt upon what was imperishable, and my wrapt
imagination pictured what was destroyed. The valleys of Jehosaphat and
Gehinnon, Mount Calvary, Mount Zion, and Mount Acre, stretched before me.
The palace of King Herod, with its sumptuous halls of marble and of
gold--the gorgeous Temple of Solomon--the lofty towers of Phaseolus and
Mariamne--the palace of the Maccabees--the Hippodrome--the houses of many
of the prophets--grew into existence again, beneath the creative force of
fancy. I stood and wept. I knelt, and kissed the consecrated earth which
once a Saviour trod."
* * * * *
"THE HUNTED STAG: A SKETCH.
What sounds are on the mountain blast?
Like bullet from the arbalast,
Was it the hunted quarry past
Right up Ben-ledi's side?--
So near, so rapidly he dash'd,
Yon lichen'd bough has scarcely plash'd
Into the torrent's tide.
Ay!--The good hound may bay beneath,
The hunter wind his horn;
He dared ye through the flooded Teith
As a warrior in his scorn!
Dash the red rowel in the steed,
Spur, laggards, while ye may!
St. Hubert's shaft to a stripling reed,
He dies no death to-day!
'Forward!'--Nay, waste not idle breath,
Gallants, ye win no green-wood wreath;
His antlers dance above the heath,
Like chieftain's plumed helm;
Right onward for the western peak,
Where breaks the sky in one white streak,
See, Isabel, in bold relief,
To Fancy's eye, Glenartney's chief,
Guarding his ancient realm.
So motionless, so noiseless there,
His foot on rock, his head in air,
Like sculptor's breathing stone!
Then, snorting from the rapid race,
Snuffs the free air a moment's space,
Glares grimly on the baffled chase,
And seeks the covert loan."
"THE COMPLAINT OF THE VIOLETS.
By the silent foot of the shadowy hill
We slept in our green retreats,
And the April showers were wont to fill
Our hearts with sweets;
And though we lay in a lowly bower,
Yet all things loved us well,
And the waking bee left its fairest flower
With us to dwell.
But the warm May came in his pride to woo
The wealth of our virgin store,
And our hearts just felt his breath, and knew
Their sweets no more!
And the summer reigns on the quiet spot
Where we dwell--and its suns and showers
Bring balm to our sisters' hearts, but not--
Oh! not to _ours_!
We live--we bloom--but for ever o'er
Is the charm of the earth and sky:
To our life, ye heavens, that balm restore,
Or bid us die!"
"THE FOUNTAIN: A BALLAD.
Why startest thou back from that fount of sweet water?
The roses are drooping while waiting for thee;
'Ladye, 'tis dark with the red hue of slaughter,
There is blood on that fountain--oh! whose may it be?'
Uprose the ladye at once from her dreaming,
Dreams born of sighs from the violets round,
The jasmine bough caught in her bright tresses, seeming
In pity to keep the fair prisoner it bound.
Tear-like the white leaves fell round her, as, breaking
The branch in her haste, to the fountain she flew,
The wave and the flowers o'er its mirror were reeking,
Pale as the marble around it she grew.
She followed its track to the grove of the willow,
To the bower of the twilight it led her at last,
There lay the bosom so often her pillow,
But the dagger was in it, its beating was past.
Round the neck of the youth a light chain was entwining,
The dagger had cleft it, she joined it again.
One dark curl of his, one of her's like gold shining,
'They hoped this would part us, they hoped it in vain.
Race of dark hatred, the stern unforgiving.
Whose hearts are as cold as the steel which they wear.
By the blood of the dead, the despair of the living,
Oh, house of my kinsman, my curse be your share!'
She bowed her fair face on the sleeper before her,
Night came and shed its cold tears on her brow;
Crimson the blush of the morning past o'er her,
But the cheek of the maiden returned not its glow.
Pale on the earth are the wild flowers weeping,
The cypress their column, the night-wind their hymn,
These mark the grave where those lovers are sleeping
Lovely--the lovely are mourning for them."
_The Casket._
* * * * *