THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH.

THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones

Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.

The image of an armed knight is graven

Upon it, clad in perfect panoply—

Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield. Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim

By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,

And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.

Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form

Of this inscription, eloquently show

His history. Let me clothe in fitting words

The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph.

"He whose forgotten dust for centuries

Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom

Adventure, and endurance, and emprise
Exalted the mind's faculties and strung
The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,

And quick to draw the sword in private feud.
He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed
The saints as fervently on bended knees

As ever shaven cenobite. He loved

As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne

The maid that pleased him from her bower by night,

To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears

His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks

On his pursuers. He aspired to see

His native Pisa queen and arbitress

Of cities earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,
But would have joined the exiles that withdrew
For ever, when the Florentine broke in
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts
For trophies-but he died before that day.

"He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life."

THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES.

Ay, this is freedom!—these pure skies
Were never stained with village smoke:
The fragrant wind, that through them flies,
Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.
Here, with my rifle and my steed,

And her who left the world for

me,

I plant me, where the red deer feed
In the green desert—and am free.

For here the fair savannas know

No barriers in the bloomy grass;
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow,
Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass.

In pastures, measureless as air,

The bison is my noble game;

The bounding elk, whose antlers tear
The branches, falls before my aim.

Mine are the river-fowl that scream

From the long stripe of waving sedge;

The bear that marks my weapon's gleam,

Hides vainly in the forest's edge;
In vain the she-wolf stands at bay;
The brinded catamount, that lies
High in the boughs to watch his prey,
Even in the act of springing, dies.

With what free growth the elm and plane Fling their huge arms across my way, Gray, old, and cumbered with a train

Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! Free stray the lucid streams, and find

No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe has swept the glades.

Alone the Fire, when frost-winds sere
The heavy herbage of the ground,
Gathers his annual harvest here,

With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky:

I meet the flames with flames again,
And at my door they cower and die.

Here, from dim woods, the aged past
Speaks solemnly; and I behold