A plume waved o'er the noble brow, fixed and white; the brow was He met at last his father's eyes, but in them was no sight! Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed; but who could paint that gaze? They hush'd their very hearts that saw its horror and amaze. They might have chain'd him as before that stony form he stood, For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood. "Father!" at length he murmur'd low, and wept like childhood then: Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men! He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown, He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down. Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow, No more, there is no more,' ," he said, "to lift the sword for now. My King is false, my hope betray'd, my father-O! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness are pass'd away from earth. "I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee yet; would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met; Thou wouldst have known my spirit then for thee my fields were won, And thou hast perish'd in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son !" Then starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein, Amidst the pale and wilder'd looks of all the courtiertrain; And with a fierce, o'er-mastering grasp the rearing war-horse led, And sternly set them face to face, the dead. the King before “Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss? Be still, and gaze thou on, false King! and tell me, what is this? The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, —give answer, where are they? If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay. "Into these glassy eyes put light, — be still! keep down thine ire ! Bid these white lips a blessing speak this earth is not my sire. Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed: Thou canst not? - and a king! — his dust be mountains on thy head!" He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell; upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turn'd from that sad place. His hope was crush'd, his after-fate untold in martial strain, His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain. FELICIA HEMANS. TO THE POETS. BARDS of Passion and of Mirth, 1 FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, born in Liverpool in 1794, was the daughter of a merchant, and was married in 1812 to Captain Hemans of the Fourth Regiment, who not long after deserted her and their children. Mrs. Hemans then returned to her family, and devoted herself to the education of her sons She died in 1835. Such time as she could spare from household cares was devoted to literature, and she published a num ber of works both in verse and in prose. But divine melodious truth; Thus ye live on high, and then Bards of Passion and of Mirth, JOHN KEATS.1 1 JOHN KEATS, the son of a stable-keeper, born in London .n 1796, was educated at a classical school in Enfield, and in his fifteenth year apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton. He soon, however, abandoned medicine for literature. His first volume was treated by the critics with crushing severity, which preyed pon his mind and injured his health. After the publication of second volume of poems, which fully redeemed the promise of the first, he went abroad for his health, and died at Rome in 1821. Much of the little poetry he left is of most exquisite Deauty, and entitles him to a high place among the group of THE CLOUD I. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shades for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, II. I sift the snow on the mountains below, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Lured by the love of the genii that move writers who made the beginning of the nineteenth century the most brilliant period of English literature, with the exception o that of Elizabeth. |