THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.
Drawing silently from them Love's fair gifts of gold and gem, "Waken! save me!" still as death At her side he slumbereth.
Ring and bracelet all are gone, And that ice-cold hand withdrawn ; But she hears a murmur low, Full of sweetness, full of woe, Half a sigh and half a moan: "Fear not! give the dead her own!"
Ah!- the dead wife's voice she knows! That cold hand, whose pressure froze, Once in warmest life had borne
Gem and band her own hath worn. "Wake thee! wake thee!" Lo, his eyes Open with a dull surprise.
In his arms the strong man folds her, Closer to his breast he holds her; Trembling limbs his own are meeting, And he feels her heart's quick beating: "Nay, my dearest, why this fear?" "Hush!" she saith, "the dead is here!"
Can those soft arms round him lie, Underneath his dead wife's eye?
She her fair young head can rest Soothed and childlike on his breast, And in trustful innocence
TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE.32
'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down
Its beauty on the Indian isle,
On broad green field and white-walled
And inland waste of rock and wood, In searching sunshine, wild and rude, Rose, mellowed through the silvergleam, Soft as the landscape of a dream, All motionless and dewy wet, Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met: The myrtle with its snowy bloom, Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom,
The white cecropia's silver rind Relieved by deeper green behind, The orange with its fruit of gold, The lithe paullinia's verdant fold, The passion-flower, with symbol holy, Twining its tendrils long and lowly, - The rhexias dark, and cassia tall, And proudly rising over all, The kingly palm's imperial stem, Crowned with its leafy diadem, Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade, The fiery-winged cucullo played ! Yes, lovely was thine aspect, then, Fair island of the Western Sea ! Lavish of beauty, even when Thy brutes were happier than thy men, For they, at least, were free! Regardless of thy glorious clime, Unmindful of thy soil of flowers, The toiling negro sighed, that Time No faster sped his hours. For, by the dewy moonlight still, He fed the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass, To pluck the long and tangled grass, And hear above his scar-worn back The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack; While in his heart one evil thought In solitary madness wrought, One baleful fire surviving still
The quenching of the immortal mind, One sterner passion of his kind, Which even fetters could not kill,- The savage hope, to deal, erelong, A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!
Hark to that cry!-long, loud, and shrill, From field and forest, rock and hill, Thrilling and horrible it rang,
Around, beneath, above; - The wild beast from his cavern sprang, The wild bird from her grove! Nor fear, nor joy, nor agony Were mingled in that midnight cry; But like the lion's growl of wrath, When falls that hunter in his path Whose barbed arrow, deeply set, Is rankling in his bosom yet,
It told of hate, full, deep, and strong, Of vengeance kindling out of wrong; It was as if the crimes of years- The unrequited toil, the tears, The shame and hate, which liken well Earth's garden to the nether hell- Had found in nature's self a tongue, On which the gathered horror hung; As if from cliff, and stream, and glen Burst on the startled ears of men That voice which rises unto God, Solemn and stern, the cry of blood! It ceased, and all was still once more, Save ocean chafing on his shore, The sighing of the wind between The broad banana's leaves of green,
« PreviousContinue » |