And call them islands of the blest. Ah! we
Do cling to olden memories and talk
About the dead as if they were but absent

A few days, and would come back at our bidding,
When they are gone forever-Ha! what ho!

'Tis but the watch cry from Antonia's ramparts.
How solemnly that midnight sound breaks on
The city's dead repose. All sleep in peace,
Regardless of my sorrows: aye! methinks
I'm lonelier than it should be, pining here
Without a soul to soothe my lamentations!
Will no one pity Herod in his anguish ?
Will no one pity Herod? No one take
His hand and say, "I too have lost my wife,
My little cherubs, one frost nipped them all.
Then let me mourn with thee and shed my tears
With thine." But men avoid me as they would
A viper of the desert; for they think

Ah me! a bloody tale; 'tis whispered round
That Herod slew her. I slay thee! my love!

By heaven! let noonday scowl with midnight gloom
An 't be declared 'tis light if rumor thus

May blab a slander which is credited

By all the nation! And yet why do men

Cluster in groups and shuddering glance behind them,
And start and turn if they but catch my eye?
Why doth each rising sun bring forth to light
Foul traitors and dark-planned conspiracies,
If Herod be not guilty !-Oh my God!
Would 'twere a simple myth like those my nurse
So often taught me in my childhood, when
Affrighted I did hide my chicken head
Upon her bosom ! would that 'twere a vain
And transitory nightmare sent from hell,
To vanish with the morning! Would it were
Aught else than what it is! My Marianne!
Forsake me not! oh clasp thy tender arms
Around my neck, and whisper soothingly
(As erst) that thou forgiv'st me! let me not
My doom encounter by thee unforgiven !

I did it but in passion, and the deed

One hour sufficed to work has made this world
For me a palpable, a second hell.

Fantasies flout my vision ceaselessly;
When morning gilds the palaces I've built,
When evening's curtains drop adown the sky,
A beauteous form, whose raven tresses drip

With clotted gore, doth haunt me; vainly I strive
To screen with trembling hands the horrid sight.
And oft a blushing maiden, robed in white,
And radiant with the hues of womanhood's
Early dawn, flits before me.-If this be

What men have called remorse, an endless pang,
A sense of crime which mocks the use of words,
And brings in blazing contrast all the bliss,
The innocence, the purity of youth

With manhood's black transgressions; then preys here

[Placing his hand on his heart.]

A fiend insatiate, who shall gnaw my heart
Throughout eternity, more ruthlessly
Than ever vulture on Prometheus' vitals.
Remorse begets despair. Despair grants no
Reprieve. 'Twere better that oblivion veil
The past, e'en if it hide most cherished scenes,
When thus the weight of grief outbalances
The sweet associations of affection.

-Ho slaves! Bring here a goblet brimming o'er
With Lethe's lymph! now will I drink and die
Forgetful of the matchless happiness

And the unutterable bitterness

Which evil destiny allotted me

They hear me not; their thoughts are all wrapt up
In grief for her, the loveliest and the best.

SUMMER.

[Exit.]

WHY do the days of our childhood come back to us as summer days; literally as days when summer is in the ascendant? We speak not of childhood spent in the city, where life flows only through human channels, and even Nature limits the display of her power to the fierce shining of noon-day suns on stony walls, and the falling of distained snows through murky atmospheres. Childhood in the city is but a mockery of childhood; for though childhood in all its delicate susceptibilities and latent power, yet never finding that life of Nature which would meet those yearnings, and call forth this power, all the newness and wonder of this unaccustomed

scene, are to it but the wonder of spirits cold and lost in the dull round of labor. But if memory never comes to the child of the city

"With music and sweet showers

Of festal flowers,"

why does she bring only such remembrances to those who have lived in the country? It is a high tribute to summer, that the young spirit should have felt such magic in her presence; for she must have come with wondrous meaning, to have fixed herself so deeply and so dominantly in memory.

So the thought came to me as, with the earth and the heavens, I rejoiced in the light and the heat of a summer day; and I asked, what is there in summer that makes dim memory tell only her tales? and again I asked, why is it that at the same time, she charges all the present with such depth of gladness; and stranger yet, awakens a solemnity so profound, that it overwhelms and swallows up the sadness of autumn's relaxing life, and the deep dreariness of wintry death? Why has she veiled herself in this twofold mystery; opening within us the fountains of joy and of sadness? Autumn is sad with death, and winter is solemn with tempests, and spring is joyous with blossoms; but summer, queen of the seasons, overshadows them all, making them her handmaids and slaves; Spring coming before her, to strew her way with flowers; Autumn coming after her to gather up what she has so lavishly cast about her. Why does summer thus lord it over the year? It cannot be her beauty alone, that secures for her this imperial throne. Though she is rich in colors, in graceful forms and a thousand nameless charms; yet autumn clothes herself in richer hues and bathes the earth in balmier airs; and winter with his frosts, builds palaces more splendid than all the temples of the groves, and traces over the earth with a network more delicate and pure, than summer's carpet of grass and flowers. We do not yield her our homage for the gifts she brings, for even the child, to whom she offers neither* grain nor fruit, acknowledges her power, and remembers her communings with him. Neither beauty nor utility award her the palm. There lurks a power in the depths of summer days, competent to greater efforts than the ripening of grain in the ear, or decking the meadow with daisies; a power, which lending sadness in its departure to the winds of autumn, solemnising the march of winter by its absence, and bringing mirth to spring in its return, bursts in all its fullness and perfectness upon the spirit, in every summer sky; in the harvest field and in the forest; alone in the long grass on the plain, and alone in the valley by the stream.

With all the magic potence of a human spirit to win; with all its varying shades to bewilder, laughing in one turn of the brook, and weeping in the next; broad and calm on the plain, and dreary on the long and heated road; it steals its way to the heart in the gentle fragrance of the violet, or takes captive the imagination with all its pomp of gorgeous shows.

Let us catch some of the protean forms in which she arrays herself, and enquire what there is that, appealing to every emotion, so enchants us. She comes at times with gaiety and mirth; with ringing of fairy bells, and such jocund glee, as lift the soul into a new atmosphere, where it floats as buoyant and careless, as gossamer down on summer lawns. Such seasons are in the upspringing of the day, when fleecy clouds attempt to veil the joyful sun; when light breezes play with the young flowers, and Nature comes with a glad shout, singing airy lyrics to jocund old Earth. Then we call her gladsome Summer, and rejoice as no other season can make us; not with the boisterous joy of animal health; not with the loving joy of the home-circle, nor with the quiet joy of peaceful life; but in that which embracing all these, and crowning them with a new delight, calls itself the joy of Summer. It is a joy that in its lightest moments, lays deep its hold on an earnest life, and like the cheer that springs from such true and earnest life, leaves no sting of remembrance, goading the spirit to remorse, in the recollection of debasing frivolity and senseless mirth. Summer fills with meaning her laughter, and teaches wisdom even in smiling skies. But notice in what specific modes it is that she informs all Nature with joyfulness. It is at the beginning of the day; it is in quick movements; in bright colors and fresh forms. Take the particular parts; the quickly nodding flowers; the sparkling, livelysounding brooks; the free and airy clouds; the heavens flooded with a light fresh and pure; these are her material. The prime agent in all these special indications, is that mysterious power of motion, which leaving Winter still and dead, and giving to autumn but one hesitating, downward movement, floods all Summer with its myriad varieties, subtle, yet bold and full. This joyousness of Summer has all the freshness and spontaneity that we mark as characterizing movement in the purity of its first genesis; as we see it in the dawn of life in childhood, magical with the aroma of freshness and newness, that so especially belongs to the beginnings of existence. So opens the Summer day, revealing to us one of Summer's phases. But as the morning ripens into noon, there will come another and a higher phase, a solemnity not sad, but earnest and deep. It was when in the green woods, towards the middle of the day, the fool lay

basking in the Summer sun, that he fell into a strain as deeply musing as ever Shakspeare wrote:

"It is ten o'clock:

Thus may we see how the world wags;
'Tis but an hour ago, since it was nine;
And after an hour more, 'twill be eleven ;
And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,

And then, from hour to hour we rot and rot.
And thereby hangs a tale."

We recognize the fitness of the season and the place to the sentiment; for where but in the broad sunshine, in the silent forest, could thought have touched that earnest, solemn chord. Then the sun sweeps in stately march over the zenith; the massive clouds move slowly, as with an inward sense of power; their broad shadows pass thoughtfully on the hills and plains, and Summer in her noon-day life-Summer exultant, jubilant in her magnificence of power, yet with no noisy triumph, or boisterous mirth, stretches her broad domain before us. Her wide-sweeping and searching sway is no wonder to us when we see with what self-contained power, she pours out her life upon the earth; when vegetation in gorgeous abundance, answers to her call; when earth and air and water, teem with her myriad hosts. In all this splendor of array, and silent pomp of glowing light, luxuriant colors and heavily-breathing odors, there is a solemnity that presses home to the spirit with thrilling force; the same solemnity that floats on cathedral airs, and that echoes through David's great psalms of thanksgiving; not gloom, for there is all the difference between gloom and solemnity, that there is between death and the fullest life. The fullest life, I say, for life at its acme, does not show itself in noise and parade; from its very intensity it is calm. Hence the solemnity with which we approach in prayer to God, the life of communion between spirit and spirit, being too intense to allow the disturbance of outcry or flourish. Such is the solemn silence when

noons.

"The noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass.
The lizard with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the cicola sleeps.
The purple flowers droop: the golden bee
Is lily-cradled."

The mysterious power of movement culminates in these deep Summer As in the early day it made Nature joyous with its light and free mirthfulness; so now it is in the subtle influences of its slow goings, that the noontide is so sovereign in life; and, as in the joyous movements of