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HOW

CATILINE DENOUNCED.

CATILINE DENOUNCED.-CICERO.

TOW far, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the nightly watch, posted to secure the Palatium? Nothing, by the city guards? Nothing, by the rally of all good citizens? Nothing, by the assembling of the Senate in this fortified place? 'Nothing, by the averted looks of all here present? Seest thou not that all thy plots are exposed?-that thy wretched conspiracy is laid bare to every man's knowledge, here in the Senate ?-that we are well aware of thy proceedings of last night; of the night before; the place of meeting, the company convoked, the measures concerted? Alas, the times! Alas, the public morals! The Senate understands all this. The Consul sees it. Yet the traitor lives! Lives? Ay, truly, and confronts us here in council,-takes part in our deliberations, and, with his measuring eye, marks out each man of us for slaughter! And we, all this while, strenuous that we are, think we have amply discharged our duty to the State, if we but shun this madman's sword and fury!

Long since, O Catiline, ought the Consul to have ordered thee to execution, and brought upon thy own head the ruin thou hast been meditating against others! There was that virtue once in Rome, that a wicked citizen was held more execrable than the deadliest foe. We have a law still, Catiline, for thee. Think not that we are powerless, because forbearing. We have a decree,though it rests among our archives like a sword in its scabbard, -a decree, by which thy life would be made to pay the forfeit of thy crimes. And, should I order thee to be instantly seized and put to death, I make just doubt whether all good men would not think it done rather too late than any man too cruelly. But, for good reasons, I will yet defer the blow long since deserved. Then will I doom thee, when no man is found, so lost, so wicked, nay, so like thyself, but shall confess that it was justly dealt. While there is one man that dares defend thee, live! But thou shalt live so beset, so surrounded, so scrutinized, by the vigilant guards that I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the Republic, without my knowledge. There shall be eyes to detect thy slightest movement, and ears to catch thy wariest

THE FIGHT OF PASO DEL MAR.

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whisper, of which thou shalt not dream. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason-the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice. Baffled on all sides, thy most secret counsels clear as noonday, what canst thou now have in view? Proceed, plot, conspire, as thou wilt; there is nothing you can contrive, nothing you can propose, nothing you can attempt, which I shall not know, hear, and promptly understand. Thou shalt soon be made aware that I am even more active in providing for the preservation of the State than thou in plotting its destruction!

THE FIGHT OF PASO DEL MAR.-BAYARD TAYLOR.

The pescador, out in his shallop,
Gathering his harvest so wide,

Sees the dim bulk of the headland

Loom over the waste of the tide;
He sees, like a white thread, the pathway
Wind round on the terrible wall,
Where the faint, moving speck of the rider
Seems hovering close to its fall!

Stout Pablo of San Diego

Rode down from the hills behind;
With the bells on his gray mule tinkling,
He sang through the fog and wind.
Under his thick, misted eyebrows
Twinkled his eye like a star,

And fiercer he sang, as the sea-winds
Drove cold on the Paso del Mar.

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THE FIGHT OF PASO DEL MAR.

Now Bernal, the herdsman of Corral,
Had travelled the shore since dawn,
Leaving the ranches behind him-

Good reason had he to be gone!
The blood was still red on his dagger,
The fury was hot in his brain,
And the chill, driving scud of the breakers
Beat thick on his forehead in vain.

With his blanket wrapped gloomily round him,
He mounted the dizzying road,

And the chasms and steeps of the headland
Were slippery and wet, as he trode;
Wild swept the wind of the ocean,
Rolling the fog from afar,

When near him a mule-bell came tinkling,
Midway on the Paso del Mar!

"Back!" shouted Bernal, full fiercely,
And "Back!" shouted Pablo, in wrath,
As his mule halted, startled and shrinking,
On the perilous line of the path!
The roar of devouring surges

Came up from the breakers' hoarse war;
And "Back, or you perish!" cried Bernal,
"I turn not on Paso del Mar!"

The gray mule stood firm as the headland;
He clutched at the jingling rein,
When Pablo rose up in his saddle,

And smote, till he dropped it again.
A wild oath of passion swore Bernal,
And brandished his dagger, still red,
While fiercely stout Pablo leaned forward,
And fought o'er his trusty mule's head.

They fought, till the black wall below them
Shone red through the misty blast;
Stout Pablo then struck, leaning further,
The broad breast of Bernal at last.

SANDALPHON.

And, frenzied with pain, the swart herdsman
Closed round him his terrible grasp,

And jerked him, despite of his struggles,
Down from the mule, in his clasp.

They grappled with desperate madness
On the slippery edge of the wall;
They swayed on the brink, and together
Reeled out to the rush of the fall!
A cry of the wildest death-anguish
Rang faint through the mist afar,
And the riderless mule went homeward
From the fight of the Paso del Mar!

SANDALPHON.-LONGfellow.

HAVE you read in the Talmud of old,

In the Legends the Rabbins have told,
Of the limitless realms of the air,--
Have you read it, the marvellous story
Of Sandalphon, the angel of Glory,
Sandalphon, the angel of Prayer?

How, erect, at the outermost gates
Of the City Celestial, he waits,

With his feet on the ladder of light,
That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered
Alone in the desert at night?

The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chant only one hymn, and expire

With the song's irresistible stress:
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder

By music they throb to express. But serene in the rapturous throng, Unmoved by the rush of the song,

With eyes unimpassioned and slow,

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450

SANDALPHON.

Among the dead angels, the deathless
Sandalphon stands listening, breathless,

To sounds that ascend from below ;

From the spirits on earth that adore,
From the souls that entreat and implore,
In the fervor and passion of prayer;
From the hearts that are broken with losses,
And weary with dragging the crosses
Too heavy for mortals to bear.

And he gathers the prayers as he stands,
And they change into flowers in his hands,
Into garlands of purple and red;

And beneath the great arch of the portal,
Through the streets of the City Immortal,
Is wafted the fragrance they shed.

It is but a legend, I know,

A fable, a phantom, a show,

Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;
Yet the old mediæval tradition,
The beautiful, strange superstition,

But haunts me and holds me the more.

When I look from my window at night,
And the welkin above is all white,

All throbbing and panting with stars,
Among them, majestic, is standing
Sandalphon, the angel, expanding
His pinions in nebulous bars.

And the legend, I feel, is a part
Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,
The frenzy and fire of the brain,
That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,
The golden pomegranates of Eden,
To quiet its fever and pain.