No strain of festal flow

That my hand for thee hath tried, But into dirge-notes wild and low, Its ringing tones have died.

Young art thou, Morna!

Yet on thy gentle head,

Like heavy dew on the lily's leaves,
A spirit hath been shed!

And the glance is thine which sees

Through nature's awful heart

But bright things go with the summer-breeze, And thou, too, must depart!

Yet shall I weep?

I know that in thy breast

There swells a fount of song too deep,

Too powerful for thy rest!

And the bitterness I know,

And the chill of this world's breath

Go, all undimm'd, in thy glory go!
Young and crown'd bride of death!

Take hence to heaven

Thy holy thoughts and bright,

And soaring hopes, that were not given
For the touch of mortal blight!

Might we follow in thy track,

This parting should not be !

But the spring shall give us violets back, every flower but thee!

And

There was a burst of tears around the bard:

All wept but one, and she serenely stood,
With her clear brow and dark, religious eye,

Rais'd to the first faint star above the hills,

And cloudless; though it might be that her cheek Was paler than before.-So Morna heard

The minstrel's prophecy.

And spring return'd,

Bringing the earth her lovely things again,

All, save the loveliest far! A voice, a smile,
A young sweet spirit gone.

THE MOURNER FOR THE BARMECIDES.

O good old man! how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world!
Thou art not for the fashion of these times.
As You Like It.

FALL'N was the House of Giafar; and its name,
The high romantic name of Barmecide,

A sound forbidden on its own bright shores,
By the swift Tigris' wave. Stern Haroun's wrath,
Sweeping the mighty with their fame away,

Had so pass'd sentence: but man's chainless heart
Hides that within its depths, which never yet

Th' oppressor's thought could reach.

"Twas desolate

Where Giafar's halls, beneath the burning sun,

Spread out in ruin lay. The songs had ceas'd;
The lights, the perfumes, and the genii-tales,

Had ceas'd; the guests were gone. Yet still one voice
Was there the fountain's; through these eastern courts,
Over the broken marble and the grass,
Its low, clear music shedding mournfully.

And still another voice ;-an aged man,
Yet with a dark and fervent eye beneath
His silvery hair, came, day by day, and sate
On a white column's fragment; and drew forth,
From the forsaken walls and dim arcades,

A tone that shook them with its answering thrill
To his deep accents. Many a glorious tale
He told that sad yet stately solitude,
Pouring his memory's fulness o'er its gloom,
Like waters in the waste; and calling up,
By song or high recital of their deeds,
Bright solemn shadows of its vanish'd race

To people their own halls with these alone,

:

In all this rich and breathing world, his thoughts

Held still unbroken converse. He had been
Rear'd in this lordly dwelling, and was now
The ivy of its ruins; unto which

His fading life seem'd bound. Day roll'd on day,
And from that scene the loneliness was fled!
For crowds around the grey-hair'd chronicler
Met as men meet, within whose anxious hearts
Fear with deep feeling strives; till, as a breeze
Wanders through forest-branches, and is met
By one quick sound and shiver of the leaves,
The spirit of his passionate lament,
As through their stricken souls it pass'd, awoke
One echoing murmur.—But this might not be
Under a despot's rule, and summon'd thence,
The dreamer stood before the Caliph's throne:
Sentenced to death he stood, and deeply pale,
And with his white lips rigidly compress'd;
Till, in submissive tones, he ask'd to speak
Once more, ere thrust from earth's fair sunshine forth.
Was it to sue for grace?—his burning heart

Sprang, with a sudden lightning, to his eye,

And he was changed!—and thus, in rapid words,
Th' o'ermastering thoughts, more strong than death,

found way.