PART XIII.

Tragedy and Sorrow.

Such is my name, and such my tale.
Confessor! to thy secret ear

I breathe the sorrows I bewail,

And thank thee for the generous tear
This glazing eye could never shed.
Then lay me with the humblest dead,
And, save the cross above my head,
Be neither name nor emblem spread.

BYRON.

PART XIII.

Tragedy and Sorrow.

THE ASH POOL.

THE wet wind sobs o'er the sodden leas,
And wails through the branches of leafless trees,
As mourning the seeds in the fallows lost,
And the pale buds peeping to die in the frost,
When Winter asserts his lingering reign,
And his sceptre glitters on hill and plain.
Drearily meadows and uplands lie

'Neath the low long sweep of sullen sky,
And, sad and still as the hushed green Yule,

'Neath the straggling boughs lies the Great Ash Pool.

Black and cold, and stagnant and deep,

No silvery fins from its waters leap;
No brown wings flutter, no pattering feet,
Tell that life in its banks finds safe retreat;
No lily-buds to its surface cling,

But docken and nightshade around it spring;
The very trees that about it stand

Are twisted and gnarled as by witches' hand,
And the ghost of a story of sin and dule
Like a mist hangs over the Great Ash Pool.

When June's soft magic is on the earth,
And the rose and the violet spring to birth,

When the bright becks dance 'neath the bright leaves' shade,

And the wild birds carol from glen and glade,

Not a sunbeam glints on its breast to play,

Not a murmur welcomes the golden day,

No children loiter beside its brink,

No shy fawn lingers its wave to drink;
The old tree's shadow is deep and cool,

Yet no lovers keep tryst at the Great Ash Pool.

Yet once by its waters wild vows were spoken,
In passion heard and in falsehood broken,
Two bright heads over its margin bent,

When the moon to its depths soft radiance lent;
A little while and one face lay there,

With its blue eyes glazed in their last despair,-
Eyes that stared upward through weed and slime,
With their story of sorrow, and shame, and crime;
So, in glory of summer, or gladness of Yule,
A curse hangs over the Great Ash Pool.

ACCURSED.

PALLID white the moonlight gloweth
Through the shadows weird and dim;
Mournfully the river floweth

Past the cedars gaunt and grim.
Soft across the twilight bar,
In the rosy light afar,

Like a gem of antique splendor,
Gleams the mystic Eastern star.

Once o'er Judah's hill of purple
Shone the star like living flame;

Through her valleys, green and fertile,
Came the echo of His name.

In those years so long agone

In religion's blessed dawn,

On my head the black curse falleth-
"Ever-evermore move on."

Eighteen hundred years I've wandered, —
And my eyes are dimmed with tears,
Seeking death where storms have thundered,
With a heart unknown to fears.

Years may come and years may go
In their vast eternal flow,

But upon my vague, wild wanderings
Still my weary feet must go.

Shiveringly the night wind waileth
Sibilant dirges of my doom,
And the gold of evening paleth-
Fadeth into deeper gloom.

'Neath the star I kneel and cry,
"Mercy, mercy, Thou on high!
Thou whose heart is filled with pity,
List to my despairing cry!"

Sacramento Union, 1874.

And yet the fair, good name was wilted;
And friends once fond grew cold and stilted,
And life was worse than death.

One venomed word,

That struck its coward, poisoned blow,
In craven whispers, hushed and low-
And yet the wide world heard.

'T was but one whisper

one,

That muttered low, for very shame,
The thing the slanderer dare not name
And yet its work was done.

A hint so slight,

And yet so mighty in its power,
A human soul in one short hour

Lies crushed beneath its blight.

CALUMNY.

A WHISPER woke the air,

A soft, light tone and low,
Yet barbed with shame and woe.
Ah! might it only perish there,
Nor farther go.

But no, a quick and eager ear

Caught up the little, meaning sound;

Another voice has breathed it clear,

And so it wandered round

From ear to lip, from lip to ear,

Until it reached a gentle heart

That throbbed from all the world apart,

And that it broke.

MRS. FRANCES OSGOOD.

THE OUTCAST.

BLEAK winds of the winter, sobbing and moaning,
Pluck not my rags with your pitiless hand;
Here in the darkness, cold and despairing,
Homeless, and friendless, and starving I stand.