Or with its jingling mules to hurry down To some grand bull-fight in the neighbouring town,

Or in the crowd with lighted taper stand,
When Jews were burned, or banished from the
land.

Then stirred within him a tumultuous joy;
The demon whose delight is to destroy
Shook him, and shouted with a trumpet tone,
"Kill! kill! and let the Lord find out his own!"
And now, in that old castle in the wood,
His daughters, in the dawn of womanhood,
Returning from their convent school, had made
Resplendent with their bloom the forest shade,
Reminding him of their dead mother's face,
When first she came into that gloomy place,-
A memory in his heart as dim and sweet
As moonlight in a solitary street,

Where the same rays that lift the sea, are thrown

Lovely but powerless upon walls of stone.

These two fair daughters of a mother dead
Were all the dream had left him as it fled.
A joy at first, and then a growing care,
As if a voice within him cried, "Beware!"
A vague presentiment of impending doom,
Like ghostly footsteps in a vacant room,
Haunted him day and night; a formless fear
That death to some one of his house was near
With dark surmises of a hidden crime,
Made life itself a death before its time,
Jealous, suspicious, with no sense of shame,
A spy upon his daughters he became;
With velvet slippers, noiseless on the floors,
He glided softly through half-opened doors;
Now in the room, and now upon the stair,
He stood beside them ere they were aware;
He listened in the passage when they talked,
He watched them from the casement when they

walked,

He saw the gipsy haunt the river's side,

He saw the monk among the cork-trees glide;
And tortured by the mystery and the doubt
Of some dark secret, past his finding out,
Baffled he paused; then reassured again
Pursued the flying phantom of his brain.
He whached them even when they knelt in

church;

Walked homeward with the Priest, and in his

room

Summoned his trembling daughters to their doom. questioned, with brief answers they replied,

When

Nor when accused, evaded or denied;
Expostulations, passionate appeals,

All that the human heart most fears or feels,
In vain the Priest with earnest voice essayed,
In vain the father threatened, wept, and prayed;
Until at last he said, with haughty mien,
"The Holy Office, then, must intervene ?"
And now the Grand Inquisitor of Spain,
With all the fifty horsemen of his train,
His awful name resounding, like the blast
Of funeral trumpets, as he onward passed,
Came to Valladolid, and there began
To harry the rich Jews with fire and ban.
To him the Hidalgo went, and at the gate
Demanded audience on affairs of state,
And in a secret chamber stood before
A venerable greybeard of fourscore,
Dressed in the hood and habit of a friar;
Out of his eyes flashed a consuming fire,
And in his hand the mystic horn he held,
Which poison and all noxious charms dispelled.
He heard in silence the Hidalgo's tale,
Then answered in a voice that made him quail :
"Son of the Church! when Abraham of old
To sacrifice his only son was told,
He did not pause to parley or protest,
But hastened to obey the Lord's behest.
In him it was accounted righteousness;
The Holy Church expects of thee no less!"
A sacred frenzy seized the father's brain,
And Mercy from that hour implored in vain.
Ah! who will e'er believe the words I say?
His daughters he accused, and the same day
They both were cast into the dungeon's gloom,
That dismal ante-chamber of the tomb,
Arraigned, condemned, and sentenced to the
flame,

The secret torture and the public shame.

Then to the Grand Inquisitor once more,
The Hidalgo went more eager than before,
And said: "When Abraham offered up his son,
He clave the wood wherewith it might be done.
By his example taught, let me too bring
Wood from the forest for my offering!"
And the deop voice, without a pause replied:
"Son of the Church! by faith now justified,
Complete thy sacrifice, even as thou wilt;
The Church absolves thy consclence from all
guilt!"

Then this most wretched father went his way
Into the woods, that round his castle lay,
Where once his daughters in their childhood
played

With their young mother in the sun and shade.
Now all the leaves had fallen; the branches

bare

Made a perpetual moaning in the air,
And screaming from their eyries overhead
The ravens sailed athwart the sky of lead.
With his own hands he lopped the boughs and
bound

Fagots, that crackled with foreboding sound.
And on his mules, caparisoned and gay
With bells and tassels, sent them on their way.

Then with his mind on one dark purpose bent,
Again to the Inquisitor he went,
And said: "Behold, the fagots I have brought,
And now, lest my atonement be as nought,
Grant me one more request, one last desire,-
With my own hands to light the funeral fire!"
And Torquemada answered from his seat,
"Son of the Church! thine offering is complete;

Her servants through all ages shall not cease;
To magnify the deed. Depart in peace!"
Upon the market-place, builded of stone
The scaffold rose, whereon Death claimed his

own.

At the four corners, in stern attitude,
Four statues of the Hebrew Prophets stood,
Gazing with calm indifference in their eyes
Upon this place of human sacrifice,

Round which was gathering fast the eager crowd,

With clamour of voices dissonant and loud,
And every roof and window was alive
With restless gazers, swarming like a hive.

The church-bells tolled, the chant of monks drew near,

Loud trumpets stammered forth their notes of fear,

A line of torches smoked along the street,
There was a stir, a rush, a tramp of feet,
And, with its banners floating in the air,
Slowly the long procession crossed the square.
And, to the statues of the Prophets bound,
The victims stood, with fagots piled around.
Then all the air a blast of trumpets shook,
And louder sang the monks with bell and book,
And the Hidalgo, lofty, stern, and proud,
Lifted his torch, and bursting through the
crowd,

Lighted in haste the fagots, and then fled,

Into a bottomless abyss.
The Italian Tales that you disdain,
Some merry Night of Straparole.
Or Machiavelli's Belphagor,
Would cheer us and delight us more,
Give greater pleasure and less pain
Than your grim tragedies of Spain."
And here the Poet raised his hand,
With such entreaty and command,
It stopped discussion at its birth,
And said: "The story I shall tell
Has meaning in it, if not mirth;
Listen, and here what once befell
The merry birds of Killingworth!"

THE POET'S TALE,

THE MERRY BIRDS OF KILLINGWORTH. IT was the season, when through all the land The merle and mavis build, and building sing Those lovely lyrics, written by His hand,

Who Saxon Cædmon calls the Blithe-heart
King;

When on the boughs the purple bud expand,
The banners of the vanguard of the Spring,
And rivulets, rejoicing, rush and leap.

And wave their fluttering signals from the steep.
The robin and the blue-birds, piping loud,
Filled all the blosoming orchards with their
glee;

O pitiless skies! why did your clouds retain
For peasants' fields their floods of hoarded rain?
O pitiless earth! why opened no abyss
To bury in its chasm a crime like this?

That night, a mingled column of fire and smoke
From the dark thickets of the forest broke,
And, glaring o'er the landscape leagues away,
Made all the fields and hamlets bright as day,
Wrapped in a sheet of flame the castle blazed,
And as the villagers in terror gazed,
They saw the figure of that cruel knight
Lean from a window in the turret's height,
His ghastly face illumined with the glare,
His hands upraised above his head in prayer,
Till the floor sank beneath him, and he fell
Dow the black hollow of that burning well.
Three centuries and more above his bones
Have piled the oblivious years like funeral
stones;

His name has perished with him, and no trace
Remains on earth of his afflicted race;
But Torquemada's name, with clouds o'ercast,
Looms in the distant landscape of the Past,
Like a burnt tower upon a blackened heath,
Lit by the fires of burning woods beneath!

INTERLUDE.

THUS closed the tale of guilt and gloom,
That cast upon each listener's face
Its shadow, and for some brief space
Unbroken silence filled the room.
The Jew was thoughtful and distressed;
Upon his memory thronged and pressed
The persecution of his race,

Their wrongs and sufferings and disgrace;
His head was sunk upon his breast,
And from his eyes alternate came
Flashes of wrath and tears of shame.

The Student first the silence broke,
As one who long had lain in wait,
With purpose to retaliate,

And thus he dealt the avenging stroke.
"In such a company as this,
A tale so tragic seems amiss,
That by its terrible control

O'ermasters and drags down the soul

Their race in Holy Writ should mention be; And hungry cows assembled in a crowd,

Clamoured their piteous prayer incessantly, Knowing who hears the ravens cry, and said: Give us, O Lord, this day our daily bread!" Across the Sound the birds of passage sailed, Speaking some unknown language strange and sweet

Of tropic isle remote, and passing hailed
The village with the cheer of all their fleet;
Or quarrelling together, laughed and railed
Like foreign sailors, landed in the street
Of seaport town, and with outlandish noise
Of oaths and gibberish frightening girls and
boys.

Thus came the jocund Spring in Killingworth,
In fabulous days, some hundred years ago;
And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth,
Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow,
That mingled with the universal mirth,
Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe;
They shook their heads, and doomed with dread-
ful words

To swift destruction the whole race of birds.
And a town-meeting was convened straightway
Te set a price upon the guilty heads
Of these marauders, who, in lieu of pay,
Levied black-mail upon the garden-beds
Aad corn-fields, and beheld without dismay
The awful scarecrow, with his fluttering
shreds;

The skeleton that waited at their feast,
Whereby their sinful pleasure was increased.
Then from his house, a temple painted white,
With fluted columns, and a roof of red,
The Squire came forth, august and splendid
sight!

Slowly descending, with majestic tread,
Three flights of steps, not looking left nor right,
Down the long street he walked, as one who
said,

"A town that boasts inhabitants like me
Can have no lack of good society!"

The Parson, too, appeared, a man austere,
The instinct of whose nature was to kill;

The wrath of God he preached from year to

When they had ended, from his place apart,

Rose the Preceptor, to redress the wrong, And trembling like a steed before the start, Looked round bewildered on the expectant throng;

Then thought of fair Almira, and took heart To speak out what was in him, clear and strong,

Alike regardless of their smile or frown, And quite determined not to be laughed down. "Plato, anticipating the Reviewers,

From his republic banished, without pity,
The Poets; in this little town of yours,
You put to death, by means of a Committee,
The ballad-singers and the Troubadours,

The street musicians of the heavenly city,
The birds, who make sweet music of us all
In our dark hours, as David did for Saul.
"The thrush that carols at the dawn of day
From the green steeples of the piny wood;
The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay,

Jargoning like a foreigner at his food, The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray Flooding with melody the neighbourhood;" Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng That dwell in nests, and have the gift of song. "You slay them all! and wherefore? for the gain

Of a scant handful more or less of wheat, Or rye, or barley, or some other grain,

Scratched up at random by industrious feet, Searching for worm or weevil after rain!

Or a few cherries that are not so sweet As are the song these uninvited guests Sing at their feast with comfortable breasts. "Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?

Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught

The dialect they speak, where melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many

keys,

Sweeter than instrument of man c'er caught! Whose habitations in the tree-tops even Are half-way houses on the road to heaven!

"Think, every morning, when the sun peeps through

The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, How jubilant the happy birds renew

Their old melodious madrigals of love! And when you think of this remember too

'Tis always morning somewhere, and above Somewhere the birds are singing evermore. The awakening continents, from shore to shore,

"Think of your woods and orchards without birds!

Of empty nests that cling to boughs, and beams

As in an idiot's brain remembered words

Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams! Will bleat of flocks or bellowing of herds

Make up for the lost music, when your teams Drag home your stingy harvest, and no more The feathered gleaners follow to your door? "What! would you rather see the incessant stir Of insects in the windrows of the hay, And hear the locust and the grasshopper Their melancholy hurdy-gurdies play? Is this more pleasant to you than the whirr Of meadow-lark, and its sweet roundelay, Or twitter of little fieldfares, as you take Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake? "You call them thieves and pillagers; but know

They are the winged wardens of your farms, Who from the corn-fields drive the insidious foe,

And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;

Even the blackest of them all, the crow,

Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail,
Renders good service as your men-at-arms,
And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
"How can I teach your children gentleness,
And mercy to the weak, and reverence
For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence;
Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
The self-same light, although averted hence,
When by your laws, your actions, and your

speech,

You contradict the very things I teach ?"

With this he closed; and through the audience

went

A murmur, like the rustle of dead leaves: The farmers laughed and nodded, and some bent

Their yellow heads together like their sheaves;

Men have no faith in fine-spun sentiment

Who put their trust in bullocks and in beeves. The birds were doomed, and, as the record shows,

A bounty offered for the heads of crows.
There was another audience out of reach,
Who had no voice nor vote in making laws,
But in the papers read his little speech,
And crowned his modest temples with ap-
plause;

They made him conscious, each one more than each,

He was still victor, vanquished in their cause. Sweetest of all the applause he won from thee, O fair Almira at the Academy!

And so the dreadful massacre began;

O'er fields and orchards and o'er woodland crests,

The ceaseless fusilade of terror ran,

Dead fell the birds, with blood-stains on their breasts,

Or wounded crept away from sight of man,
While the young died of famine in their nests;
A slaughter to be told in groans, not words,
The very St. Bartholomew of Birds!

The Summer came, and all the birds were dead; The days were like hot coals; the very ground

Was burned to ashes; in the orchards fed
Myriads of caterpillars, and around
The cultivated fields and garden beds

Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and

found

No foe to check their march, till they had made The land a desert without leaf or shade.

Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town, Because like Herod, it had ruthlessly Slaughtered the Innocents. From the trees spun down

The canker-worms upon the passers-by, Upon each woman's bonnet, shawl, and gown, Who shook them off with just a little cry; They were the terror of each favourite walk, The endless theme of all the village talk.

The farmers grew impatient, but a few

Confessed their error, and would not com plain,

For after all the best thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.

All full of singing birds, came down the street,
Filling the air with music wild and sweet.
From all the country round these birds were
brought,

By order of the town, with anxious quest,
And, loosened from their wicker prisons, sought
In woods and fields the places they loved
best:

Singing loud canticles, which many thought
Were satires to the authorities addressed,
While others, listening in green lanes, averred
Such lovely music never had been heard!
But blither still and louder carolled they
Upon the morrow, for they seemed to know
It was the fair Almira's wedding-day,

And everywhere, around above, below,
When the Preceptor bore his bride away,
Their songs burst forth in joyous overflow,
And a new heaven bent over a new earth
Amid the sunny farms of Killingworth.

FINALE.

knew

It would not call the dead to life again; As school-boys, finding their mistake too late, Draw a wet sponge across the accusing slate. That year in Killingworth the Autumn came Without the light of his majestic look, The wonder of the falling tongues of flame, The illuminated pages of his Doom's-Day A few lost leaves blushed crimson with their shame,

book.

brook,

And drowned themselves despairing in the While the wild wind went moaning everywhere, Lamenting the dead children of the air!

But the next Spring a stranger sight was seen,
A sight that never yet by bard was sung,
As great a wonder as it would have been,
If some dumb animal had found a tongue!

A wagon overarched with evergreen,

Upon whose boughs were wicker cages hung,

The Landlord's eyes were closed in sleep,
And near the story's end a deep
Sonorous sound at times was heard
As when the distant bagpipes blow.
At this all laughed; the Landlord stirred,
As one awakening from a swound,
And, gazing anxiously around,
Protested that he had not slept,
But only shut his eyes and kept
His ears attentive to each word.
They all arose, and said “Good Night,"
Alone remained the drowsy Squire
To rake the embers of the fire,
And quench the waning parlour light;
While from the windows, here and there,
The scattered lamps a moment gleamed,
And the illumined hostel seemed
The constellation of the Bear,
Downward, athwart the misty air,
Sinking and setting towards the sun.
Far off the village clock struck one.

THE SONG OF HIAWATHA.-P. L

This Indian Edda-if I may so call it is founded on a tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. He was known among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozho, Tarenyawagon, and Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an account of him in his "Algic Researches," Vol. I. p. 134; and in his "History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States," Part III. p. 814, may be found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief.

Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians.

The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.

In the Vale of Tawasentha.-p. 1.

This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albany County, New York.

On the mountains of the Prairie.-p. 1. Mr. Catlin, in his "Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians," Vol. II. p. 160, gives an interesting account of the Coteau des Prairies, and the Red Pipe-stone Quarry. He says:

"Here (according to their traditions) happened the mysterious birth of the red pipe, which has blown its fumes of peace and war to the remotest corners of the continent; which has visited every warrior, and passed through its reddened stem the irrevocable oath of war and desolation. And here, also, the peace-breathing calumet was born, and fringed with the eagle's quills which has shed its thrilling fumes over the land, and soothed the fury of the relentless savage.

yet (Tso-mec-cos-tee and Tso-me-cos-te-wondee), answering to the invocations of the highpriests, or medicine-men, who consult them when they are visitors to this sacred place."

Hark you, Bear! you are a coward.-p. 3. This anecdote is from Heckewelder. In his account of the Indian nations, he describes an Indian hunter as addressing a bear in nearly these words. I was present," he says, "at the delivery of this curious invective; when the hunter had despatched the bear. I asked him how he thought that the poor animal could understand what he said to it? Oh,' said he, in answer, the bear understood me very well; did you not observe how ashamed he looked while I was upbraiding him?''- Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. I. p. 240.

Hush! the Naked Bear will get thee!-p. 5. Heckewelder, in a letter published in the "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society," Vol. IV, p. 260, speaks of this tradition as prevalent among the Mohicans and Dela

wares.

"Their reports," he says, "run thus: that among all animals that had been formerly in this country, this was the most ferocious: that it was much larger than the largest of the common bears, and remarkably long-bodied; all over (except a spot of hair on its back of a white colour), naked.

The history of this animal used to be a subject of conversation among the Indians, especially when in the woods a hunting. I have also heard them say to their children when crying: Hush! the naked bear will hear you, be upon you, and devour you.'

Little

Where the Falls of Minnehaha, &c.—p. 7. "The scenery about Fort Snelling is rich in beauty. The Falls of St. Anthony are familiar to travellers, and to readers of Indian sketches. Between the Fort and these falls are the Falls, forty feet in height, on a stream that empties into the Mississippi. The Indians call them Mine-hah-hah, or laughing waters.'". Mrs. Eastman's Dacotah, or Legends of the Sioux. 2.

Sand Hills of the Nagow Wudjoo.-p. 17.

A description of the Grand Sable, or_great sand-dunes of Lake Superior, is given in Foster and Whitney's "Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Land District, Part II, p. 131.

"The Grand Sable possesses a scenic interest little inferior to that of the Pictured Rocks. The explorer passes abruptly from a coast of consolidated sand to one of loose materials: and although in the one case the cliffs are less precipitous, yet in the other they attain a higher altitude. He sees before them a long reach of coast, resembling a vast sand-bank, more than three hundred and fifty feet in height, without a