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Christ and the saints, be merciful unto me! Yet why should I fear death? What is it to die?

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To leave all disappointment, care, and sorrow, To leave all falsehood, treachery, and unkindness,

All ignominy, suffering, and despair,

And be at rest for ever! Oh, dull heart, Be of good cheer! When thou shalt cease to beat,

Then shalt thou cease to suffer and complain!
Enter VICTORIAN and HYPOLITO behind.
Vict. 'Tis she! Behold, how beautiful she
stands

Under the tent-like trees!
Hyp.

A woodland nymph!
Vict. I pray thee, stand aside. Leave me.
Hyp.
Be wary:

Do not betray thyself too soon.

Vict. (disguising his voice.) Hist! Gipsy! Prec. (aside with emotion.) That voice! That voice from heaven! Oh, speak again!

Who is it calls? Vict.

Prec. (aside.)

A friend.

"Tis he! "Tis he!

I thank thee, Heaven, that thou hast heard my prayer,

And sent me this protector! Now be strong, Be strong, my heart! I must dissemble here.False friend or true?

Vict. Fear not come hither. tunes?

A true friend to the true! So; can you tell for

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Tell me a better fortune for my money;
Not this old woman's tale!

Prec.
You are passionate;
And this same passionate humour in your blood
Has marred your fortune. Yes; I see it now;
The line of life is crossed by many marks.
Shame! shame! Oh, you have wronged the
maid who loved you!

How could you do it?

Vict.

I never loved a maid;

For she I loved was then a maid no more.
Prec. How know you that?
Vict.

A little bird in the air

There, take back your gold!

Whispered the secret.

Prec.

Your hand is cold, like a deceiver's hand!
There is no blessing in its charity!
Make her your wife, for you have been abused;
And you shall mend your fortunes, mending
hers.

Vict. (aside.) How like an angel's is the tongue of woman,

When pleading in another's cause her own !———
This is a pretty ring upon your finger.
Pray, give it me.
Prec.

Shall that be taken! Vict.

(Tries to take the ring.) No; never from my hand

Why, 'tis but a ring.

I'll give it back to you; or, if I keep it,
Will give you gold to buy you twenty such.
Prec. Why would you have this ring?
A traveler's fancy,

Vict.

A whim, and nothing more. I would fain keep

it

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I will not part with it, even when I die:
But bid my nurse fold my pala fingers thus.
That it may not fall from them. Tis a token
Of a beloved friend, who is no more,

Vict.
How? dead!
Prec, Yos; dead to me: and worse than dead.
He is estranged! And yet I keep this ring.
I will rise with it from my grave hereafter,
To prove to him that I was never false.

Vict. (aside.) Be still, my swelling heart! one moment, still!

Why, 'tis the folly of a love-sick girl.
Come, give it me, or I will say 'tis mine,
And that you stole it.

Prec.

To utter such a fiendish lie! Vict.

Oh, you will not dare Not dare?

Look in my face, and say if there is aught I have not dared, would not dare for thee! (She rushes into his arms.)

Prec. "Tis thou! 'tis thou! Yes: yes; my heart's elected

My dearest-dear Victorian! my soul's heaven! Where hast thou been so long? Why didst thou leave me?

Vict. Ask me not now, my dearest Preciosa.
Let me forget we ever have been parted!
Prec. Hadst thou not come-
Vict.

I pray thee, do no chide me! Prec. I should have perished here among these Gipsies.

Vict. Forgive me, sweet, for what I made thee suffer.

Think'st thou this heart could feel a moment's

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speak on!

Let me but hear thy voice, and I am happy;
For every tone, like some sweet incantation,
Calls up the buried past to plead for me.
Speak, my beloved, speak into my heart,
Whatever fills and agitates thine own.

(They walk aside.)
Hyp. All gentle quarrels in the pastoral poets,
All passionate love-scenes in the best romances.
All chaste embraces on the public stage,
All soft adventures, which the liberal stars
Have winked at, as the natural course of things.
Have been surpassed here by my friend, the stu-

dent,

And this sweet Gipsy lass, fair Preciosa!
Prec. Senor Hypolito! I kiss your hand.
Pray, shall I tell your fortune?
Hup.
Not to-night:
For, should you treat me as you did Victorian,
And send me back to marry maids forlorn,
My wedding-day would last from now to Christ-

mas.

Chispa (within). What ho! the Gipsies ho! Beltran Cruzado! Halloo! halloo !

halloo! halloo!

(Enters booted, with a Vict. Why such a fearful din? robbed?

whip and lantern.) What now?

Hast thou been

Chispa. Ay, robbed and murdered; and good evening to you,

My worthy masters.

Viet. Speak: what brings thee here?

Chispa (to PRECIOSA). Good news from Court; good news! Beltran Cruzado,

The Count of the Cales is not your father,
But your true father has returned to Spain
Laden with wealth. You are no more à Gipsy.
Vict. Strange as a Moorish tale!
Chispa
And we have all
Been drinking at the tavern to your health,
As wells drink in November, when it rains.
Vict. Where is the gentleman?
As the old song says,

Chispa.

His body is in Segovia,

His soul is in Madrid.

Prec. Is this a dream? Oh, if it be a dream. Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet! Repeat thy story! Say I'm not deceived! Say that I do not dreamn! I am awake; This is the Gipsy camp: this is Victorian, And this his friend, Hypolito! Speak! speak! Let me not wake and find it all a dream! Vict. It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream,

A blissful certainty, a vision bright

Of that rare happiness, which even on earth Heaven gives to those it loves. Now art thou rich,

As thou wast ever beautiful and good;
And I am now the beggar.

Prec. (giving him her hand.) I have still
A hand to give.

Chispa (aside). And I have two to take; I've heard my grandmother say, that Heaven gives almonds

To those who have no teeth. That's nuts to crack.

I've teeth to spare, but where shall I find almonds?

Vict. What more of this strange story? Chispa. Nothing more, Your friend, Don Carios, is now at the village Showing to Pedro Crespo, the Alcalde, The proofs of what I tell you. The old hag, Who stole you in your childhood. has confessed; And probably they'll hang her for the crime, To make the celebration more complete.

Vict. No; let it be a day of general joy; Fortune comes well to all. that comes not late. Now let us join Don Carlos.

Hyp. So farewell, The student's wandering life! Sweet serenades, Sung under ladies' windows in the night, And all that makes vacation beautiful! To you, ye cloistered shades of Alcalá, To you, ye radiant visions of romance, Written in books, but here surpassed by truth, The Bachelor Hypolito returns,

And leaves the Gipsy with the Spanish Student.

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Monk. Santa Maria! Come with me to San
Ildefonso, and thou shalt be well rewarded.
Shep. What wilt thou give me?

Monk. An Agnus Dei and my benediction.
(They disappear. A mounted Contrabandista
passes, wrappped in his cloak, with a gun at his
saddle-bow. He goes down the pass singing.)

SONG.

Worn with speed is my good steed,
And I march me hurried, worried;
Onward, caballito mio,

With the white star in thy forehead!
Onward, for here comes the Ronda,
And I hear their rifles crack!
Ay, jaléo! Ay, ay, jaléo!

Ay, jaleo! They cross our track.
(Song dies away. Enter PRECIOSA, on horseback,
attended by VICTORIAN, HYPOLITO, DON
CARLOS, and CHIPSA, on foot, and armed.)
Vict. This is the highest point. Here let us

rest.

See, Preciosa, see how all about us
Kneeling, like hooded friars, the misty mountains
Receive the benediction of the sun!
O glorious sight!

Prec.

Most beautiful, indeed!

Hyp. Most wonderful!
Vict.

And in the vale below, Where yonder steeples flash like lifted halberds, San Ildefonso, from its noisy belfries,

Sends up a salutation to the morn,

As if an army smote their brazen shields,
And shouted victory!

Prec.

Segovia ?

And which way lies

Vict. At a great distance yonder.

Dost shou not see it?

Prec.

No. I do not see it.

And an Alcázar, builded by the Moors.
Wherein, you may remember, poor GII Blas
Was fed on Pan del Rey. Oh, inany a time
Out of its grated windows have I looked
Hundreds of feet plumb down to the Eresina,
That, like a serpent through the valley creeping,
Glides at its foot.
Prec.
Oh, yes! I see it now,
Yet rather with my heart than with mine eyes,
So faint it is. And all my thoughts sail thither,
Freighted with prayers and hopes, and forward
urged

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Against all stress of accident, as, in

The Eastern Tale, against the wind and tide. Great ships were drawn to the Magnetic Mountains,

And there were wrecked and perished in the sea! (She weeps)

Vict. O gentle spirit! Thou didst bear un-
moved

Blasts of adversity and frosts of fate!
But the first ray of sunshine that falls on thee
Melts thee to tears! Oh, let thy weary heart
Lean upon mine! and it shall faint no more,
Nor thirst, nor hunger; but be comforted
And filled with my affection.

Prec.
Stay no longer!,
My father waits. Methinks I see him there,
Now looking from the window, and now watching
Each sound of wheels or foot-fall in the street,
And saying, "Hark! she comes!" O father!
father!

(They descend the pass. CHISPA remains behind.)

Chispa. I have a father, too, but he is a dead one. Alas and alack-a-day! Poor was I born, and poor do I remain. I neither win nor lose. Thus do I wag through the world, half the time on foot, and the other half walking; and always as merry as a thunder-storm in the night. And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox. Who knows what may hapnen? Patience, and shuffle the cards! I am not yet so bald, that you can see my brains; and perhaps, after all, I shall some day go to Rome, and come back Saint Peter. Benedicite! [Erit. (A pause. Then enter BARTOLOME wildly, as if in pursuit, with a carbine in his hand.) Bart. They passed this way! I hear their horses' hoofs!

Yonder I see them! Come, sweet caramillo,

Vict. The merest flaw that denotes the hori- This serenade shall be the Ginsy's last!

zon's edge.

There, yonder!

Hyp, 'Tis a notable old town, Boasting an ancient Roman aqueduct,

(Fires down the pass.) Ha ha! Well whistled, my sweet caramillo! Well whistled!-I have missed her!--O my God! (The shot is returned. BARTOLOME falls.)

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

Come i gru van cantando lor lai
Facendo in aer di sè lunga riga.

-DANTE.

PROMETHEUS,

OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

OF Prometheus, how undaunted
On Olympus' shining bastions
His audacious foot he planted,
Myths are told and songs are chaunted,
Full of promptings and suggestions.
Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals,
The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring.

Born of heavenward aspiration,
Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture,-the despairing
Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.
All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;
Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning.
In their passionate pulsations,
In their words among the nations,
The Promethean fire is burning.
Shall it, then, be unavailing,

All this toil for human culture?
Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,
Must they see above them sailing

O'er life's barren crags the vulture?
Such a fate as this was Dante's,

By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes,

By affliction touched and saddened.
But the glories so transcendent

That around their memories cluster,
And, on all their steps attendant,
Make their darkened lives resplendent
With such gleams of inward lustre!

All the melodies mysterious,

Through the dreary darkness chaunted;
Thoughts in attitudes imperious,
Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!

All the soul in rapt suspension,
All the quivering, palpitating
Chords of life in utmost tension,
With the fervour of invention,

With the rapture of creating!

Ah, Prometheus; heaven-scaling!
In such hours of exultation
Even the faintest heart unquailing,
Might behold the vulture sailing

Round the cloudy crags Caucasian!
Though to all there is not given
Strength for such sublime endeavour,
Thus to scale the walls of heaven,
And to leaven with fiery leaven

All the hearts of men for ever;

Yet all bards, whose hearts unblighted
Honour and believe the presage,
Hold aloft their torches lighted,
Gleaming through the realms benighted,
As they onward bear the message!

THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. SAINT AUGUSTINE! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame

A iadder. if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design
Thrt makes another's virtues less
The revel of the ruddy wine,

And all occasions of excess;

The longing for ignoble things:

The strife for triumph more than truth; The hardening of the heart, that brings Irreverence for the dreams of youth;

All thoughts of ill, all evil deeds,

That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes

The action of the nobler will;--
All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminence domain.
We have not wings, we cannot soar:
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.

The mighty pyramids of stone

That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen, and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.

The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upwards in the night.
Standing on what too long we bore,

With shoulders bent and downcast eyes
We may discern-unseen before-
A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last

To something nobler we attain.

THE PHANTOM SHIP.
IN Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old Colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.
"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"-
Thus prayed the old divine-
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!"
But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
"This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be.'

And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of the vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying

That the Lord would let them hear,
What in His greater wisdom

He had done with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:It was in the month of June,

An hour before the sunset

Of a windy afternoon,

When steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,

And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts.
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,

And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.

And the masts with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one.

And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,

That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village

Gave thanks to God in prayer, That, to quiet their troubled spirits, He had sent this Ship of Air.

THE WARDEN OF THE CINQUE PORTS. A MIST was driving down the British Channel, The day was just begun,

And through the window-panes, on floor and panel,

Streamed the red autumn sun.

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Each answering each, with morning salutations, That all was weli.

And down the coast, all taking up the burden,
Replied the distant forts,

As if to summon from his sleep the Warden
And Lord of the Cinque Ports.

Him shall no sunshine from the fields of azure,
No drum-beat from the wall,

No morning gun from the black forts embrasure,

Awaken with its call!

No more, surveying with an eye impartial
The long line of the coast,

Shall the gaunt figure of the old Field Marshal
Be seen upon his post!

For in the night, unseen, a single warrior,
In sombre harness mailed,

Dreaded of man, and surnamed the Destroyer,
The rampart wall has scaled.

He passed into the chamber of the sleeper,
The dark and silent room,

And as he entered, darker grew, and deeper,
The silence and the gloom.

He did not pause to parley or dissemble,
But smote the Warden hoar.

Ah! what a blow! that made all England

tremble

And groan from shore to shore.

Meanwhile, without, the surly cannon waited,
The sun rose bright o'erhead:

Nothing in Nature's aspect intimated
That a great man was dead.

HAUNTED HOUSES.

ALL houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses. Through the open doors The harmless phantoms on their errands glide. With feet that make no sound upon the floors. We meet them at the door-way, on the stair, Along the passages they come and go, Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro. There are more guests at table, than the hosts Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty

hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

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