Reverberate along that vale,
More suited to the shepherd's tale: Though few the numbers-theirs the strife, That neither spares nor speaks for life! Ah! fondly youthful hearts can press, To seize and share the dear caress: But Love itself could never pant For all that Beauty sighs to grant With half the fervour Hate bestows Upon the last embrace of foes, When grappling in the fight they fold Those arms that ne'er shall loose their hold: Friends meet to part; Love laughs at faith; True foes, once met, are join'd till death!
AN ASSAULT ON A CITY BY NIGHT. The night was dark, and the thick mist allowed Nought to be seen save the artillery's flame, Which arched the horizon like a fiery cloud, And in the Danube's waters shone the same, A mirrored Hell! The volleying roar, and loud Long booming of each peal on peal, o'ercame The ear far more than thunder; for Heaven's flashes Spare or smite rarely-Man's make millions ashes! The column ordered on the assault scarce passed Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises, When up the bristling Moslem rose at last,
Answering the Christian thunders with like voices; Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced, Which rocked as 'twere beneath the mighty noises; While the whole rampart blazed like Ætna, when The restless Titan hickups in his den. And one enormous shout of "Allah!" rose
In the same moment, loud as even the roar.
Of War's most mortal engines, to their foes Hurling defiance: city, stream, and shore Resounding" Allah!" and the clouds which close With thickening canopy the conflict o'er, Vibrate to the Eternal name. Hark! through All sounds it pierceth," Allah! Allah! Hu!”
A SCENE AFTER A BATTLE.
Upon a taken bastion where there lay
Thousands of slaughtered men, a yet warm group Of murdered women, who had found their way To this vain refuge, made the good heart droop And shudder;-while, as beautiful as May, A female child of ten years tried to stoop And hide her little palpitating breast Amidst the bodies killed in bloody rest.
Two villanous Cossacques pursued the child
With flashing eyes and weapons: matched with
The rudest brute that roams Siberia's wild
Has feelings pure and polished as a gem,—
The bear is civilized, the wolf is mild:
And whom for this at last must we condemn ? Their natures? or their sovereigns, who employ All arts to teach their subjects to destroy?
Their sabres glittering o'er her little head,
Whence her fair hair rose twining with affright, Her hidden face was plunged amidst the dead: When Juan caught a glimpse of this sad sight, I shall not say exactly what he said,
Because it might not solace "ears polite;"
* Allah Hu !is properly the war cry of the Mussulmans, and they dwell long on the last syllable, which gives it a very wild and peculiar effect.
But what he did, was to lay on their backs, The readiest way of reasoning with Cossacques.
One's hip he slashed, and split the other's shoulder, And drove them with their brutal yells to seek If there might be chirurgeons who could solder The wounds they richly merited, and shriek Their baffled rage and pain; while waxing colder As he turned o'er each pale and gory cheek, Don Juan raised his little captive from The heap a moment more had made her tomb.
And she was chill as they, and on her face
A slender streak of blood announced how near Her fate had been to that of all her race;
For the same blow which laid her mother here Had scarred her brow, and left its crimson trace As the last link with all she had held dear; But else unhurt, she opened her large eyes, And gazed on Juan with a wild surprise.
Just at this moment, while their eyes were fixed Upon each other, with dilated glance, In Juan's look, pain, pleasure, hope, fear, mixed With joy to save, and dread of some mischance Unto his protegee; while her's, transfixed
With infant terrors, glared as from a trance, A pure, transparent, pale, yet radiant face, Like to a lighted alabaster vase.
THE FATE OF BEAUTY.
As rising on its purple wing The insect-queen of eastern spring, O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer
Invites the young pursuer near,
And leads him on from flower to flower A weary chase and wasted hour, Then leaves him, as it soars on high, With panting heart and tearful eye- So Beauty lures the full-grown child, With hue as bright, and wing as wild; A chase of idle hopes and fears, Begun in folly, closed in tears. If won, to equal ills betray'd, Woe waits the insect and the maid; A life of pain, the loss of peace, From infant's play, and man's caprice: The lovely toy so fiercely sought Hath lost its charm by being caught, For every touch that wooed its stay Hath brushed its brightest hues away, Till charm, and hue, and beauty gone, 'Tis left to fly or fall alone.
With wounded wing, or bleeding breast, Ah! where shall either victim rest? Can this with faded pinion soar From rose to tulip as before? Or Beauty, blighted in an hour, Find joy within her broken bower? No gayer insects fluttering by
Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die, And lovelier things have mercy shown To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim
Except an erring sister's shame,
BLUES AND AMATEUR AUTHORS.
They cannot read, and so don't lisp in criticism; Nor write, and so they don't affect the muse;
Were never caught in epigram or witticism, Have no romances, sermons, plays, reviews, In harams learning soon would make a pretty schism! But luckily these beauties are no "blues;"
No bustling Botherby's have they to show 'em "That charming passage in the last new poem."
No solemn, antique gentleman of rhyme, Who having angled all his life for fame, And getting but a nibble at a time,
Still fussily keeps fishing on, the same Small "Triton of the minnows," the sublime Of mediocrity, the furious tame,
The echo's echo, usher of the school
Of female wits, boy bards-in short, a fool!
A talking oracle of awful phrase,
The approving" Good !" (by no means good in law) Humming like flies around the newest blaze,
The bluest of blue bottles you e'er saw, Teasing with blame, excruciating with praise, Gorging the little fame he gets all raw, Translating tongues he knows not even by letter, And sweating plays so middling, bad were better. One hates an author that's all author, fellows In foolscap uniforms, turned up with ink, So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous,
One don't know what to say to them, or think, Unless to puff them with a pair of bellows;
Of coxcombry's worst coxcombs e'en the pink Are preferable to these shreds of paper, These unquench'd snuffings of the midnight taper. Of these same we see several, and of others,
Men of the world, who know the world like men,
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