No liege man to his crownèd mistress sworn,
Bound and devoted is as I to thee;
And he who offers to thy alter'd state
The slightest seeming of diminish'd rev'rence,
Must in my blood-(To Hartman)-O pardon me, my friend! Thou'st wrung my heart.
Hart. Nay, do thou pardon me,-I am to blame:
Thy nobler heart shall not again be wrung.
But what can now be done? O'er such wild ravings
There must be some control.
Theo. O none! none! none! but gentle sympathy,
And watchfulness of love.
Wander where'er thou wilt, thy vagrant steps
Shall follow'd be by one, who shall not weary,
Nor e'er detach him from his hopeless task;
Bound to thee now as fairest, gentlest beauty
Could ne'er have bound him.
Alice. See how she gazes on him with a look,
Subsiding gradually to softer sadness,
Half saying that she knows him.
There is a kindness in her changing eye.
How still the morning of the hallow'd day!
Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd
The plough-boy's whistle, and the milk-maid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers,
That yestermorn bloom'd waving in the breeze;
Sounds the most faint attract the ear,-the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating, midway up the hill.
Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud.
To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,
The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tun'd song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-worn glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose circling smoke
O'er-mounts the mist, is heard, at intervals,
The voice of Psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods;
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceas'd; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare
Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man, Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free, Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
His iron-arm'd hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
SUNDAY TO THE SHIPWRECKED.
OH! my heart bleeds to think there now may live One hapless man, the remnant of a wreck,
Cast on some desert island of that main
Immense, which stretches from the Cochin shore
To Acapulco. Motionless he sits,
As is the rock his seat, gazing whole days,
With wandering eye, o'er all the watery waste;
Now striving to believe the albatross
A sail appearing on the horizon's verge;
Now vowing ne'er to cherish other hope
Than hope of death. Thus pass his weary hours,
Till welcome evening warn him that 'tis time
Upon the well-notch'd calendar to mark
Another day, another dreary day,—
The Hermit of the Deep, not unobserv'd
The Sabbath passes;-'tis his great delight.
Each seventh eve he marks the farewell ray,
And loves, and sighs to think,-that setting sun
Is now empurpling Scotland's mountain-tops,
Or, higher risen, slants athwart her vales,
Tinting with yellow light the quivering throat
Of day-spring lark, while woodland birds below
Chaunt in the dewy shade. Thus, all night long
He watches, while the rising moon describes
The progress of the day in happier lands.
And now he almost fancies that he hears
The chiming from his native village church:
And now he sings, and fondly hopes the strain
May be the same that sweet ascends at home
In congregation full,-where, not without a tear,
They are remember'd who in ships behold
The wonders of the deep: he sees the hand,
The widow'd hand, that veils the eye suffus'd;
He sees his orphan'd boy look up, and strive
The widow'd heart to soothe. His spirit leans
On God.-
The far-exploding firmament, and dares.
To hope-one bolt in mercy is reserv'd
For his release; and yet he is resign'd
To live because full well he is assur'd
Thy Hand does lead him, thy right Hand upholds.
And thy right Hand does lead him! Lo! at last,
One sacred eve, he hears, faint from the deep,
Music remote, swelling at intervals,
As if the embodied spirit of sweet sounds
Came slowly floating on the shoreward wave:
The cadence well he knows-a hymn of old,
Where sweetly is rehears'd the lowly state
Of JESUS, when his birth was first announced,
In midnight music, by an angel choir,
To Bethlehem's shepherds, as they watch'd their flocks.
Breathless, the man forlorn listens, and thinks
It is a dream. Fuller the voices swell;
He looks, and starts to see, moving along,
A fiery wave, (so seems it,) crescent form'd,
Approaching to the land; straightway he sees
A towering whiteness; 'tis the heaven-fill'd sails
That waft the mission'd men, who have renounced
Their homes, their country, nay, almost the world,
Bearing glad tidings to the farthest isles
Of ocean, that the dead shall rise again.
Forward the gleam-girt castle coast-wise glides,
It seems as it would pass away. To cry
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