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That sometimes from the savage den,

And sometimes from the darksome shade, And sometimes starting up at once,

In green and sunny glade,

There came, and looked him in the face,
An angel beautiful and bright;
And that he knew, it was a fiend,
This miserable Knight!

And how, unknowing what he did,
He leap'd amid a murdʼrous band,

And saved from outrage worse than death
The Lady of the Land;

And how she wept and clasped his knees,
And how she tended him in vain-
And ever strvoe to expiate

The scorn, that crazed his brain :

And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away
When on the yellow forest leaves
A dying man he lay ;

His dying words-But when I reached
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My falt❜ring voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve,

The music, and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindie hope
An undistinguishable throng!

And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherished long!

She wept with pity and delight,

She blushed with love and maiden shame;
And, like the murmur of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

Her bosom heaved-she stepped aside;
As conscious of my look, she stepped-
Then suddenly with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.

She half enclosed me with her arms,
She pressed me with a meek embrace ;
And bending back her head looked up,
And gazed upon my face.

'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art
That I might rather feel than see
The swelling of her heart.

I calmed her fears; and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride!

THE FOSTER-MOTHER'S TALE.

A NARRATION IN DRAMATIC BLANK VERSE.

But that entrance, Mother j

FOSTER-MOTHER.

Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale

No one.

MARIA.

FOSTER-MOTHER.

My husband's father told it me,

Poor old Leoni!-Angels rest his soul !

He was a woodman, and could fell and saw
With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam
Which props the hanging wall of the old chapel ;
Beneath that tree, while yet it was a tree,
He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined

With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool
As hang on brambles. Well, he brought him home
And reared him at the then Lord Velez' cost.

A pretty boy, but most unteachable

And so the babe grew up a pretty boy,

And never learnt a prayer nor told a bead

But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes,

And whistled, as he were a bird himself:
And all the Autumn 'twas his only play

To gather seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them,
With earth and water, on the stumps of trees.
A friar, who sought for simples in the wood,
A grey-haired man-he loved this little boy,
The boy loved him-and, when the friar taught him
He soon could write with the pen and from that time
Lived chiefly at the convent or the castle.

So he became a very learned youth.

But. Oh! poor wretch-he read, and read, and read,
Till his brain turned-and ere his twentieth year

He had unlawful thoughts of many things:
And though he prayed, he never loved to pray
With holy men, nor in a holy place-
But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet,
The late Lord Velez ne'er was wearied with him.

And once, as by the north side of the chapel
They stood together, chained in deep discourse,
The earth heaved under them with such a groan,
That the wall tottered, and had well-nigh fallen
Right on their heads. My Lord was sorely frightened:
A fever seized him, and he made confession

Of all the heretical and lawless talk

Which brought this judgment: so the youth was seized
And cast into that cell. My husband's father
Sobbed like a child-it almost broke his heart:
And once as he was working near the cell
He heard a voice distinctly; 'twas the youth's
about green fields,
Who sang a doleful song

How sweet it were on lake or wild savannah,

To hunt for food, and be a naked man,
And wander up and down at liberty.

Leoni doted on the youth, and now

His love grew desperate; and defying death,
He made that cunning entrance I described,
And the young man escaped.

MARIA.

'Tis a sweet tale

And what became of him?

FOSTER-MOTHER.

He went on ship-board,

With those bold voyagers who made discovery

younger

poor

brother

Of golden lands. Leoni's
Went likewise; and when he returned to Spain,
mad youth,
He told Leoni, that the
Soon after they arrived in that new world,
In spite of his dissuasion, seized a boat,
And, all alone, set sail by silent moonlight
Up a great river, great as any sea,

And ne'er was heard of more: but 'tis supposed
He lived and died among the savage men,

LINES

ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND, IN ANSWER TO A MELAN-
CHOLY LETTER.

Away, those cloudy looks, that lab'ring sigh,
The peevish offspring of a sickly hour!

Nor meanly thus complain of Fortune's pow'r, When the blind gamester throws a luckless die.

Yon setting sun flashes a mournful gleam

Behind those broken clouds, his stormy train;
To-morrow shall the many colour'd main
In brightness roll beneath his orient beam!

Wild as th' Autumnal gust, the hand of Time
Flies o'er his mystic lyre: in shadowy dance
Th' alternate groups of joy and grief advance
Responsive to his varying strains sublime!

Bears on its wing each hour a load of fate.
The swain, who lull'd by Seine's mild murmurs, led
His weary oxen to their nightly shed,
To-day may rule a tempest-troubled state.

Nor shall not Fortune, with a vengeful smile,
Survey the sanguinary despot's might,

And haply hurl the pageant from his height,
Unwept, to wander in some savage isle.

There shiv'ring sad, beneath the tempest's frown, Round his tir'd limbs to wrap the purple vest; And mix'd with nails and beads, an equal jest! Barter for food, the jewels of his crown.

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