Day fades apace: another day,
That maiden will be far away,
A wanderer o'er the dark-blue sea,
And bound for lovely Italy,
Her mother's land. Hence, on her breast,
The cross beneath a Moorish vest,
And hence those sweetest sounds that seem
Like music murmuring in a dream
When in our sleeping ear is ringing
The song the nightingale is singing
When by that white and funeral stone
Half hidden by the cypress gloom
The hymn the mother taught her child.
Is sung each evening at her tomb.
But quick the twilight-time has past
Like one of those sweet calms that last
A moment, and no more, to cheer
The turmoil of our pathway here.
The bark is waiting in the bay;
Night darkens round: Leila, away
Far ere to-morrow o'er the tide,
Or wait and be Abdalla's bride.
She touched her lute: never again
Her ear will listen to its strain;
She took her cage, first kissed the breast,
Then freed the white dove prisoned there:
It paused one moment on her hand,
Then spread its glad wings to the air.
She drank the breath as it were health
That sighed from every scented blossom,
And, taking from each one a leaf,
Hid them like spells upon her bosom, Then sought the sacred path again
She once before had traced when lay A Christian in her father's chain,
And gave him gold and taught the way To fly. She thought upon the night When, like an angel of the light, She stood before the prisoner's sight, And led him to the cypress grove, And showed the bark and hidden cove, And bade the wandering captive flee In words he knew from infancy, And when she thought how for her love He had braved slavery and death, That he might only breathe the air
Made sweet and sacred by her breath. She reached the grove of cypresses:
Another step is by her side; Another moment, and the bark
Bears the fair Moor across the tide.
"Twas beautiful by the pale moonlight
To mark her eyes, now dark, now bright,
As now they met, now shrank away,
From the gaze that watched and worshipped
They stood on the deck, and the midnight gale
Just waved the maiden's silver veil
Just lifted a curl, as if to show
The cheek of rose that was burning below;
And never spread a sky of blue
More clear for the stars to wander through,
And never could their mirror be
A calmer or a lovelier sea;
For every wave was a diamond gleam,
And that light vessel well may seem
A fairy ship, and that graceful pair
Young genii whose home was of light and air.
Another evening came, but dark;
The storin-clouds hovered round the bark
Of misery; they just could see
The distant shore of Italy
As the dim moon through vapors shone:
A few short rays, her light was gone.
O'erhead a sullen scream was heard
As sought the land the white sea-bird,
Her pale wings like a meteor streaming;
Upon the waves a light is gleaning--
Ill-omened brightness, sent by Death
To light the night-black depths beneath.
The vessel rolled amid the surge;
The winds howled round it like a dirge
Sung by some savage race; then came
The rush of thunder and of flame:
It showed two forms upon the deck,
One clasped around the other's neck,
As there she could not dream of fear:
In her lover's arms could danger be near?
He stood and watched her with the
Of fixed and silent agony.
The waves swept on; he felt her heart
Beat close and closer yet to his;
They burst upon the ship the sea
Has closed upon their dream of bliss.
Surely theirs is a pleasant sleep
Beneath that ancient cedar tree
Whose solitary stem has stood
For years alone beside the sea,
The last of a most noble race
That once had there their dwelling-place,
Long past away. Beneath its shade
A soft green couch the turf has made,
And glad the morning sun is shining
On those beneath the boughs reclining.
Nearer the fisher drew. He saw
The dark hair of the Moorish maid
Like a veil floating o'er the breast
Where tenderly her head was laid, And yet her lover's arm was placed Clasping around the graceful waist; But then he marked the youth's black curls Were dripping wet with foam and blood, And that the maiden's tresses dark
Were heavy with the briny flood.
Woe for the wind! woe for the wave!
They sleep the slumber of the grave.
They buried them beneath that tree:
It long had been a sacred spot;
Soon it was planted round with flowers
By many who had not forgot
Or yet lived in those dreams of truth,
The Eden-birds of early youth,
That make the loveliest of love,
And called the place "The Maiden's Cove,'
That she who perished in the sea
Might thus be kept in memory.
If she be not so to me,
What care I how kind she be?
Shall a woman's virtues move
Me to perish for her love,
Or her merit's value known
Make me quite forget mine own?
Be she with that goodness blest
Which may gain her name of best,
If she seem not such to me,
What care I how good she be?
'Cause her fortune seems too high,
Shall I play the fool and die?
Those that bear a noble mind
Where they want of riches find,
Think what with them they would do
Who without them dare to woo;
And unless that mind I see,
What care I though great she be?
Great or good, or kind or fair,
I will ne'er the more despair;
If she love me, this believe:
I will die ere she shall grieve.
If she slight me when I woo,
I can scorn and let her go;
For if she be not for me,
What care I for whom she be?
Perhaps a new lover now roams at her side, With antlers as branching, as lovely a hide.
WAS the flash of the rifle, the bullet is "Oh, hush! for the ladies would faint should. sped,
And the pride of the forest, the roebuck, is That such frailty should lurk in the heart of dead:
How he crashed through the thicket! how
I will not be silent. The roebuck is dead,
That rustle betrayed him, that bound was his And his fawns have departed, his widow has
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