Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

The name of Belisarius can never die; but instead of the funeral, the monuments, the statues, so justly due to his memory, I only read that his treasures, the spoils of the Goths and Vandals, were immediately confiscated by the emperor. Some decent portion was reserved, however, for the use of his widow; and, as Antonina had much to repent, she devoted the last remains of her life and fortune to the foundation of a convent.

Such is the simple and genuine narrative of the fall of Belisarius and the ingratitude of Justinian. That he was deprived of his eyes and reduced by envy to beg his bread"Give a penny to Belisarius the general!" -is a fiction of later times which has obtained credit, or rather favor, as a strange example of the vicissitudes of fortune.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed]
[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

A SLEEPING CHILD.

RT thou a thing of mortal birth

ART

Whose happy home is on our earth?
Does human blood with life imbue
Those wandering veins of heavenly blue
That stray along thy forehead fair,
Lost 'mid a gleam of golden hair?
Oh, can that light and airy breath
Steal from a being doomed to death,
Those features to the grave be sent
In sleep thus mutely eloquent?

Or art thou, what thy form would seem,
The phantom of a blessed dream?
Oh that my spirit's eye could see
Whence burst those dreams of ecstacy!
That light of dreaming soul appears
To play from thoughts above thy years.

Thou smil'st as if thy soul were soaring
To heaven, and heaven's God adoring.
And who can tell what visions high
May bless an infant's sleeping eye?
What brighter throne can brightness find
To reign on than an infant's mind,
Ere sin destroy or error dim.
The glory of the seraphim?

O vision fair, that I could be
Again as young, as pure, as thee!

Vain wish the rainbow's radiant form
May view, but cannot brave, the storm;
Years can bedim the gorgeous dyes
That paint the bird of Paradise,

And
years-so Fate hath ordered-roll
Clouds o'er the summer of the soul.
Fair was that face as break of dawn
When o'er its beauty sleep was drawn
Like a thin veil that half concealed
The light of soul, and half revealed.
While thy hushed heart with visions wrought,
Each trembling eyelash moved with thought,
And things we dream, but ne'er can speak,
Like clouds came floating o'er thy cheek—
Such summer-clouds as travel light
When the soul's heaven lies calm and bright-
Till thou awok'st; then to thine eye
Thy whole heart leapt in ecstacy.
And lovely is that heart of thine,
Or sure these eyes could never shine
With such a wild yet bashful glee,
Gay, half-o'ercome timidity.

JOHN WILSON (Christopher North).

THE MANIAC BOY.

DOWN

yon lets few

The village wonder and the widow's joy— Dwells the poor mindless, pale-faced maniac boy.

He lives and breathes, and rolls his vacant eye

To greet the glowing fancies of the sky,
But on his cheek unmeaning shades of

woe

Reveal the withered thoughts that sleep below.

A soulless thing, a spirit of the woods, He loves to commune with the fields and floods;

Sometimes along the woodland's winding glade

He starts and smiles upon his pallid shade, Or scolds with idiot threat the roaming wind

But rebel music to the ruined mind—
Or on the shell-strewn beach delighted
strays,

Playing his fingers in the noontide rays;
And when the sea-waves swell their hollow

roar,

He counts the billows plunging to the shore;

And oft beneath the glimmer of the moon He chants some wild and melancholy tune, Till o'er his softening features seems to play

A shadowy gleam of mind's reluctant sway. Thus, like a living dream, apart from men, From morn to eve he haunts the wood and glen;

But round him, near him, wheresoe'er he

rove,

A guardian angel tracks him from above; romantic dale, where ham- Nor harm from flood or fen shall e'er destroy The mazy wanderings of the maniac boy.

Arrest the summer pilgrim's pensive view—

ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

[ocr errors]

But sooner or later the reckoning arrives,

THE UPAS IN MARYBONE LANE.

ATREE grew in Java whose pestilent And ninety-nine perish for one who survives.

rind

[blocks in formation]

They quickly steal in, and they slowly reel Resistless words were on his tongue :

out.

Surcharged with the venom, some walk forth

erect,

Apparently baffling its deadly effect;

Then eloquence first flashed below; Full-armed to life the portent sprung,

Minerva from the Thunderer's brow, And his the sole, the sacred hand That shook her ægis o'er the land.

« ForrigeFortsæt »