also wrote two tragedies, The Vespers of Palermo, and The Siege of Valencia, the former of which was produced on the stage, but with very moderate success. The greater part of the poems of Mrs. Hemans consists of short pieces which may be styled Lyrics. Four years before her death she took up her residence in Ireland, where her brother was living. Her constitution began to give way, and some time before her death she almost entirely lost the use of her limbs. Her last poem, a sonnet entitled "Sunday in England," was dictated to her brother three weeks before her death.

CHRIST WALKING ON THE WATERS.

A mighty minster, dim, and proud, and vast!
Silence was round the sleepers whom its floor
Shut in the grave; a shadow of the past:

A memory of the sainted steps that wore
Erewhile its gorgeous pavement seemed to brood
Like mist upon the stately solitude;

A halo of sad fame to mantle o'er

Its white sepulchral forms of mail-clad men :

And all was hushed as night in some deep Alpine glen.

More hushed, far more! for there the wind sweeps by, Or the woods tremble to the stream's loud play ; Here a strange echo made my very sigh

Seem for the place too much a sound of day! Too much my footsteps broke the moonlight, fading, Yet arch through arch in one soft flow pervading, And I stood still. Prayer, chant, had died away Yet past me floated a funeral breath

Of incense. I stood still-as before God and Death.

For thick ye girt me round, ye long departed!

Dust-imaged forms-with cross and shield and crest;

It seemed as if your ashes would have started

Had a wild voice burst forth above your rest!

Yet ne'er, perchance, did worshipper of yore
Bear to your thrilling presence what I bore

Of wrath, doubt, anguish, battling in the breast!
I could have poured out words on that pale air,
To make your proud tombs ring-no, no, I could not
there.

Not 'midst those aisles, through which a thousand years
Mutely as clouds, and reverently had swept;
Not by those shrines, which yet the trace of tears
And kneeling votaries on their marble kept!
Ye two were mighty in your pomp of gloom
And trophied age, O temple, altar, tomb!

And you, ye dead-for in that faith ye slept,
Whose weight had grown a mountain on my heart,
Which could not there be loosed. I turned me to depart.

I turned what glimmered faintly on my sight-
Faintly, yet brightening, as a wreath of snow

Seen through dissolving haze? The moon, the night,
Had waned, and dawn poured in-gray, shadowy,

slow,

Yet dayspring still! A solemn hue it caught,
Piercing the storied windows, darkly fraught

With stoles and draperies of imperial glow;
And soft and sad that colored gleam was thrown
Where pale, a picture from above the altar shone.

Thy form, thou Son of God!-a wrathful deep,
With foam, and cloud, and tempest round Thee spread
And such a weight of night!—a night when sleep
From the fierce rushing of the billows fled.

A bark showed dim beyond Thee, its mast
Bowed, and its rent sail shivering to the blast;
But like a spirit in Thy gliding tread,

Thou, as o'er glass didst walk that stormy sea,
Through rushing winds which left a silent path for
Thee.

So still Thy white robes fell !-no breath of air
Within their long and slumbrous folds had sway.

So still the waves of parted, shadowy hair

From the dear brow flowed droopingly away!