Ere down yon blue Carpathian hills

The sun shall sink again ! Farewell to life and all its ills,

Farewell to cell and chain.

These prison shades are dark and cold,

But, darker far than they, The shadow of a sorrow old

Is on my heart alway.

For since the day when Warkworth wood

Closed o'er my steed and I,
An alien from my name and blood,

A weed cast out to die,

When, looking back in sunset light,

I saw her turret gleam,
And from its casement, far and white,

Her sign of farewell stream,
Like one who from some desert shore

Doth home's green isles descry,
And, vainly longing, gazes

o'er The waste of wave and sky;

VOL. I.

15

So from the desert of my fate

I gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate

The shade is backward cast !

I've wandered wide from shore to shore,

I've knelt at many a shrine ; And bowed me to the rocky floor

Where Bethlehem's tapers shine ; And by the Holy Sepulchre

I've pledged my knightly sword To Christ, his blessed Church, and her,

The Mother of our Lord.

Oh, vain the vow, and vain the strife!

How vain do all things seem! My soul is in the past, and life

To-day is but a dream!

In vain the penance strange and long,

And hard for flesh to bear; The prayer, the fasting, and the thong,

And sackcloth shirt of hair.

The eyes of memory will not sleep,

Its ears are open still ;
And vigils with the past they keep

Against my feeble will.

And still the loves and joys of old

Do evermore uprise ;
I see the flow of locks of gold,

The shine of loving eyes !
Ah me! upon another's breast

· Those golden locks recline ; I see upon another rest

The glance that once Evas mine

"O faithless Priest !-0 perjured knight!”

I hear the Master cry;
“ Shut out the vision from thy sight,

Let Earth and Nature die

“ The Church of God is now thy spouse,

And thou the bridegroom art;
Then let the burden of thy vows

Crush down thy human heart !”
In vain! This heart its grief must know,

Till life itself hath ceased,
And falls beneath the self-same blow,

The lover and the priest !
O pitying Mother! souls of light,

And saints, and martyrs old !
Pray for a weak and sinful knight,

A suffering man uphold.
Then let the Paynim work his will,

And death unbind my chain,
Ere down yon blue Carpathian hill

The sun shall fall again.

THE HOLY LAND.

FROM LAMARTINE.

I HAVE not felt o’er seas of sand,

The rocking of the desert bark;
Nor laved at Hebron's fount my hand,

By Hebron's palm-trees cool and dark;
Nor pitched my tent at even-fall,

On dust vhere Job of old has lain,
Nor dreamed beneath its canvas wall,
The drean m of Jacob o'er again.

One vast world-page remains unread;

How shine the stars in Chaldea's sky, How sounds the reverent pilgrim's tread,

How beats the heart with God so nigh!How round gray arch and column lone The spirit

of the old time broods, And sighs in all the winds that mean

Along the sandy solitudes ! In thy tall cedars, Lebanon,

I have not heard the nations' cries,
Nor seen thy eagles stooping down

Where buried Tyre in ruin lies.
The Christian's prayer I have not said,

In Tadmor's temples of decay,
Nor startled with my dreary tread,

The waste where Memnon's empire lay.

Nor have I, from thy hallowed tide,

O, Jordan ! heard the low lament, Like that sad wail along thy side,

Which Israel's mournful prophet sent ! Nor thrilled within that grotto lone,

Where deep in night; the Bard of Kings Felt hands of fire direct his own, And

sweep for God the conscious strings.

I have not climbed to Olivet,

Nor laid me where my Saviour lay,
And left his trace of tears as yet

By angel eyes unwept away ;
Nor watched at midnight's solemn time,
The garden where his

prayer

and

groan, Wrung by his sorrow and our crime,

Rose to One listening ear alone.

I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot,

Where in his Mother's arms he lay, Nor knelt

the sacred spot Where last his footsteps pressed the clay;

Nor looked on that sad mountain head,

Nor smote my sinful breast, where wide
His arms to fold the world he spread,

And bowed his head to bless—and died !

PALESTINE. Blest iand of Judea! thrice hallowed of song, Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng; In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy

sea, On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee. With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore, Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before; With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod Made bright by the steps of the angels of God. Blue sea of the hills !—in my spirit I hear Thy waters, Genesaret, chime on my ear; Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat

down, And thy spray on the dust of his sandals was

thrown.

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of

green, And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene ; And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee ! Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and

strong, Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along; Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain, And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the

slain.