MISCELLANEOUS THE KNIGHT OF ST. JOHN. ERE down yon blue Carpathian hills These prison shades are dark and cold,— For since the day when Warkworth wood When, looking back in sunset light, And from its casement, far and white, Like one who from some desert shore So from the desert of I my fate gaze across the past; Forever on life's dial-plate The shade is backward cast! I've wandered wide from shore to shore, 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! In vain the penance strange and long, The prayer, the fasting, and the thong, And sackcloth shirt of hair. The eyes of memory will not sleep,- And vigils with the past they keep And still the loves and joys of old Ah me! upon another's breast I see upon another rest The glance that once was mine 66 O faithless Priest !-O 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, In vain! This heart its grief must know, And falls beneath the self-same blow, O pitying Mother! souls of light, Then let the Paynim work his will, THE HOLY LAND. FROM LAMARTINE. I HAVE not felt o'er seas of sand, On dust where Job of old has lain, One vast world-page remains unread; 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, Which Israel's mournful prophet sent! 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; and groan, Nor watched at midnight's solemn time, I have not kissed the rock-hewn grot, Nor knelt upon the sacred spot Nor looked on that sad mountain head, PALESTINE. BLEST land 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, Blue sea of the hills!—in my spirit I hear And thy spray on the dust of his sandals was thrown. Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green, 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. |