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And the rich blood that is in thee, swells in thy indignant

pain;

Till careless eyes, which rest on thee, may count each started vein.

Will they ill-use thee? If I thought—but no, it cannot

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Thou art so swift, yet easy curbed, so gentle, yet so free. And yet, if haply when thou'rt gone, my lonely heart should yearn,

Can the hand which cast thee from it, now command thee to return.

Return, alas! my Arab steed, what shall thy master do, When thou, who wert his all of joy, hast vanished from his view;

When the dim distance cheats mine eye, and through the gathering tears,

Thy bright form for a moment like the false mirage ap

pears;

Slow and unmounted will I roam, with weary foot alone, Where with fleet step and joyous bound, thou oft hast borne me on,

And sitting down by that green well, I'll pause, and sadly

think,

It was here he bowed his glossy neck when last I saw him

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When last I saw thee drink? . . . . Away! the fevered dream is o'er,

I could not live a day, and know that we should meet no

more.

They tempted me, my beautiful! for hunger's power is

strong,―

They tempted me, my beautiful! but I have loved too

long.

Who said that I had given thee up?-who said that thou wert sold?

"Tis false! 'tis false! my Arab steed,-I fling them back their gold:

Thus, thus, I leap upon thy back, and scour the distant plains,

Away, who overtakes us now shall claim thee for his pains!

PARRHASIUS.*

BY WILLIS.

THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A grey-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,

And touched his unhealed wounds, and with a sneer
Passed on; and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bowed his head in a forgetful sleep,

The inhuman soldier smote him, and with threats
Of torture to his children, summoned back

The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

* "Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, among those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and when he had him at his house, put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pains and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was then about to paint."-Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun Tipped with a golden fire the many domes Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere

Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs,

But now he was alone, and from his nerves
The needless strength departed, and he leaned
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would. Unmarked of him,
Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,

Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek
Flushed as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandoned limbs,
Stained with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fulness: the grey hair,
Thin and disordered, hung about his eyes;
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

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The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colours stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armour, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away

Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a veil of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.
Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,

L

Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus-
The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And colour clad them, his fine, earnest eye
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,

Were like the winged god's, breathing from his flight.

"Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens around me play
Colours of such divinity to-day.

"Ha! bind him on his back!

Look! -as Prometheus in my picture here!

Quick or he faints!

stand with the cordial near !

Now-bend him to the rack!

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh !

"So-let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! grey-haired, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"Pity' thee! So I do!

pity the dumb victim at the altar—
But does the robed priest for his pity falter ?
I'd rack thee though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine-
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Hereafter!' Ay— hereafter !

A whip to keep a coward to his track!

What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the sceptic's laughter ?

Come from the grave to-morrow with that story-
And I'may take some softer path to glory.

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"No, no, old man! we die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye—

For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.
"Yet there's a deathless name!

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn
And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars! I'd bind it on!

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"Ay- though it bid me rifle

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst-
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first-
Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild-

"All I would do it all—

Sooner than die, like a dull worm to rot

Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!

Oh, heavens!--but I appal

Your heart, old man! forgive

Ha! on your lives!

Let him not faint! - rack him till he revives!

"Vain-vain-give o'er. His eye

Glazes apace. He does not feel you now-
Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow!
Gods! if he do not die

But for one moment-one - till I eclipse

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Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

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