A plume waved o'er the noble brow,

fixed and white;

the brow was

He met at last his father's eyes, but in them was no

sight!

Up from the ground he sprang, and gazed; but who could paint that gaze?

They hush'd their very hearts that saw its horror and

amaze.

They might have chain'd him as before that stony form he stood,

For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood.

"Father!" at length he murmur'd low, and wept like childhood then:

Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men!

He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown,

He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down.

Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow,

No more, there is no more,' ," he said, "to lift the

sword for now.

My King is false, my hope betray'd, my father-O! the worth,

The glory, and the loveliness are pass'd away from earth.

"I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee yet;

would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met;

Thou wouldst have known my spirit then for thee my fields were won,

And thou hast perish'd in thy chains, as though thou hadst no son !"

Then starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein,

Amidst the pale and wilder'd looks of all the courtiertrain;

And with a fierce, o'er-mastering grasp the rearing war-horse led,

And sternly set them face to face,

the dead.

the King before

“Came I not forth upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss?

Be still, and gaze thou on, false King! and tell me, what is this?

The voice, the glance, the heart I sought, —give answer, where are they?

If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay.

"Into these glassy eyes put light, — be still! keep down thine ire !

Bid these white lips a blessing speak this earth is not my sire.

Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed:

Thou canst not?

-

and a king! — his dust be mountains on thy head!"

He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell; upon the

silent face

He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turn'd

from that sad place.

His hope was crush'd, his after-fate untold in martial

strain,

His banner led the spears no more amidst the hills of Spain.

FELICIA HEMANS.

TO THE POETS.

BARDS of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Doubled-lived in regions new?
Yes, and those of heaven commune
With the spheres of sun and moon;
With the noise of fountains wondrous,
And the parle of voices thund'rous;
With the whisper of heaven's trees
And one another, in soft ease
Seated on Elysian lawns,
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns;
Underneath large blue-bells tented,
Where the daisies are rose-scented,
And the rose herself has got
Perfume which on earth is not;
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,

1 FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, born in Liverpool in 1794, was the daughter of a merchant, and was married in 1812 to Captain Hemans of the Fourth Regiment, who not long after deserted her and their children. Mrs. Hemans then returned to her family, and devoted herself to the education of her sons She died in 1835. Such time as she could spare from household cares was devoted to literature, and she published a num ber of works both in verse and in prose.

But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.

Thus ye live on high, and then
On the earth ye live again;
And the souls ye left behind you
Teach us here the way to find you,
Where your other souls are joying,
Never slumber'd, never cloying.
Here, your earth-born souls still speak
To mortals, of their little week;
Of their sorrows and delights;
Of their passions and their spites;
Of their glory and their shame;
What doth strengthen and what maim.
Thus ye teach us, every day,
Wisdom, though fled far away.

Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Ye have souls in heaven too,
Double-lived in regions new!

JOHN KEATS.1

1 JOHN KEATS, the son of a stable-keeper, born in London .n 1796, was educated at a classical school in Enfield, and in his fifteenth year apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton. He soon, however, abandoned medicine for literature. His first volume was treated by the critics with crushing severity, which preyed pon his mind and injured his health. After the publication of second volume of poems, which fully redeemed the promise of the first, he went abroad for his health, and died at Rome in 1821. Much of the little poetry he left is of most exquisite Deauty, and entitles him to a high place among the group of

THE CLOUD

I.

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shades for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

II.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 't is my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

writers who made the beginning of the nineteenth century the most brilliant period of English literature, with the exception o that of Elizabeth.