Felicia Hemans

“ Around the setting sun,
Answer! have ye a home for those
Whose earthly race has run?
—The bright Clouds answer'd—"We depart,
We vanish from the sky;
Ask what is deathless in thy heart,
For that which cannot die!" ”

“ The Switzer's Wife.* [1]
Nor look nor tone revealeth aught
Save woman's quietness of thought;
And yet around her is a light
Of inward majesty and might.Arria, by M. J. J.
It was the time when children bound to meet
Their father’s homeward step from field or hill,
And when the herd's returning bells are sweet
In the Swiss valleys, and the Lakes grow still,
And the last note of that wild horn swells by,
Which haunts the Exile's heart with melody. ”

“ Thou sleepest in love on its grassy breast.
Sunbeam of summer! oh! what is like thee?
Hope of the wilderness, joy of the sea!
—One thing is like thee, to mortals given,
The Faith, touching all things with hues of Heaven. ”

“ He stood beside his death-pyre, and the brand
Flamed up to light it, in the chieftain's hand!
—He thought upon his God. Hush! hark!—a cry
Breaks on the stern and dread solemnity!
A step hath pierced the ring! Who dares intrude
On the dark Hunters in their vengeful mood?
A Girl—a young slight Girl!—a fawn-like child
Of green savannas and the leafy wild,
Springing unmark'd till then, as some lone flower,
Happy because the sunshine is its dower ”

“ Since last ye parted from that sweet spot?
"A change we have found there, and many a change!
Faces and footsteps and all things strange!
Gone are the heads of the silvery hair,
And the young that were, have a brow of care,
And the place is hush'd where the children play'd—
—Nought looks the same, save the nest we made!"
Sad is your tale of the beautiful earth,
Birds that o'ersweep it in power and mirth! ”

“ The Baron Von der Wart, accused, though it is believed unjustly, as an accomplice in the assassination of the Emperor Albert, was bound alive on the wheel, and attended by his wife Gertrude, throughout his last agonizing moments, with the most heroic fidelity. Her own sufferings, and those of her unfortunate husband, are most affectingly described in a letter which she afterwards addressed to a female friend, and which was published some years ago at Haarlem, in a book entitled "Gertrude Von der Wart, or Fidelity unto death." ”

“ And the floor gave back a muffled tone
From the couches of the Dead:
The silent many that round him lay,
The crown’d and helm'd that were,
The haughty chiefs of the war-array—
—Each in his sepulchre! ”

“ With tall plumes crested and wild hues o'erspread,
Girt him like feverish phantoms; and pale stars
Look'd through the branches as through dungeon-bars,
Shedding no hope!—He knew, he felt his doom.—
Oh! what a tale to shadow with its gloom
That happy hall in England!—Idle fear! ”

“ Her hand on his, and with a pleading look
Through tears half quivering,—o'er him bent, and said,
"What grief, dear friend, hath made thy heart its prey † [2]
That thou shouldst turn thee from our love away? ”

“ The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 16, Pages 192-193
THE EFFIGIES.
————"Women act their parts
When they do make their ordered houses know them.
Men must be busy out of doors, must stir
The city;—yea, make the great world aware
That they are in it ”

“ This was called the Vigil of Arms. ↑ * "The Knight swore by his sword, for its cross-hilt was emblematical of his Saviour's cross. The sword was his only crucifix when mass was said in the pause between the forming of the military array and the laying of lances in their rests. ”