Your tears for my absence soon ceasing to flow,
Some other will court you, and you will bestow
On a wealthier suitor your hand!"
"Oh! hush these suspicions," Fair Imogene said,
"Offensive to love and to me;
For, if you be living, or if you be dead,
I swear by the Virgin that none in your stead
Shall husband of Imogene be.
"If e'er, by caprice or by wealth led aside,
I forget my Alonzo the Brave,
God grant that, to punish my falsehood and pride,
Your ghost at the marriage may sit by my side-
May tax me with perjury, claim me as bride,
And bear me away to the grave !"
To Palestine hastened the hero so bold,
His love she lamented him sore;
But scarce had a twelvemonth elapsed, when, behold!
A baron, all covered with jewels and gold,
Arrived at Fair Imogene's door.
His treasures, his presents, his spacious domain,
Soon made her untrue to her vows;
He dazzled her eyes, he bewildered her brain;
He caught her affections, so light and so vain,
And carried her home as his spouse.
And now had the marriage been blest by the priest ;
The revelry now was begun;
The tables they groaned with the weight of the feast,
Nor yet had the laughter and merriment ceased,
When the bell at the castle tolled-one.
Then first with amazement Fair Imogene found
A stranger was placed by her side:
His air was terrific; he uttered no sound
He spake not, he moved not, he looked not around-
But earnestly gazed on the bride.
His vizor was closed, and gigantic his height,
His armour was sable to view;
All pleasure and laughter were hushed at his sight;
The dogs, as they eyed him, drew back in affright;
The lights in the chamber burned blue !
His presence all bosoms appeared to dismay;
The guests sat in silence and fear;
At length spake the bride-while she trembled-" I pray,
ALONZO THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR IMOGENE
Sir knight, that your helmet aside you would lay,
And deign to partake of our cheer."
The lady is silent-the stranger complies-
His vizor he slowly unclosed;
Oh, God! what a sight met Fair Imogene's eyes!
What words can express her dismay and surprise,
When a skeleton's head was exposed!
All present then uttered a terrified shout,
All turned with disgust from the scene;
The worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out,
And sported his eyes and his temples about,
While the spectre addressed Imogene :—
“Behold me, thou false one, behold me !" he cried,
"Remember Alonzo the Brave!
God grants that, to punish thy falsehood and pride,
My ghost at thy marriage should sit by thy side-
Should tax thee with perjury, claim thee as bride,
And bear thee away to the grave!"
Thus saying, his arms round the lady he wound,
While loudly she shrieked in dismay;
Then sunk with his prey through the wide-yawning ground,
Nor ever again was fair Imogene found,
Or the spectre that bore her away.
Not long lived the baron; and none, since that time,
To inhabit the castle presume;
For chronicles tell that, by order sublime,
There Imogene suffers the pain of her crime,
And mourns her deplorable doom.
At midnight, four times in each year, does her sprite,
When mortals in slumber are bound,
Arrayed in her bridal apparel of white,
Appear in the hall with the skeleton knight,
And shriek as he whirls her around!
While they drink out of skulls newly torn from the grave,
Dancing round them the spectres are seen;
Their liquor is blood, and this horrible stave
They howl:-"To the health of Alonzo the Brave,
And his consort, the Fair Imogene !"
TO T. L. H., SIX YEARS OLD, DURING A SICKNESS.
EXTRACT FROM THE HELLENICS. XV.
We are what suns, and winds, and waters make us ; The mountains are our sponsors, and the rills Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles. But where the land is dim from tyranny, Their tiny pleasures occupy the place
Of glories and of duties; as the feet
Of fabled faeries, when the sun goes down,
Trip o'er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.
Then Justice, call'd the Eternal One above,
Is more inconstant than the buoyant form,
That burst into existence from the froth
Of ever-varying ocean: What is best
Then becomes worst; what loveliest most deformed.
The heart is hardest in the softest climes,
The passions flourish, the affections die.
O! thou vast tablet of these awful truths,
That fillest all the space between the seas,
Spreading from Venice's deserted courts
To the Tarentine and Hydruntine mole;
What lifts thee up? What shakes thee? "Tis the breath
Of God. Awake, ye nations! spring to life!
Let the last work of His right hand appear
Fresh with his image, Man. Thou recreant slave
That sittest afar off and helpest not;
O! thou degenerate Albion! with what shame
Do I survey thee, pushing forth the spunge
At thy spear's length, in mockery at the thirst
Of holy Freedom in his agony,
And prompt and keen to pierce the wounded side!
Must Italy then wholly rot away
Amid her slime, before she germinate
Into fresh vigour, into form again?
What thunder burst upon mine ear! some isle
Hath surely risen from the gulphs profound,
Eager to suck the sunshine from the breast
Of beauteous Nature, and to catch the gale
From golden Hermus and Melena's brow.
A greater thing than isle, than continent,
Than earth itself, than ocean-circling earth,
Hath risen there; regenerate Man hath risen.
Generous old bard of Chios! not that Jove
Deprived thee, in thy latter days, of sight,
Would I complain, but that no higher theme
Than a disdainful youth, a lawless king,
A pestilence, a pyre, awoke thy song,
When, on the Chian coast, one javelin's throw
From where thy tombstone, where thy cradle stood, Twice twenty self-devoted Greeks assail'd
The naval host of Asia,-at one blow,
Scattered it into air. . . and Greece was free...
And, ere these glories beam'd, thy day had closed.
Let all that Elis ever saw give way,
All that Olympian Jove e'er smiled upon :
The Marathonian columns never told
A tale more glorious, never Salamis
Nor faithful in the centre of the false
Platea, nor Anthela, from whose mount,
Benignant Ceres wards the blessed laws,
And sees the Amphictyon dip his weary foot
In the warm streamlet of the strait below.
Goddess! altho' thy brow was never rear'd
Among the powers that guarded or assail'd
Perfidious Illion, parricidal Thebes,
Or other walls whose war belt e'er inclosed
Man's congregated crimes and vengeful pain,
Yet hast thou toucht the extreme of grief and joy;
Grief upon Enna's mead and hell's ascent,
A solitary mother; joy beyond—
Far beyond that thy woe, in this thy fane:
The tears were human, but the bliss divine.
I, in the land of strangers, and deprest
With sad and certain presage for my own,
Exult at Hope's fresh day-spring, though afar,
There where my youth was not unexercised
By chiefs in willing war and faithful song:
Shades as they were, they were not empty shades,
Whose bodies haunt our world and blear our sun;
Obstruction worse than swamp and shapeless sands.
Peace, praise, eternal gladness to the souls
That, rising from the seas into the heavens,
Have ransom'd first their country with their blood!
O! thou immortal Spartan! at whose name
The marble table sounds beneath my palms.
Leonidas! even thou wilt not disdain
To mingle names, august as these, with thine;
Nor thou, twin star of glory, thou whose rays
Streamed over Corinth on the double sea,
Achaian and Saronic; whom the sons
Of Syracuse, when Death removed thy light,
Wept more than slavery ever made them weep,
But shed (if gratitude is sweet) sweet tears..
The hand that then pour'd ashes o'er their heads
Was loosen'd from its desperate chain by thee.
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