That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled,
Sir Leoline!

And wouldst thou wrong thy only child,
Her child and thine?

Within the Baron's heart and brain

If thoughts, like these, had any share,
They only swelled his rage and pain,
And did but work confusion there.
His heart was cleft with pain and rage,
His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild,
Dishonored thus in his old age;
Dishonored by his only child,
And all his hospitality

To th' insulted daughter of his friend,
By more than woman's jealousy,
Brought thus to a disgraceful end-
He rolled his eye with stern regard
Upon the gentle minstrel bard,
And said in tones abrupt, austere
Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here?
I bade thee hence! The bard obeyed;
And turning from his own sweet maid,
The aged knight, Sir Leoline,

Led forth the lady Geraldine!

THE CONCLUSION TO PART THE SECOND.

A little child, a limber elf,

Singing, dancing to itself,

A fairy thing with red round cheeks
That always finds and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 't is tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.

And what if in a world of sin

(0 sorrow and shame should this be true!)
Such giddiness of heart and brain.
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do.

YOUTH AND AGE.

VERSE, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying,
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee-
Both were mine! Life went a-Maying
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
When I was young!

When I was young ?

Ah, woful when!

Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then! This breathing house not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands,

How lightly then it flashed along:Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On winding lakes and rivers wide, That ask no aid of sail or oar,

That fear no spite of wind or tide!

Naught cared this body for wind or weather
When Youth and I lived in 't together.

Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like,
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
O the joys that came down shower-like,
Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty!
Ere I was old!

Ere I was old? Ah, woful Ere,
Which tells me Youth 's no longer here!
O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
"T is known that thou and I were one;
I'll think it but a fond conceit

It cannot be that thou art gone!
Thy vesper bell hath not yet tolled:
And thou wert aye a masker bold!
What strange disguise hast now put on
To make believe that thou art gone?
I see these locks in silvery slips,

This drooping gait, this alter'd size:
But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,

And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!

Life is but thought: so think I will
That Youth and I are housemates still.

KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree:
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated mid-way on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer

VOL. VI.

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.

-9

Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

THE GREAT GOOD MAN.

"How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits
Honor or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits,
If any man obtain that which he merits,

Or any merit that which he obtains."

For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain :
What wouldst thou have a good great man obtain ?
Place - titles

salary a gilded chain

Or throne of crosses which his sword hath slain? -
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends !
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man?—Three treasures, Love and Light,
And calm Thoughts regular as infant's breath; -
And three firm friends more sure than day and night-
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.