EARTH.

A MIDNIGHT black with clouds is in the sky;
I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight
Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain
Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star
Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze,
From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass.
No sound of life is heard, no village hum,
Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path,
Nor rush of wind, while, on the breast of Earth,

I lie and listen to her mighty voice:

A voice of many tones-sent up from streams

That wander through the gloom, from woods unseen
Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air,

From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the great invisible hills,
And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far
Into the night-a melancholy sound!

O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past
Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
And thy majestic groves of olden time,
Perished with all their dwellers?

Dost thou wail

For that fair age of which the poets tell,
Ere yet the winds grew keen with frost, or fire
Fell with the rains or spouted from the hills,
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night

Was guiltless and salubrious as the day?
Or haply dost thou grieve for those that die-
For living things that trod thy paths awhile,
The love of thee and heaven-and now they sleep
Mixed with the shapeless dust on which thy herds
Trample and graze? I too must grieve with thee,
O'er loved ones lost. Their graves are far away
Upon thy mountains; yet, while I recline
Alone, in darkness, on thy naked soil,
The mighty nourisher and burial-place
Of man, I feel that I embrace their dust.

Ha! how the murmur deepens! I perceive And tremble at its dreadful import. Earth Uplifts a general cry for guilt and wrong, And heaven is listening. The forgotten graves Of the heart-broken utter forth their plaint. The dust of her who loved and was betrayed, And him who died neglected in his age; The sepulchres of those who for mankind Labored, and earned the recompense of scorn; Ashes of martyrs for the truth, and bones Of those who, in the strife for liberty, Were beaten down, their corses given to dogs, Their names to infamy, all find a voice. The nook in which the captive, overtoiled, Lay down to rest at last, and that which holds Childhood's sweet blossoms, crushed by cruel hands, Send up a plaintive sound. From battle-fields, Where heroes madly drave and dashed their hosts Against each other, rises up a noise,

As if the armèd multitudes of dead

Stirred in their heavy slumber. Mournful tones
Come from the green abysses of the sea-

A story of the crimes the guilty sought

To hide beneath its waves. The glens, the groves, Paths in the thicket, pools of running brook,

And banks and depths of lake, and streets and lanes Of cities, now that living sounds are hushed, Murmur of guilty force and treachery.

Here, where I rest, the vales of Italy
Are round me, populous from early time,
And field of the tremendous warfare waged
'Twixt good and evil. Who, alas! shall dare
Interpret to man's ear the mingled voice
That comes from her old dungeons yawning now
To the black air, her amphitheatres,
Where the dew gathers on the mouldering stones,
And fanes of banished gods, and open tombs,
And roofless palaces, and streets and hearths
Of cities dug from their volcanic graves?
I hear a sound of many languages,
The utterance of nations now no more,

Driven out by mightier, as the days of heaven
Chase one another from the sky. The blood
Of freemen shed by freemen, till strange lords
Came in their hour of weakness, and made fast
The yoke that yet is worn, cries out to heaven.

What then shall cleanse thy bosom, gentle Earth, From all its painful memories of guilt? The whelming flood, or the renewing fire, Or the slow change of time?—that so, at last, The horrid tale of perjury and strife, Murder and spoil, which men call history, May seem a fable, like the inventions told By poets of the gods of Greece. O thou,

Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep,
Among the sources of thy glorious streams,
My native Land of Groves! a newer page
In the great record of the world is thine;
Shall it be fairer? Fear, and friendly Hope,
And Envy, watch the issue, while the lines,
By which thou shalt be judged, are written down.

THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH.

THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear

To shiver in the deep and voluble tones

Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.

The image of an armed knight is graven

Upon it, clad in perfect panoply

Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.

Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim

By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,

And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.

Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form

Of this inscription, eloquently show

His history. Let me clothe in fitting words

The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph:

"He whose forgotten dust for centuries Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom Adventure, and endurance, and emprise,

Exalted the mind's faculties and strung

The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,

And quick to draw the sword in private feud,

He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed
The saints as fervently on bended knees

As ever shaven cenobite.

As fiercely as he fought.

He loved

He would have borne

The maid that pleased him from her bower by night To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears

His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks

On his pursuers. He aspired to see
His native Pisa queen and arbitress
Of cities earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death
In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.
He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke,
But would have joined the exiles that withdrew
Forever, when the Florentine broke in
The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts
For trophies-but he died before that day.

"He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life."