And ere I answered, passing out of sight, On his celestial embassy he sped. 'T was at thy door, O friend ! and not at mine, The angel with the amaranthine wreath, Pausing, descended, and with voice divine, Whispered a word that had a sound like Death. But at length the feverish day Then the moon, in all her pride, And the Poet's song again Then fell upon the house a sudden All its grace and mystery. gloom, A shadow on those features fair and thin; And softly, from that hushed and | THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT darkened room, Two angels issued, where but one went in. All is of God! If he but wave his hand, The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud, Till, with a smile of light on sea and land, NEWPORT. How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! Lo! he looks back from the de- The trees are white with dust, that parting cloud. o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long, mysterious Exodus of And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, That pave with level flags their burial-place, Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down And broken by Moses at the mountain's base. The very names recorded here are strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes ; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God for he created | Anathema maranatha was the cry Death!" The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that never more shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Deca logue That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where'er they went ; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. In the grand dialect the Prophets For in the background figures vague and vast Drove o'er the sea-that desert des- But ah ! what once has been shall be olate These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire ; Taught in the school of patience to endure The life of anguish and the death of fire. All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, no more! The groaning earth in travail and in pain Brings forth its races, but does not restore, And the dead nations never rise again. OLIVER BASSELIN.1 IN the Valley of the Vire Still is seem an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, Oliver Basselin, the " Père joyeux du Vaudeville," flourished in the fifteenth The wasting famine of the heart century, and gave to his convivial songs they fed, And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vaux-de-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville. "Come forth to thy death, Victor Galbraith !" Forth he came, with a martial tread; Firm was his step, erect his head; Victor Galbraith, He who so well the bugle played, Could not mistake the words it said; "Come forth to thy death, Victor Galbraith !" He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky, He looked at the files of musketry, Victor Galbraith! And he said, with a steady voice and eye, "Take good aim; I am ready to die !" Thus challenges death Under the walls of Monterey The sentinels hear the sound, and say, "That is the wraith MY LOST YOUTH. I remember the bulwarks by the shore, And the fort upon the hill; The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar, The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er, And the bugle wild and shrill. And the music of that old song Throbs in my memory still "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. I remember the sea-fight far away,1 How it thundered o'er the tide ! And the dead captains, as they lay In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay, Where they in battle died. And the sound of that mournful song Goes through me with a thrill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' And the voice of that fitful song Sings on, and is never still: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." There are things of which I may not speak; There are dreams that cannot die ; There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak, And bring a pallor into the cheek, And a mist before the eye. And the words of that fatal song Come over me like a chill: "A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." |
