The Slaver led her from the door,

He led her by the hand,

To be his slave and

paramour

In a strange and distant land!

THE WARNING.

BEWARE! The Israelite of old, who tore
The lion in his path,—when, poor and blind,
He saw the blessed light of heaven no more,
Shorn of his noble strength and forced to grind
In prison, and at last led forth to be
A pander to Philistine revelry,-

Upon the pillars of the temple laid

His desperate hands, and in its overthrow
Destroyed himself, and with him those who made
A cruel mockery of his sightless woe;

The poor, blind Slave, the scoff and jest of all,
Expired, and thousands perished in the fall!

There is a poor, blind Samson in this land,

Shorn of his strength, and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may, in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this Commonweal,

Till the vast temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

BALLADS, SONGS,

AND

SONNETS.

Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;

From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries

The Orkneyan skerries,

Answering the hoarse Hebrides;

And from wrecks of ships, and drifting

Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas ;

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting

On the shifting

Currents of the restless main ;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long

From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song :

From the far-off isles enchanted,

Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;

From the flashing surf, whose vision

Gleams elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavour

That forever

Wrestles with the tides of Fate;

From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,

Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;—