But soon a funeral hymn was heard Where the soft breath of evening stirred The tall, gray forest; and a band

Of stern in heart, and strong in hand,
Came winding down beside the wave,
To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers He stood, in the last moon of flowers, And thirty snows had not yet shed Their glory on the warrior's head; But, as the summer fruit decays, So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Covered the warrior, and within Its heavy folds the weapons, made For the hard toils of war, were laid: The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, And the broad belt of shells and beads.

O

BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

67

Stripped of his proud and martial dress
Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,
With darting eye, and nostril spread.
And heavy and impatient tread,

He came; and oft that eye so proud
Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle steed; And swift an arrow cleaved its way

To his stern heart! One piercing neigh Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, The rider grasps his steed again.

6

།།།།།།།!Rett!!

TRANSLATIONS.

O

Don Jorge Manrique, the author of the following poem. flourished in the last half of the fifteenth century. He followed the profession of arms, and died on the field of battle. Mariana, in his History of Spain, makes honorable mention of him, as being present at the siege of Uclés; and speaks of him as "a youth of estimable qualities, who in this war gave brilliant proofs of his valor. He died young; and was thus cut off from long exercising his great virtues, and exhibiting to the world the light of his genius, which was already known to fame." He was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Cañavete, in the year 1479.

The name of Rodrigo Manrique, the father of the poet, Conde de Paredes and Maestre de Santiago, is well known in Spanish history and song. He died in 1476; according to Mariana, in the town of Uclés; but, according to the poem of his son, in Ocaña. It was his death that called forth the poem upon which rests the literary reputation of the younger Manrique. In the language of his historian, "Don Jorge Manrique, in an elegant Ode, full of poetic beauties, rich embellishments of genius, and high moral reflections, mourned the death of his father as with a funeral hymn." This praise is not exaggerated. The poem is a model in its kind. Its conception is solemn and beautiful; and, in accordance with it, the style moves on-calm, dignified and majestic.]