Walter R. Cassels

What art thou--friend or foe? Stand! stand! My heart is true as steel,

The Grey-beard Winter sat alone and still, Locking his treasures in the flinty earth; And like a miser comfortless and chill,

Winds are sighing round the drooping eaves; Sadly float the midnight hours away; Dun and grey athwart the ivy-leaves,

The lights have faded from the little casement, As though her closing eyes had brought on night; And now she dreams--Ah! dreams supremely bright,

From what rock-hollow'd cavern deep in ocean, Where jagged columns break the billow's beat, Whirl'd upward by some wild mid-world commotion,

Time sets his footprints on our little Earth, And, walk he ne'er so softly, some sweet thing Falls 'neath each foot-fall, crush'd amid its mirth,

The day fades fast; And backward ebbs the tide of light From the far hills in billows bright,

Peace! Let me go, or ere it be too late; Dip not your arrows in the honey-mead; Paint not the wound through which my heart doth bleed;

1. It was too sweet--such dreams do ever fade When Sorrow shakes the sleeper from his rest--

Turn thine eyes from me, Angel of Heaven-- Read not my soul, Angel of Heaven-- Sorrow is steeping my pale cheeks with weeping,

The King call'd forth his first-born, and took him by the hand, "Come! boy, and see the people you must soon command: A bold and stalwart nation, dauntless in the fight,

My little bark glides steadily along, Still and unshaken as a summer dream; And never falls the oar into the stream,

The night is dark, and evermore The thick drops patter on the pane The wind is weary of the rain,

Autumn went faintly flying o'er the land, Trailing her golden hair along the West, Weeping to find her waving fields despoil'd,

Life's chalice is empty--pour in! pour in! What?--Pour in Strength! Strength for the struggle through good and ill;

I. - In the Porch. [MORGAN and a MONK.] MORGAN.

Mabel, A Sketch. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. ORAN, a Speculative Philosopher.

Hot blows the wild simoom across the waste, The desert waste, amid the dreary sand, With fiery breath swift burning up the land,

"A hunter of shadows, himself a shade."--HOMER. Oh! weary sleeper by the lone sea-shore, Where billows toil for ever 'mid the rocks,

About the land I wander, all forlorn, About the land, with sorrow-quench'd eyes; Seeking my love among the silent woods;

Ever restless, ever toiling, Fretting fiercely on its narrow bounds, Still filling heaven and earth with mournful sounds,

The day is fading from the sky, And softly shines the Star of Even, As watching with a lover's eye

Love took me softly by the hand, Love led me all the country o'er, And show'd me beauty in the land,

The days are past, the days are past, When we did meet, my love and I; And youthful joys are fading fast,

O Cloud so golden, stealing o'er the sky, Like pensive thought across a virgin mind, Scarce sadder than the sunshine left behind;

The sun is slowly sinking in the West; The plough lies idle, and the weary team, Cool'd with the freshness of the shallow stream,

1. The Land stood still to listen all that day, And 'mid the hush of many a wrangling tongue,

On, like a giant, stalketh the strong Wind, Wrapping the clouds about him, close and dark, Rifting Creation's soul, for rage is blind,--

Through the calm and silent air Floats the tolling funeral bell, Swooning over hill and dell,

The reeds are idly waving o'er the marshy ground, The rank and ragged herbage rots on many a mound, And desolate pools and marshes deadly lie around.

Across the mountains and the hills, Across the valleys and the swelling seas, By lakes and rivers whose deep murmur fills

How light and pleasant is the way Across this quiet valley, whose soft mead Springs lightly as the air that angels tread,

The winds sweep by him on his mountain throne, Hurling the clouds together at his feet, Till Earth is hidden, lost, and swallow'd up

[It is scarcely necessary to say that the following fragment is founded upon the beautiful, and well-known tale in the "Arabian Nights," entitled, "The two Sisters who were jealous of their younger Sister;" and the reader need only be reminded that the two brothers of Perizade, Bahman and Perviz, had previously gone in search of the treasures described by the Devotee, and had perished in the attempt,--the fate of the latter having just been intimated to her at the commencement of this episode, by the fixture of the pearls in the magic chaplet, which Perviz had left her for that purpose.] The days flow'd on, and each day Perizade At morn and eve told o'er the snowy pearls,

I stood on the Land's End, alone and still. Man might have been unmade, for no frail trace Of mortal labour startled the wild place,

Night's heavy hand is lifted up at last, And my freed heart beats evenly again, Unpress'd by that dull heavy weight of pain

There is a land whereon the sun's warm gaze, God-like, all-seeing, falls right down through space, And the weak Earth, quite smitten by its rays,

O! well I mind the olden time, The sweet, sweet olden time; When I did long for eve all day,

Far, far away, over land and sea, When Winter comes with his cold, cold breath, And chills the flowers to the sleep of death,

There sat a raven 'mid the pines so dark, The pines so silent and so dark at morn A ragged bird with feathers rough and torn,

The dream fell on him one calm summer night, Stealing amid the waving of the corn, That waited, golden, for the harvest morn--

O'er the wide world I wander evermore, Through wind and weather heedless and alone, Alike through summer, and through winter hoar,

Where art thou, oh! my Beautiful? Afar I seek thee sadly, till the day is done, And o'er the splendour of the setting sun,

Deep in the bosom of the ocean, Where sunshine fades to twilight gloom, The pure pearls lie, and the coral bloom

From the darksome earth-mine lifted, From the clay and from the rock Loosen'd out with many a shock;

Whither away, youth, whither away, With lightsome step, and with joyous heart, And eyes that Hope's gay glances dart?

Oh! weird West Wind, that comest from the sea, Sad with the murmur of the weary waves, Wand'ring for ever through old ocean caves,

'Mid the waving Woods of Wytham, Now so far, so far from me, Where the grand old beeches be,

This day it was--Ah! years ago, Long years ago, when first we met; When first her voice thrill'd through my heart,