he'd die first!"
Poor Penn – ! I could have embraced him for that touch of pride; and felt assured that whatever the penalty might be which he was doomed to suffer, that he had "a heart for any fate!" What that fate was I have had no means of knowing, for I have never since heard of poor Penn – .
A SONG
Bring me the juice of the honey fruit,
The large translucent, amber-hued,
Rare grapes of southern isles, to suit
The luxury that fills my mood.
And bring me only such as grew
Where rarest maidens tent the bowers,
And only fed by rain and dew
Which first had bathed a bank of flowers.
They must have hung on spicy trees
In airs of far enchanted vales,
And all night heard the ecstasies
Of noble-throated nightingales:
So that the virtues which belong
To flowers may therein tasted be —
And that which hath been thrilled with song
May give a thrill of song to me.
For I would wake that string for thee
Which hath too long in silence hung,
And sweeter than all else should be
The song which in thy praise is sung.
THE ENCHANTED ISLE
Far in the ocean of the Night
There lyeth an Enchanted Isle,
Within a veil of mellow light,
That blesseth like affection's smile.
It tingeth with a rosy hue
All objects in that country fair,
Like summer twilight, when the dew
Is trembling in the fragrant air.
And there is music evermore,
That seemeth sleeping on the breeze.
Like sound of sweet bells from the shore
Lingering along the summer seas.
And there are rivers, bowers, and groves,
And fountains fringed with blossomed weeds,
And all sweet birds that sing their loves
'Mid stately flowers or tasseled reeds.
All that is beautiful of earth,
All that is valued, all that's dear,
All that is pure of mortal birth,
Lives in immortal beauty here.
All tender buds that ever grew
For us on Hope's ephemeral tree,
All loves, all joys, that e'er we knew,
Bloom in that country gloriously.
There is no parting there, no change,
No death, no fading, no decay;
No hand is cold, no voice is strange,
No eye is dark – or turned away.
To us, who daily toil and weep,
How welcome is Night's starry smile,
When in the fairy barge of Sleep
We visit the Enchanted Isle.
All holy hearts that worship Truth,
Though bleak their daily pathway seems,
Find treasure and immortal youth
In that fair isle of happy dreams.
But, if the soul have dwelt with sin,
It landeth on that isle no more,
Though it would give its life to win
One glimpse but of the pleasant shore.
Their joys, which have been thrown away,
Or stained with guilt, can bloom no more,
And o'er the night their vessels stray
Where pale shades weep, and surges roar.
THE CONTINENTS
I had a vision in that solemn hour,
Last of the year sublime,
Whose wave sweeps downward, with its dying power
Rippling the shores of Time!
On the lone margin of that hoary sea
My spirit stood alone,
Watching the gleams of phantom History
Which through the darkness shone:
Then, when the bell of midnight, ghostly hands
Tolled for the dead year's doom,
I saw the spirits of Earth's ancient lands
Stand up amid the gloom!
The crownéd deities, whose reign began
In the forgotten Past,
When first the glad world gave to sovereign Man
Her empires green and vast!
First queenly Asia, from the fallen thrones
Of twice three thousand years,
Came with the wo a grieving goddess owns
Who longs for mortal tears:
The dust of ruin to her mantle clung,
And dimmed her crown of gold,
While the majestic sorrows of her tongue
From Tyre to Indus rolled:
"Mourn with me, sisters, in my realm of wo,
Whose only glory streams
From its lost childhood, like the artic glow
Which sunless Winter dreams!
In the red desert moulders Babylon,
And the wild serpent's hiss
Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone
And waste Persepolis!
Gone are the deities who ruled enshrined
In Elephanta's caves,
And Brahma's wailings fill the odorous wind
That stirs Amboyna's waves!
The ancient gods amid their temples fall,
And shapes of some near doom,
Trembling and waving on the Future's wall,
More fearful make my gloom!"
Then from her seat, amid the palms embowered
That shade the Lion-land,
Swart Africa in dusky aspect towered —
The fetters on her hand!
Backward she saw, from out her drear eclipse,
The mighty Theban years,
And the deep anguish of her mournful lips
Interpreted her tears.
"Wo for my children, whom your gyves have bound
Through
