THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH. THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained walls, That earthquakes shook not from their poise, appear To shiver in the deep and voluble tones Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet The image of an armed knight is graven Upon it, clad in perfect panoply— Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred helm, Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield. Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim By feet of worshippers, are traced his name, And birth, and death, and words of eulogy. Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb, Of this inscription, eloquently show His history. Let me clothe in fitting words The thoughts they breathe, and frame his epitaph. "He whose forgotten dust for centuries Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom Adventure, and endurance, and emprise And quick to draw the sword in private feud. As ever shaven cenobite. He loved As fiercely as he fought. He would have borne The maid that pleased him from her bower by night, To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks On his pursuers. He aspired to see His native Pisa queen and arbitress Of cities earnestly for her he raised "He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life." THE HUNTER OF THE PRAIRIES. Ay, this is freedom!—these pure skies And her who left the world for me, I plant me, where the red deer feed For here the fair savannas know No barriers in the bloomy grass; In pastures, measureless as air, The bison is my noble game; The bounding elk, whose antlers tear Mine are the river-fowl that scream From the long stripe of waving sedge; The bear that marks my weapon's gleam, Hides vainly in the forest's edge; With what free growth the elm and plane Fling their huge arms across my way, Gray, old, and cumbered with a train Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! Free stray the lucid streams, and find No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe has swept the glades. Alone the Fire, when frost-winds sere With roaring like the battle's sound, And hurrying flames that sweep the plain, And smoke-streams gushing up the sky: I meet the flames with flames again, Here, from dim woods, the aged past |