Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn ?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest-branches and the trodden weed!
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought,
As doth eternity. Cold pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

JOHN KEATS

Mother and Poet.

(Turin, after news from Gaeta, 1861.)

EAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,

DEAD

And one of them shot in the west by the sea!
Dead! both my boys! when you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me!

Yet I was a poetess only last year,

And good at my art, for a woman, men said;

But this woman, this, who is agonized here,

--The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head Forever instead.

MOTHER AND POET.

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!

69

What art is she good at, but hurting her breast With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain? Ah boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you pressed And I proud, by that test.

What art's for a woman? to hold on her knees

Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees

And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat!
To dream and to doat!

To teach them. . It stings there! I made them, indeed,
Speak plain the word country. I taught them, no doubt,
That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about

The tyrant cast out.

And when their eyes flashed. . O my beautiful eyes! . .
I exulted! nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not.—But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone!-Then one weeps, then one
kneels !

God! how the house feels!

At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled

With my kisses,-of camp-life and glory, and how They both loved me, and soon, coming home to be spoiled In return would fan off every fly from my brow

With their green laurel-bough.

Then was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free !"
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.—
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,

While they cheered in the street.

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand: "I was not to faint.-
One loved me for two-would be with me ere long:
And Viva l'Italia!' he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint !"

My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls,-was impressed
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed,

To live on for the rest."

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line

Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :-Shot. Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother, -not "mine,"

No voice says "my mother" again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that love and sorrow which reconciled so
The above and below.

O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,

Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away And no last word to say!

MOTHER AND POET.

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature.

71

We all

Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men ? When the guns of Cavalli with final retort

Have cut the game short;

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and

red,

When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead),—

What then? Do not mock me.

Ah, ring your bells low,
My country is there,

And burn your lights faintly!

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE—with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me.

Some women bear children in strength, And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn; But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length Into wail such as this-and we sit on forlorn

Dead!

When the man-child is born.

One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea!
Both both my boys! If in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

Nuremberg.

N the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands

IN

Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art

and song,

Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold

Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron

band,

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's

hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of art;
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the
common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,

By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy

dust,

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age

their trust: