MR. ALBERT G. GREENE was born at Providence, Rhode Island, February 10th, 1802. He was a graduate at Brown University in 1820, practiced law in his native city until 1834, since which time he has held office under the city government. One of his earliest metrical compositions was the popular ballad of" Old Grimes." His poems, which were principally written for periodicals, have never been pub. lished in a collected form. One of his longest serious ballads, entitled "Canonchet," is published in Updike's "History of the Narraghansett Church." IV. 95. BERNARDO DEL CARPIO.1 1. HEwarrior bowed his crested head, and tamed his heart of fire, And sued the haughty king to free his long-imprisoned sire; "I bring thee here my fortress-keys, I bring my captive train, I pledge thee faith, my liege, my lord!-Oh! break my father's chain !" 2. "Rise, rise! even now thy father comes, a ransomed man this day: Mount thy good horse; and thou and I will meet him on his way." Then lightly rose that loyal son, and bounded on his steed, And urged, as if with lance in rest, the charger's foamy speed. 3. And lo! from far, as on they pressed, there came a glittering band, With one that 'midst them stately rode, as a leader in the land: "Now haste, Bernardo, haste! for there, in věry truth, is he, The father whom thy faithful heart hath yearned so long to see." 4. His dark eye flashed, his proud breast heaved, his cheek's hue came and went : He reached that gray-haired chieftain's side, and there, dismount ing, bent; A lowly knee to earth he bent, his father's hand he took- 1 Bernardo del Carpio, a celebrated Spanish champion, after many ineffectual efforts to procure the release of his father, Count Saldana, whom King Alphonso, of Asturias, had long retainedin prison, at last took uparms in despair. He maintained so destructive a war that the king's subjects united in demanding Saldana's release. Alphonso therefore offered Bernardo the person of his father in exchange for the castle of Carpio. Bernardo immediately gave up his stronghold with all his captives; and rode forth with the king to meet his father, who he was assured was on his way from prison. The remainder of the story is related in the ballad. 5. That hand was cold, a frozen thing,-it dropped from his like lead! He met, at last, his father's eyes,—but in them was no sight! 6. Up from the ground he sprang and gazed ;—but who could paint that gaze? They hushed their very hearts, that saw its horror and ămăze :— They might have chained him, as before that stony form he stood; For the power was stricken from his arm, and from his lip the blood. 7. "FATHER!" at length he murmured low, and wept like childhood then : Talk not of grief till thou hast seen the tears of warlike men! He thought on all his glorious hopes, and all his young renown,He flung his falchion from his side, and in the dust sat down. 8. Then covering with his steel-gloved hands his darkly mournful brow, "No more, there is no more," he said, "to lift the sword for, now; My king is false-my hope betrayed! My father-Oh! the worth, The glory, and the loveliness, are passed away from earth! 9. "I thought to stand where banners waved, my sire, beside thee, yět! I would that there our kindred blood on Spain's free soil had met! Thou wouldst have known my spirit, then ;-for thee my fields were won; And thou hast perished in thychains, asthough thou hadst noson!" 10. Then, starting from the ground once more, he seized the monarch's rein, Amidst the pale and wildered looks of all the courtier train; And, with a fierce, o'ermastering grasp, the rearing war-horse led, And sternly set them face to face-the king before the dead: 11. "Came I not fōrth, upon thy pledge, my father's hand to kiss? Be still, and gaze thou on, false king! and tell me, what is this? The voice, the glance, the heart I sought,-give answer, where are they? If thou wouldst clear thy perjured soul, send life through this cold clay! 12. "Into these glassy eyes put light;-be still! keep down thine ire!— Bid these white lips a blessing speak,-this earth is not my sire: Give me back him for whom I strove, for whom my blood was shed! Thou canst not? and a king!—his dust be mountains on thy head!" 13. He loosed the steed, his slack hand fell;-upon the silent face He cast one long, deep, troubled look, then turned from that sad place: His hope was crushed, his after fate untold in martial strain :His banner led the spears no mōre, amidst the hills of Spain. MRS. HEMANS. MRS. HEMANS (Felicia Dorothea Browne), the daughter of a Liverpool merchant, was born in that town on the 25th of September, 1793. Her father, soon after, experiencing some reverses, removed with his family to Wales, and there the young poetess imbibed that love of nature which is displayed in all her works. She wrote verses from her childhood, and published a poetical volume in her fourteenth year. Her second volume, "The Domestic Affections," which appeared in 1812, established her poetical reputation. In the same year she married Captain Hẹmans, who, after some years, went to reside on the Continent, his wife remaining at home with her five sons. She became more and more devoted to study and composition. In 1819 she won a prize of £50, offered by some patriotic Scots for the best poem on Sir William Wallace, and in June, 1821, she obtained the prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature for the best poem on the subject of Dartmoor. She succeeded well in narrative and dramatic poetry, though the character of her genius was decidedly lyrical and reflective. Her numerous poems are admirable for purity of sentiment and gentle pathos; and her personal character was amiable, modest, and exemplary. After several changes of residence, she died in Dublin, on the 16th of May, 1835. V. 96. MARIUS IN PRISON. HE peculiar sublimity of the Roman mind does not express THE itself, nor is it at all to be sought, in their poëtry. Poetry, according to the Roman ideal of it, was not an adequate organ for the grander movements of the national mind. Roman sublimity must be looked for in Roman acts, and in Roman sayings. Where, again, will you find a more adequate expression of the Roman majesty, than in the saying of Trajan'-Imperatorem oportere stantem mori-that Cæsar' ought to die standing ?—a speech of imperatoriäl' grandeur. Implying that he, who was "the foremost man of all this world," and, in regard to all other nations, the representative of his own, should express its characteristic virtue in his farewell act―should die in procinctu‚* and should meet the last enemy as the first, with a Roman countenance and in a soldier's attitude. If this had an imperatorial, what follows had a consular majesty, and is almost the grandèst story upon record. 2. Māriüs,' the man who rose to be seven times consul, was in a dungeon, and a slave was sent in with commission to put him to death. These were the persons-the two extremities of exalted and forlorn humanity, its vanward and its rearward man, a Roman consul and an abject slave. But their natural relations to each other were, by the caprice of fortune, monstrously inverted the consul was in chains; the slave was for a moment the arbiter of his fate. By what spells, what magic, did Marius reinstate himself in his natural prerogatives? By what marvels drawn from heaven or from earth, did he, in the twinkling of an eye, again invest himself with the purple, and place between himself and his assassin a host of shadowy lictors? : 3. By the mere blank supremacy of great minds over weak ones. He fascinated the slave, as a rattlesnake does a bird. Standing "like Teneriffe," he smote him with his eye, and said, "Tunc, homo, audes occidere C. Marium?"-Dost thou, fellow, 1 Trajan, one of the most illustrious emperors of Rome, was born near Seville, in Spain, in the year 53. By his great victories over the Dacians, Germans, and Parthians, he fixed securely the boundaries of the Roman empire on the banks of the Rhine and the Tigris. His internal administration was equally glorious, his reign being celebrated for its great clemency, and rigid discipline of justice, and for its humanity to Christians. He died at Selinus, a town in Cilicia, August, 117. ' Caius Julius Cæsar, Dictator of Rome, was born July 12th, B. C. 100, presume to kill Caius Marius? Whereat, the rep'tile, quaking under the voice, nor daring to affront the consular eye, sank gently to the ground, turned round upon his hands and feet, and, crawling out of the prison like any other vermin, left Marius standing in solitude as steadfast and immovable as the capitol. DE QUINCEY. L SECTION XVIII. I. 97. THE ANNOYER. OVE knoweth every form of air, And comes, unbidden, everywhere, 2. He peeps into the warrior's heart And the sĕrried' spears, and the many men, He'll come to his tent in the weary night, And be busy in his dream, And he'll float to his eye in the morning light, 3. He hears the sound of the hunter's gun, And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf, And flits in his woodland track. The shade of the wood, and the sheen' of the river, He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver, Ser ried, close; crowded; compact. Sheen, brightness. |