My God! can it be possible I have

To die so suddenly? So young to go

Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
To be nailed down into a narrow place;

To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost, -
How fearful!

It will be granted. We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years;
O, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.

Beatr.

Yet both will soon be cold.

O, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope;
It is the only ill which can find place
Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour

Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring;
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch
Even now a city stands, fair, strong, and free;
Now stench and blackness yawns, like death.
O, plead

With famine, or wind-walking pestilence,
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!
Cruel, cold, formal man! righteous in words,
In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die,
Since such is the reward of innocent lives.
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.

And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep, 't were just the grave
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!

Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,

And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

A COURT LADY.

I.

HER hair was tawny with gold, her eyes with purple were dark,

Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.

II.

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race;
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.

III.

Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife, Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.

IV.

She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens,

"Bring

That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the

king.

V.

"Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the

mote,

Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.

VI.

"Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,

Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves."

VII.

Gorgeous she entered the sunlight which gathered her up in a flame,

While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital

came.

VIII.

In she went at the door, and gazing, from end to end,. "Many and low are the pallets, but each is the place of a friend."

IX.

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed:

Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his

head.

X.

"Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!"

she cried,

And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face and died.

XI.

Pale was his passing soul, she went on still to a second He was a grave, hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.

XII.

Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were

sorer.

"Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes drove lightnings before her.

XIII.

"Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord,

Able to bind thee, O strong one,-free by the stroke of a

sword.

XIV.

"Now be grave for the rest of us, using the life overcast To ripen our wine of the present (too new) in glooms of the past."

XV.

Down she stepped to a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying, - a deep black hole in

the curls.

XVI.

"Art thou from Tuscany, brother? and seest thou, dreaming in pain,

Thy mother stand in the piazza, searching the list of the

slain?"

XVII.

Kind as a mother herself, she touched his cheeks with her hands:

"Blessed is she who has borne thee, although she should weep as she stands."

XVIII.

On she passed to a Frenchman, his arm carried off by a ball:

Kneeling, . . . "O more than my brother! how shall I

thank thee for all?

XIX.

"Each of the heroes around us has fought for his land and

line,

But thou hast fought for a stranger, in hate of a wrong not

XX.

"Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed; But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!"

XXI.

Ever she passed on her way, and came to a couch where pined

One with a face from Venetia, white with a hope out of

mind.

XXII.

Long she stood and gazed, and twice she tried at the

name,

But two great crystal tears were all that faltered and

came.

XXIII.

Only a tear for Venice?-she turned as in passion and loss,

And stooped to his forehead and kissed it, as if she were kissing the cross.

XXIV.

Faint with that strain of heart, she moved on then to

another,

Stern and strong in his death.

"And dost thou suffer,

my brother?"

XXV.

Holding his hands in hers: "Out of the Piedmont lion Cometh the sweetness of freedom! sweetest to live or to die on."

XXVI.

Holding his cold rough hands, "Well, O well have ye

done

In noble, noble Piedmont, who would not be noble alone."