Existence

REMEMBERED GRIEFS.

may be borne, and the deep root Of life and sufferance make its firm abode, In bare and desolate bosom. Mute

The camel labours with the heaviest load,

And the wolf dies in silence. Not bestowed

In vain, should such examples be. If they,
Things of ignoble or of savage mood,

Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay,
May temper it to bear. It is but for a day.

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, Even by the sufferer; and in each event, Ends. Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, Return to whence they came with like intent, And weave their web again. Some bowed and bent, Wax grey and ghastly, withering ere their time, And perish with the reed on which they leant. Some seek devotion, toil, war, good or crime, According as their souls were formed to sink or climb.

But ever and anon, for grief subdued,

There comes a token, like a scorpion's sting,

Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued,
And slight withal may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling
Aside for ever. It may be a sound,

A tone of music, summer's eve, or spring,

A flower, the wind, the ocean, which shall sound, Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.

And how and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind,
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind;
While out of things familiar, undesigned,

When least we deem of such, calls up to view

The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,

The cold-the changed-perchance the dead, anew, The mourned-the loved-the lost, too many, yet how few!

Byron.

MARTYRDOM OF LOUIS XVI.

Paris! there was no sleep beneath thy roofs

The morn that saw this deed. The dim streets rung,
Long before day, with cannon, trampling hoofs,
And, fearfullest of all, the tocsin's tongue.

Startling the eye; the passing torches flung

Their flash through many a chamber from beneath, Then vanished with the thick and hurrying throng; While the heart-sinking listener held his breath, Catching in every sound the distant roar of death.

But earlier than that dim and early hour, A lonely taper twinkled through the gloom; 'Twas from the casement of the Temple tower, 'Twas from a king's, a martyr's, dungeon room! There he subdued his spirit for its doom; And one old priest, and one pale follower, Knelt weeping, as beside their master's tomb. Rude was the altar, but the heart was there, And peace and glorious hope were in that prison prayer.

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But trumpets pealed, and torches glared below,
And from the tower rose woman's loud lament
And infant cries; and shadows seemed to go
With tossing arms, and heads in anguish bent,
Backwards and forwards hurrying, then, as spent,
Sink down, and all be silent for a time;
Until the royal victims' souls were rent

With some new yell of cruelty and crime,

Or thundered through the dusk the tocsin's deadly chime.

And 'twas as wild and still within the square,

This square
An iron harvest bristled through the air,

of luxury! The morn arose,

Bayonet and pike in countless, close-rocked rows,
Silent as death, the crowd,-the grim repose

Before the earthquake ;-none from roof or wall
Might look; no hand the casement might unclose.
And in their centre, frowning o'er them all,
Their idol-the sole God before whose name they fall,

The Guillotine !—when hell proposed the feast, Where guilty France was drunk, but not with wine, Till madness sat upon her visioned breast,

This was the press that crushed her bloody vine. To this grim altar came the shuddering line, Whose worship was,-beneath its knife to lie; The haggard traitors to the throne and shrine, By traitors crushed, that in their turn must die; Till massacre engulphed the wreck of liberty.

The Guillotine !-It stood in that pale day
Like a huge spectre, just from earth upsprung,
To summon from the tomb the fierce array
That round its feet in desperate homage clung.
But on the wind a sudden trumpet rung,

All eyes were turned, and far as eye could stray,

Was caught a light, from moving helmets flung,

A banner tossing in the tempest's sway,

A wain that through the throng slow toiled its weary way.

'Tis done, the monarch on the scaffold stands;
The headsmen grasp him!of the myriads there,
That hear his voice, that see his fettered hands,
Not one has given a blessing or a tear.

But that old priest who answers him in

n prayer. : He speaks; his dying thoughts to France are given. His voice is drowned; for murder has no ear. The saint unmurmuring to the axe is driven. If ever spirit rose, that heart is calm in heaven.

France was anathema. Her cup before

Was full, but this o'ertopped its burning brim,
And plagues, like serpent-teeth, her entrails tore;
Crime slipped to ravage through a land of crime!
In the sacked sepulchre caroused the mime!
On God's high altar sat idolatry;

Before the harlot knelt the nation's prime, And sons dragged fathers, fathers sons to die, 'Till judgment girt the bow on its eternal thigh.

Croly.