Can you, ye flowerets, spread your perfumed balm
'Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?
And you, wild winds, thus can you sleep so still
Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?
Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill?
And in the eternal mansions of the sky

Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?

II.

Hark! I hear music on the Zephyr's wing!
Louder it floats along the unruffled sky!
Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string!
Now faint in distant air the murmurs die,-
Awhile it stills the tide of agony.

Now, now, it loftier swells! again stern woe
Arises with the awakening melody:

Again fierce torments, such as demons know,
In bitterer feller tide on this torn bosom flow!

III.

Arise, ye sightless spirits of the storm,

Ye unseen minstrels of the aërial song! Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form,

And roll the tempest's wildest swell along! Dart the red lightning, wing the forkèd flash,

Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder's roar, Arouse the whirlwind, and let ocean dash

In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore! Destroy this life, or let earth's fabric be no more!

IV.

Yes, every tie that links me here is dead.
Mysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey:
Since hope and peace and joy for aye are fled,
I come, terrific Power, I come away.

Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of hell,

In triumph laughing wildly, mock its pain;

And, though with direst pangs mine heartstrings swell, I'll echo back their deadly yells again,

Cursing the Power that ne'er made aught in vain!

FRAGMENT.

I.

YES, all is past! swift time has fled away,
Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind.
How long will horror nerve this flame of clay?
I'm dead,—and lingers yet my soul behind!
O powerful Fate! revoke thy deadly spell!

And yet that may not ever, ever be,—
Heaven will not smile upon the work of hell:
Ah no! for heaven cannot smile on me:
Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.

II.

I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge;
I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes:
The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,
And on the blast a frightful yell arose.

Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened main,—
Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare.
Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain
Swelled 'mid the tumult of the battling air :-
'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more soft and fair.

III.

I met a maniac,-like he was to me.

I said: "Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam? And canst thou not contend with agony,

That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?" "Ah! there she sleeps! Cold is her bloodless form,

And I will go to slumber in her grave;

And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm, Will sleep at midnight o'er the wildered wave: Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?"

IV.

"Ah no! I cannot shed the pitying tear:

This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more.

But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,

Can shriek in horror to the tempest's roar."

THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN.

WHAT was the shriek that struck fancy's ear
As it sate on the ruins of time that is past?
Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,
And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.
It is not the Benshie's moan on the storm,
Or a shivering fiend that, thirsting for sin,
Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,
Winged with the power of some ruthless king,
And sweeps o'er the breast of the prostrate plain.
It was not a fiend from the regions of hell
That poured its low moan on the stillness of night;
It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,

Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore.

But aye, at the close of seven years' end,

That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm;

And aye, at the close of seven years' end,
A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill
Awakens, and floats on the mist of the heath.
It is not the shade of a murdered man

Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,
And howls in the pause of the eddying storm.

This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill;

'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul;

"Tis more frightful far than the Death-demon's scream,

Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o'er the corpse Of a man who has sold his soul to hell.

It tells the approach of a mystic form.

A white courser bears the shadowy sprite :

More thin they are than the mists of the mountain

When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake. More pale his cheek than the snows of Nithona

When Winter rides on the northern blast,

And howls in the midst of the leafless wood.

Yet, when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,
And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,—
Still secure 'mid the wildest war of the sky,

The phantom courser scours the waste,
And his rider howls in the thunder's roar.

O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven

Pause, as in fear to strike his head.

The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure;
Yet the wildered peasant that oft passes by

With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form :
And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
The startled passenger shudders to hear,

More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar.

Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,

Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,

And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the demons;

Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,—

Though wildered by death, yet never to die.

Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,

Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch

Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain.
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead
In horror pause on the fitful gale.

They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,
And scared seek the cares of gigantic . . .;
Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake,
And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.

MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES.

ART thou indeed for ever gone

For ever, ever, lost to me?
Must this poor bosom beat alone,
Or beat at all if not for thee?
Ah! why was love to mortals given?
To lift them to the height of heaven,
Or dash them to the depths of hell?

Yet I do not reproach thee, dear:

Ah no! the agonies that swell

This panting breast, this frenzied brain,

Might wake my 's slumbering tear.
Oh! Heaven is witness I did love,

And Heaven does know I love thee still-
Does know the fruitless sickening thrill

When reason's judgment vainly strove
To blot thee from my memory,—
But which might never, never be.

Oh! I appeal to that blessed day
When passion's wildest ecstasy
Was coldness to the joys I knew,

When every sorrow sunk away!
Oh! I had never lived before! . .
But now those blisses are no more!
And, now I cease to live again,
I do not blame thee, love,-ah no!
The breast that feels this anguished woe
Throbs for thy happiness alone.

Two years of speechless bliss are gone :—
I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.
'Tis night: what faint and distant scream
Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
It moans for pleasures that are past,
It moans for days that are gone by.
O lagging hours, how slow you fly!—
I see a dark and lengthened vale,

The black view closes with the tomb:
But darker is the louring gloom
That shades the intervening dale.
In visioned slumber for awhile
I seem again to share thy smile,
I seem to hang upon thy tone:-
Again you say: "Confide in me,
For I am thine, and thine alone,

And thine must ever, ever be."
But oh! awakening still anew,
Athwart my enanguished senses flew
A fiercer deadlier agony!

[End of Margaret Nicholson.]

THE TEAR.

I.

OH! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,