Her handmaids tended, but she heeded not;
Her father watch'd, she turn'd her eyes away;
She recognized no being, and no spot,

However dear or cherish'd in their day;
They changed from room to room, but all forget,
Gentle, but without memory she lay ;

At length those eyes, which they would fain be weanin
Back to old thoughts, wax'd full of fearful meaning;

And then a slave bethought her of a harp;
The harper came, and tuned his instrument:
At the first notes, irregular and sharp,

On him her flashing eyes a moment bent,

Then to the wall she turn'd as if to warp

Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-scut And he began a long low island song

Of ancient days, ere tyranny grew strong.

Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall

In time to his old tune; he changed the theme, And sung of love; the fierce name struck through all Her recollection: on her flash'd the dream

Of what she was, and is, if ye could call

To be so being; in a gushing stream

The tears rush'd forth from her o'erclouded brain,
Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain.

Short solace, vain relief!-thought came too quick,
And whirl'd her brain to madness; she arose
As one who ne'er had dwelt among the sick,
And flew at all she met, as on her foes;
But no one ever heard her speak or shriek,
Although her paroxysm drew towards its close ;-
Hers was a frenzy which disdain'd to rave,
Even when they smote her, in the hope to save.

Yet she betray'd at times a gleam of sense;
Nothing could make her meet her father's face,
Though on all other things with looks intense
She gazed, but none she ever could retrace;
Food she refused, and raiment; no pretence

Avail'd for either; neither change of place,
Nor time, nor skill, nor remedy, could give her
Senses to sleep-the power seem'd gone for ever.

Twelve days and nights she wither'd thus; at last,
Without a groan, or sigh, or glance, to show
A parting pang, the spirit from her pass'd:
And they who watch'd her nearest could not knox
The very instant, till the change that cast

Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow,
Glazed o'er her eyes--the beautiful, the black-
Oh! to possess such lustre-and then lack!

That isle is now all desolate and bare,

Its dwellings down, its tenants pass'd away; None but her own and father's grave is there,

And nothing outward tells of human clay : Ye could not know where lies a thing so fair, No stone is there to show, no tongue to say What was; no dirge, except the hollow sca's, Mourns o'er the beauty of the Cyclades.

THE BLACK FRIAR.

BEWARE! beware! of the Black Friar,
Who sitteth by Norman stone,

For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air,
And his mass of the days that are gone.
When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville,
Made Norman Church his prey,

And expell'd the friars, one friar still
Would not be driven away.

Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right, To turn church lands to lay,

With sword in hand, and torch to light

Their walls, if they said nay;

A monk remain'd, unchased, unchain'd,

And he did not seem form'd of clay,

For he's seen in the porch, and he's seen in the church, Though he is not seen by day.

And whether for good, or whether for ill,

It is not mine to say;

But still with the house of Amundeville
He abideth night and day.

By the marriage-bed of their lords, 'tis said,
He flits on the bridal eve;

And 'tis held as faith, to their bed of death
He comes-but not to grieve.

When an heir is born, he's heard to mourn,
And when aught is to befall

That ancient line, in the pale moonshine
He walks from hall to hall.

His form you may trace, but not his face,

'Tis shadow'd by his cowl:

But his eyes may be seen from the folds between,
And they seem of a parted soul.

But beware! beware! of the Black Friar,
He still retains his sway,
For he is yet the Church's heir,
Whoever may be the lay.
Amundeville is lord by day,

But the monk is lord by night;
Nor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal,
To question that friar's right.

Say nought to him as he walks the hall,
And he'll say nought to you;
Ile sweeps along in his dusky pall,
As o'er the grass the dew.

Then grammercy! for the Black Friar;
Heaven sain him! fair or foul,
And whatsoe'er may be his prayer,
Let ours be for his soul.

NORMAN OR NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,-
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion,-of a rich and rare
Mix'd Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferr'd a hill behind
To shelter their devotion from the wind.

It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunderstroke
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters-as day awoke

The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.

Before the mansion lay a lucid lake,

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its soften'd way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wildfowl nestled in the brake

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fix'd upon the flood

Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade,
Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
I's shriller echoes-like an infant made

Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone; But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone,The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child,

With her Sou in her bless'd arms, look'd round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd; She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition, weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.

A mighty window, hollow in the centre,
Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraphs' wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.

But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is wingèd from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sings again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given

Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall:

Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm
In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fixed hour)
To this grey ruin with a voice to charm,

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower;
The cause, I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact:-I've heard it,—once perhaps too much.

Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,

Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:
The spring gush'd through grim mouths of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,
Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles.

The mansion's self was vast and venerable,
With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and refectory, I ween;

An exquisite small chapel had been able,

Still unimpair'd, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reform'd, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.

Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined,
Form'd a whole, which, irregular in parts,

Yet left a grand impression on the mind,

At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.

JULIA'S PORTRAIT.

Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise

A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul
Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole

Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow

Bright with intelligence, and fair, and smooth;
Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow,
Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth,
Mounting, at times, to a transparent glow,

As if her veins ran lightning; she, in sooth,
Possess'd an air and grace by no means common:
Her stature tall-I hate a dumpy woman.