A TALE OF PARAGUAY.

PREFACE.

ONE of my friends observed to me, in a letter, that many stories which are said to be founded on fact have in reality been foundered on it. This is the case if there be any gross violation committed or ignorance betrayed of historical manners in the prominent parts of a narrative wherein the writer affects to observe them, or when the groundwork is taken from some part of history so popular and well known that any mixture of fiction disturbs the sense of truth; still more so if the subject be in itself so momentous that any alloy of invention must of necessity debase it: but most of all in themes drawn from Scripture, whether from the more familiar or the more awful portions; for, when what is true is sacred, whatever may be added to it is so surely felt to be false that it appears profane.

Founded on fact the poem is, which is here committed to the world; but, whatever may be its defects, it is liable to none of these objections. The story is so singular, so simple, and withal so complete, that it must have been injured by any alteration. How faithfully it has been followed, the reader may perceive, if he chooses to consult the abridged translation of Dobrizhoffer's "History of the Abipones."

TO EDITH MAY SOUTHEY.

1.

EDITH! ten years are numbered, since the day
Which ushers in the cheerful month of May,
To us by thy dear birth, my daughter dear,
Was blest. Thou therefore didst the name partake
Of that sweet month, the sweetest of the year;
But fitlier was it given thee for the sake
Of a good man, thy father's friend sincere,
Who at the font made answer in thy name.
Thy love and reverence rightly may he claim;
For closely hath he been with me allied
In friendship's holy bonds, from that first hour
When in our youth we met on Tejo's side,
Bonds which, defying now all Fortune's power,
Time hath not loosened, nor will Death divide.

2.

A child more welcome, by indulgent Heaven
Never to parents' tears and prayers was given;
For scarcely eight months at thy happy birth
Had passed, since of thy sister we were left,
Our first-born and our only babe, bereft.
Too fair a flower was she for this rude earth!

The features of her beauteous infancy
Have faded from me like a passing cloud,
Or like the glories of an evening sky;

And seldom hath my tongue pronounced her name
Since she was summoned to a happier sphere.
But that dear love, so deeply wounded then,
I in my soul with silent faith sincere

Devoutly cherish till we meet again.

3.

I saw thee first with trembling thankfulness,
O daughter of my hopes and of my fears!
Pressed on thy senseless cheek a troubled kiss,
And breathed my blessing over thee with tears.

But memory did not long our bliss alloy :

For gentle nature, who had given relief,

Weaned with new love the chastened heart from grief;

And the sweet season ministered to joy.

4.

It was a season when their leaves and flowers
The trees as to an Arctic summer spread;
When chilling wintry winds and snowy showers,
Which had too long usurped the vernal hours,
Like spectres from the sight of morning, fled
Before the presence of that joyous May;
And groves and gardens all the live-long day
Rung with the birds' loud love-songs.
Over all,
One thrush was heard from morn till even-fall:

Thy Mother well remembers, when she lay
The happy prisoner of the genial bed,
How from yon lofty poplar's topmost spray,
At earliest dawn, his thrilling pipe was heard;
And, when the light of evening died away,
That blithe and indefatigable bird

Still his redundant song of joy and love preferred.

5.

How I have doted on thine infant smiles

At morning, when thine eyes unclosed on mine;
How, as the months in swift succession rolled,
I marked thy human faculties unfold,
And watched the dawning of the light divine;
And with what artifice of playful guiles
Won from thy lips with still-repeated wiles
Kiss after kiss, a reckoning often told, -
Something I ween thou know'st; for thou hast

seen

Thy sisters in their turn such fondness prove, And felt how childhood, in its winning years, The attempered soul to tenderness can move. This thou canst tell; but not the hopes and fears With which a parent's heart doth overflow, The thoughts and cares inwoven with that love: Its nature and its depth, thou dost not, canst not, know.

6.

The years which since thy birth have passed away May well to thy young retrospect appear

A measureless extent: like yesterday

To me, so soon they filled their short career. To thee discourse of reason have they brought, With sense of time and change; and something too Of this precarious state of things have taught, Where Man abideth never in one stay; And of mortality a mournful thought. And I have seen thine eyes suffused in grief, When I have said that with autumnal gray The touch of eld hath marked thy father's head; That even the longest day of life is brief, And mine is falling fast into the yellow leaf.

7.

Thy happy nature from the painful thought
With instinct turns, and scarcely canst thou bear
To hear me name the Grave. Thou knowest not
How large a portion of my heart is there!
The faces which I loved in infancy

Are gone; and bosom-friends of riper age,
With whom I fondly talked of years to come,
Summoned before me to their heritage,
Are in the better world, beyond the tomb.
And I have brethren there, and sisters dear,

And dearer babes. I therefore needs must dwell Often in thought with those whom still I love so well.

8.

Thus wilt thou feel in thy maturer mind:

When grief shall be thy portion, thou wilt find