While in the noiseless air and light that flowed Round your fair brows, eternal Peace abode.

Here pealed the impious hymn, and altar flames
Rose to false gods, a dream-begotten throng,
Jove, Bacchus, Pan, and earlier, fouler names;
While, as the unheeding ages passed along,
Ye, from your station in the middle skies,
Proclaimed the essential Goodness, strong and
wise.

In you the heart that sighs for freedom seeks

Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; While even the immaterial Mind, below,

And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by

power,

Pine silently for the redeeming hour.

THE KNIGHT'S EPITAPH.

THIS is the church which Pisa, great and free, Reared to St. Catharine. How the time-stained

walls,

That earthquakes shook not from their poise,

appear

To shiver in the deep and voluble tones

Rolled from the organ! Underneath my feet
There lies the lid of a sepulchral vault.

The image of an armed knight is graven
Upon it, clad in perfect panoply -

Cuishes, and greaves, and cuirass, with barred

helm,

Gauntleted hand, and sword, and blazoned shield.
Around, in Gothic characters, worn dim

By feet of worshippers, are traced his name,
And birth, and death, and words of eulogy.
Why should I pore upon them? This old tomb,
This effigy, the strange disused form

Of this inscription, eloquently show

His history. Let me clothe in fitting words

The thoughts they breathe, and frame his

epitaph.

"He whose forgotten dust for centuries

Has lain beneath this stone, was one in whom Adventure, and endurance, and emprise

Exalted the mind's faculties and strung

The body's sinews. Brave he was in fight,
Courteous in banquet, scornful of repose,
And bountiful, and cruel, and devout,

And quick to draw the sword in private feud.

He pushed his quarrels to the death, yet prayed The saints as fervently on bended knees

As ever shaven cenobite.

He loved

As fiercely as he fought.

He would have borne

The maid that pleased him from her bower by

night,

To his hill-castle, as the eagle bears

His victim from the fold, and rolled the rocks

On his pursuers. He aspired to see

His native Pisa queen and arbitress

Of cities; earnestly for her he raised
His voice in council, and affronted death

In battle-field, and climbed the galley's deck,
And brought the captured flag of Genoa back,
Or piled upon the Arno's crowded quay
The glittering spoils of the tamed Saracen.

He was not born to brook the stranger's yoke, But would have joined the exiles, that withdrew For ever, when the Florentine broke in

The gates of Pisa, and bore off the bolts

For trophies but he died before that day.

"He lived, the impersonation of an age That never shall return. His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier Turning from the reproaches of the past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life."

SEVENTY-SIX.

WHAT heroes from the woodland sprung,

When, through the fresh awakened land,

The thrilling cry of freedom rung,

And to the work of warfare strung
The yeoman's iron hand!

Hills flung the cry to hills around.

And ocean-mart replied to mart,

And streams, whose springs were yet unfound, Pealed far away the startling sound

Into the forest's heart.

Then marched the brave from rocky steep,

From mountain river swift and cold;

The borders of the stormy deep,

The vales where gathered waters sleep,
Sent up the strong and bold,—

As if the very earth again

Grew quick with God's creating breath, And, from the sods of grove and glen, Rose ranks of lion-hearted men

To battle to the death.