That decked the miser's daughter; envious tongues
Gilded anew the half-forgotten tale,
And it became the marvel of all Rome:
Thus, till the diadem of gems and gold
Burned on her white brow like a circling flame,
And she went writhing home, to weep-to loathe
The sordid parent who had brought this blight
Upon the joyous promise of her youth!

It was the still noon of a summer night,
When the young countess from her father's roof
Fled-with a noble of the Roman court.
Morn came, and through the empty corridors,
The balconies, the gardens, the wide halls,
In vain they sought her. Noon passed by, and then
The truth was guessed, not spoken! Silently
Count Julio trod the marble staircases,
And pausing by the door that once was hers,
Stood a brief moment, and then, pressing on,
Stepped through the quiet chamber. All was still,
Bearing no traces of her recent flight.
Here lay a slipper, here a silken robe,
And here a lute thrown down, with a white glove
Flung carelessly beside it. Still the air
Breathed of the delicate perfumes she had loved.

He glanced but once around the empty room, Then from the mirrored and silk-draperied walls Cast his eye downward o'er his shrunken form, His meagre garments. Few the words he spake, And muttered low: but in them came a curse, So blasphemous, so hideous in its depth Of impotent rage, that they who at his side Yet stood in lingering pity, with blanched lips Turned to the threshold, and crept shuddering forth. He breathed his sorrow to no human ear, But left it channelled in his heart, to breed Corruption there. None knew how wearily The hours passed on beneath those lonely walls; None saw him, when by midnight still a watcher He brooded o'er his anguish, pale and faint, Starting and trembling, as inconstantly The night winds swayed the curtains to and fro, Fancying the rustle of her silken robe, Her footfall on the staircase! Time sped on To strike the du led bloom from his cheek, and sere The soul that once had queened it on his brow. A bent and wan old man, upon whose breast Hung the neglected masses of his beardWith tremulous hands, habitually clinched Till the sharp nails wore furrows in the palmsThus stole he forth at even, and with eyes Lost in the golden future of his dreams, Passed through the busy crowds unmarked, unheedOnce had he looked upon Bianca's faceOnce had she knelt before him, with her child Gasping upon her breast, and prayed for succor. The unwept victim of a drunken brawl, Her lord had fallen, and the palace walls That owned her mistress were deserted now. She had braved fear and hunger, till her babe Wailed dying on her bosom, and so urgedPride, shame, forgotten in a mother's loveClung to his knees for pardon. But in vain : He cursed her as she knelt-bade her go forth, And mid the loathsome suppliants that unveil Disease and suffering to the eye of wealth,

[ing.

Bare, too, her anguish to the glance of Pity; Then, as she lingered, spurned her from his feet With words that chilled her agony to dread, And drove her thence in horror!

From that day

His very blood seemed charged with bitterness.
Miser and usurer both, upon the wrecks
Of others' happiness he built his own;
His name became accursed in the land,
And with his withering soul his body grew
Scarce human in its ghastly hideousness.

The bulb enshrouds the lily; and within
The most unsightly form may folded lie
The white wings of an angel. But in him
Seemed all the sweet humanities of life
Coldly encharnelled; and no hand divine
Rolled from his breast the weary weight of sin,
To bid them go forth unto suffering man
Like gracious ministers.

And she, alas! Whom he had madly driven forth to ruinEarth hath no words to tell how dark the change That clothed her fallen spirit. O'er the waste Of want and horror that engulfed her fortunes, She had sent forth the white dove, Purity, And it returned no more. The Roman dames Took not her name upon their scornful lips. Her form became a model for the artist; And her rare face went down to future ages, Limned on his canvass. Ye may mark it yet, In the long galleries of the Vatican, Varied but still the same: now robed in pride, As monarchs in their garbs of Syrian purple; Now with a Magdalen's blue mantle drawn Over the bending forehead. As the marble Sleeps in unsullied whiteness on the tomb, Taking no taint from the foul thing it covers, Her beauty bore no blight from guilt, but lived A monument that made her name immortal.

Night had uprisen, clothed with storms and gloom; No taper lit the solitary hall,

And to and fro, with feeble steps, its lord [then,
Paced through the darkness. Midnight came, and
Pausing beside the groaning door, that weighed
Its rusty hinge, Count Julio, crouching, peered
Into the gloom without; for stealthy feet,
Whose echo struck upon his wary ear,
Had passed the lower halls, and slowly now
Trod the great staircase.

"T was no robber's step:
Faint, s'ow, and halting, ever and anon,
As though in weariness. His sharpened sense
Caught, mid the fitful pauses of the wind,
The headlong dashing of the driven rain,
A sound of painful breathing-nay, of sobs-
Bursting, and then as suddenly suppressed.

Shuddering he stood; and as the storm's red bolt Leaped through the windows, lighting as it passed, A dusky shape, that cowered at the flash, He shrank within the chamber, and once more Listened in silence.

Nearer came the sound: A tall form crossed the threshold, and threw back What seemed a heavy mantle. Then again Glanced the pale lightning, and Count Julio knew

By the long hair that swept her garments' hem, Bianca!

They who through that night of fear Kept watch with storm and terror till the dawn, Bore its dark memories even to the tomb: For shrieks and cries seemed mingled with the wind; And voices, as of warring fiends, prevailed O'er its low mutterings. Morn awoke at last; And with its earliest gleam Count Julio crept Out through his palace gardens. Swollen drops Hung from the curved roofs of the porticoes; His footsteps dashed them from the earth-bowed And from the tangles of the matted grass; [leaves, But over-head the day broke gloriously.

Where once a fountain to the sunlight leaped, A marble naiad, by its weedy bed,

Stood on her pedestal. With hand outstretched
She grasped a hollowed shell, now brimming o'er;
While a green vine that round her arm had crept,
Rose, serpent-like, and in the cha ice dipped
Its curling tendrils. Thither turned his eye
Just as the red uprising of the morn
Flushed the pale statue, and crept brightening down,
Even to its very base. Mantled and prone,
A heap that scarcely seemed a human form,
Crouched in the shadow, and with tottering feet
The old man hurried onward. Motionless,
It stirred not at his footsteps: nearer still [hands
He marked a white face, upward turned, clinched
Locked in the hair that swept its ghastly brow!
Shading his weak eyes from the blinding sun,
Cowering in trembling horror to the earth,
Stil. on he crept; then bending softly down,
Spake in a smothered voice-" Hist, hist, Bianca !"
Oh, mockery! Her ear that he had filled
With curses, woke not to the tones of love; [not
The breast that he had spurned from him, heaved
At his wild anguish. Death had done its work:
The tempest had been merciless as the parent
That drove her forth to meet it; and the flash
Of its red eye more withering than his scorn!
Shunned, both in penitence and guilt; forsaken
By those who only prized her for the beauty
Time and perchance remorse had touch'd with blight;
Drenched with the rain; all breathless with the storm;
Homeless and hopeless-she had crept to him
Once more a suppliant: spurned rudely forth,
Here had lain down despairing, and so perished.

STORM AT TWILIGHT

THE roar of a chafed lion, in his lair Begirt by levelled spears. A sudden flash, Intense, yet wavering, like a beast's fierce eye Searching the darkness. The wild bay of winds Sweeps the burnt plains of heaven, and from afar Linked clouds are riding up like eager horsemen, Javelin in hand. From the north wings of twilight There falls unwonted shadow, and strange gloom Cloisters the unwilling stars. The sky is roofed With tempest, and the moon's cant rays fall through Like light let dimly through the fissured rock Vaulting a cavern. To the horizon The green sea of the forest hath rolled back Its levelled billows, and where mastlike trees

Sway to its bosom, here and there a vine, [aloft
Braced to some pine's bare shaft, clings-rocked
Like a bold mariner. There is no bough
But lifteth its appealing arm to Heaven.
The scudding grass is shivering as it flies,
And herbs and flowers crouch to their mother earth
Like frightened children. "Tis more terrible
When the hoar thunder speaks, and the fleet wind
Stops, like a steed that knows his rider's voice--
For oh the rush that follows is the calm
Of a despairing heart; and as a maniac
Loses his grief in raving, the mad storm,
Weeping hot tears, awakens with a sob
From its blank desolation, and shrieks on!

JULIETTE.

WHERE the rough crags lift, and the sea mews call,
Yet stands Earl Hubert's castle tall:
Close at the base of its western wall

The chafed waves stand at bay;

And the May-rose twined in its banquet hall
Dips to the circling spray.

For the May-rose springs, and the ivy clings,

And the wallflower flaunts in the ruined bower, And the sea-bird foldeth her weary wings Up in the stone-gray tower. Scaling an arch of the postern rude,

A wild vine dips to the ocean's flow; Deep in the niches the blind owls brood,

And the fringing moss hangs low
Where stout Earl Hubert's banner stood
Five hundred years ago!

Out from the castle's western wall
Jutteth a tower round and tall,
And leading up to the parapet
By a winding turret-stair:
Over the sea there looketh yet

A chamber small and square,
Where the faint daylight comes in alone
Through a narrow slit in the solid stone;
And here, old records say,
Earl Hubert bore his wayward child
From courts and gallants gay-
That, guarded by the billows wild,
And cloistered from her lover's arms,
Here might she mourn her wasted charms,
Here weep her youth away.
"One-two!" said the sentinel,

Pacing his rounds by the eastern tower.
Up in the turret a solemn knell

Tolled for the parting hour;
Over the ocean its echo fell-
"One! two!"-like a silver bell

Chiming afar in the sea-nymph's bower.
Shrill and loud was the sea-bird's cry,
The watch-dog bayed as the moon rose high,
The great waves swelled below;
And the measured plash of a dipping oar
Broke softly through their constant roar,
And paused beneath the shade
Flung westward by that turret hoar
Where slept the prisoned maid.

The sentinel paced to and fro

Under the castle parapet, But, in her chamber, Juliette

Heard not the tramp of his clanging foot,
Nor the watchdog baying near—
Only the sound of a low toned lute

Stole to her dreaming ear.

The moon rode up as the night wore on,
Looking down with a blinding glare
Into that chamber still and lone,
Touching the rough-hewn cross of stone

And the prayer-beads glittering there-
The loosened waves of the sleeper's hair,
And the curve of her shoulder, white and bare!
She dreamed! she dreamed! that dreary keep
Melted away in the calm moonbeams;
The deep bell's call and the wave's hoarse sweep
Changed for the lull of a forest deep,

And the pleasant voice of streams.
She seemed to sit by a mossy stone,
To watch the blood-red sun go down
And hang on the verge of the horizon
Like a ruby set in a golden ring;
To hear the wild birds sing
Up in the larch-boughs, loud and sweet,
Over a surf where the soft waves beat
With a sound like a naiad's dancing feet.
For here and there on its winding way

Down by dingle and shady nook,
Under the white thorn's dropping spray
Glittered the thread of a slender brook;
And scarce a roebuck's leap beyond,
Close at the brink of its grassy bound,
She heard her lover's chiding hound,
His bugle's merry play.

Oh! it was sweet again to be

Under the free blue skies!
She turned on her pillow restlessly,

And the tears to her sleeping eyes
Came welling up as the full drops start
With Spring's first smile from a fountain's heart.
Up rose the maid in her dreamy rest,

And flung a robe o'er her shoulders bare, And gathered the threads of her floating hair, Ere with a foot on the turret stair She paused, then onward pressed, As the tones of a soft lute broke again Through the deeper chords of the voiceful main. Steep and rude was the perilous way;

Through loopholes square and small
The night looked into the turret gray,
And over the massive wall

In blocks of light the moonbeams lay;
But the changeful ghosts of the showering spray
And the mirrored play of the waters dim
Rippled and glanced on the ceiling grim.
The moon looked into her sleeping eyes,
The night wind stirred her hair,
And wandering blindly, Juliette,
Close on the verge of the parapet,

Stood without in the open air.
Under the blue arch of the skies,

Save for the pacing sentinel,

Save for the ocean's constant swell, There seemed astir no earthly thing.

Below, the great waves rose and fell, Scaling ever their craggy bound,

But scarce a zephyr's dipping wing Broke the silver crust of the sea beyond: And in her lifelike dream

The maiden now had wandered on

To the brink of the slender stream;
Then pausing, stayed her eager foot,
For with the brook's sweet monotone
Mingled the soft voice of a lute;
And, where the levelled moonbeams played
Over the lap of a turfy glade,

A hound lay sleeping in the shade.
Rocked by the light waves to and fro,
Scarcely an arrow's flight from shore,
Her lover in his bark below

Paused, resting on the oar,
Watching the foam-wreaths bead and fall
Like shattered stars from the castle wall.
And higher yet he raised his eyes-

Jesu! he started with affright! For painted on the dusky skies

Seemed hovering in the tremulous light A figure small and angel white! Against the last lay far and dim, Touched by the moon's uncertain ray, The airy form of the turret grim. Doubtful he gazed a moment's space, Then rowed toward the castle's base,

But checked his oar midway,
And gazing up at the parapet,
Shouted the one word, "Juliette!"
Lute, baying hound, and restless deep,
Each gave the clue bewildered Thought
Had followed through the maze of sleep,
And by her lulled ear faintly caught
Her lover's voice its echo wrought.
She heard him call, she saw him stand,
With smiling lip and beckoning hand;
And closer pressed, and dreaming yet,
From the green border of the stream-
From the o'erhanging parapet

Sprang forward with a scream!
Then once again the deep bell tolled
Up in the turret gray and old,
And, mingled with its lingering knell,
The echoed cry, half won, half lost,
Startled the weary sentinel,

Now slumbering at his post:
Yet, wakened from his dreamful rest,

He deemed the sound some wandering ghost
Haunting the caves of Sleep,

For like a bird upon its nest

The hushed air brooded o'er the deep;

And to his drowsy ear there crept

Only the voice of the choral wavesOnly the drip of the spray that wept, And the ripples that sang through the weedy caves Nor marked he, ere again he slept, The muffled stroke of a hasty oar, A steed's quick tramp along the shore. When morning came, a shallop's keel Grated the edge of the pebbly strand— A maid's small foot and a knight's armed heel Lay traced upon the sand!