become one of her greatest sons. Religion rejoices serenely, with joy unspeakable, in the final escape of Vincent de Paul. Exposed in the public square of Tunis to the inspection of the trafficers in human flesh, this illustrous Frenchman was subjected to every vileness of treatment; like a horse, compelled to open his mouth, to show his teeth, to trot, to run, to exhibit his strength in lifting burthens, and then, like a horse, legally sold in market overt. Passing from master to master, after a protracted servitude, he achieved his freedom, and regaining France, commenced that resplendent career of charity by which he is placed among the great names of Christendom. Princes and orators have lavished panegyrics upon this fugitive slave; and the Catholic Church, in homage to his extraordinary virtues, has introduced him into the company of saints.
The dark jaguar was abroad in the land;
His strength and his fierceness what foe could withstand?
The breath of his anger was hot in the air,
And the white lamb of Peace he had dragged to his lair.
Then up rose the Farmer; he summoned his sons :
"Now saddle your horses, now look to your guns!"
And he called to his hound, as he sprang from the ground
To the back of his black-pawing steed with a bound.
Oh, their hearts, at the word, how they tingled and stirred!
They followed, all belted and booted and spurred.
"Buckle tight, boys!" said he, "for who gallops with me,
Such a hunt as was never before he shall see!
This traitor, we know him! for when he was younger,
We flattered him, patted him, fed his fierce hunger;
But now far too long we have borne with the wrong,
For each morsel we tossed makes him savage and strong."
Then said one, "He must die!
"He must die!" And they took up the cry. "For this last crime of his he must die! he must die!" But the slow eldest-born sauntered sad and forlorn, For his heart was at home on that fair hunting-morn.
"I remember," he said, "how this fine cub we track
Has carried me many a time on his back!”
And he called to his brothers, "Fight gently! be kind!"
And he kept the dread hound, Retribution, behind.
The dark jaguar on a bough in the brake
Crouched, silent and wily, as lithe as a snake:
They spied not their game, but, as onward they came,
Through the dense leafage gleamed two red eyeballs of flame.
Black-spotted, and mottled, and whiskered, and grim,
White-bellied, and yellow, he lay on the limb,
All so still that you saw but just one tawny paw
Lightly reach through the leaves and as softly withdraw.
Then shrilled his fierce cry, as the riders drew nigh,
And he shot from the bough like a bolt from the sky:
In the foremost he fastened his fangs as he fell,
While all the black jungle reëchoed his yell.
Oh, then there was carnage by field and by flood!
The green sod was crimsoned, the rivers ran blood,
The cornfields were trampled, and all in their track
The beautiful valley lay blasted and black.
Now the din of the conflict swells deadly and loud,
And the dust of the tumult rolls up like a cloud:
Then afar down the slope of the Southland recedes
The wild rapid clatter of galloping steeds.
With wide nostrils smoking, and flanks dripping gore,
The black stallion bore his bold rider before,
As onward they thundered through forest and glen,
A-hunting the dark jaguar to his den.
In April, sweet April, the chase was begun;
It was April again, when the hunting was done:
The snows of four winters and four summers green,
Lay red-streaked and trodden and blighted between.
Then the monster stretched all his grim length on the ground;
His life-blood was wasting from many a wound;
Ferocious and gray and snarling he lay,
Amid heaps of the whitening bones of his prey.
Then up spoke the slow eldest son, and he said,
"All he needs now is just to be fostered and fed!
Give over the strife! Brothers put up the knife!
We will tame him, reclaim him, but take not his life!"
But the farmer flung back the false words in his face;
"He is none of my race, who gives counsel so base!
Now let loose the hound!" And the hound was unbound,
And like lightning the heart of the traitor he found.
"So rapine and treason forever shall cease!"
And they washed the stained fleece of the pale lamb of Peace;
When lo! a strong angel stands winged and white
In a wonderful raiment of ravishing light!
Peace is raised from the dead! In the radiance shed
By the halo of glory that shines round her head,
Fair gardens shall bloom where the black jungle grew,
And all the glad valley shall blossom anew!
In the deepest depth of midnight, while the sad and solemn swell
Still was floating, faintly echoed from the forest chapel bell.
Faintly, falteringly floating o'er the sable waves of air
That were thro' the midnight rolling, chafed and billowy with the tolling-
In my chamber I lay dreaming, by the fire-light's fitful gleaming,
And my dreams were dreams foreshadowed on a heart foredoomed to care.
As the last, long, lingering echo of the midnight's mystic chime,
Lifting through the sable billows of the thither shore of Time-
Leaving on the startless silence not a token nor a trace-
In a quivering sigh departed; from my couch in fear I started;
Started to my feet in terror, for my dream's phantasmal error
Painted in the fitful fire a frightful, fiendish flaming face!
On the red hearth's reddest center, from a blazing knot of oak,
Seemed to gibe and grin this phantom when in terror I awoke,
And my slumberous eyelids straining, as I staggered to the floor.
Still in that dread vision seeming, turned my gaze toward the gleaming
Hearth, and there!-oh, God! I saw it; and from its flaming jaw it
Spat a ceaseless, seething, hissing, bubbling, gurgling stream of gore!
Speechless, struck with stony silence, frozen to the floor I stood,
Till methought my brain was hissing with that hissing, bubbling blood;
Till I felt my life-stream oozing from those lambent lips;
Till the demon seemed to name me-then a wondrous calm came o'er me;
And my brow grew cold and dewy, with a death damp stiff and gluey ;
And I fell back on my pillow, in apparent soul eclipse.
Then as in death's seeming shadow, in the icy fall of fear
I lay, stricken, came a hoarse and hideous murmur to my ear;
Came a murmer like the murmur of assassins in their sleep-
Muttering, "Higher! higher! higher! I am demon of the Fire!
I am Arch-Fiend of the Fire, and each blazing roof's my pyre,
And my sweetest incense is the blood and tears my victims weep!
"How I revel on the prairie! how I roar among the pines!
How I laugh when from the village o'er the snow the red flame shines,
And I hear the shrieks of terror, with a life in every breath !
How I scream with lambent laughter, as I hurl each crackling rafter
Down the fell abyss of fire-until higher! higher! higher!
Leap the high priests of my altar, in their merry dance of death!
"I am Monarch of the Fire! I am Vassal King of Death!
World enriching, with the shadow of its doom upon my breath!
With the symbol of Hereafter flaming from my fatal face!
I command the Eternal Fire! Higher! higher! higher! higher!
Leap my ministering demons, like phantasamagoric lemans
Hugging Universal Nature in their hideous embrace!"
Then a sombre silence shut me in a solemn, shrouding sleep,
And I slumbered like an infant in the "cradle of the deep,"
Till the belfry in the forest quivered with the matin stroke,
And the martins, from the edges of the lichen-lidded lodges,
Shimmered through the russet arches, where the light in torn files marches Like a routed army struggling through the serried ranks of oak.
Thro' my ivy-fretted casements, filtered in a tremulous note,
From the tall and stately linden, where the robin swelled his throat-
Querulous quaker-breasted robin, calling quaintly for his mate!
Then I started up unbidden from my slumber, night-mare ridden,
With the memory of that dire demon in my central fire,
On my eye's interior mirror like the shadow of a fate!
Ah! the fiendish fire had smouldered to a white and formless heap,
And no knot of oak was flaming as it flamed upon my sleep;
But around its very center, where the demon face had shone,
Forked shadows seemed to linger, pointing, as with spectral finger,
To a Bible, massive, golden, on a table carved and olden:
And I bowed and said, "All power is of God-of God alone!"
"Amo, Amare, Amavi, Amatum.”
Dear girls, never marry for knowledge,
(Though that, of course, should form a part,)
For often the head, while at college,
Gets wise at the cost of the heart.
Let me tell you a fact that is real
I once had a beau in my youth,
My brightest and best "beau ideal'
Of manliness, goodness, and truth.
O, he talked of the Greeks and the Romans,
Of Normans, and Saxons, and Celt;
And he quoted from Virgil and Homer,
And Plato, and-somebody else.
And he told his deathless affection,
By means of a thousand strange herbs,
With numberless words in connection,
Derived from the roots-of Greek verbs.
|