Became intelligent with conscious thought,
And somewhat troubled underneath the arch
Of eyebrows but a little too intense
For perfect beauty; how the pose and poise
Of the lithe figure on its tiny foot
Suggested life just ceased from motion; so
That any one might cry, in marveling joy,
"That creature lives, has senses, mind, a soul
To win God's love or dare hell's subtleties!"
The artist paused. The ratifying "Good!"
Trembled upon his lips. He saw no touch
To give or soften. "It is done," he cried,
'My task, my duty! Nothing now on earth
Can taunt me with a work left unfulfilled!"
The lofty flame, which bore him up so long,
Died in the ashes of humanity;

66

And the mere man rocked to and fro again
Upon the center of his wavering heart.
He put aside his palette, as if thus

He stepped from sacred vestments, and assumed

A mortal function in the common world.

A king has held my palette, a grand-duke
Has picked my brush up, and a pope has begged
The favor of my presence in his Rome.

I did not go; I put my fortune by.

I need not ask you why: you knew too well.
It was but natural, it was no way strange,
That I should love you. Everything that saw,
Or had its other senses, loved you, sweet,
And I among them. Martyr, holy saint,
I see the halo curving round your head,
I loved you once; but now I worship you,
For the great deed that held my love aloof,
And killed you in the action! I absolve
Your soul from any taint. For from the day
Of that encounter by the fountain-side
Until this moment, never turned on me
Those tender eyes, unless they did a wrong
To nature by the cold, defiant glare

With which they chilled me. Never heard I

word

Of softness spoken by those gentle lips;

Now for my rights!" he muttered, and ap- Never received a bounty from that hand

proached

The noble body. "O lily of the world!

So withered, yet so lovely! what wast thou

To those who came thus near thee for I stood
Without the pale of thy half-royal rank

Which gave to all the world. I know the cause.
You did your duty, -not for honor's sake,
Nor to save sin or suffering or remorse,
Or all the ghosts that haunt a woman's shame,
But for the sake of that pure, loyal love

When thou wast budding, and the streams of Your husband bore you. Queen, by grace of God, life

Made eager struggles to maintain thy bloom,
And gladdened heaven dropped down in gracious
dews

On its transplanted darling? Hear me now!
I say this but in justice, not in pride,
Not to insult thy high nobility,
But that the poise of things in God's own sight
May be adjusted; and hereafter I

May urge a claim that all the powers of heaven
Shall sanction, and with clarions blow abroad.
Laura, you loved me! Look not so severe,
With your cold brows, and deadly, close-drawn
lips!

You proved it, Countess, when you died for it,
Let it consume you in the wearing strife
It fought with duty in your ravaged heart.
I knew it ever since that summer day

I painted Lila, the pale beggar's child,
At rest beside the fountain; when I felt -
O Heaven!--the warmth and moisture of your
breath

Blow through my hair, as with your eager soul-
Forgetting soul and body go as one
You leaned across my easel till our cheeks —
Ah me! 't was not your purpose-touched, and
clung!

I bow before the luster of your throne!
I kiss the edges of your garment-hem,
And hold myself ennobled! Answer me,
If I had wronged you, you would answer me
Out of the dusty porches of the tomb :-
Is this a dream, a falsehood? or have I
Spoken the very truth?" "The very truth!”
A voice replied; and at his side he saw
A form, half shadow and half substance, stand,
Or, rather, rest; for on the solid earth
It had no footing, more than some dense mist
That wavers o'er the surface of the ground
It scarcely touches. With a reverent look
The shadow's waste and wretched face was bent
Above the picture; as though greater awe
Subdued its awful being, and appalled,
With memories of terrible delight
And fearful wonder, its devouring gaze.
"You make what God makes,

the shape.

beauty,” said

"And might not this, this second Eve, console
The emptiest heart? Will not this thing outlast
The fairest creature fashioned in the flesh ?
Before that figure, Time, and Death him clf,
Stand baffled and disarmed. What would you ask
More than God's power, from nothing to create?"
The artist gazed upon the boding form,

Well, grant 't was genius; and is genius naught? And answered: "Goblin, if you had a heart,

I ween it wears as proud a diadem

That were an idle question. What to me
Is my creative power, bereft of love?

Or what to God would be that selfsame power,

If so bereaved ?"

mourned,

You calmly forfeited.

"And yet the love, thus

For had you said

To living Laura - in her burning ears —
One half that you professed to Laura dead,
She would have been your own. These contraries
Sort not with my intelligence.
But speak,

Were Laura living, would the same stale play
Of raging passion tearing out its heart
Upon the rock of duty be performed?”
"The same, O phantom, while the heart I bear
Trembled, but turned not its magnetic faith
From God's fixed center." "If I wake for you
This Laura, give her all the bloom and glow
Of that midsummer day you hold so dear,
The smile, the motion, the impulsive soul,
The love of genius, yea, the very love,
The mortal, hungry, passionate, hot love,
She bore you, flesh to flesh, - would you receive
That gift, in all its glory, at my hands?"
A smile of malice curled the tempter's lips,
And glittered in the caverns of his eyes,
Mocking the answer. Carlo paled and shook ;
A woful spasm went shuddering through his frame,
Curdling his blood, and twisting his fair face
With nameless torture. But he cried aloud,
Out of the clouds of anguish, from the smoke
Of very martyrdom, "O God, she is thine!
Dɔ with her at thy pleasure!" Something grand,
And radiant as a sunbeam, touched the head
He bent in awful sorrow. "Mortal, see-
"Dare not! As Christ was sinless, I abjure
These vile abominations! Shall she bear
Life's burden twice, and life's temptations twice,
While God is justice?" "Who has made you
judge

Of what you call God's good, and what you think
God's evil? One to him, the source of both,
The God of good and of permitted ill.

Your mystic person nor your dreadful power.
Nor shall I now invoke God's potent name
For my deliverance from your toils. I stand
Upon the founded structure of his law,
Established from the first, and thence defy
Your arts, reposing all my trust in that!"
The darkness eddied off; and Carlo saw
The figure gathering, as from outer space,
Brightness on brightness; and his former shape
Fell from him, like the ashes that fall off,
And show a core of mellow fire within.
Adown his wings there poured a lambent flood,
That seemed as molten gold, which plashing fell
Upon the floor, enringing him with flame;
And o'er the tresses of his beaming head
Arose a stream of many-colored light,
Like that which crowns the morning. Carlo stood
Steadfast, for all the splendor, reaching up
The outstretched palms of his untainted soul
Towards heaven for strength. A moment thus ;
then asked,

With reverential wonder quivering through
His sinking voice, "Who, spirit, and what, art
thou?"

"I am that blessing which men fly from, -Death."
"Then take my hand, if so God orders it ;
For Laura waits me." "But, bethink thee, man,
What the world loses in the loss of thee!
What wondrous art will suffer with eclipse!
What unwon glories are in store for thee!
What fame, outreaching time and temporal shocks,
Would shine upon the letters of thy name
Graven in marble, or the brazen height
Of columns wise with memories of thee!"
"Take me! If I outlived the Patriarchs,
I could but paint those features o'er and o'er :
Lo! that is done." A smile of pity lit

The seraph's features, as he looked to heaven,
With deep inquiry in his tender eyes.

The mandate came. He touched with downy wing

Have you no dream of days that might have been, The sufferer lightly on his aching heart;

Had you and Laura filled another fate?-
Some cottage on the sloping Apennines,
Roses and lilies, and the rest all love?

I tell you that this tranquil dream may be
Filled to repletion. Speak, and in the shade
Of my dark pinions I shall bear you hence,
And land you where the mountain-goat himself
Struggles for footing." He outspread his wings,
And all the chapel darkened, as though hell
Had swallowed up the tapers; and the air
Grew thick, and, like a current sensible,
Flowed round the person, with a wash and dash,
As of the waters of a nether sea.
Slowly and calmly through the dense obscure,
Dove-like and gentle, rose the artist's voice:
"I dare not bring her spirit to that shame!
Know my full meaning, I who neither fear

And gently, as the skylark settles down
Upon the clustered treasures of her nest,
So Carlo softly slid along the prop
Of his tall easel, nestling at the foot
As though he slumbered; and the morning broke
In silver whiteness over Padua.

GEORGE HENRY BOKER.

THE DREAM OF CLARENCE.

FROM "KING RICHARD III."

SCENE, a room in the Tower. Enter CLARENCE and BRAKENBURY.

BRAKENBURY. Why looks your grace so heavily to-day?

CLARENCE. O, I have passed a miserable night,

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days;
So full of dismal terror was the time.
BRAK. What was your dream, my lord? I pray Environed me, and howlèd in mine ears
you, tell me.

"Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured
Clarence,

That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury;
Seize on him, Furies, take him to your torments!"
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends

Such hideous cries, that with the very noise

CLAR. Methought that I had broken from the I trembling waked, aud, for a season after,

Tower,

And was embarked to cross to Burgundy;
And in my company, my brother Gloster,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward Eng

land,

And cited up a thousand heavy times,
During the wars of York and Lancaster,
That had befallen us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloster stumbled; and, in fall-
ing,

Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard,
Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O heaven! methought what pain it was to drown!
What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!
Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks;
A thousand men, that fishes gnawed upon;
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea.

Some lay in dead men's skulls; and in those holes
Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept
(As 't were in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,
That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep,
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.
BRAK. Had you such leisure in the time of
death

To gaze upon these secrets of the deep?
CLAR. Methought I had : and often did I strive
To yield the ghost: but still the envious flood
Kept in my soul, and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast, and wandering air;
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to beleh it in the sea.

BRAK. Awaked you not with this sore agony?
CLAR. O, no, my dream was lengthened after
life,

O, then began the tempest to my soul!
I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that grim ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul,
Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick,
Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?"
And so he vanished: then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood; and he shrieked out aloud,

Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream.

SHAKESPEARE

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.

'T WAS in the prime of summer time,
An evening calm and cool,
And four-and-twenty happy boys

Came bounding out of school;
There were some that ran, and some that leapt
Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds
And souls untouched by sin;

To a level mead they came, and there
They drave the wickets in:
Pleasantly shone the setting sun
Over the town of Lynn.

Like sportive deer they coursed about,
And shouted as they ran,
Turning to mirth all things of earth
As only boyhood can;

But the usher sat remote from all,
A melancholy man !

His hat was off, his vest apart,

To catch heaven's blessed breeze;

For a burning thought was in his brow,
And his bosom ill at ease;

So he leaned his head on his hands, and read
The book between his knees.

Leaf after leaf he turned it o'er,
Nor ever glanced aside,
For the peace of his soul he read that book
In the golden eventide;

Much study had made him very lean,

And pale, and leaden-eyed.

At last he shut the ponderous tome;
With a fast and fervent grasp
He strained the dusky covers close,
And fixed the brazen hasp:
"O God! could I so close my mind,
And clasp it with a clasp!"

Then leaping on his feet upright,
Some moody turns he took, —