Which is most sad of saddest things.
The laughter? or the weeping?

Laughs Chaworth, while her Feast of Sighs
Love-in-Death is keeping?

Thou ghastly thing! thou mockery
Of life, and human doings!

With flame-like eyes, on shadows fix'd!
Shadows which are ruins!

Thou see'st but sadness in her smile,

And pity in her sadness,

And in her slander'd innocence

Pain, that once was gladness.

And can'st thou-while Night groans-do less
Than weep for injured woman?
Man! is thy manhood manliness?
Is she not a woman?

Oh, Night doth love her! oh, the clouds
They do her form environ !

The lightning weeps-it hears her sob,

"Speak to me, Lord Byron!"

On winds, on clouds, they ride, they driveOh, hark, thou Heart of iron!

The thunder whispers mournfully,

"Speak to her, Lord Byron!"

My God! thy judgments dreadful are When thought its vengeance wreaketh, And mute reproach is agony :

Now, thy thunder speaketh!

He doth not speak! he cannot speak ;
Then, break, thou Heart of iron!
It cannot break! it cannot break!
I can weep for Byron.

The uttered word is oft a sin,

Its stain oft everlasting ;

But, oh, that saddest unsaid word;
Its dumb guilt is blasting!

Eternity, the ever young,

Hath, with fix'd hand, recorded The speechless deed unspeakable; Ne'er to be unworded!

Oh, write it, then, " in weeping blood,"
Ye purified and thwarted!
Oh, House of Brokenheartedness!
Spare the broken-hearted.

Tell not the fallen that they fell,

The foil'd that there are winners,

If He, whose name is Purity,

Died, to ransom sinners.

No, spare the wronger and the wrong'd, who wrongs inherit !

Oh, ye,

"A wounded spirit who can bear?" Soothe, the erring spirit!

He, earning least, and taking most,
May love the wrong in blindness,
Not needing less, but all the more,
Pity, help, and kindness.

THE GIPSY.

AN OLD LEGEND MODERNIZED.

JOHN FOWLER, I owe you a tale or a song,
I've remain'd, I confess it, your debtor too long;

So, painting in verse and rude Saxon a scene
Where oft with the bard of the rabble you've been,

I daub on the landscape a figure or two,

Not portraits from life, but ideally true,
And humbly inscribe the poor picture to you.

I.

Said horse-swapping Jem, with his hat on his lap,
While his bull-bitch sat listening near,

"Was ever yet seen by a Stannington-Chap *
A contrast like this I see here?

With Susan, my cousin, just four feet by two,
Here's a gipsy as tall as a stee: +

I guess, she is telling my fortune to Sue;
And, I guess, we know what it will be."

II.

With his legs on the turf, o'er his hat and his knees,
Behind the bare brambles he bent,

While Rivilin sang to the palm-waving breeze,‡
A sweet ancient song about new-budded trees,
As townward together the stream and the breeze
Through regions of loveliness went ;

And he gazed, squatting low in the old birken wood, §

#

Stannington is a village near Sheffield.

+ Stee is the Yorkshire name for ladder.

Rivilin is one of the rivers of Hallamshire, near Sheffield, where the blossoms of the willow are called palms.

§ The venerable wood here alluded to was destroyed in the year 1837, to win a bit of wretched land, at twice the cost of its value. One of its old trees bore an uncouth likeness to three snakes twisted together, with their heads on the ground, and their tails in the air. With more pain than pleasure, I saw, about a year ago, in the Stove of the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, fragments of this tree.

On the marble-fac'd prophetess brown,

Whose eyes flash'd black venom where stately she

stood,

In her grey cloak and long sallow gown ;

With her slightly arch'd nose, her smooth brow finely spread,

Her chin sharply chisel'd, and bold

Under lips of firm beauty, her face and her head
Formed an oval of darkness and gold.

Her hair was like horsehair, when glossy it lies

On the strong stallion's neck, where the fledged linnet

flies;

And her black felted hat, suiting well with her size, Was a crown on the head of a queen;

But 'twas strange! when he look'd on her face and

wild eyes,

Her eyes only seem'd to be seen.

III.

"What faults," said the giantess, lifting her brow

While a smile lit her loveliness grim,

"What faults hath John Mathews, thy husband, that thou

Would'st swap him for horse-swapping Jem?"

* For a chapter on gipsies, see William Howitt's Rural Life in England, which has furnished me with some particulars of this description.