Well sleep the dead: in holy ground

Well sleeps the Heart of iron:
The worm that pares his sister's cheek,
What cares it for Byron?

Yet when her night of death comes round,
They ride and drive together,
And ever when they drive and ride,
Wilful is the weather.

On mighty wings, in spectre coach,
Fast speeds the Heart of iron;
On spectre-steed, the spectre-dame-
Side by side with Byron.

The winds they blow rain, sleet, and snow
To welcome Devil Byron ;

Through sleet and snow the hail doth go,
Ripp'd-like shot of iron.

A star? 'Tis gone. The moon? How fast
She hurries through wild weather!
The coach and steed chase moon and star,
Lost and seen together.

"Halloo!"-The slain hath left his grave!

He knows thee, Heart of iron ! And with a laugh that daft's hellfire, Hails thy sister, Byron !

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,

Oh, ye,

who wrongs inherit !

"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.