MELPOMENE.

In my meditations on the genius and poetry of LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON, I have always associated her with Melpomene, one of the nine Muses, the presiding goddess of sorrow; and hence I have placed the following stanzas to the memory of L. E. L. under that title.

He has outsoared the shadow of the night,
Envy, and calumny, and hate, and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight
Can touch him not, and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold

ADONAIS.

I.

THOU wert not made for happiness on earth,

Thy spirit nature had too finely strung

With feelings that were of ethereal birth,
To brook the woes that fate around thee flung;
Falsehood and scorn too bitterly had stung
Thy tender heart in its first vernal bloom;
The mists of sorrow like a mildew clung
Around its bud, o'ershadowing it in gloom,

And sad its moans as sighs that whisper from the tomb.

II.

HIGH-GIFTED Woman! gloomy, mournful thing!
Brief was thy voyage on life's stormy sea,

And rough, and dark, and fraught with suffering;
Station and wealth were not awarded thee,
To save thee from the withering calumny
And cavil of those gossips who care nought
How
pure the heart, or great the merit be

Of helpless victims whose fair names they blot:
Of Genius, thine was but, alas, the common lot.

III.

THY youth, thy innocence, dependent state,1 Thy high aspiring mind, unbounded praise, Did point thee out a fitting mark for Hate And Envy's poisoned arrows: He who lays His course in life's high walks, and tries to raise Himself in being's scale, must bear the sting And scoff of those who plod in narrow ways— They are the brood doomed near the earth to cling, And in despite would clip the soaring eagle's wing.

IV.

SORROW appeareth in full many a shape,2

And none are skilled to tell the whence or why Such tears are shed-such moans the heart escape; They may arise alone from sympathy—

Some secret, sudden blow of cruelty,

Or wrong, or guilt it may be doth compel
Her wailing victim from his home to fly,

And strive amid the camp, or ocean's swell,
Or in the sparkling bowl his miseries to quell.

V.

SOME seek from grief in tears a partial rest,
In songs, in sighs to give the heart repose;
While others hide the viper in their breast,
In silence bear the bosom's rankling throes.
The lofty soul once stung will shun its foes,
Recoil within its cell-on its own breath

There feed, and brood above its hoarded woes,
Till, like the fire-girt scorpion in its scath,

Writhing it fiercely turns and stings itself to death.

VI.

THOU wert one of that pining race who seem
Doomed to drink immeasurable wo;

Whose lot is here to toil, and sing, and dream,
Scourged by the lash of wrong, and many a foe,
That should, alas! their better being know;
Whose food is wormwood, and whose tears are gall,
Along whose paths doth deadly nightshade grow;
Who find no peace till death in mercy call,
And the grave frees the spirit from its bitter thrall.

VII.

POOR unprotected wanderers they come
Upon the earth, and raise their plaintive cries,
Their wail, their yearnings for a purer home,
E'en as a bird caged from its native skies;
Men view their haggard brows, their agonies,
And deem them mad, or wrecks of infamy,
And lend their breath to swell vile calumnies,
To stab the writhing soul whose fame shall be
A glory and a song throughout eternity.

VIII.

АH! hard the fate that life on such bestows,
Their wrongs an angel's tongue would fail to tell;
Some have gone mad, and fled their earthly foes,
And sought a home afar in desert dell;

Some breathed out life within a prison's cell,

Some, too, have cut it short in its full prime—

Death the sole stroke their agonies could quell;

And some through tears have lit with thought sublime Their own funereal pyre to gild the night of time.

IX.

BRAVE Ghibelline !3 thou of the sword and lyre!
Whose noble deeds proud Florence did repay
With wrong, and scorn, and unrelenting ire;
Compelled thee her stern mandates to obey,
But could not chain thy spirit to its clay,
Or quell its fire, which dissipates the gloom
Of slander, hate, and envy, and decay,

The long oblivion of the cold, dark tomb,

And twines thy brow with wreaths of an immortal bloom.