Awake, my spirit! nor within me die !
Srike on the key-note of thine agony;

Ring out one anthem more !-one sad farewell!
To love and life! Oh! breathe in it thy knell!
Thy requiem a dagger make each tone,

To pierce false PHAON's heart when I am gone!"
She said; then swept its straining cords-but fleet
As struck, her lute fell shattered at her feet.
She gazed upon it as it quivering lay,

And said " Thus have life, hope, love passed away.”

III.

Upon that melting scene, those glowing skies,
She cast around her sad and swimming eyes,
And to them breathed a silent, long farewell;

For in her earlier years they held a spell
Upon her lute, and she had of them sung

Ere wrong, with ruthless hand her heart had wrung.
Then turning, gazed afar across the sea,

To where young PHAON dwelt,-bright Sicily;
Then her heart swelled-to every woe awake,
And beat the narrow cage it could not break-

"Yes, yes,-inconstant PHAON! thou art there Heedless of SAPPHO's love and lone despair.

9

I see thee in the grove-thy noble form

Move on,—a maiden hanging on thine arm,

And drinking thy sweet words erst breathed to me—
Forsake me, reason-thought-and memory !—
I see thee in the gay Sicilian dance,

Bending upon the fair thy tender glance;

Where diamonds gleam, and dazzling beauty glows;
The song swells high, the sparkling goblet flows;
Joy, laughing, sits enthroned on many a brow;
I see thee by a beauteous maiden now-

Love's fickle vows--thy witching flatteries hear,
As thou dost breathe them in her willing ear.
O misery! why am I thus awake?

Sad heart of mine, oh! wilt thou never break?
There's but one remedy for such deep woe;
A fearful antidote-but be it so!

And must I go ?-from thee no farewell sigh;
No word to soothe my last sharp agony ;

No smile to cheer me in the hour of death ?—
Oh! for some power swift as the lightning's breath,

To catch my dying shriek as I depart,

And ring it as a death-knell in thy heart.

"And yet I would not chide thee, PHAON !-No!

But I would wake thee to a sense of woe,
And all the misery that thou hast wrought,
And why a home beneath the waves I sought

When thou wert far away.

May peace be thine!
The gods preserve thee from a fate like mine!

The quick and fevered pulse, the tears that blind,
The heart's dark void, the canker of the mind;
And if to 'parted spirits power be given,

To leave the high abode they hold in heaven,
Oh, I will guide thy footsteps from all woe,
Thy guardian angel be while lingering here below.

IV.

"PHAON, thou wert the fond reality

Of my youth's cherished dream,--the phantasy
That hath beguiled me from my earliest days,
Luring me on-the theme of all my lays,
The pole-star of my heart on love's soft sea,

The dayspring of my life-my Deity!

That I might win thy heart, and make thee mine

A dream too pure, too heavenly, too divine

For earth!-I've toiled through long and weary years,
In hours I stole from slumber-life's dull cares,
And earned a laurel for my fading brow,
That will not wither like thy fragile vow ;-
Yes, I have swept my lyre through Lesbian isles,
Till it has won from kings their softest smiles;
And royal dames have worshipped where I trod,
As there had been enshrined their favorite god;

The proud have sought my hand,—the high of birth Have knelt to me, as I were not of earth:

But these are nothing, since they fail to move Thy heart, and gain for me thy constant love. This was the die on which I staked my all, And I, alas! have lost, and perish in thy thrall.

V.

"And now, to thee, thou wild and mighty Sea!
Terrific emblem of futurity!

That in thy restless might dost round me roll,
And chafe thyself like my own troubled soul;
Upon whose fickle bosom none can trace,
The pathways of the dead unto their place
Of endless rest; from chilling storms of life,
From my own heart's corroding fires and strife,-
From pangs that have no antidote but death,
I come to seek for peace, thy waves beneath.
Ope now thy breast, and hide for ever there
My fading form-my fondness and despair!"
She said, then drew her snowy vesture close,
And calmly as reclining to repose

At eventide, from that LEUCADIAN height,
Headlong descended to eternal night,

On sea-weed beds to rest in slumbers sweet,

The boundless main her tomb, the waves her winding sheet.

THE FORSAKEN.

IT hath been said-for all who die

There is a tear ;

Some pining, bleeding heart to sigh
O'er every bier :-

But in that hour of pain and dread,
Who will draw near

Around my humble couch and shed
One farewell tear ?

Who watch life's last departing ray
In deep despair,

And soothe my spirit on its way

With holy prayer?

What mourner round my bier will come In weeds of woe,

And follow me to my long home

Solemn and slow ?