.IV.

Is her heart quite withered and sere?
Are the pledges forgotten yet
That, with flashing face,

In a secret place,

She breathed in my tingling ear,
In the morning of the year,

When after long parting we met
By the sea on the shadowy lawn,

And talked till the sunset faded to jet, And the moon and stars made a dawn?

V.

As she lies in her wifely place,

With the wings of her white soul furled,
Do the red lips pressed

To her husband's breast

Grow scorched with the hot disgrace
Of the kisses I placed on her face,

When the mists of the night upcurled
From the ocean that night of June,

And made a glamour wherein the world Seemed close to the stars and moon?

VI.

By this ringlet of yellow hair,

Still full of the light forlorn
Of that parting spot,
Has she quite forgot

The passionate love she bare,

And the hope she promised to share,

When the ringlet of gold was shorn,

And the flowers felt the sun on the soil,

And the fire-fly stars went out i' the morn, And I hurried back to my toil?

VII.

I could crush it under my heel!
Hath she forgotten the clear
Vision of fame

That died when her shame

Made my thick blood curdle and reel ?

Hath she a heart to feel?—

False to her vows in a year,

False and hollow as hell,

False to the voice that warned in her ear,

And false to her face as well!

VIII.

This curl that she gave to me

Fell over her brow of snow:
So 'twas near the bright
Spiritual light

That burned in the brain;-and see!
I am kissing it tenderly!

She is asking for mercy, I know;

So I kiss it again and again,

For I know some charm makes the kisses glow Like fire through the woman's brain.

IX.

She cannot choose but atone !

She must sin (by this curl that has gleamed
On her brow!) in thought

Against him who bought

The heart already mine own,

And left me weeping alone.

'Tis a charm, and my loss is redeemed!

And the sin 'gainst her lord will be

To remember how close to the stars we seemed

That night in the mists by the sea.

X.

She will look in her husband's face,
She will kiss him on the cheek;
She will kiss, she will smile,
And all the while,

In thought no other may trace,

She'll be back in that perfumed place,

Hearing the words that I speak,

With a heart too happy to grieve,

While the sunset dies with a purple streak

'Neath the whitening star of eve.

ΧΙ.

And the voice of the waves will bar
All harsher sounds from her ears.
She'll be under the moon
Of that night of June,

And the motions of moon and star

Will trouble her from afar;

And then, when the silver spheres

Fade fitfully each in its place,

And the red dawn breaks, she will wake in tears,

And shriek at her husband's face!

XII.

And in time, when again and again
I have kissed the magical gold,
The man's gross eyes

Will be open and wise,

And his heart will be feverish pain,
And a doubt will arise in his brain;

And ere she is grown very old

He will know what she knows and knew,

And will see the strange light of that night in her cold Face, and despise her too!

XIII.

Then perchance in her yearning she may

Be bewildered and brought to shame,

By a new delight,

So like that night

With its mimical glamour of day,
That she cannot shake it away;

And following it she will roam

To the darkness whence it came,

While the man blushes red in his darkened home When the children utter her name.

XIV.

See! my passionate lips are warm

On the curl, in a cruel bliss,-
In day or mirk

The charm would work,

While she dreams of that night, till her form

Was caught in the eddies of storm;

There's a devil impels me to kiss,

And my blood boils to and fro;

She asks for mercy! Shall mercy like this

Be given her? No, no, no!

XV.

With the world, as it ebbs and flows,

My harsher heart is in tune;

Let the memory

Of her beauty be

Furled in a soft repose

Round my heart, like the leaves of a rose!

The faith which has faded too soon

I am tearing up by the root;

For the curl, still bright with that night of June

Lo, I trample it under foot.

WILLIAMS BUCHANAN.

496]

Empress Giulia's Abdication.

IT is gala-night for the Royal Eblana Opera House, which noble temple of the lyrical drama, as the world well knows, rises within a furlong or so of the Liffey. It is likely that these geographical impressions may be but of an imperfect character, for they are gathered through the little bull's-eye of a black condemned cell on wheels, in which I have been immursed, an innocent victim, and conscious of no offence in the world. Why this place of confinement should have been drawn up to receive its prisoner, with its back to the pavement, and its horse projecting into the street and obstructing the thoroughfare, seems a profound mystery, beyond its being in the mere fitness of things in reference to such institutions. Suffice it to say, they do not follow the eternal law of cabs, nor impart the equable motion of those vehicles. The heart sinks as I see this dark chamber of horror-this square locomotive packing-case-leaning over on to the pavement yawning for its prey; and when a careless bystander points and intimates that the present function of this mysterious engine is to convey me incontinently to the Royal Eblana Opera, I make no protest, but enter mechanically, and have the cell-door savagely shut upon me by the cruel gaoler who drives.

The sensation must be akin to what the notorious Lemuel Gulliver experienced when shut up in one of the Brobdingnag's little caskets, and dropped into the sea by an incautious member of that gigantic tribe; save that, in working out my term of imprisonment, there is superadded a rocking, churning motion, owing to a nice balance and adjustment upon the fine line of an axle. Suddenly churning is suspended with an abrupt jolt, which sets the cell quivering and dancing, and with the first shock flings the prisoner with force against the bars of his cage. A peculiar crunching sound indicates that mischief has been done-possibly a hat has been flattened. From the oubliette I can see through the night that in front there is a snake-like tail of spectre cells (trunks upon wheels), and that we have fallen "into line."

A very pretty temple of the drama this Royal Eblana Opera House, with its ribbons of galleries running round-its pale and delicate pinks and sea-greens-its sugary cupids and boys gambolling together over the panels-its gold pillars and crimson-velvet linings. The filtered and selecter aristocracy sit together in the common pasturage of a balcon, after the French manner, not in the rigid seclusion of the secret cell or box; and a cluster of choice Irish flowers, freshly pulled, with the bloom on, whose leaves and crimson petals shift and rustle with every turn, seem a perfect horse-shoe bed in a dainty garden, or one of the gaudy rings in a Roman bouquet.

Below, in the centre, is the unpicturesque miscellany of the pitpoetically named parterre, but which is in truth but a bed of shabby

weeds. To-night they have been sown very thickly, even to choking and stifling each other. Upwards overhead stretch away other horse-shoe flower-beds stocked with but a dingy growth, until it reaches the rank and luxuriant vegetation of the galleries: a packed and steaming miscellany; a compressed Olympus; a dense bank of indistinct faces; a sweltering and animated marsh of humanity.

And looking upwards to the realms of mythology, where reign the unclean immortals of our planet, and measuring the thickly-sown hanging-gardens which intervene, down to the huge bed of black flowers in the middle, and the dainty flower-bank, in which I personally am no more than a black stalk and foil to those pink and white camelias of flesh and blood, and Opera-cloak rhododendrons, it occurs to me that the aim and purpose of to-night's work will be tumultuously celebrated.

As fresh flowers drop in about me, being "put down" by the official gardener in this or that vacant spot, I begin to think over this purpose and business of the night. There is to be a jubilee and a funeral service; a greeting and a farewell; a triumph and yet a decadence; a coronation and yet an abdication. The pretty conceit of the swan that sings, and dies as it sings, shall be played out to-night allegorically; and a famous Giulia, who has sung her way round and round the world, shall sing to-night for the last time, and then sing no more.

Zamiel-like posters, printed by the Brobdingnags, have been flaming out this dismal valediction from appropriate dead walls for weeks back. Monstrous vermilion letters have proclaimed to the eye that an empress of the Opera will lay down her crown, and descend the throne. True, the scoffer's voice has been heard,-laughing a scornful disbelief, talking of previous leave-takings and previous sham abdications. But here is to be a genuine leave-taking, irrevocable as conventual last vows; and lest that faith and longanimity should hereafter falter, it is whispered that some vile (superfluous perhaps) mundane securities have been found taking the shape of bond and penalty, and pecuniary pound of flesh to be exacted rigorously. The cruel Impressario Shylock and Farmer-General of voices has suspicion of how weak and frail is woman's resolution, when pressed by remonstrance and supplication. No; La Diva will sing her last twirl and cadence on this very night, and Norma the priestess cut vervain for the last time.

The Drama is being invented in a pretty Grecian valley by persons with lyres and Thespian wagons and scarlet draperies, all on a gaudy dropscene floating before me; but behind this Inventing of the Drama I know that Empress Giulia is now in some dingy dressing-room, in the thick of the theatrical squalor that hangs upon such places, getting on her royal robes for the last time. I suspect Empress Giulia is at this moment very dismal and heavy of heart, as she fits on her tinsel and finery and gewgaws. I wonder is her mind straying back across the gulf of some thirty years or thereabouts, dotted with legions of nights of rapture, of sovereignty, of whirlwind and intoxicating applause, to that night of