Few words they speak, nor dare to slack Their pace

from mile to mile, Till they have crossed the quaking marsh,

And reached the lonely Isle.

The sun above the pine-trees showed

A bright and cheerful face; And Ina looked for her abode,

The promised hiding-place; She sought in vain, the Woodman smiled;

No threshold could be seen, Nor roof, nor window ;--all seemed wild

As it had ever been.

Advancing, you might guess an hour,

The front with such nice care
Is masked, 'if house it be or bower,'

But in they entered are;
As shaggy as were wall and roof

With branches intertwined,
So sinooth was all within, air-proof,

And delicately lined:

And hearth was there, and maple dish,

And cups in seemly rows,
And couch—all ready to a wish

For nurture or repose;
And Heaven doth to her virtue grant

That here she may abide
In solitude, with every want

By cautious love supplied.

a

:

No queen, before a shouting crowd,

Led on in bridal state,
E’er struggled with a heart so proud,

Entering her palace gate:
Rejoiced to bid the world farewell,

No saintly anchoress
E'er took possession of her cell

With deeper thankfulness.

" Father of all, upon thy care And

mercy am I thrown; Be thou my safeguard !”—such her prayer

When she was left alone,
Kneeling amid the wilderness

When joy had passed away,
And smiles, fond efforts of distress

To hide what they betray!

The prayer is heard, the Saints have seen,

Diffused through form and face,
Resolves devotedly serene;

That monumental grace
Of Faith, which doth all passions tame

That Reason should control;
And shows in the untrembling frame

A statue of the soul.

PART III.

'Tis sung in ancient minstrelsy

That Phoebus wont to wear
The leaves of any pleasant tree

Around his golden hair ;
Till Daphne, desperate with pursuit

Of his imperious love,
At her own prayer transformed, took root,

A laurel in the grove.

Then did the Penitent adorn

His brow with laurel green;
And ’mid his bright locks never shorn

No meaner leaf was seen;
And poets sage, through every age,

About their temples wound
The bay; and conquerors thanked the Gods,

With laurel chaplets crowned.

Into the mists of fabling Time

So far runs back the praise
Of Beauty, that disdains to climb

Along forbidden ways;
That scorns temptation; power defies

Where mutual love is not;
And to the tomb for rescue flies

When life would be a blot.

To this fair Votaress, a fate

More mild doth Heaven ordain
Upon her Island desolate;

And words, not breathed in vain,
Might tell what intercourse she found,

Her silence to endear;
What birds she tamed, what flowers the ground

Sent forth ber peace to cheer.

To one mute Presence, above all,

Her soothed affections clung,
A picture on the cabin wall

By Russian usage hung-
The Mother-maid, whose countenance bright

With love abridged the day;
And, communed with by taper light,

Chased spectral fears away.

And oft, as either Guardian came,

The joy in that retreat
Might any common friendship shame,

So high their hearts would beat;
And to the lone Recluse, whate'er

They brought, each visiting
Was like the crowding of the year

With a new burst of spring.

But, when she of her Parents thought,

The pang was hard to bear;
And, if with all things not enwrought.

That trouble still is near.

Before her flight she had not dared

Their constancy to prove,
Too much the heroic Daughter feared

The weakness of their love.

Dark is the past to them, and dark

The future still must be,
Till pitying Saints conduct her bark

Into a safer sea-
Or gentle Nature close her eyes,

And set her Spirit free
From the altar of this sacrifice,

In vestal purity.

Yet, when above the forest-glooms

The white swans southward passed,
High as the pitch of their swift pluines

Her fancy rode the blast;
And bore her toward the fieids of France

Her Father's native land,
To mingle in the rustic dance,

The happiest of the band !

Of those beloved fields she oft

Had heard her Father tell
In phrase that now with echoes soft

Haunted her lonely cell ;
She saw the hereditary bowers,

She heard the ancestral stream;
The Kremlin and its haughty towers

Forgotten like a dream!

VOL. IV.

BB