Hark! I hear music on the zephyr's wing-
Louder it floats along the unruffled sky;
Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string –
Now faint in distant air the murmurs die.
Awhile it stills the tide of agony;

Now

now it loftier swells-again stern woe Arises with the awakening melody;

Again fierce torments, such as demons know, In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.

Arise, ye sightless spirits of the storm,

Ye unseen minstrels of the aërial song, Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form, And roll the tempest's wildest swell along. Dart the red lightning, wing the forkèd flash, Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder's

roar;

Arouse the whirlwind

and let ocean dash

In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore, Destroy this life or let earth's fabric be no

more!

Yes! every tie that links me here is dead;
Mysterious fate, thy mandate I obey!
Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled,
I come, terrific power, I come away.

Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of hell,

In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain; And, though with direst pangs mine heartstrings swell,

I'll echo back their deadly yells again, Cursing the power that ne'er made aught in

vain.

FRAGMENT

YES! all is past-swift time has fled away,
Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind.
How long will horror nerve this frame of clay ?
I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.
Oh! powerful fate, revoke thy deadly spell,
And yet that may not ever, ever be,
Heaven will not smile upon the work of hell;
Ah! no, for heaven cannot smile on me;
Fate, envious fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.

I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge ;
I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes;
The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,
And on the blast a frightful yell arose.
Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened main,
Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;
Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain
Swelled 'mid the tumult of the battling air,
'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more soft and
fair.

"Ah, there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form, And I will go to slumber in her grave;

And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened

storm,

Will sweep at midnight o'er the wildered wave; Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?"

"Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear,

This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more; But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,

Can shriek in horror to the tempest's roar.'

THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN

WHAT was the shriek that struck fancy's ear
As it sate on the ruins of time that is past?
Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,
And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.
It is the Benshie's moan on the storm,
Or a shivering fiend that, thirsting for sin,
Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,
Winged with the power of some ruthless king,
And sweeps o'er the breast of the prostrate plain.
It was not a fiend from the regions of hell
That poured its low moan on the stillness of night;
It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,

Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore ;
But

aye at the close of seven years' end
That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm,
And aye at the close of seven years' end,
A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill
Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath.
It is not the shade of a murdered man,

Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,

And howls in the pause of the eddying storm.
This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill;

'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.
'Tis more frightful far than the death-demon's

scream,

Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o'er the corpse

Of a man who has sold his soul to hell.

It tells the approach of a mystic form,
A white courser bears the shadowy sprite;

More thin they are than the mists of the mountain,
When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless

lake.

More pale his cheek than the snows of Nithona
When winter rides on the northern blast,

And howls in the midst of the leafless wood.
Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,
And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,

Still secure 'mid the wildest war of the sky,

The phantom courser scours the waste,
And his rider howls in the thunder's roar.
O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging heaven
Pause, as in fear, to strike his head.

The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure;
Yet the wildered peasant, that oft passes by,
With wonder beholds the blue flash through his

form;

And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
The startled passenger shudders to hear,

More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar.
Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,

And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the

demons;

Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,
Though wildered by death, yet never to die!
Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the night-
mares,

Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch

Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain
Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead
In horror pause on the fitful gale.

They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,
And scared seek the caves of gigantic
Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake,
And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.

MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES

ART thou indeed forever gone,
Forever, ever, lost to me?

Must this poor bosom beat alone,
Or beat at all, if not for thee?
Ah, why was love to mortals given,
To lift them to the height of heaven,
Or dash them to the depths of hell?
Yet I do not reproach thee, dear!
Ah! no, the agonies that swell

This panting breast, this frenzied brain,
Might wake my's slumbering tear.
Oh! heaven is witness I did love,
And heaven does know I love thee still,
Does know the fruitless sickening thrill,