t. Yet the pious
admonitions of her father, and the example of her cousin, assisted by
the meliorating influence of time, had a gradual though slow effect, in
changing grief into meek resignation. Her lute, long endeared by the
remembrance of Eustace, was now attuned to deplore the death of him who
had restored her the treasure. When sorrow can flow in poesy, it becomes
more plaintive than agonizing; and possibly the reader will be pleased
to see that the long-protracted years of Constantia's anguish were
soothed by those alleviations, which, in mercy to man, are permitted
imperceptibly to soften the ravages of death.

It is thus that afflicted survivors, in talking and meditating on those
who are gone before them to the unseen world, derive an enjoyment from
musing on the past, and from anticipating in the future what the present
is not able to afford.

CONSTANTIA TO ISABEL.

And dost thou mourn the sad estate
Of widow'd love? then silent be;
And hark! while for my murder'd mate
I wake the lute's soft melody.

How dear to me the midnight moon,
As through the clouds she sails along,
For then with spirits I commune,
And Eustace listens to my song.

Oh, not to her who wildly mourns
Her noble lover basely slain--
Oh, not to her the morn returns
With pleasure laughing in her train.

So look'd it once, when Eustace sung
Of plighted love's perennial joys,
Now silent is that tuneful tongue,
That graceful form the worm destroys.

In vain the feather'd warblers soar,
Mid floods of many colour'd light;
I hear them not, but still deplore
The eye of Beauty quench'd in night.

How in the battle flam'd his crest,
Refulgent as the morning star:
But ruthless murder pierc'd that breast,
Which met unhurt the storm of war.

My Love, "how beautiful, how brave;"
Still, still, her oaths thy Constance keeps;
The laurel decks the victor's grave,
O'er thine the faithful willow weeps.

The disturbed state of England at this time permitted no long indulgence
of domestic sorrow. "Griefs of an hour's age did hiss the speaker," and
pity and sympathy often claimed the falling tear, which had been wrung
forth by "own distress." Ribblesdale was again disturbed by the march of
hostile troops. The young King had yielded to the solicitations of his
Scottish subjects, and transported himself to tha