,
To mar its beauty;--there sublime it stands,
Waving its graceful branches o'er the soil
That wraps the mouldering children of the land.

The shadowy splendour of an autumn sky
Was radiant with the hues of parting day;
The glorious sun seemed loth to leave the west,
That glowed like molten gold--a saffron sea
Fretted with crimson billows, whose rich tints
Gave to the rugged cliff and barren heath
A ruddy diadem of living light!

Hark!--'tis the lonely genius of the place
Sighs through the wind-stirred branches and bewails
Its desolation to the moaning blast,
That sweeps the ivy on the dark gray walls!--
No--'twas a sound of bitter agony
Wrung from the depths of some o'erburdened heart,
Which in life's early morning had received
A sad inheritance of sighs and tears.

Starting, I turned--and seated on the ground
Beside the broken altar I beheld
A female figure, whose fantastic dress
And hair enwreathed with sprigs of ash and yew
Bespoke a mind in ruins. On her brow
Despair had stamped his iron seal; her cheek
Was pale as moonlight on the misty wave;
Her hollow eyes were fixed on vacancy,
Or wildly sent their hurried glances round
With quick impatient gesture, as in quest
Of some loved object, present to her mind,
But shut for ever from her longing view.

The sun went down. She slowly left her seat
And cast one long sad look upon the wave;
Then poured the anguish of her breaking heart
In a low plaintive strain of melody,
That rose and died away upon the breeze,
The mournful requiem of her perished hopes:--

Hark! the restless spirits of ocean sigh;
I can hear them speak as the wind sweeps by.
See, the ivy has heard their mystic call,
And shivering clings to the broken wall,
The dark green leaves take a sadder shade,
And the flowers turn pale and begin to fade;
The landscape grows dim in the deepening gloom,
And the dead awake in the silent tomb.
I have watched the return of my true-love's bark,
From the sun's uprising till midnight dark;
I have watched and wept through the weary day,
But his ship on the deep is far away;
I have gazed for hours on the whitening track
Of the pathless waters, and called him back,
But my voice returned on the moaning blast,
And the vessel I sought still glided past.

We parted on just such a lovely night:
The billows were tossing in cloudless light,
And the full bright moon on the waters slept;
And the stars above us their vigils kept,
And the surges whispere