And eagle feathers in her hair,

And around her a robe of panther's hide. Instead, he beholds with secret shame

A form of beauty undefined,

A loveliness without a name,

Not of degree, but more of kind;
Nor bold nor shy, nor short nor tall,
But a new mingling of them all.
Yes, beautiful beyond belief,
Transfigured and transfused, he sees

The lady of the Pyrenees,

The daughter of the Indian chief.

Beneath the shadow of her hair
The gold-bronze colour of the skin
Seems lighted by a fire within,
As when a burst of sunlight shines
Beneath a sombre grove of pines,--
A dusky splendour in the air.

The two small hands, that now are pressed

In his seem made to be caressed,

They lie so warm and soft and still,
Like birds half hidden in a nest,
Trustful, and innocent of ill.

And ah! he cannot believe his ears
When her melodious voice he hears
Speaking his native Gascon tongue;
The words she utters seem to be

Part of some poem of Goudouli,

They are not spoken, they are sung !

And the Baron smiles, and says, “You see,

I told you but the simple truth;

Ah, you may trust the eyes of youth!"

Down in the village, day by day,
The people gossip in their way,

And stare to see the Baroness pass
On Sunday morning to early Mass ;

And when she kneeleth down to pray,

They wonder, and whisper together, and say, "Surely this is no heathen lass!"

And in course of time they learn to bless

The Baron and the Baroness.

And in course of time the Curate learns

A secret so dreadful, that by turns,

He is ice and fire; he freezes and burns.
The Baron at confession hath said,
That though this woman be his wife,
He hath wed her as the Indians wed,
He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!
And the Curate replies: "O profligate,
O Prodigal Son! return once more
To the open arms and the open door
Of the Church, or ever it be too late.
Thank God, thy father did not live
To see what he could not forgive;

On thee, so reckless and perverse,

He left his blessing, not his curse.

But the nearer the dawn, the darker the night,
And by going wrong all things come right;
Things have been mended that were worse,
And the worse, the nearer they are to mend.
For the sake of the living and the dead,
Thou shalt be wed as Christians wed,
And all things come to a happy end."

O sun, that followest the night
In yon blue sky, serene and pure,
And pourest thine impartial light
Alike on mountain and on moor,
Pause for a moment in thy course,
And bless the bridegroom and the bride!
O Gave, that from thy hidden source,
In yon mysterious mountain-side,
Pursuest thy wandering way alone,
And leaping down its steps of stone,
Along the meadow lands demure
Stealest away to the Adour,

Pause for a moment in thy course

To bless the bridegroom and the bride!

The choir is singing the matin song,
The doors of the church are opened wide,
The people crowd, and press, and throng

To see the bridegroom and the bride.
They enter and pass along the nave ;
They stand upon the father's grave;
The bells are ringing soft and slow;
The living above and the dead below
Give their blessing on one and twain ;

The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain,
The birds are building, the leaves are green,

And Baron Castine of St. Castine

Hath come at last to his own again.

THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN.

I.

AT Stralsund by the Baltic Sea,

Within the sandy bar,

At sunset of a summer's day,

Ready for sea, at anchor lay

The good ship Valdemar.

The sunbeams danced upon the waves,

And played along her side,

And through the cabin windows streamed
In ripples of golden light, that seemed

The ripple of the tide.

There sat the captain with his friends,-
Old skippers brown and hale,

Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog,
And talked of iceberg and of fog,

Of calm, and storm, and gale.

And one was spinning a sailor's yarn
About Klaboterman,

The Kobold of the sea; a sprite

Invisible to mortal sight,

Who o'er the rigging ran.

Sometimes he hammered in the hold,

Sometimes upon the mast,

Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft,

Or at the bows he sang and laughed,
And made all tight and fast.

He helped the sailors at their work,
And toiled with jovial din ;

He helped them hoist and reef the sails,

He helped them stow the casks and bales,

And heave the anchor in.

But woe unto the lazy louts,
The idlers of the crew;
Them to torment is his delight,
And worry them by day and night,

And pinch them black and blue.