DEPOSITION OF NADIEJDA YAKOVLEVNA.
Nadiejda Yakovlevna is twenty-one years of age. She confessed frankly that she had loved, and still loved passionately the cornet Semenov, but assured me that no intimacy had existed between them, and that the cornet was even ignorant of the passion he had inspired. She said the soldier Tsaryna had paid his court to her, and not being able to obtain her love had sworn to her that he would revenge himself upon the one who had obtained it. At first his suspicions rested on Hortinja, and he said he would soon get rid of the old rascal. Some time after he came to her and said, “Harken, Nadiejda! be mine, or I swear by St. Nicholas thou shalt witness the death of Semenov.” She cared little for his threats, knowing him to be a coward. About this time the cornet left Trehmiria. Tsaryna renewed his declarations, but still without success. Before setting out for Kostroma, he said, “The old one will do what I have threatened; before I return I will be revenged, I swear it by St. Nicholas.” She had never heard Hortinja threaten the life of the cornet; he was sad and melancholy—he even wept, but he was a man incapable of committing a crime unless provoked to it.
This is her account of the night in which she saved the cornet:
“I had a presentiment which oppressed my heart; before I lay down I found a cat upon my bed. A bad sign! As soon as I fell asleep I had horrible dreams. I awoke and cried out, ‘Wo to me!’ My father then ordered me to go upon the Volga and draw away the nets; there I heard cries, and thought I recognised the voice of Semenov. It was more than a year since I had seen him, and I knew him in spite of the obscurity. I rowed towards his boat, and as I neared it, I heard the splash of a body thrown into the water. Fortunately, I was close by and succeeded in drawing him out of the river. It was Semenov.”
The inquiry was completed by a few other declarations of less consequence.
The Armenian merchant tried to excuse himself, and said that he endeavored to save the two men in order that they might have time for repentance. In other things he confirmed what Hortinja had said.
The fisherman Yakov gave an account of the manner in which Tsaryna had threatened him, because he would not give him his daughter.
The inquiry terminated on the thirteenth of May, and the depositions were on the same day laid before the criminal tribunal of Novogorod by the captain Isprawnik.
On the twenty-ninth of May the tribunal pronounced the decree which condemns:
Paul Ivanovitch Hortinja to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and ten years labor in the mines.
Jerome Smilabej, Armenian merchant, to one year and six days imprisonment, a fine of one thousand rubles, and the costs.
Pierre A. Tsaryna, being a soldier, was sent before the military tribunal.
On the fourth of June, the military tribunal of the first corps of the army, assembled at Novogorod, condemned Pierre A. Tsaryna to pass three times through the rods of a squadron, and afterwards to be transported to Siberia, where he must labor in the mines for the rest of his life.
These decrees have been submitted to the emperor, and confirmed by him with this change: Hortinja is perpetually banished, but will not be obliged to labor in the mines.
On the third of June, the decree was executed on Pierre A. Tsaryna, who was so severely beaten that there is little hope of his recovery; he has been taken to the hospital of Novogorod.
L’Abeille du Nord, a Russian journal of St. Petersburg, reached us at the same time with the letter of our correspondent. It gives an account of this affair, and also adds that the emperor has deigned to decorate the girl Nadiejda with a medal of gold on the ribbon of Saint Waldimir.
The Cornet Semenov married Nadiejda Yakovlevna as soon as the trial was concluded.
PERDITI.
PART SECOND.
———
BY WM. WALLACE, ESQ., AUTHOR OF “BATTLE OF TIPPECANOE,” “MARCHES FOR THE DEAD,” ETC., ETC.
———
AMERICAN BATTLE SHIP.
I.
Out on the sounding sea,
With a flag of stars and a row of steel,
’Mid the tempest scowl and the battle peal—
The great ship of the free!
Away from her moorings—away o’er the wave—
How proudly she bears the glad hearts of the brave!
In the sun-burst of morning, the darkness of night,
Like a goddess she strives with the gales:
Behold her alone in her glorious might,
With her banners of beauty and streamers of light,
Like a condor when out on his terrible flight,
Where the breath of the tempest prevails.
Hark, hark! ’tis her thunder! her flags are all out,
And the lightning’s the wreath she will wear;
Now it shines on her mast—now ’tis hurried about,
’Mid the ring of the sword and the rapturous shout,
By the breath of the sulphury air.
Why thus is she wrapt in the black-curling smoke?
Why thus have her thunders tumultuously broke
O’er the halls of the dark-rolling wave?
Why thus have her star-crested flags been unfurl’d
Like the wings of some god from the sky to the world?
She battles abroad for the brave!
Proud hope of our land! we have given thy form
To the lord of the breeze and the god of the storm;
We have hung from the top of the high soaring mast
A broad sheet of stripes with the bird
Who cradles his wing in the home of the blast,
When the cloud-troops are angrily hurrying past,
And the voice of the thunder is heard:
We have wet thy scarred decks with the hallowèd blood
Of those who have battled for us on the flood,
And blessed thee with hearts, which the freemen alone
Can possess, when we saw thee sit firm on thy throne
Of the dark-rolling waters.
Go forth, gallant one!—
Go forth in thy glory and pomp o’er the main,
And burst with the might of thy sure-pointed gun
The palace, the cell and the tyrannous chain.
The breezes shall kiss thee: the stars shall illume
Thy pathway when dangers are there,
And around thee the laurels of triumph shall bloom,
Like the plumage of angels abroad on the gloom
Of the battle’s tempestuous air.
Aye! the great god of freedom who holds in his hand
This universe blazing around,
Who walks on the billows which hear his command,
And straight in deep quiet are found:
Aye! he who has yoked, in the ether afar,
The lightning-maned steeds of the storm to his car,
Shall guide thee all safe o’er the foam,
And at last, by the torch of his bright beacon-star,
Restore thee once more to thy home!
II.
But such! ah! such is not my theme—
Illumined by a grosser fire
Than that which some will truly deem
Befitting well the patriot’s lyre.
And yet how could I pass thee by—
Thou of the fearless soul and eye?—
Thou who hast watched my boyhood’s hours
Amid thy sacred rocks and rills,
Where liberty with glory towers
Unshaken on her thousand hills!
Genius of freedom! let me stand
With thee upon my native land;
Still let me hear thy thunder-voice
Bid every child of thine rejoice;
Still let me see on yonder mast
The banner of the heart unfurl’d—
The playmate of the ocean-blast,
The hope or terror of the world.
And when the minstrel’s form is cold,
His brightest meed of praise shall be,
As o’er his grave yon starry fold
By wind and tempest is unroll’d,
“Freedom! thy minstrel sang of thee!”
——
’Tis dark around! yet darker still
Within that melancholy clime,
Where tireless, sleepless vulture-ill
Sits blackly brooding over crime;
The tempest has a deeper moan;
The night-wind has a wilder tone;
The thunder glares his troubled eye
Amid the hollows of the sky;
And sheeted lightnings swiftly stream
From yonder cloud’s tremendous rack,
And then with swifter stride they seem
In pallid horror hurrying back.
Groans in the dark tide of the air:
Groans in the withered space around:
Groans in the tempest’s sickly glare:
Groans struggling under ground!
And look! Lo! blacker clouds are swelling
Around the thunder’s opened dwelling,
Which with a Vulcan-torch illumes
This realm of everlasting glooms;
Set in the distance—see it stand
Above that melancholy land—
Wild, gloomy, solitary, grand!
Heckla of spirits—placed afar,
The lamp of ghastly heath and rill,
As if like some malignant star
’Twould make them all more ghastly still.
ROSANI.
“Fit time!”—he cried with quivering brow,
Tale such as mine was uttered now;
When all the elements are stirred
To hear a spirit’s fearful word.
Let lightnings flash—let thunders roll,
What terrors have they for the soul
That flees the golden eye of day,
And hates its beams e’en more than they!
I’ve revell’d in their light before
In many a sea, on many a shore—
On many a rock—on many a deck—
Yes! challenged them amid the wreck—
When they and the remorseless sea
Seem’d smiling on my agony.
Yet! have I loved a milder glow
Than yonder lurid fires bestow:
There was a moment! glorious time!
When I, amid my native bow’rs,
Unmoved by care—unsoiled by crime—
Would watch the sunshine beam for hours;
It glowed of my own self a part,
For all was sunshine in the heart,
Which seemed an angel who had left,
He knew not how, the stainless blue,
And smiled, so long of light bereft,
To find an angel wandering, too.
But when I saw the bannered storm—
Like giant rousing from his sleep—
Uplift o’er heaven his awful form,
And from the thunder-chamber sweep
To his dread bridal with the flame
Before their altar of the cloud,
While all his minstrel-tempests came
Around the shrine, in terror bowed,—
I’ve smiled with other smile than this,
For then, I, leaping from the sod,
Saw, in their rude but meaning bliss,
The wondrous glory of a God:—
Yes! e’en when others quailed to see
The red volcano light our clime,
I’ve joyed, for in its ministry
I only saw a torch sublime,
Lighting with its tremendous glare
The glorious pages of His book,
Which men might read if they would dare
Upon those awful leaves to look.
Like thee I joyed alone to range
Amid the beautiful and bright,
A thing like them of love and light—
Like thee my spirit had its change.
The spell was wove! It thundered out
In many a wild and bitter curse—
And thenceforth I was hurl’d about
Hopeless amid the universe.
Long years! oh! how your shadows press
My brow in very weariness:
Here! here ye stretch and ever gloom
Like funeral-foliage of the tomb,
Whose leaves—the favorites of pain
Must ever life from sorrow gain.
Long years! long years! I feel again
Your star-eyed hopes around me glow
Bright as the plumage of a train
Of pilgrim-angels furled below.
We are together: Ila, see
The light of heaven’s own heraldry—
And hark!—the evening breeze is here;
His silver lips no longer mute,—
He breathes—a minstrel-worshipper—
An avè from his leafy lute:
Shall we not join him? Dearest, press
Thy lip to mine, while, as of old,
We hear with love’s sweet tenderness
That glorious vesper music rolled.
We are together in those bowers
Glad as the rosy-footed hours
And all as pure.—I see her now
A creature less of earth than skies,
With day’s pure sunshine on her brow
And heaven’s own midnight in her eyes.
And thus we trod the path of life,
Without nor cloud, nor grief, nor strife—
Like pensile stars whose golden light
Meets on the sable bridge of night
And glows with such a wedded beam
In calm or stormy weather,
That men when looking upwards deem
They are but one, for thus they seem,
So close they shine together.
Ha! whence this change? My Ila! why
That icy mien and tearful eye?
No more for me thou cullest the flow’r;—
No more with me thou seekest the bow’r;—
No more thy sweet lips press my own;—
No more thy warm hands link with mine,
When Daylight, stooping from his throne,
Has furl’d his wing by evening’s shrine.
She answered not! yet sorrow there
Has held a bridal with despair,
And pale her cheek as if with wo
Which none but she must ever know.
In vain I questioned—her reply
A sad reproachfulness of eye,
So firm yet tender in its look,
It ever, sorrowing, seemed to say
“Why torture me!”—I could not brook
Such gaze, but gladly turned away,
Leaving my Ila to her mood
In our old castle’s solitude.
Days rolled away!—And who art thou
With princely step and lofty brow?
What dost thou here within our halls,
Sir knight! unwelcome to these walls?
Days roll’d away!—I sought my sire;
He met me but with glance of ire,
And freezing mystery of air,
Which seemed to say—“Ila?—beware!”
And then he cried, “away! away!
Mad boy, she weds the knight to-day!”
I spoke not; slowly round me came
A wavering sheet of cloud and flame,
Which seem’d to sear my very brain:
How long ’twas thus I cannot say,
Nor when I woke to life again.
They called me mad: I heard the chain
Clanking around my limbs, and near
The hum of voices meet my ear,
And eyes amid the darkness shone
So bright, so angry and so lone—
Methought they were the eyes of those
Whom men have named their demon-foes,
Drawing a life from human woes.
Yes! I was mad, and in my strength
I spurned the dungeon’s hated ground,
Hurled from my limbs the chain, at length,
And thus my birth-right freedom found.
I saw the glorious stars again—
Once more I gazed upon the main
Whose billows e’en in boyhood were
My playmates, when their crested forms
Rushed up like ministers of Fear
Amid their temple of the storms.
Once more I heard the Ocean’s shock
Against the castellated rock;
And saw, oh! gallant, blessed sight!
My barque along the heaving tide,
Like lover resting through the night
Upon the bosom of his bride.
The sail’s unfurl’d! How free! How brave!
On! on my vessel, o’er the wave!
The night-winds kiss thee, as in joy
To meet once more their ocean-boy.
Oh! I had loved thee, glorious sea,
And oft thy waters laved my brow,
But never have I gazed on thee
With such a bounding heart as now.
Roll on! Roll on! thy dark blue foam
Shall henceforth be to me a home.
For days I skimmed the ocean blue,
And deeper still my gladness grew;
And oft my joy was uttered out
To heaven in that delirious shout
Which only he can swell whose life
Is passed amid the ocean’s strife.
And others soon around me came;
And men soon shook before my name.
What trophies glittered on our deck,
How foemen sank with many a wreck,
Let that old ocean’s caverns tell,—
In sooth our spirits loved them well—
They lay beneath us like a spell.
A sail! How looks she in the dark?
“Bravely! She is a royal barque!”
Give thanks! Hurrah! I ween the wave
Before the morn shall be her grave!
Out with the guns!—“Ho, sir! she veers!—
Again! again! Hurrah! she nears!”
She came so nigh, that we could see
The pilot’s lonely ministry.
Sudden as lightning from its lair
Fire glowed around her deck;—
Ha! ship, that rode so proudly there—
Thou art a very wreck!
Once more the frowning guns were out;
Their thunder told in shriek and shout!
“The barque’s on fire!”—with one wild cry!
That pierced the very wave and sky,
Her crew leaped in the tide;
But as she heavily floated by—
Oh! God what met my startled eye?
The chieftain and his bride!
Yes, he and Ila shrined in flame
Were wildly calling on my name:—
At one mad bound I cleared my deck,
And stood upon that burning wreck:
Through flame and smoke I fearless flew!
A moment—I have reached the two!
I grasped him! and the lurid wave
Revenged me well—it was his grave.
I bore her in my arms—the smoke
And flame in vain around me broke,—
I felt them curling o’er my brow,
As fierce they swept from stern to plow;—
I struggled on!—one effort more—
I leaped upon my vessel’s side!
Thank God! the final strife was o’er,
And I had won my ocean-bride!
In one dread shock the crackling mast
Came thundering down beneath the blast:—
The flaming wreck slow drives away—
Dim and more dim we marked the ray;
And now unloosing every sail—
We feel our vessel, like a steed
Gladdening to serve his rider’s need,
Dart out before the gale.
Slowly the thrill of feeling came
Along my Ila’s pallid frame;
I marked the rising crimson swell
Upon the cheek I loved too well,
And heard, how joyously! the sigh
Which told me that she could not die,
At least not then:—she rose at last;
One piercing look around she cast,
And shrieked!—her memory, ah! too soon
Had lighted up those scenes of old,
When I, beneath far different moon
Than that which brightly rose aboon,
My love so passionately told.
She spake not still; but day by day
I saw her calmly sink away
Like some sweet flower or rainbow-form
Whose life is withered by the storm.
But when I saw her pallid lips
Darkling beneath the death-eclipse,
She waved me to her side and said—
I cannot speak her words—the dead
Would stir within their very tomb
To hear such tale!—Enough! she died,
And I beheld in that sea-room
A sister in my ocean-bride.
Oh! how I blessed the God above,
That she went down unsoiled by love
Whose reckless and unholy fire
Springs from the heart of low desire.
My sire had framed a cunning tale
—To shroud his crime, and this the baal!
He brought her to our castle’s hall—
Saying she was a homeless child,
Whom he had found beneath the wall
In all her orphan-freedom wild.
Of that she told me, on the day
She died, thus much I dared to say.
And Ila sleeps within the wave,
And round her peaceful ocean-tomb
The pale flowers of the coral-grave
In all their quiet beauty bloom.
Sleep on! sleep on in that deep rest—
Thou of the stainless brow and breast,—
Oh! holy as the stars that shine
In all their seraph splendor set,
Like torches of a templed-shrine
In midnight’s azure coronet.
She was avenged! That very hour
In which the tide received her form,
The deep-blue sky began to lour
Beneath the scowling of the storm;
And soon the thunder, vast and dark,
Shook his red arm above our barque,
Whose deck deserted—sails all rent
And loose around the shivered mast,
Like reeling clouds were blindly sent
Before the fury of the blast.
“The boats! the boats!”
They’re riding well
Along that billow’s crested swell.
“Save! save yourselves,” I sternly cried,
Undaunted on the plunging deck,
“I go to seek my ocean-bride,
But comrades ye must leave the wreck!”
An instant—they were safe! and I
Alone stood challenging the sky
And rolling waves.
With fearless form
I dared the spirit of the storm:
His red lips answered me—the flame
Leaped burning through my blackened frame!—
And I was here.—
“No more! No more!”
He cried, “that agony was o’er:—
But this!”
He darkly gazed around,
Then quivering sank upon the ground;
And Lorro on his dread distress
Gazed sorrowing—mute and motionless.
The tempest with his train has fled,
And yet no moon hath lit her fire;
Nought lights the darkness, deep and dread,
Save that dim-burning Vulcan-pyre.
With its drear, wavering, ghastly light,
Still heavier than the heavy night:
Most terrible!
The task is done!
How gladly mounts the trembling soul,
Like light returning to its sun,
When Heaven’s own streams of glory roll!
Joy, spirit! joy! I’ve broke the spell;
Land of the lost! dread land, farewell.
——
Soul of that shadowy realm, where Time
Hath thrown his last-expiring wave,
When the Immortal glooms sublime
And terrible above the grave,—
Dread image o’er whose phantasm we
Have hung a shroud of mystery,
And then for countless ages shook
Before its dark, eternal look.
Bold scorner of the groan or tear—
Swaying between the star and storm—
Thou art a mighty thing of fear,
Yet glory crowns thy mystic form.
Vast, potent, melancholy, dim,
Past ruler of the cherubim,
And king-like in thy ruin still,
Thou livest despite of sleepless ill.
Oh! once all splendid in that time,
Ere thy great banners were unfurl’d
Like thunder flashes in the clime
From which the rebel hosts were hurl’d,
How art thou fallen—fallen now!—
The burning seal upon thy brow
Which towered in its own glory bright—
A mighty pyramid of light.
And battling still? Thine essence gleams
Like the dim flashing of a cloud;
Oh! how unlike its heavenly beams
Ere sin that angel-beauty bowed,
And changed thee to a giant curse
Breathed through the shuddering universe—
A deathless, hopeless agony—
An aching immortality.
THE HEAVENLY VISION.
———
BY THOMAS HOLLEY CHIVERS, M. D.
———
If I be sure I am not dreaming now,
I should not doubt to say it was a dream.
Shelley.
I met her in the spring-time of my years,
When suns set golden in the azure west;
The sight of her dissolved my heart to tears—
It seemed she came from heaven to make me blest.
A golden harp was in her snow-white hand,
And when she touched the strings, so softly prest,
The music seemed as from some heavenly band,
As though she came from heaven to make me blest.
Her eyes were of that soft, celestial hue,
Which heaven puts on when Day is in the west;
Whose words were soft as drops of evening dew—
It seemed she came from heaven to make me blest.
Long had we parted—long had she been dead—
When late one night, when all had gone to rest,
Her spirit stood before me—near my bed—
She came from heaven to tell me she was blest.
As some fond dove unto her own mate sings,
So sang she unto me, in my unrest—
Who lay beneath the shadow of her wings—
Of heaven, wherein she told me she was blest.
My spirit had been longing here for years
To know if that dear creature was at rest;
When, just as my poor heart lost all its tears,
She came from heaven to tell me she was blest.
I then grew happy—for with mine own eyes
I had beheld that being whom my breast
Had pillowed here for years—fresh from the skies—
Who came from heaven to tell me she was blest.
I wept no more—from that sad day to this,
I have been longing for the same sweet rest,
When my fond soul shall dwell with her in bliss,
Who came from heaven to tell me she was blest.
MRS. WARE’S POEMS.[[1]]
Averse, as we have declared ourselves, to any severe criticisms upon the productions of female poets, we are constrained, in the case before us, to speak with a plainness, savoring less of gallantry than truth. If only “some female errors” fell to the lot of Mrs. Katharine Augusta Ware, we might, perhaps, “look in her face” and “forget them all;” but so many are the faults of which she is guilty, that she must have a face as beautiful as Raphael’s Fornarina, to cause us to forget or forgive a tithe of the number. The lady, however, is neither beautiful nor juvenile; she goes so far in her preface as to confess that she cannot plead “youthful diffidence” for her indiscretion in writing and publishing a volume of verses. That she is not beautiful, we state on positive intelligence. On this score, therefore, her sins of metrical commission cannot be pardoned any more than because of her juvenility—an excuse which she so magnanimously disclaims.
On the second leaf of Mrs. Ware’s book, which is not really as well as figuratively blank, we perceive, paraded in capital letters, the words “Copyright secured in America.” Now, if the copyright has in fact been secured in America; if it has been entered at the office of the District Clerk of New York or of any other State, as the law directs, it strikes us that the dollar, charged as a fee in such cases, has been absurdly and ridiculously thrown away. The proceeding was altogether supererogatory. Booksellers are not particularly partial to publishing collections of poetry at the best; but that any one of them should be so insane as to re-publish a farrago like this, to enter into rivalry and competition for such a cause, is an hypothesis which never could have been engendered, except in the brain of a rhymster, dizzy with self-conceit. From the fact, however, of a copyright having been secured in America, we are well assured that the author is an American; even this was unnecessary, because Mrs. Katharine Augusta Ware has, in times past, written her name to so many patches of poetry, that it is not unfamiliar to pains-taking readers, at least on our side of the water. She first made herself known to the literary world here as the Editor of a monthly magazine, exquisitely christened “The Bower of Taste.” That any work, with so Rosa-Matildaish a title, could have existed for a year was marvellous; still more marvellous was it, that it survived the merciless visitings of the Muse of Mrs. Ware. With the failure of this undertaking, her literary biography, brief as the posy of a ring, would terminate, were it not for the fact that, during some four years past, she has resided in England, and manufactured, to order, occasional lyrics for the Liverpool Newspapers. By some fatuity, which she has provokingly left unexplained, in a preface written in the worst possible taste, she has been impelled to the perpetration of the volume before us. But, previous to exemplifications of its component properties, let us give the preface entire, by way of showing how very unlike ladies, and how very foolishly, feminine bards can behave on paper. If our readers of both sexes do not laugh at the following outbreak of egotism and vanity, they are less easily amused than we conjecture.
| [1] | Power of the Passions and other Poems. By Mrs. Katharine Augusta Ware. London: William Pickering, 1842. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 148 |