With a stifled cry of horror straight she turned
away her head;
With a sad and bitter feeling looked she back upon
her dead;
But she heard the youth's low moaning, and his
struggling breath of pain,
And she raised the cooling water to his parching
lips again.
Whispered low the dying soldier, pressed her hand and faintly smiled; Was that pitying face his mother's? did she watch beside her child? All his stranger words with meaning her woman's heart supplied; With her kiss upon his forehead, "Mother!" murmured he, and died!
"A bitter curse upon them, poor boy, who led thee
forth,
From some gentle, sad-eyed mother, weeping, lonely,
in the North!"
Spake the mournful Mexic woman, as she laid him
with her dead,
And turned to soothe the living, and bind the
wounds which bled.
"Look forth once more, Ximena!" Like a cloud
before the wind
Rolls the battle down the mountains, leaving blood
and death behind;
Ah! they plead in vain for mercy; in the dust the
wounded strive;
"Hide your faces, holy angels! O thou Christ of
God, forgive!"
Sink, O Night, among thy mountains! let the cool, gray shadows fall; Dying brothers, fighting demons, drop thy curtain over all! Through the thickening winter twilight, wide apart the battle rolled, In its sheath the sabre rested, and the cannon's lips grew cold.
But the noble Mexic women still their holy task
pursued,
Through that long, dark night of sorrow, worn and
faint and lacking food.
Over weak and suffering brothers, with a tender
care they hung,
And the dying foeman blessed them in a strange
and Northern tongue.
Not wholly lost, O Father! is this evil world of ours; Upward, through its blood and ashes, spring afresh the Eden flowers; From its smoking hell of battle, Love and Pity send their prayer, And still thy white-winged angels hover dimly in our air! 1847.
THE LEGEND OF ST. MARK.
"This legend [to which my attention was called by my friend Charles Sumner], is the subject of a celebrated picture by Tintoretto, of which Mr. Rogers possesses the original sketch. The slave lies on the ground, amid a crowd of spectators, who look on, animated by all the various emotions of sympathy, rage, terror; a woman, in front, with a child in her arms, has always been admired for the lifelike vivacity of her attitude and expression. The executioner holds up the broken implements; St. Mark, with a headlong movement, seems to rush down from heaven in haste to save his worshipper. The dramatic grouping in this picture is wonderful; the coloring, in its gorgeous depth and harmony, is, in Mr. Rogers's sketch, finer than in the picture."—MRS. JAMESON'S Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 154.
THE day is closing dark and cold,
With roaring blast and sleety showers;
And through the dusk the lilacs wear
The bloom of snow, instead of flowers.