"I do bring you news from far,
False was the Fontanlee in war!
—Unbend your bright swords from my breast,
I that do speak do know it best."
Wide he flung his mantle free;
Lo, it was the Fontanlee!
Then the squires like stricken men
Sank into their seats again,
And their cheeks in wet tears steeping
Fresh and faster fell a weeping.
He with footsteps soft and slow
Round to his sons' heads did go;
Sadly he looked on every one,
And stooped and kissed the youngest, John.
Then his weary head down bending,
"Heart," said he, "too much offending,
Break, and let me only be
Blotted out of memory."
Thrice with crimson cheek he stood,
And thrice he swallowed the salt blood;
Then outpoured the torrent red;
And the false Fontanlee lay dead.
THE LEGEND OF SAINT LAURA.
BY THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.
Saint Laura, in her sleep of death,
Preserves beneath the tomb
—'Tis willed where what is willed must be—
In incorruptibility,
Her beauty and her bloom.
So pure her maiden life had been,
So free from earthly stain,
'Twas fixed in fate by Heaven's own Queen
That till the earth's last closing scene
She should unchanged remain.
Within a deep sarcophagus
Of alabaster sheen,
With sculptured lid of roses white,
She slumbered in unbroken night,
By mortal eyes unseen.