No More Learning

More and more
Fades it slow,
As on shore
Ripples flow,--
As the plaint
Far and faint
Of a saint
Murmured low.

Hark! hist!
Around,
I list!
The bounds
Of space
All trace
Efface
Of sound.

JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN.





THE OBDURATE BEAUTY.

_("A Juana la Grenadine! ")_

[XXIX. , October, 1843. ]


To Juana ever gay,
Sultan Achmet spoke one day
"Lo, the realms that kneel to own
Homage to my sword and crown
All I'd freely cast away,
Maiden dear, for thee alone. "

"Be a Christian, noble king!
For it were a grievous thing:
Love to seek and find too well
In the arms of infidel.
Spain with cry of shame would ring,
If from honor faithful fell.
"

"By these pearls whose spotless chain,
Oh, my gentle sovereign,
Clasps thy neck of ivory,
Aught thou askest I will be,
If that necklace pure of stain
Thou wilt give for rosary. "

JOHN L. O'SULLIVAN.





DON RODRIGO.

A MOORISH BALLAD.

_("Don Roderique est a la chasse. ")_

[XXX. , May, 1828. ]


Unto the chase Rodrigo's gone,
With neither lance nor buckler;
A baleful light his eyes outshone--
To pity he's no truckler.

He follows not the royal stag,
But, full of fiery hating,
Beside the way one sees him lag,
Impatient at the waiting.

He longs his nephew's blood to spill,
Who 'scaped (the young Mudarra)
That trap he made and laid to kill
The seven sons of Lara.

Along the road--at last, no balk--
A youth looms on a jennet;
He rises like a sparrow-hawk
About to seize a linnet.

"What ho! " "Who calls? " "Art Christian knight,
Or basely born and boorish,
Or yet that thing I still more slight--
The spawn of some dog Moorish?

"I seek the by-born spawn of one
I e'er renounce as brother--
Who chose to make his latest son
Caress a Moor as mother.