d their track;
On Albion's shore, unseen, the invader stept;
Secret, and swift, and terrible it crept;
At noon, at midnight, seized the weak, the strong,
Asleep, awake, alone, amidst the throng,
Kill'd like a murder; fix'd its icy hold,
And wrung out life with agony of cold;
Nor stay'd its vengeance where it crush'd the prey,
But set a mark, like Cain's, upon their clay,
And this tremendous seal impress'd on all,
"Bury me out of sight, and out of call."

Wherefore no filial foot this turf may tread,
No kneeling mother clasp her baby's bed;
No maiden unespoused, with widow'd sighs,
Seek her soul's treasure where her true-love lies;
--All stand aloof, and gazing from afar,
Look on this mount as on some baleful star,
Strange to the heavens, that with bewildering light,
Like a lost spirit, wanders through the night.

Yet many a mourner weeps her fall'n estate,
In many a home by them left desolate;
Once warm with love, and radiant with the smiles
Of woman, watching infants at their wiles,
Whose eye of thought, while now they throng her knees,
Pictures far other scene than that she sees,
For one is wanting--one, for whose dear sake,
Her heart with very tenderness would ache,
As now with anguish--doubled when she spies
In this his lineaments, in that his eyes,
In each his image with her own commix'd,
And there at least, for life, their union fix'd!

Humanity again asks, "Who are these?
And what their sin?"--They fell by _one_ disease!
But when they knock'd for entrance at the tomb,
Their fathers' bones refused to make them room;
Recoiling Nature from their presence fled,
As though a thunder-bolt had struck them dead;
Their cries pursued her with the thrilling plea,
"Give us a little earth for charity!"
She linger'd, listen'd; all her bosom yearn'd;
The mother's pulse through every vein return'd;
Then, as she halted on this hill, she threw
Her mantle wide, and loose her tresses flew.
"Live!" to the slain she cried: "My children live!
This for an heritage to you I give;
Had Death consumed you by the common lot
Ye, with the multitude, had been forgot;
Now through an age of ages ye shall _not_."

Thus Nature spake;--and as her echo, I
Take up her parable, and prophesy:
Here, as from spring to spring the swallows pass,
Perennial daisies shall adorn the grass;
Here the shrill skylark build her annual nes