ark! from the tomb,
Mightier than mother's tears, or sister's love,
Thy voice resistless cries:--my arms enfold
A treasure, potent with celestial joys,
To deck this earthly sphere, and make a lot
Worthy the gods! but shall I live in bliss,
While in the tomb thy sainted innocence
Sleeps unavenged? Thou, Ruler of our days,
All just--all wise--let not the world behold
Thy partial care! I saw her tears!--enough--
They flowed for me! I am content: my brother!
I come!

[He stabs himself with a dagger, and falls dead
at his sister's feet. She throws herself into her
mother's arms.

Chorus, CAJETAN (after a deep silence).
In dread amaze I stand, nor know
If I should mourn his fate. One truth revealed
Speaks in my breast;--no good supreme is life;
But all of earthly ills the chief is--Guilt!

THE END

ON THE USE OF THE CHORUS IN TRAGEDY.

A poetical work must vindicate itself: if the execution be defective,
little aid can be derived from commentaries.

On these grounds I might safely leave the chorus to be its own advocate,
if we had ever seen it presented in an appropriate manner. But it must
be remembered that a dramatic composition first assumes the character of
a whole by means of representation on the stage. The poet supplies only
the words, to which, in a lyrical tragedy, music and rhythmical motion
are essential accessories. It follows, then, that if the chorus is
deprived of accompaniments appealing so powerfully to the senses, it will
appear a superfluity in the economy of the drama--a mere hinderance to
the development of the plot--destructive to the illusion of the scene,
and wearisome to the spectators.

To do justice to the chorus, more especially if our aims in poetry be of
a grand and elevated character, we must transport ourselves from the
actual to a possible stage. It is the privilege of art to furnish for
itself whatever is requisite, and the accidental deficiency of
auxiliaries ought not to confine the plastic imagination of the poet. He
aspires to whatever is most dignified, he labors to realize the ideal in
his own mind--though in the execution of his purpose he must needs
accommodate himself to circumstances.

The assertion so commonly made that the public degrades art is not well
founded. It is the artist that brings the public to the level of his
own conceptions; and, in every age in which art has gone to decay, it has
fallen through its professors. The people