She had come to meet for a moment there,
Ere he sought the field in the strife to share,
One who her father had blessed in death,
As she pledged her faith with faltering breath;
And Huon with joyous smile and gay,
Welcomed the presence of Morna Grey.

X.

But the words they spoke were short and few--
A soldier must be to his duty true;
And ere a half hour had hastened by,
She watched his steed as it hurried nigh,
O'er the verdant plain to the cedars tall,
Where his men were waiting their leader's call.
As she dashed the drops that dimmed her sight,
From the dark-fringed lids where they trembled bright,
A rustling was heard in the brushwood near,
And a crone, whose wild and fantastic gear
Betrayed the erring of mind within,
Stood in her presence with mocking grin.
"Said I not sorrows in dark array,
Crowded the future of Morna Grey?
Why from the cheek do the roses fly?
Where is the light of the flashing eye?
Where has the rounded lips, ruby red,
Gone, since we parted beside the dead?
The white owl entered the casement high,
O'er the brow of the dying I saw it fly;
Presager of death! I hailed its wing,
She scorned the omen but felt the sting
Of bitter grief, when another day
Bore her angel Mother from earth away.
I warned her, when on the coming blast
I saw the phantom-like shades flit past;
She smiled on my words as idle play,
But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray,
Felled to the dust by the Tory's blade,
Died in the home where his bones are laid;
When the cold drops stood on the forehead fair,
And the curdling blood on the thin, gray hair.
But the dead in silence forgotten sleep;
She is weaving on earth a vision deep,
Of joyous hopes that must fade and die,
Like the bow that smiles when the tempests fly,
In vain the strength of her youth is shed,
In a path where she trembles and fears to tread;
In vain--in vain would the fragile form,
Brave the hot breath of the cannon's storm;
The bullet speeds on its mission free--
A broken heart and a grave I see."

"Though dark my way, I fear it not;
Speed, woman, to thy sheltered cot,
Lest thou, with no protector nigh,
Should catch some hostile wanderer's eye.
My trust is in that mighty Power,
Who rules the battle's wildest hour;
And woman's