Lay still, and were damp with the dewdrops of eve, And dark as the shadows of night.

Then came a dark band from the gloom of the wood,

And, rugged and rough in array,

They bore the lone maid, in her soul-wilder'd mood, To the cave of the mountain away.

And long, long it proved ere her swoon was unstaid, Though often and deep would she sigh,

As, opening her eyelids, she murmuring said, "Ah! dying, thou surely shalt die !"

And when, with the power of her being, at last
The sense of existence return'd,

Her

eye and her accents were wild in their cast, From her brain that in madness still burn'd.

She heeded no words that her guardians might say, Nor dainties that round her were spread;

But stealing, at last, from the cavern away,

Afar to the wilderness fled:

And there, when the tempest blew loudly and rough

The wastes of the desert among,

Young Lelah, poor maiden ! would linger and laugh, Or hurry her madly along :

And still, as the night-clouds were over her cast,
The woes of her heart she beguiled,

By sighing and singing, afar 'mid the waste,
The songs that were mournful and wild.

A SONG OF LELAH.

OH! though thou shouldst fly from the dwellings of

life,

Where hope may its treasures unfold,

And shun the keen touch of the weapon of strife That teaches the heart to grow cold;

And dwell 'mong the rocks and the caves of the

clime

Where nought but the eagle is nigh,

Still, still thou shalt meet with the sorrows of time, And, dying, thou surely shalt die!

The lip hath no drink from the dews and the rain,
And the damps from the wilderness sprung,

Can cool not the heat of the heart and the brain
Which the hand of a demon hath wrung;
And, whether thy memory return to the past,
And cling to the joys that are by,

Or thy hope be afar o'er futurity cast,
Still, dying, thou surely shalt die !

Thou mayst tell of thy love in the forest's recess,

Or fly to the valley afar,

Or dream that thou yet thy fair ringlets shalt dress 'Mid the halo that shines round the star;

But thought shall return and awaken thy heart,
O'er the land of the living to sigh;

The light and the darkness alike shall depart,
And, dying, thou surely shalt die !

They told me his form was not fallen, and left

To the beasts of the forest a prey;

But the bird was not false that sung out from the clift
That the worm hath its couch in the clay :
And still, whereso'er thou in life mayst be placed,
On the lands that are under the sky,

The spoiler shall come, and thy home shall be waste,
And, dying, thou surely shalt die !

The bosom may beat, though it beat not in love,
And feel, though it feel not in peace,

And lonely as mine in the wilderness prove,
Ere the pangs of its sufferings may cease;
But though thou wert meek in the days of thy youth,
When the frolics of others were high,

And faithful and free, as the spirit of truth,
Still, dying, thou surely shalt die !

The locks of the desert are wither'd and grey,
Yet the fountain is fresh in its green,

And so, when his eye had its light from the day,
There was comfort in earth's wilder'd scene:
But something seems lonely to Lelah, thus laid,
Where these winds, like eternity, sigh;-

Oh! God, it was thus that the accents were said, Ay, dying, thou surely shalt die !

Ay, die! Though thy cheek like the red-rose should bloom,

And thine eye beam as heaven's own light,

Yet the star shall be bright when thine eye is in gloom,

And the rose, when thy cheek shall be white;

For there lives a wild worm in the bosom of life,

That forces the living to sigh,

And thou shalt not hide from the power of its strife,

But, dying, thou surely shalt die !