Still memory to a gray-haired man
That sweet child-face is showing.
Dear girl! the grasses on her grave
Have forty years been growing.

He lives to learn in life's hard school,
How few who pass above him
Lament their triumph and his loss,
Like her because they love him.

WHITTIER.

PARRHASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE.

THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-hair'd and majestical old man,
Chain'd to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung.
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.

He had stood there since morning, and had borne
From every eye in Athens the cold gaze
Of curious scorn. The Jew had taunted him
For an Olynthian slave. The buyer came
And roughly struck his palm upon his breast,
And touch'd his unheal'd wounds, and with a sneer
Pass'd on; and when, with weariness o'erspent,
He bow'd his head in a forgetful sleep,

The inhuman soldier smote him, and, with threats
Of torture to his children, summon'd back
The ebbing blood into his pallid face.

'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipp'd with a golden fire the many domes
Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere

Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street

Through which the captive gazed. He had borne up
With a stout heart that long and weary day,
Haughtily patient of his many wrongs;

But now he was alone, and from his nerves
The needless strength departed, and he lean'd
Prone on his massy chain, and let his thoughts
Throng on him as they would.

Unmark'd of him,

Parrhasius at the nearest pillar stood,

Gazing upon his grief. The Athenian's cheek
Flush'd as he measured with a painter's eye
The moving picture. The abandon'd limbs,
Stain'd with the oozing blood, were laced with veins
Swollen to purple fulness; the gray hair,
Thin and disorder'd, hung about his eyes;
And as a thought of wilder bitterness
Rose in his memory, his lips grew white,
And the fast workings of his bloodless face
Told what a tooth of fire was at his heart.

The golden light into the painter's room
Stream'd richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere
Like forms and landscapes magical they lay.
The walls were hung with armor, and about
In the dim corners stood the sculptured forms
Of Cytheris, and Dian, and stern Jove,
And from the casement soberly away
Fell the grotesque long shadows, full and true,
And, like a vail of filmy mellowness,
The lint-specks floated in the twilight air.

Parrhasius stood, gazing forgetfully
Upon his canvas. There Prometheus lay,

Chain'd to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus

The vulture at his vitals, and the links

Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
And as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and pluck'd the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye,
Flash'd with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip,

Were like the wing'd god's, breathing from his flight.

66

Bring me the captive now!

My hand feels skilful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow

--

Upon the bended heavens — around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

Look!

"Ha! bind him on his back!

as Prometheus in my picture here! Quick- or he faints! stand with the cordial near!

Now - bend him to the rack!

Press down the poison'd links into his flesh !
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So-let him writhe! How long

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now!
What a fine agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-hair'd, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

666

Pity' thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar

But does the robed priest for his pity falter?
I'd rack thee, though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine-
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Hereafter!' Ay-hereafter!

A whip to keep a coward to his track!
What gave Death ever from his kingdom back
To check the sceptic's laughter?

Come from the grave to-morrow with that story
And I may take some softer path to glory.

"No, no, old man! we die

Even as the flowers, and we shall breathe away
Our life upon the chance wind, even as they!
Strain well thy fainting eye-

For when that bloodshot quivering is o'er,
The light of heaven will never reach thee more.

"Yet there's a deathless name!

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn
And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars! I'd bind it on!

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst-
Though every life-strung nerve be madden'd first
Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild

"All I would do it all

Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot

Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!

Oh heavens! - but I appall

Your heart, old man! forgive

ha! on your lives

Let him not faint!-rack him till he revives!

"Vain - vain—give o'er! His eye

Glazes apace. He does not feel you now

Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow!

"Shivering! Hark! he mutters Brokenly now - that was a difficult breath Another? Wilt thou never come, O Death! Look! how his temple flutters!

Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!

He shudders-gasps-Jove help him!-so-he's dead."

How like a mounting devil in the heart
Rules the unrein'd ambition! Let it once
But play the monarch, and its haughty brow
Glows with a beauty that bewilders thought
And unthrones peace forever. Putting on
The very pomp of Lucifer, it turns

The heart to ashes, and with not a spring
Left in the bosom for the spirit's lip,

We look upon our splendor and forget

The thirst of which we perish! Yet hath life

Many a falser idol. There are hopes

Promising well; and love-touch'd dreams for some;

And passions, many a wild one; and fair schemes
For gold and pleasure - yet will only this
Balk not the soul- AMBITION only, gives,
Even of bitterness, a beaker full!

Friendship is but a slow-awaking dream,
Troubled at best. Love is a lamp unseen,
Burning to waste, or, if its light is found,
Nursed for an idle hour, then idly broken-
Gain is a grovelling care, and Folly tires,
And Quiet is a hunger never fed

And from Love's very bosom, and from Gain,
Or Folly, or a Friend, or from Repose-
From all but keen Ambition — will the soul
Snatch the first moment of forgetfulness