Phaon, thou wast the fond reality Of my youth’s cherished dream—the phantasy That hath beguiled me from my earliest days. Luring me on—the theme of all my lays, The pole-star of my heart in grief or joy. The day-spring of my life, my Deity! That I might win thy love, and make thee mine— O dream too pure, too heavenly, too divine For earth!—I’ve toiled through long and weary years, In hours I stole from sleep and life’s dull cares, And earned a laurel for my fading brow, That will not wither like thy fragile vow;— Yes, I have swept my lyre through Lesbian isles, Till it has won from kings their softest smiles; And royal dames have worshiped where I trod, As there had been enshrined their favorite god; The proud have sought my hand—the high of birth Have knelt to me, as I were not of earth; But these are nothing, since they fail to move Thy heart, and gain for me thy constant love. This was the die on which I staked my all. And I, alas! have lost, and perish in thy thrall. V. And now, to thee, thou wild and mighty sea! Terrific emblem of futurity! That in thy restless might dost round me roll, And chafe thyself like my own troubled soul; Upon whose fickle bosom none can trace The pathways of the dead unto their place Of endless rest. From blighting storms of life, From my own heart’s corroding fires and strife— The flame that hath no sure relief but death, I come to seek for peace, thy waves beneath. Ope now thy breast, and hide forever there My lifeless form—my fondness and despair!” She said, then drew her robe around her close, And calmly as reclining to repose At eventide, from that tremendous height, Headlong descended to eternal night, On sea-weed beds to rest in slumbers sweet, The boundless main her tomb, the waves her winding-sheet. * * * * * =NINE O’CLOCK.= The night of the 30th of June, 1783, is memorable in the prison annals of Paris, as the last night in confinement of the leaders of the famous Girondin party in the first French Revolution. On the morning of the 31st, the twenty-one deputies, who represented the department of the Gironde, were guillotined, to make way for Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.