As one by one the shadows creep Back to their lairs in hilly hollows, A broader splendor issues forth And on their track in silence follows; A fuller air swims everywhere, A freer murmur shakes the bough, A thousand fires surprise the spires, And all the city wakes below. What morn shall rise, what cursed morn, To find this bright pomp all surrendered, These palaces an empty shell, This vigor listless ruin rendered,-- While every sprite of its delight Mocks fickle echoes through the court, And in our place a sculptured trace Saddens some stranger's careless sport? Oh, gay with all the stately stir, And bending to your silken flowing, One day, my banner-poles, ye creak Naked beneath the high winds blowing! One day ye fall across the wall And moulder in the moat's green bosom, While in the cleft the wild tree left Bursts into spikes of cruel blossom! Ah, never dawn that day for me! O Fate, its fierce foreboding banish! When all our hosts, like pallid ghosts Blown on by morning, melt and vanish! Oh, in the fires of their desires Consume the toil of those invaders! And let the brand divide the hand That grasps the hilt of the Crusaders! Yet idle words in such a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,-- The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,-- The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,-- How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this day desert its dawning? Forget to soar, thou rosy rack! Ye riders, bronze your airy motion! Still skim the seas, so snowy craft,-- Forever sail to meet the ocean! There bid the tide refuse to slide, Glassing, below, thy drooping pinion,-- Forever cease its wild caprice, Fallen at the feet of our dominion! * * * * * THE HUMMING-BIRD. _May 9th._ To-day, Estelle, your special messenger, the Humming-Bird, comes darting to our oriel, my Orient. As I sat sewing, his sudden, unexpected whirr made me look up. How did he know that the very first Japan-pear-bud opened this morning? Flower and bird came together by some wise prescience. He has been sipping honey from your passion-flowers, and now has come to taste my blossoms. What bright-winged thought of yours sent him so straight to me, across that wide space of sea and land? Did he dart like a sunbeam all the way? There were many of them voyaged together; a little line of wavering light pierced the dark that night. A large, brave heart has our bold sailor of the upper deep. Old Pindar never saw our little pet, this darling of the New World; yet he says,-- "Were it the will of Heaven, an osier-bough Were vessel safe enough the seas to plough."