How sweetly the peal from the convent rings out, The nuns scatter flowers around and about, Black-stoled and black-wimpled, they bloom like the rose, Their eyes ev’n have veils, that too often they close, Of long silken lashes, now raised with a smile-- A cordial the long, weary way to beguile: But hip-hip-hurrah! we have passed from their ken, While they wish us good speed over hill, vale, and fen. At midnight, the streets of the town to the tread Of our horses resound--all the sky’s glowing red, For crowds gather round us with torches alight, And pine-boughs all blazing, to stare at the sight. A crack of the whip and a cheer and a song, Through a circle of fire, we clatter along; And hip-hip-hurrah! through the glow and the glare, Through flowers and folk, e’er a halt we declare. ’Twas when I was driving my king that I broke Both my legs at one fall--why, a saint ’twould provoke! But when in three weeks he returned o’er the plain, Thank the Lord! I was sound in the saddle again. ‘What, it’s you back again!’ was his greeting to me. ‘Yes, sire,’ I replied, ‘for Roumanians are we, And hip-hip-hurrah! a postillion as well. Seven lives are my birthright, I’ve often heard tell.’ Even if I were dead, I could never lie still-- I should hasten afield over valley and hill. I’d take the eight reins and the whip in my hand, And scarce in the saddle I’d fly through the land. No dull, droning chant and procession for me, I’d turn in my coffin such doings to see; And hip-hip-hurrah! from the bier and its gloom I’d leap to the saddle and drive to my tomb.” And also this poem-- BETRAYED. “A rock had chosen a pine for his bride, In his rugged arms he bore her, And vowed, as he cradled her early growth, For ever he’d keep and adore her. She was his; who should tear her away from his side? So deep her roots had she driven; She clasped him firmly with loving embrace, That his stony heart was riven. But the west wind rose, and with angry breath, He cried ‘Let her go, she is mine!’ So the stormy blast and the love-lorn rock Strove each with each for the pine. Till, poised for a moment, as if in doubt, The pine fell trembling over, And tore herself loose from the rock’s caress, And took the storm for her lover. But little recked he of the pine laid low As he blustered in mirth down the valley, Through rocks and forests cleaving his way With many another to dally. She clutched with powerless arms at space, But might not arrest her ruin; Headlong she fell and abandoned lay Far from the place she grew in. And the rock, forlorn, gazed down the abyss Where she lay at the foot of the mountain, While, swollen with tears, from his stony side, Burst forth a perennial fountain.