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SOUTHERN LITERARY GAZETTE:
(!. RICHARDS, EDITOR.
©riginal |Joctrii.
For the Southern Literary Gazette.
OH. WEEP FOR THE LOVELY !
IN MEMORY OF MARY*
by WILLIAM C . RICHARDS.
Oh weep ! for the lovely lies low in the tomb—
In the morning oflife and in beauty's fresh bloom,
Kre a tint of the rose on her cheek had grown pale,
Or the bright “ silver cord ” was beginning to fail.
Oh, weep! foi the cold hand of Death has been laid
On a form where the graces were sweetly display’d;
A bright eye, that beam’d with affection, is sealed,
And Life’s crimson tide is forever congealed.
ihreet lips, that ne’er opened in anger or pride,
Are mute, and forever, now Mary hath died ;
A heart that ne’er throbb’d with unkindness or strife,
Shall beat nevermore to the music of life!
Like a leaf on a torrent borne hastily by,
Like a star that hath gone from its place in the sky,
,<he hath vanish’d as quickly, and darkness alone,
Fills the home where the charm of her loveliness
shone!
From that home, and those hearts in whose love she
was blest,
She passed, as a bride, to a true, manly breast:
Their vows on the altar with “Farewells” were
blent,
And far from the homes oftheir childhood they went.
AH buoyant with hope and elated with love,
Through still shifting scenes of enjoyment they
move ;
Hut the arrows of Death at a “ shining mark ” fly—
A ml she, amid strangers, must lie down and die.
Oh, poor stricken heart! with thy anguish alone—
Have her beautiful form whence the spirit had
flown —
llow feeble is language to reach thy despair—
God help thee ! and pity thy agony there !
Clod help thee, poor sufferer! while baek to her
home,
Thou bearest the lost who if living—bad come
To be folded with rapture to hearts now as dead
To joy, as thy bride in her cold narrow bed.
Oh, weep ! for sad tears are fit tribute to pay
To beauty, and goodness and truth passed away :
\ et weep not as those who must sorrow in vain,
For in mansions of bliss ye shall meet her again !
Athens Sept. 13. 1848.
* Mary, thedaughter of Rev. Samuel Anthony, wae mar
ried on the 3th of Aitguet, to Mr. Rufus L. Moss. Whfle
’ihseat on the bridal tour, she was seized with an illness
ibat terminated her life almost suddenly—in the nine
teenth year of her age. The Editor of the “ Gazette” had
sufficient personal acquaintance with the departed to know
and appreciate her loveliness, and the above verses were
a spontaneous tribute of Ills heart to her memory. They
are published here in accordance with the wish of the be
reaved father and friends of the departed Mary.
For the Southern Literary Gazette.
MARTYRDOM OF THE PATRIOTS,
[ITALY, 1830.]
Ay, t,o the rack, the scaffold and chain—
To all your cruel tortures, bear them on,
‘ie foul and coward hangmen—but in vain !
L? cannot touch the glory they have won—
And win—thus yielding up the martyr’s breath
lor Freedom ! Their’s is a triumphant death!
A sacred pledge from Nature that her womb
Btill keeps some holy fires that shall burst
Lven from the reeking relics of their doom,
As glorious, ay, more glorious than the first !
And in your cells of carnage—in your sfreets —
I hat reek with blood and stream with winding
sheets,
Jn which all vainly have your felon hands
Striven to strangle infant Liberty.
A bloody retribution Heaven demands —
And the dread hour of vengeance shall we see,
When, in his might, the Giant now in chains,
rapt in his thousand terrors, o’er ye stands —
And on the shrines—the hearthstones of the free,
The slumbering of long ages—snaps bis bands,
Avenging in the black blood of the oppressor,
His limbs’ long thraldom, his free nature’s stains!
■bhall such as ye be Liberty’s confessor,
And, at your feet, shall men be taught to bow
long established schools of slavery,—
i e ld up the richest gem in nature’s bravery,—
2ln illustrated iUccklg Journal of J3ellcs-Ccttres, Science and tl)e 2trts.
Her spirit—God’s own spirit!—while they vow
Allegiance to your rank and monstrous knavery 1
Ye deadly charlatans, who school the heart
To its perdition,—crushing Heaven’s goodlie t
guise,
Throned in man’s form, andspeaking in his spirit,
With the fell chains of soul which ye devise:—
In very recklessness of crime, deny
To that pure essence, of Heaven’s self, a part,
Those high estates, God-chartered in the sky,
And that first boon—great birth-right!—all in
herit !
Ye slaughter,—do ye triumph ! Ask your chains
\ e sodom-hearted butchers! Turn your eyes,
Where reeks yon bloody scaffold ; and the pains,
Ungroan’d, of a true martyr, as he die3,
Attest the damned folly of your crime,
Now at its carnival! Ilis spirit flies,
Unscathed by all your fires, through every clime,
Into the world’s wide bosom ! Men arise,
. Prompt at its call, and principled to strike,
The tyrant and the tyranny alike !
Voices, against ye, speak in all your deeds,
And cry to Heaven, arm Earth, and kindle Hell!
A thousand freemen, where one martyr bleeds,
Spring from his place of death, and make his knell
The chorus of a Jubilee. Your streets, —
Where freedom, robed in grandeur, in long hours,
Held her proud sway, but now, where all she meets,
Are chains, and a fierce fury that devours ;
Upon the high walls of your palaee towers,
The spatter’d brains of the slain cilizen,
The fresh blood sprinkled marble, and the crie3
Os spine-distorted, and limb riven men,
Pound on the revolving wheel, or in cold den.
Dying of thirst and famine—have their tongue,
Whose accent elemental—wing’d, still flies,
Crying for vengeance on the infernal W'rong!
And in the bloody drops, that, from their brows,
Your racks wring forth in life’s last agonies ;
The carnage of your foul and rotten house,
Whose scarlet is a name for infamy,—
Freedom hath put a tongue, that still must cry,
W i!h bitter taunt, unto each passer by,—
Point to the chains he wears,—the blood thus spilt,
The guilt of looking quietly on guilt,
Rolling in riot, while the good and brave
Scaffold the gory homes they died to save!
The curse, —the swollen curse of the long ages
Ye have dishonored ; —Heaven’s curse; —the curse
of man—
The generations gone, and those whose pages
Are yet unwritten, yield their sulphury ban,
And blight ye into blisters! May ye live,
Immortal, in that Hell of imprecation,
The angry elements, invoked, must give,
In their full-roured, ne’er dying indignation !
For ye arc nature’s bye-word and her terror.
Ye monster-spawned creations of her error:
Fashion’d in crime, with hearts and hopes asrotten,
As the foul sins in which ye were begotten!
Ye souls that gender snakes, and do not perish,
As ye are deadlier than the things ye cherish,
Though venomous and loathsome. Be the doom,
Os life, in torture, on ye! May ye live,
To seek, but never find, the sheltering tomb, —
Beholding the fair elements expire.
The earth that ye have sought to blast, survive,
To light and watch, as ye have built, her pyre;—
And not permitted, in that final fire,
To purge ye of your poison.—but to stand,
Man’s night—ye were his night-shade—with a
brand
That puts ye on the verge of your own crime,
Beacons betwixt eternity and time !
We mourn not for the patriots! They have per
ished
As the good perish, for a deathless faith !
Their memories, with their cause, must still be
cherish’d
Beyond the dread of overthrow or scath.
Their blood hath grown a principle, to guide,
Onward—still onward—in continuous flow.
Restless, resistless, as the Mexique tide,
The spirit Heaven yields Freedom here below !
llow should we mourn them who as stars now
shine,
And light the groping nations! ’Twere as wise,
To weep that other patriot of our line, —
The rock and vulture-iortured Titan sire,
Whose crime, and its stern penalty alike,
Were his proud spirit’s glory. It denies
All homage but in triumph—all triumph, save
That single one, which, —standing o’er the grave,
And on the scaffold, —to the nations cries,
Even in its latest agonies,—to strike!
WILFRED.
ATHENS, GEORGIA, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1848.
popular STalcs.
THE TWO KATES.
i BY THE AUTHOR OF “ THE BUCCANEER,” ETC.
“I cannot help observing, Mr. Seymour,
that I think it exceedingly strange in you to
interfere with the marriage of my daughter :
marry your sons, sir, as you please—but my
daughter! that is quite another matter.”
And Airs. Seymour, a stately, sedate mat
ron, of the high-heeled and hoop school, drew
herself up to her full height, which (without
the heels) was five foot seven—and fanning
herself with a huge green fan, more rapidly
than she had done for many months, looked
askance upon her husband, a pale, delicate
man, who seemed in the last stage of a con
sumption.
“ A little time, Mary!” (good Jack ! could
such a person as Mrs. Seymour bear so sweet
a name I) “a little time, Mary, and our sons
may marry as they list for me. But I have
yet to learn, why you should have more con
trol over our Kate than I. Before I quit this
painful world, I should like the sweet child to
be placed under a suitable protector.”
“ You may well call her child, indeed—lit
tle more than sixteen. Forcing the troubles
of the world upon her, so young. I have
had my share of them. Heaven knows, al
though I had nearly arrived at an age of dis
cretion, before 1 united my destiny to yours.”
“So you had, my dear—you were, I think,
close upon forty!”
It is pretty certain that a woman who num
bers thirty, without entering “the blessed
state,” had better deliberate whether she is
able to take up new ideas, forego “her own
sweet will,” and sink from an independent to
a dependent being; but a woman of forty,
who is guilty of such an absurdity, merits
the punishment she is sure to receive. And
though Mr. Seymour was a kind, amiable,
and affectionate man, his lady was far from
being a happy woman : she had enjoyed more
of her own way than geffcrally falls to the
lot of her sex, and yet not near so much as
she desired or fancied she deserved. If Mr.
Seymour would have held his tongue, and
done exactly as she wished, it would have
been all well; but this course he was not ex
actly prone to —he having been, at least ten
years before his marriage, what is general!}’
termed an old bachelor. Let it not be ima
gined that Mrs. Seymour was one of your
“ shall and will” ladies—no such thing : she
was always talking of “female duties,” of
“gentle obedience.” of “amiable docility:”
and, with her eyes fastened upon a piece of
tent-stitch, which she had worked in her ju
venile days, representing Jacob drinking from
Rebecca’s pitcher, she would lecture her hus
band by the long winter hours, and the mid
summer sunshine, as to the inestimable trea
sure he possessed in her blessed self.
“Think, Mr. Seymour, if you had married
a gad-about who would have watched over
my children!” (she never by any chance said
our children.) “I have never been outside
the doors (except to church) these four years!
If you had married a termagant, how she
w'ould have flown at, and abused all your
little—did I say little ? I might, with truth,
say, your greal peculiarities. I never inter
fere, never; I only notice—for your own
good —that habit for instance, of always giv
ing Kate sugar with her strawberries, and
placing the tongs to the left instead of the
right of the poker—it is very sad I”
“ My dear,” Mr. Seymour would interrupt
“ what does it signify whether the tongs be
to the right or left!”
“Bless me, dear sir, you need not fly out
so; I was only saying that there are some
women in the world who would make that a
bone of contention—l never do, much as it
annoys we, —much.as it leads the servants
into careless habits, much as it and other
things grieve and worry my health aud spir
its, —I never complain! never. Some men
are strangely insensible to their domestic bles
sings, and do not know how to value earth’s
greatest treasure —a good wife! but I am
dumb; I am content tosufler, to melt away in
tears —it is no matter.” Then, after a pause
to recruit her breath and complainings, she
would rush upon another grievance the
abominable whine of an aggrieved and much
injured person,—a sort of mental and mono
tonous wailing, which, though nobody mind-
VOLUME I.—NUMBER 21.
ed, annoyed every body within her sphere.
Her husband was last sinking into his grave;
her sons had gone from Eton to Cambridge ;
and, when they \v%re at home, took good care
to be continually out of earshot of their mo
thers lamentations; the servants changed
places so continually, that the door was never
twice opened by the same footman; and the
only fixture at Seymour Hall, where servants
and centuries, at one time, might be almost
termed synonymous, was the old deaf house
keeper, who, luckily for herself, could not
hear her mistress’s voice. To whom then
had Airs. Seymour to look forward, as the
future source of her comforts, —(i. e.) of her
tormenting? —even her daughter Kate, —the
bonny Kate—the merry Kate, the thing of
smiles and tears, who danced the sha
dow of the old trees, who sang with the birds,
who learned industry from the bees and cheer
fulness from the grasshopper,—whose voice
told in its rich full melody of young Joy and
his laughing train, —whose step was as light
on the turf as the dew or the sunbeam,
whose shadow was blessed as it passed the
window of the poor and lowly cottager, her
alding the coming of her, who comforted her
own soul by comforting her fellow creatures.
“. How can it be possible,” said every body,
“that such a lovely, cheerful, cheering crea
ture can be the child of Mr. and Airs. Sey
mour ?—the father, dear man, kind and gen
tle, but so old; the mother!” and then fol
lowed a look and a shrug, that told of much
disapprobation, and yet not half as much as
was most generously bestowed on the melan
choly-dealing Airs. Seymour.
Kate’s father well knew that his days were
numbered; and he looked forward with no
very pleasurable feeling to his daughter’s
health and happiness being sacrificed at the
shrine whereon he had offered up his own.
Kate, it is true, as yet had nothing suffered;
she managed to hear and laugh at her moth
er’s repinings, without being rendered gloomy
thereby, or giving offence to her mournful
and discontented parent. She would, in her
own natural and unsophisticated manner, lead
her forth into the sunshine, sing her the gay
est songs, read to her the most cneerful books,
and gather for her the freshest flowers; and
sometimes, even Airs. Seymour would smile,
and be amused, though her heart quickly re
turned to its bitterness, and her soul to it*
discontent; but Mr. Seymour knew that this
buoyant spirit could not endure for ever, anc
he sought to save the rose of his existence
from the canker thathad destroyed him. Sh
was earnestly beloved by a brave and intelli
gent officer, who had already distinguished
himself, and who hoped to win fresh laurels
whenever his country needed his exertions
It would be difficult to define the sort of feel
ing with which Kate received his attentions:
like all young, very young girls, she thought
that affection ought to be kept secret from the
world, and that it was a very shocking thing
to fall in love; she consequently vowed and
declared to every body, that “ she had no idea
of thinking of Major Cavendish; that she
was too young, much too young to marry ;
that her mamma said so.” She even steeped
her little tongue so deeply in love’s natural
hypocrisy, as to declare, but only once y “ that
she hated Major Cavendish.” If he address
ed her in company, she was sure to turn away,
blush, and chatter most inveterately to her
cousin, long Jack Seymour; if he asked her
to sing, she had invariably a sore throat; and
if he asked her to dance, she had sprained
her ankle: it was quite marvellous the quan
tity of little fibs she invented, whenever Ma
jor Cavendish was in the way; and it is pro
bable that the calm, dignified and gentlemanly
soldier would never have declared his prefer
ence for the laughter-loving and provoking
Kale, but for one of those little episodes which
either make or mar the happiness of life.
1 must observe that Kate’s extreme want of
resemblance to either her mournful mother or
her pale and gentle father, was not more ex
traordinary than that Major Cavendish, as we
have said, —the calm and dignified Major
Cavendish, at six-and-twenty,—should evmce
so great an affection for the animated and
girlish creature, whom four years before his
” declaration.” he had lectured to, and romped
with, but no, not romped—Major Cavendish
was too dignified to romp, or to flirt either;
what shall I call it then?—laughed!—yes,
he certainly did laugh, generally after the
most approved English fashion: his lips sep
arated with a manifest desire to unite again
as soon as possible, and his teeth, white and
even, appeared to great advantage during the