ENIGMA. [Democratic Review, October, 1837.] THE lightest and the softest thing That floats upon the zephyr's wing, I move, with unresisting ease, Before the breath of every breeze. With power resistless and sublime, A favorite guest with all the fair, 'Tis mine to hurl the bolts of fate, That overwhelm the guilty great; I wield the giant arm that brings Dismay and death on tyrant kings. No throb of passion ever press'd The vacant chambers of my breast; And no desire nor dream of care Could ever gain admittance there. With passion's various fires I burn; Their boiling currents through my soul. In Folly's lap I had my birth, The wisest own that I am wiser, I boast but little outward grace, I soar to fields of liquid light, Where rainbows glow and stars are bright; I sun me at their spotless fires, And sport amid the heavenly choirs The nameless being of a day, No chance or change has power enough THE DIRGE OF LARRA. [Boston Miscellany, January, 1842.] IMITATED FROM THE SPANISH OF ZORRILLA. İr was a dark evening in the month of February. A funeral car passed slowly through the streets of Madrid, followed by a long procession, composed chiefly of the most intelligent and highly educated young men of the capital of Spain. On the car was a coffin containing the remains of Larra. His friends had placed upon the cover a garland composed of laurel interwoven with cypress. It was one of the few occasions, which have occurred in Spain within our time, when a public homage has been offered to merely literary and poetical talent, unaided by the outward advantages of rank and fortune. Don José Mariano de Larra had been, for several years preceding, the most distinguished of the living poets of Spain. His career was arrested by an unfortunate attachment. The lady of his love, after lending for some time a favorable ear to his vows, with a fickleness not unnatural to the sex, changed her purpose, and insisted on breaking off the connexion. After using every effort to dissuade her from this determination, Larra, at the end of a long conversation on the subject, swore, in the passionate excitement of the moment, that he would not survive the separation, and that the hour in which she should finally announce it to him, should be the last of his existence. 'You have then but a short time left for repentance,' replied the lady, perhaps considering the desperate words of Larra as mere bravado, 'for I assure you, whatever the results may be, that, with my consent, we shall never meet again.' Larra retired from her presence, and within a few minutes she heard the report of the pistol-shot that terminated his life. The procession took its melancholy way through the streets of Madrid to the cemetery near the Fuencarral Gate, where a niche had been prepared by a friendly hand for the remains of the dead. A numerous concourse filled the place, and the fast retiring twilight threw a gray and gloomy color upon the bones that paved the floor, the inscriptions that covered the walls, and the faces of the assistants. After the funeral ceremonies were over, a friend of the deceased, Señor Roca de Togores, pronounced a eulogy, in which he sketched with the eloquence of kindred genius, the brilliant, though stormy and disastrous career of the unfortunate bard. -our "The impression produced by it," says an eye-witness, "was of the deepest kind. The attachment we had felt for the deceased poet, sorrow at his melancholy death,—the images of decay and mortality with which we were surrounded, the sepulchre opening at our feet, — the starry sky above our heads, the touching expressions of sympathy and tenderness which had fallen from the lips of the eloquent speaker, — all combined to excite our sensibility to the highest degree. Tears flowed from every eye; and we looked round upon each other in silence, as if we were longing to hear some new voice give utterance, under a still higher inspiration, to our common feelings. "At this moment there stepped forth from among us, and, as it were, from within the sepulchre before our feet, a young man unknown to us all, and of almost boyish appearance. After glancing at the grave and then at the sky, he turned his pale face to the company and began to read with a trembling voice, which none of us had ever heard before, an elegy in honor of the dead. Scarcely, however, had he commenced, when he was overcome by the excess of his emotion and compelled to stop. The reading of the elegy was finished by the orator, who had just concluded his address. Never, perhaps, was the full effect of fine poetry more distinctly seen or more promptly acknowledged. Our surprise was equal to our enthusiasm. No sooner had we learned the name of the gifted mortal who had framed these charming verses, than we saluted him with a sort of religious reverence, and gave thanks to the Providence which had thus so manifestly interfered to bring forth, as it were from the very grave of our lost bard, a fit successor to his genius and glory. The same procession which had attended the remains of the illustrious Larra to the resting-place of the dead, now sallied forth in triumph to announce to the living the advent of a new poet, and proclaimed with enthusiasm the name of Zorrilla." The high expectations excited by this interesting scene seem to have been fully realized. Zorrilla has been ever since regarded as the most distinguished of the Spanish living poets. His Elegy on Larra stands at the opening of the collection of his poems, now composing six volumes. The following free imitation will give some imperfect notion of the original, the effect of which, on the first recitation, was probably somewhat heightened by the strange and affecting circumstances under which it was delivered. On the breeze I hear the knell Of the solemn, funeral bell, He has done his earthly toil, When he saw the Future rise He has perish'd in his pride, Like a fountain, summer-dried; Like a flower of odorous breath, Which the tempest scattereth ; But the rich aroma left us, Shows the sweets that have been reft us, And the meadow, fresh and green, What the fountain would have been. |