The blood-red sky above us
    Was darkening into night,
  And the Arab watching silently
    Our sad and hurried rite.

  The voice of Egypt’s river
    Came hollow and profound,
  And one lone palm-tree, where we stood,
    Rock’d with a shivery sound: 

  While the shadow of the Pyramid
    Hung o’er the grave we made,
  When the battle-day was done,
  And the Desert’s parting sun
    A field of death survey’d.

  The fathers of our brother
    Were borne to knightly tombs,
  With torch-light and with anthem-note,
    And many waving plumes: 

  But he, the last and noblest
    Of that high Norman race,
  With a few brief words of soldier-love
    Was gather’d to his place;

  In the shadow of the Pyramid,
    Where his youthful form we laid,
  When the battle-day was done,
  And the Desert’s parting sun
    A field of death survey’d.

  But let him, let him slumber
    By the old Egyptian wave! 
  It is well with those who bear their fame
    Unsullied to the grave!

  When brightest names are breathed on,
    When loftiest fall so fast,
  We would not call our brother back
    On dark days to be cast,

  From the shadow of the Pyramid,
    Where his noble heart we laid,
  When the battle-day was done,
  And the Desert’s parting sun
    A field of death survey’d.

Blackwood’s Magazine.

* * * * *

THE SNOW-WHITE VIRGIN.

(Continued from page 125.)

Her life seemed to be the same in sleep.  Often at midnight, by the light of the moon shining in upon her little bed beside theirs, her parents leant over her face, diviner in dreams, and wept as she wept, her lips all the while murmuring, in broken sentences of prayer, the name of Him who died for us all.  But plenteous as were his penitential tears—­penitential, in the holy humbleness of her stainless spirit, over thoughts that had never left a dimming breath on its purity, yet that seemed, in those strange visitings, to be haunting her as the shadows of sins—­soon were they all dried up in the lustre of her returning smiles!  Waking, her voice in the kirk was the sweetest among many sweet, as all the young singers, and she the youngest far, sat together by themselves, and within the congregational music of the psalm, uplifted a silvery strain that sounded like the very spirit of the whole, even like angelic harmony blent with a mortal song.  But sleeping, still more sweetly sang the “Holy Child;” and then, too, in some diviner inspiration than ever was granted to it while awake, her soul composed its own hymns, and set the simple scriptural words to its own mysterious music—­the tunes she loved best gliding into one another, without once ever marring the melody, with pathetic touches interposed never heard before, and never more, to be renewed!  For each dream had its own breathing, and many-visioned did then seem to be the sinless creature’s sleep!