Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1823.pdf/70



But what has fame to do with one Whose light and hope of fame are gone? Oh, fame is as the moon above, Whose sun of light and life is love. There is more in the smile of one gentle eye Then the thousand pages of history; Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise. Take the gems in glory's coronal, And one smile of beauty is worth them all.—

He was not lonely quite,—a shade, A dream, a fancy, round him played; Sometimes low, at the twilight hour, He heard a voice like that, whose power Was on his heart: it sang a strain Of those whose love was fond, yet vain: Sweet like a dream,—yet none might say Whose was the voice or whose the lay. And once, when worn with toil and care, All that the soldier has to bear, With none to soothe and none to bless His hour of sickly loneliness, When, waked to consciousness again, The fire gone from his heart and brain, He could remember some fair thing Around his pillow hovering; Of white arms, in whose clasp he slept; Of young blue eyes, that o'er him wept; How, when on the parched lip and brow Burnt the red fever's hottest glow, Some one had brought dew of the spring, With woman's own kind solacing. And he had heard a voice, whose thrill Was echoed by his bosom still. It was not hers—it could but be A dream, the fever's fantasie. - - -

Deadly has been the fight to-day; But now the infidels give way, And cimetar and turbaned band Scatter before the foeman's hand;