John."
"Let the dastard look to it!"
Cried fiery Estienne,
"Were D'Aulnay King Louis,
I'd free her again!"
"Alas for thy lady!
No service from thee
Is needed by her
Whom the Lord hath set free;
Nine days, in stern silence,
Her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came,
And Death opened her door!"
As if suddenly smitten
La Tour staggered back;
His hand grasped his sword-hilt,
His forehead grew black.
He sprang on the deck
Of his shallop again.
"We cruise now for vengeance!
Give way!" cried Estienne.
"Massachusetts shall hear
Of the Huguenot's wrong,
And from island and creekside
Her fishers shall throng!
Pentagoet shall rue
What his Papists have done,
When his palisades echo
The Puritan's gun!"
Oh, the loveliest of heavens
Hung tenderly o'er him,
There were waves in the sunshine,
And green isles before him:
But a pale hand was beckoning
The Huguenot on;
And in blackness and ashes
Behind was St. John!
1841
THE CYPRESS-TREE OF CEYLON.
Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveller of the fourteenth
century, speaks of a cypress-tree in Ceylon, universally held sacred by
the natives, the leaves of which were said to fall only at certain
intervals, and he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was
restored, at once, to youth and vigor.
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