4. These songs are sweet; but the sorrows and the joys which they awake are not my sorrows nor my joys. The exile is everywhere alone! I have been asked, Why weepest thou? but when I have told my tale, no one wept: for no one understood me. The exile is everywhere alone! I have seen old men surrounded by children, as the olive by its branches; but none of those old men called me his son; none of those children called me his brother. The exile is everywhere alone! 5. I have seen young girls smile, with a smile as pure as the dawn, on him they had chosen for a husband; but not one smiled on me. The exile is everywhere alone! I have seen young men heart to heart embrace each other as if they held in common but one existence; but not one pressed my hand. The exile is everywhere alone! There are friends, wives, fathers, brothers, only in one's own country. The exile is every where alone! 6. Poor exile! cease to lament. Every one is banished like thyself; every one beholds father, mother, wife, friend, pass away and vanish. Our country is not here below; man seeks for it here in vain; that which he mistakes for it is only a resting-place for a night. 7. Heaven guide the poor exile. He goes wandering over the earth. LAMENNAIS 81. A CHRISTMAS HYMN. T was the calm and silent night!— IT Seven hundred years and fifty-three And now was queen of land and sea! Held undisturbed their ancient reign, Centuries ago! 2. Twas in the calm and silent night! His breast with thoughts of boundless sway; 8. Within that province far away Went plodding home a weary boor; Fallen through a half-shut stable door 4. O, strange indifference!-low and high One that shall thrill the world forever! To that still moment none would heed, 5. It is the calm and solemn night! A thousand bells ring out, and throw The night that erst no shame had worn, To it a happy name is given; For in that stable lay, new-born, The peaceful Prince of earth and heaven, DOMMET. 32. BARON GERAMB. HOSE whose memory does not carry back beyond the days THOS of Waterloo may have found, in Moore's politico-satirical poems, mention of a person enjoying a celebrity similar to that possessed more lately by a French count resident in London, as a leader of fashion, remarkable at the same time for wit and accomplishments. Such was the Baron Geramb, in the days when George the Third was king. But some may possibly remember a higher renown gained by him beyond that of having his last bon-mot quoted in the morning papers. 2. Being an alien, though neither a conspirator nor an assassin, he was ordered to leave the country, and refused. He barricaded his house, and placarded it with the words, “Every Englishman's house is his castle," in huge letters. He bravely stood a siege of some duration against the police of those days, and crowds around the house; till at length, whether starved out by a stern blockade, or overreached by Bow Street strategy, he either yielded at discretion, or was captured through want of it, and was forth with transferred to a foreign shore. 3. So ends the first chapter of the public life of the gallant and elegant Baron Geramb, the charm of good society, to which by every title he belonged. What became of him after this? Did that society, on losing sight of him, ask any more? Probably few of those who had been entertained by his cleverness, or amused by his freaks, ever gave him another thought; and a commentator on Thomas Moore encountering the "whiskers of Geramb" in one of his verses might be at a loss to trace the history of their wearer. Certainly those ornaments of his countenance would have lent but slight assistance in tracing him in after-life. 4. Many years later, in the reign of Gregory the Sixteenth, let the reader suppose himself to be standing on the small plateau shaded by the ile which fronts the Franciscan convent above Castle Gandolfo. He is looking down on the lovely lake which takes its name from that, through an opening in the oaken screen, enjoying the breeze of an autumn afternoon. He may see issuing from the convent-gate a monk not of his fraternity, but clothed in the white Cistercian habit; a man of portly dimensions, bestriding the humblest but most patriarchal of man-bearing animals selected of hundreds, his rider used to say, to be in just proportion to the burden. 5. If the stranger examines him, he will easily discern, through the gravity of his look, not only a nobleness of countenance, and through the simplicity of his habit, not merely a gracefulness of demeanor which speaks the highly-bred gentleman, but even visible remains of the good-humored, kindhearted, and soldierly courtier. There lurks in his eye a sparkling gleam of wit suppressed, or disciplined into harmless coruscations. Once, when I met him at Albano, he had brought as a gift to the English Cardinal Acton a spirited sketch of himself and his "Gallant Gray" rolling together in the dust. 6. When I called on him at his convent he showcd me an imperial autograph letter, just received, announcing to him the gallantry and wounds of his son, fighting in Circassia, and several other royal epistles written in the pleasant tone of friend to friend. Yet he is thoroughly a monk of the strictest order known in the Church, living in a cell without an object of luxury near him, sleeping on a straw bed, occupied in writing, reading, meditating on holy things, devout in prayer, edifying in conversation. Among other works of his overflowing with piety is one peculiarly tender, "My Saviour's Tomb." 7. The good old monk had been to Jerusalem, and had manifested his affections by a novel and exquisite prodigality, borrowed in idea from a certain woman who had been a sinner in the city. He anointed the sepulchre of our Lord with the most costly of perfumes, the attargul, or otto of roses, as we call it, so that the whole house was filled with its fragrance. Such is the Père Geramb; such the second chapter of his known life. What had been the intermediate hidden stage? 8. When expelled, happily for him, from England, he very soon fell into the enemy's hands, I know not how. But he happened to be cast into the same prison, I think Vincennes, where the good Cardinal de Gregorio was also in bonds. He was first struck by the patience and virtues of his fellow-captive, and gradually entered into conversation with him. The result was a change of heart and a change of life. Liberty soon put the sincerity of both to the severest test. Baron Geramb remained attached to the land of his captivity: in it he joined the fervent and austere life of La Trappe. After some years he was sent to Rome as resident procurator of the order, where I had the pleasure of knowing him. Several amusing anecdotes mingle with his memory, to show how even in his sackcloth and ashes lived his wonted fire. CARDINAL WISEMAN. SPE 33. THE ANGELS OF BUENA VISTA. I. PEAK and tell us, our Ximena, looking northward far away, O'er the camp of the invaders, o'er the Mexican array, Who is losing? who is winning? are they far or come they near? Look abroad, and tell us, sister, whither rolls the storm we hear. II. "Down the hills of Angostura still the storm of battle rolls; Blood is flowing, men are dying; God have mercy on their souls !" |