Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851

How much is destroyed, how much has passed away.

How many good men, who were here, are here no longer; and how many who remain would grieve but little if they, too, were numbered with the dead.

The hero of battles is once more a robber and a fugitive. The iron hand of the law drives him from land's end to land's end.

In the mad-house mopes a captain of hussars, and ever repeats, – "Wait but a moment!" None there can guess the meaning of his words.

Only George of St Thomas is happy. He sleeps in a welcome grave, dreaming of sweet renown and deep revenge.

We have suppressed two chapters of this tale, both for want of space, and because they are unpleasantly full of horrors. They are chiefly occupied with the vengeance wreaked by George, who is frightfully mutilated in the course of the war, upon the Serbs, and especially upon his deadly foe Basil; and include an account of the capture by assault, and subsequent conflagration, of the town of St Thomas. They are in no way essential to heighten or complete the interest of those we have given; and L'Envoy is as appropriately placed at the end of the third chapter as at the close of the fifth. The plot of the whole tale, if such it may be called, is quite unimportant; but there is an originality and a wild vigour in many of the scenes, which justify, in combination with other German translations from the Magyar that have lately reached us, an anticipation of yet better things from the present generation of Hungarian poets and novelists.

THE MESSAGE OF SETH.

AN ORIENTAL TRADITION

BY DELTA

I

Prostrate upon his couch of yellow leaves,
Slow-breathing lay the Father of Mankind;
And as the rising sun through cloudland weaves
Its gold, the glowing past returned to mind,
Days of delight for ever left behind,
In purity's own robes when garmented,
Under perennial branches intertwined —
Where fruits and flowers hung temptingly o'erhead,
Eden's blue streams he traced, by bliss ecstatic led.

II

Before him still, in the far distance seen,
Arose its rampart groves impassable;
Stem behind giant stem, a barrier screen,
Whence even at noonday midnight shadows fell;
Vainly his steps had sought to bid farewell
To scenes so tenderly beloved, although
Living in sight of Heaven made Earth a Hell;
For fitful lightnings, on the turf below,
Spake of the guardian sword aye flickering to and fro —

III

The fiery sword that, high above the trees,
Flashed awful threatenings from the angel's hand,
Who kept the gates and guarded: – nigh to these,
A hopeless exile, Adam loved to stand
Wistful, or roamed, to catch a breeze that fanned
The ambrosial blooms, and wafted perfume thence,
As 'twere sweet tidings from a distant land
No more to be beheld; for Penitence,
However deep it be, brings back not Innocence.

IV

Thus had it been through weary years, wherein
The primal curse, working its deadly way,
Had reft his vigour, bade his cheek grow thin,
Furrowed his brow, and bleached his locks to grey:
A stricken man, now Adam prostrate lay
With sunken eye, and palpitating breath,
Waning like sunlight from the west away;
While tearfully, beside that bed of death,
Propping his father's head, in tenderness hung Seth.

V

"Seth, dearest Seth," 'twas thus the father said,
"Thou know'st – ah! better none, for thou hast been
A pillow to this else forsaken head,
And made, if love could make, life's desert green —
The dangers I have braved, the ills unseen,
The weariness and woe, that, round my feet,
Lay even as fowlers' nets; and how the wrath
Of an offended God, for blossoms sweet
Strewed briars and thorns along each rugged path: —
Yet deem not that this Night no hope of Morning hath.

VI

"On darkness Dawn will break; and, as the gloom
Of something all unfelt before, downweighs
My spirit, and forth-shadows coming doom,
Telling me this may be my last of days —
I call to mind the promise sweet (let praise
Be ever His, who from Him hath not thrust
The erring utterly!) again to raise
The penitential prostrate from the dust,
And be the help of all who put in Him their trust.

VII

"Know then, that day, as sad from Eden's home
Of primal blessedness my steps were bent
Reluctant, through the weary world to roam,
And tears were with the morning's dewdrops blent,
That 'twas even then the Almighty did relent —
Saying, 'Though labour, pain, and peril be
Thy portion, yet a balsam sweet of scent