'Neath skies that winter never knew
The air was full of light and balm,
And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
Through orange bloom and groves of palm.

A stranger from the frozen North,
Who sought the fount of health in vain,
Sank homeless on the alien earth,
And breathed the languid air with pain.

God's angel came! The tender shade
Of pity made her blue eye dim;
Against her woman's breast she laid
The drooping, fainting head of him.

She bore him to a pleasant room,
Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
And watched beside his bed, for whom
His far-off sisters might not care.

She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed
Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
The trembling soul that fear...

He'd a breet ruddy face an a laffin e'e,
An his shoolders wer brooad as brooad need be;
For each one he met he'd a sally o' wit,
For a jovjal soul wor this same Tom Grit.
He climb'd up to his waggon's heigh seeat wi' pride,
For he'd bowt a new horse 'at he'd nivver tried;
But he had noa fear, for he knew he could drive
As weel, if net better, nor th' best man alive.
Soa he sed, as he gethered his reins in his hand,
An prepared to start off on a journey he'd planned;
But some 'at stood by shook ther heeads an lukt grave,
For they'd daats ha that mettlesum horse might behave.
It set off wi' a jerk when Tom touched it wi' th' whip,
But his arms they wor strong, an like iron his grip,
An he sooin browt it daan to a nice steady gait,
But it tax'd all his skill to mak it...

Put by the sun my joyful soul,
We are for darkness that is whole;

Put by the wine, now for long years
We must be thirsty with salt tears;

Put by the rose, bind thou instead
The fiercest thorns about thy head;

Put by the courteous tire, we need
But the poor pilgrim's blackest weed;

Put by - a'beit with tears - thy lute,
Sing but to God or else be mute.

Take leave of friends save such as dare
Thy love with Loneliness to share.

It is full tide. Put by regret.
Turn, turn away. Forget. Forget.

Put by the sun my lightless soul,
We are for darkness that is whole.

Oh that men would praise the Lord
    For his goodness unto men!
Forth he sends his saving word,
    --Oh that men would praise the Lord!--
And from shades of death abhorred
    Lifts them up to light again:
Oh that men would praise the Lord
    For his goodness unto men!

Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!
When thy flowery hand delivers
All the mountain-prisoned rivers,
And thy great heart beats and quivers,
To revive the days that were,
Make me over, mother April,
When the sap begins to stir!

Take my dust and all my dreaming,
Count my heart-beats one by one,
Send them where the winters perish;
Then some golden noon recherish
And restore them in the sun,
Flower and scent and dust and dreaming,
With their heart-beats every one!

Set me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the streaming hosts a-wing!
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow,
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow--
Every migrant is my fellow,
Making northward with the spring.
Loose me in the urge and tide-drift
Of the...

I

O heart that vainly follows
The flight of summer swallows,
Far over holts and hollows,
O'er frozen buds and flowers;
To violet seas and levels,
Where Love Time's locks dishevels
With merry mimes and revels
Of aphrodisiac Hours.


II

O Love who, dreaming, borrows
Dead love from sad to-morrows,
The broken heart that sorrows,
The blighted hopes that weep;
Pale faces pale with sleeping;
Red eyelids red with weeping;
Dead lips dead secrets keeping,
That shake the deeps of sleep!


III

O Memory that showers
About the withered hours
White, ruined, sodden flowers,
Dead dust and bitter rain;
Dead loves with faces teary;
Dead passions wan and dreary;
The weary, weary, weary,
Dead h...

Like the bright lamp, that shone in Kildare's holy fane,[1]
    And burn'd thro' long ages of darkness and storm,
Is the heart that sorrows have frowned on in vain,
    Whose spirit outlives them, unfading and warm.
Erin, oh Erin, thus bright thro' the tears
Of a long night of bondage, thy spirit appears.

The nations have fallen, and thou still art young,
    Thy sun is but rising, when others are set;
And tho' slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung,
    The full noon of freedom shall beam round thee yet.
Erin, oh Erin, tho' long in the shade,
Thy star will shine out when the proudest shall fade.

Unchilled by the rain, and unwaked by the wind,
    The lily lies sleeping thro' winter's cold hour,
Till Spring's light touch her fetters unbind,

La bella donna che cotanto amavi.

TO HIS BROTHER GERARDO, ON THE DEATH OF A LADY TO WHOM HE WAS ATTACHED.


    The beauteous lady thou didst love so well
Too soon hath from our regions wing'd her flight,
To find, I ween, a home 'mid realms of light;
So much in virtue did she here excel
Thy heart's twin key of joy and woe can dwell
No more with her--then re-assume thy might,
Pursue her by the path most swift and right,
Nor let aught earthly stay thee by its spell.
Thus from thy heaviest burthen being freed,
Each other thou canst easier dispel,
And an unfreighted pilgrim seek thy sky;
Too well, thou seest, how much the soul hath need,
(Ere yet it tempt the shadowy vale) to quell
Each earthly hope, since all that lives must die.

WOLL...

("Si j'étais la feuille.")

[XXII., September, 1828.]


Oh! were I the leaf that the wind of the West,
His course through the forest uncaring;
To sleep on the gale or the wave's placid breast
In a pendulous cradle is bearing.

All fresh with the morn's balmy kiss would I haste,
As the dewdrops upon me were glancing;
When Aurora sets out on the roseate waste,
And round her the breezes are dancing.

On the pinions of air I would fly, I would rush
Thro' the glens and the valleys to quiver;
Past the mountain ravine, past the grove's dreamy hush,
And the murmuring fall of the river.

By the darkening hollow and bramble-bush lane,
To catch the sweet breath of the roses;
Past the land would I speed, where the sand-driven plain

Love, banished heaven, in earth was held in scorn,
Wand'ring abroad in need and beggary;
And wanting friends, though of a goddess born,
Yet craved the alms of such as passèd by.
    I, like a man devout and charitable,
Clothèd the naked, lodged this wandering guest;
With sighs and tears still furnishing his table
With what might make the miserable blest.
    But this ungrateful for my good desert,
Enticed my thoughts against me to conspire,
Who gave consent to steal away my heart,
And set my breast, his lodging, on a fire.
    Well, well, my friends, when beggars grow thus bold,
    No marvel then though charity grow cold.

Master of sweet and loving lore,
    Give us the open mind
To know religion means no more,
    No less, than being kind.

Give us the comprehensive sight
    That sees another's need;
And let our aim to set things right
    Prove God inspired our creed.

Give us the soul to know our kin
    That dwell in flock and herd,
The voice to fight man's shameful sin
    Against the beast and bird.

Give us a heart with love so fraught
    For all created things,
That even our unspoken thought
    Bears healing on its wings.

Give us religion that will cope
    With life's colossal woes,
And turn a radiant face of hope
    On troops of pigmy foes.

Give us the mastery of our fate
    In thoughts so warm and white,
T...

Let God be blest, be praised, and be thanked,
Who to us himself hath granted
This his own flesh and blood to feed and save us!
May we take right what he gave us:
Lord, be merciful to us.
By thy holy body dead in shame,
Lord, which from thy mother, Mary, came,
And by thy holy blood
Ease us, Lord, from all our load:
Lord, be merciful to us.

The holy body is for us laid lowly
Down in death, that we live holy;
No greater goodness he to us could render
Than make us mind his love tender.
Lord, be merciful to us.
Lord, thy love so great was, it hath driven
Thee to death, and us great gifts hath given
Our old debt it has paid,
And God has gracious made:
Lord, be merciful to us.

God on us all his blessing free bestow now
That we in ...

God, who me gives a will for to repent,
Will add a power to keep me innocent;
That I shall ne'er that trespass recommit
When I have done true penance here for it.

        From the Tales of Bonaventura des Periers, Servant to Marguerite of Valois, Queen of Navarre. By HORACE LORD ORFORD.


        How anxious is the pensive parents' thought,
        How blest the lot of fondlings, early taught;
        Joy strings her hours on pleasure's golden twine,
        And fancy forms it to an endless line.
        But ah! the charm must cease, or soon or late,
        When chicks and misses rise to woman's state;
        The little tyrant grows in turn a slave,
        And feels the soft anxiety she gave.
        This truth, my pretty friend, an ancient sage,
        Who wrote in tale and legend many a page,
        Couch'd in that age's unaffected guise,
        When fables were the wisdom of the wise.
        To careless note...

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow,
We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago,
    And etched on vacant places
    Are half-forgotten faces
Of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know -
When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow.

Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near,
We see, with strange emotion, that is not free from fear,
    That continent Elysian
    Long vanished from our vision,
Youth's lovely lost Atlantis, so mourned for and so dear,
Uprising from the ocean of the present surging near.

When gloomy, gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
    And draws from youth's recesses
    Some memory it possesses,
...

I'll get me hence,
Because no fence
Or fort that I can make here,
But love by charms,
Or else by arms
Will storm, or starving take here.

    Wreath the bowl
    With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
    We'll take a flight
    Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.
    Should Love amid
    The wreaths be hid,
That joy, the enchanter, brings us,
    No danger fear,
    While wine is near,
We'll drown him if he stings us,
    Then, wreath the bowl
    With flowers of soul,
The brightest wit can find us;
    We'll take a flight
    Towards heaven to-night,
And leave dull earth behind us.

    'Twas nectar fed
    Of old, 'tis said,
Their Junos, Joves, Apollos;
    And man may brew
    His nectar too,
The rich receipt's as follows:
    Take wine like this,
    Let looks of bliss
Around it well be blended,
 ...

They told her that he, to whose vows she had listened
    Thro' night's fleeting hours, was a spirit unblest;--
Unholy the eyes, that beside her had glistened,
    And evil the lips she in darkness had prest.

"When next in thy chamber the    bridegroom reclineth,
    "Bring near him thy lamp, when in slumber he lies;
"And there, as the light, o'er his dark features shineth,
    "Thou'lt see what a demon hath won all thy sighs!"

Too fond to believe them, yet doubting, yet fearing,
    When calm lay the sleeper she stole with her light;
And saw--such a vision!--no image, appearing
    To bards in their day-dreams, was ever so bright.

A youth, but just passing from childhood's sweet morning,
    While round him still lingered its innocent ray;
Tho' gleams...