I

Serene and beautiful and very wise,
Most erudite in curious Grecian lore,
You lay and read your learned books, and bore
A weight of unshed tears and silent sighs.
The song within your heart could never rise
Until love bade it spread its wings and soar.
Nor could you look on Beauty's face before
A poet's burning mouth had touched your eyes.

Love is made out of ecstasy and wonder;
Love is a poignant and accustomed pain.
It is a burst of Heaven-shaking thunder;
It is a linnet's fluting after rain.
Love's voice is through your song; above and under
And in each note to echo and remain.


II

Because Mankind is glad and brave and young,
Full of gay flames that white and scarlet glow,
All joys and passions that Mankind may know<...

1.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down, -
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, -
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight; -
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew.

2.
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, - ere it be long!
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!

A lantern light from deeper in the barn
Shone on a man and woman in the door
And threw their lurching shadows on a house
Near by, all dark in every glossy window.
A horse's hoof pawed once the hollow floor,
And the back of the gig they stood beside
Moved in a little. The man grasped a wheel,
The woman spoke out sharply, "Whoa, stand still!"
"I saw it just as plain as a white plate,"
She said, "as the light on the dashboard ran
Along the bushes at the roadside, a man's face.
You must have seen it too."
"I didn't see it.
Are you sure"
"Yes, I'm sure!"
", it was a face?"
"Joel, I'll have to look. I can't go in,
I can't, and leave a thing like that unsettled.
Doors locked and curtains drawn will make no difference.
I always have felt strange when we...

O jealousy, that art
The canker of the heart;
And mak'st all hell
Where thou do'st dwell;
For pity be
No fury, or no firebrand to me.

Far from me I'll remove
All thoughts of irksome love:
And turn to snow,
Or crystal grow,
To keep still free,
O! soul-tormenting jealousy, from thee.

In things like this I've always tried
To look upon the Brighter Side;
And when I see the Prince, I say
"The Crown's worth something anyway."

Adversity hurts none, but only such
Whom whitest fortune dandled has too much.

What, he on whom our voices unanimously ran,
Made Pope at our last Conclave? Full low his life began:
His father earned the daily bread as just a fisherman.

So much the more his boy minds book, gives proof of mother-wit,
Becomes first Deacon, and then Priest, then Bishop: see him sit
No less than Cardinal erelong, while no one cries “Unfit!”

But some one smirks, some other smiles, jogs elbow and nods head:
Each winks at each: “I’-faith, a rise! Saint Peter’s net, instead
Of sword and keys, is come in vogue!” You think he blushes red?

Not he, of humble holy heart! “Unworthy me!” he sighs:
“From fisher’s drudge to Church’s prince, it is indeed a rise:
So, here’s my way to keep the fact forever in my eyes!”

And straightway in his palace-hall, where commonly i...

The hinges are so rusty
The door is fixed and fast;
The windows are so dusty
The sun looks in aghast:
Knock out the glass, I pray,
Or dash the door away,
Or break the house down bodily,
And let my soul go free!

This "sentiment" was read on the same occasion as the "Family Record," which immediately follows it. The latter poem is the dutiful tribute of a son to his father and his father's ancestors, residents of Woodstock from its first settlement.

The Ship of State! above her skies are blue,
But still she rocks a little, it is true,
And there are passengers whose faces white
Show they don't feel as happy as they might;
Yet on the whole her crew are quite content,
Since its wild fury the typhoon has spent,
And willing, if her pilot thinks it best,
To head a little nearer south by west.
And this they feel: the ship came too near wreck,
In the long quarrel for the quarter-deck,
Now when she glides serenely on her way, -
The shallows past where dread explosives lay, -
The stiff o...

BY JOHN BULL.


        Dublin, March 12, 1827.--Friday, after the arrival of the packet bringing the account of the defeat of the Catholic Question, in the House of Commons, orders were sent to the Pigeon-House to forward 5,000,000 rounds of musket-ball cartridge to the different garrisons round the country.--Freeman's Journal.


I have found out a gift for my Erin,
    A gift that will surely content her:--
Sweet pledge of a love so endearing!
    Five millions of bullets I've sent her.

She askt me for Freedom and Right,
    But ill she her wants understood;--
Ball cartridges, morning and night,
    Is a dose that will do her more good.

There is hardly a day of our lives
    But we read, in some amiable trials,
How husbands make lov...

LOVED AND LOST, - OR - THE SKY-LARK AND THE VIOLET.


VIOLET'S SONG

I.

        Come down from thy dazzling sphere,
            Bird of the gushing song!
Come down where the young leaves whisper low,
While the breeze steals in with a murmurous flow,
And the tender branches wave to and fro
            In the soft air all day long!

        I have watched thy daring wing
            Cleaving the sun-bright air,
Where the snowy cloud is asleep in light,
Or dreamily floating in robes of white,
While thy soul gushed forth in its song's free might,
            Till my spirit is dim with care.

        For oh, I have loved thee well,
            Thou of the soaring wing! -
And I fear lest the angels that sit on high,
In the ca...

O come you down from the far hills
Whereon you fought, triumphed and died,
Men at whose names the quick blood thrills
And the heart's troubled in our side.

Your shadows o'er our fields ere night
Draw from the shadow of old trees;
Ghost-hallowed run the streams, and light
Hangs halo-wise in the great peace.

Warriors of England whom we praise
(Ah, vain all praise!), your spirit is not
Lost in the meanness of these days,
Not wholly is your charge forgot.

And this perplexity of strife
Not all estrangèd leaves our heart;
England is ours yet, and her life
Has yet in ours the purest part.

But come you down and stand you yet
A little closer to our side,
Or in the darkness we forget
The cause for which Earth's noblest died.

She stood among the lilies
In sunset's brightest ray,
Among the tall June lilies,
As stately fair as they;
And I, a boyish lover then,
Looked once, and, lingering, looked again,
And life began that day.

She sat among the lilies,
My sweet, all lily-pale;
The summer lilies listened,
I whispered low my tale.
O golden anthers, breathing balm,
O hush of peace, O twilight calm,
Did you or I prevail?

She lies among the lily-snows,
Beneath the wintry sky;
All round her and about her
The buried lilies lie.
They will awake at touch of Spring,
And she, my fair and flower-like thing,
In spring-time--by and by.

No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano.
    - Spanish Proverb

The sun is bright,--the air is clear,
    The darting swallows soar and sing.
And from the stately elms I hear
    The bluebird prophesying Spring.

So blue you winding river flows,
    It seems an outlet from the sky,
Where waiting till the west-wind blows,
    The freighted clouds at anchor lie.

All things are new;--the buds, the leaves,
    That gild the elm-tree's nodding crest,
And even the nest beneath the eaves;--
    There are no birds in last year's nest!

All things rejoice in youth and love,
    The fulness of their first delight!
And learn from the soft heavens above
    The melting tenderness of night.

Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme,
   ...

Where are they, that song and tale
Tell of? lands our childhood knew?
Sea-locked Faerylands that trail
Morning summits, dim with dew,
Crimson o'er a crimson sail.

Where in dreams we entered on
Wonders eyes have never seen:
Whither often we have gone,
Sailing a dream-brigantine
On from voyaging dawn to dawn.

Leons seeking lands of song;
Fabled fountains pouring spray;
Where our anchors dropped among
Corals of some tropic bay,
With its swarthy native throng.

Shoulder ax and arquebus!
We may find it! past yon range
Of sierras, vaporous,
Rich with gold and wild and strange
That lost region dear to us.

Yet, behold, although our zeal
Darien summits may subdue,
Our Balboa eyes reveal
But a vaster sea come to<...

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind![1]
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
For there thy habitation is the heart -
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar - for 'twas trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.[2]

I see her still - by her fair train surrounded,
The fairest of them all, she took her place;
Afar I stood, by her bright charms confounded,
For, oh! they dazzled with their heavenly grace.
With awe my soul was filled - with bliss unbounded,
While gazing on her softly radiant face;
But soon, as if up-borne on wings of fire,
My fingers 'gan to sweep the sounding lyre.

The thoughts that rushed across me in that hour,
The words I sang, I'd fain once more invoke;
Within, I felt a new-awakened power,
That each emotion of my bosom spoke.
My soul, long time enchained in sloth's dull bower,
Through all its fetters now triumphant broke,
And brought to light unknown, harmonious numbers,
Which in its deepest depths, had lived in slumbers.

And when the chords h...

The prosperous and beautiful
To me seem not to wear
The yoke of conscience masterful,
Which galls me everywhere.

I cannot shake off the god;
On my neck he makes his seat;
I look at my face in the glass,--
My eyes his eyeballs meet.

Enchanters! Enchantresses!
Your gold makes you seem wise;
The morning mist within your grounds
More proudly rolls, more softly lies.

Yet spake yon purple mountain,
Yet said yon ancient wood,
That Night or Day, that Love or Crime,
Leads all souls to the Good.