And bending o'er with soul transfusing eyes,
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,
Woos back the fleeting spirit and half-supplies;
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love.
Yet haply there will come a weary day,

When overtasked at length

Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth,
And both supporting does the work of both.

HUMAN LIFE.

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY,

F dead, we cease to be; if total gloom

IF

Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
Surplus of nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,

She formed with restless hands unconsciously!
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly !

If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,

Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights!-Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,
And to repay the other! Why rejoices

Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood? Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices, Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,

That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun !
Thou hast no reason why! Thou can'st have none;
Thy being's being is a contradiction.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS.

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER.

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,

Never alone :

Scarce had I welcomed the sorrow-beguiler,

Iacchus but in came boy Cupid the smiler;
Lo! Phoebus the glorious descends from his throne!
They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With divinities fills my

Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,
Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance,

Bear aloft to you homes, to your banquets of joyance, That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!

Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul! O give me the nectar!

O fill me the bowl!

Give him the nectar!
Pour out for the poet,
Hebe pour free!

Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,

That Styx the detested no more he may view,
And like one of us gods may conceit him to be!
Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry !
The wine of the Immortals

Forbids me to die!

T

THEKLA'S SONG.

FROM SCHILLER.

HE cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar,
The damsel paces along the shore ;

The billows they tumble with might, with might;
And she flings out her voice to the darksome night;
Her bosom is swelling with sorrow;

T'he world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky:
Thou Holy One, call thy child away!
I've lived and loved, and that was to-day-
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.

SONG.

SUNNY shaft did I behold,

A From sky to earth it slanted:

And poised therein a bird so bold—
Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!
He sank, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
Within that shaft of sunny mist;
His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
All else of amethyst !

And thus he sang: "Adieu! adieu !
Love's dreams prove seldom true.
The blossoms, they make no delay:
The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
Sweet month of May,

We must away;
Far, far away!

To-day! to-day!"

WE

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB.

HERE is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be?— By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree!

The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,
And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,
And whistled and roared in the winter alone,
Is gone and the birch in its stead is grown.-
The Knight's bones are dust,

And his good sword rust

His soul is with the saints, I trust.

O

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY.

AN ALLEGORY.

N the wide level of a mountain's head

(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place), Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, Two lovely children run an endless race,

A sister and a brother!

That far outstripp'd the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he pass'd,
And knows not whether he be first or last.