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MEMORY.

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odours when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

SHELLEY.

WOMAN'S GRIEFS AND REWARDS.

Be satisfied;

Something thou hast to bear through womanhood-
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin;

Some pang paid down for each new human life:

Some weariness in guarding such a life

Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust

From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason; feebleness

Within thy heart, and cruelty without;

And pressures of an alien tyranny,

With its dynastic reasons of larger bones,

And stronger sinews. But go to! thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,

After its own life-working. A child's kiss,
Set on thy sighing lips, and make thee glad :

A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich;
An old man help'd by thee, shall make thee strong.
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest.

UPON A MAID.

E. B. BARRETT.

Here she lies in bed of spice,
Fair as Eve in Paradise;
For her beauty it was such
Poets could not praise too much,
Virgins come, and in a ring,
Her supremest requiem sing;
Then depart, but see ye tread
Lightly, lightly, o'er the dead.

HERRICK.

SORROW.

The sadness of your greatness fits you well;
As if the plume upon a hero's casque.
Should nod a shadow upon his victor face.

E. B. BROWNING.

DANTE.

Who wove his web

And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth
Immortal, having burn'd all that could burn,
And leaving only what shall still be found
Untouch'd, nor with the smell of fire upon it,
Under the funeral ashes of the world.

SYDNEY DOBELL.

A WINTER SCENE.

Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends
At first thin-wavering, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherish'd fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white:

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,
Faint from the west, emits his evening ray;
Earth's universal face, deep hid, and chill,
Is one wide dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the labourer-ox
Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil.

THOMSON.

TO VENUS.

Goddess, I do love a girl

Ruby-lipp'd and tooth'd with pearl ;
If so be I may but prove
Lucky in this maid I love,
I will promise there shall be
Myrtles offer'd up to thee.

HERRICK.

A BIRD AT SUNSET.

By OWEN MEREDITH.

WILD bird, that wingest wide the glimmering moors,
Whither, by belts of yellowing woods away?
What pausing sunset thy wild heart allures
Deep into dying day?

Would that my heart, on wings like thine, could pass
Where stars their light in rosy regions lose-
A happy shadow o'er the warm brown grass,
Falling with falling dews!

Hast thou, like me, some true-love of thine own,
In fairy lands beyond the utmost seas;
Who there, unsolaced, yearns for thee alone,
And sings to silent trees?

O tell that woodbird that the summer grieves,
And the suns darken and the days grow cold;
And, tell her, love will fade with fading leaves,
And cease in common mould.

Fly from the winter of the world to her!
Fly, happy bird! I follow in thy flight,
Till thou art lost o'er yonder fringe of fir
In baths of crimson light.

My love is dying far away from me.
She sits and saddens in the fading west.
For her I mourn all day, and pine to be
At night upon her breast.

THE SUN.

By BERNARD Barton.

MOST glorious art thou! when from thy pavilion
Thou lookest forth at morning; flinging wide
Its curtain clouds of purple and vermilion,
Dispensing life and light on every side;

VOL. V.

H

74

Brightening the mountain cataract, dimly spied
Through glittering mist; opening each dew-gemm'd flower,
Or touching in some hamlet, far descried,

Its spiral wreaths of smoke that upward tower,
While birds their matin sing from many a leafy bower.

And more magnificent art thou, bright sun,
Uprising from the Ocean's billowy bed!
Who that has seen thee thus, as I have done,
Can e'er forget the effulgent splendours spread
From thy emerging radiance? Upward sped
Even to the centre of the vaulted sky.

Thy beams pervade the heavens, and o'er them shed
Hues indescribable-of gorgeous dye,

Making among the clouds mute glorious pageantry.

LIFE IN ITALY.

A passage in Mrs. BROWNING's Aurora Leigh.

I TOOK up the old days
With all their Tuscan pleasures worn and spoil'd,—
Like some lost book we dropt in the long grass
On such a happy summer afternoon

When last we read it with a loving friend,
And find in autumn, when the friend is gone,

The grass cut short, the weather changed, too late,
And stare at, as at something wonderful

For sorrow,-thinking how two hands, before,
Had held up what is left to only one,

And how we smiled when such a vehement nail
Impress'd the tiny dint here, which presents
This verse in fire for ever! Tenderly
And mournfully I lived. I knew the birds
And insects, which look'd father'd by the flowers
And emulous of their hues : I recognised
The moths, with that great overpoise of wings
Which makes a mystery of them how at all
They can stop flying: butterflies, that bear
Upon their blue wings such red embers round,
They seem to scorch the blue air into holes

Each flight they take: and fire-flies that suspire
In short lapses of transported flame
Across the tingling Dark, while overhead
The constant and inviolable stars

Outburn those lights-of-love: melodious owls
(If music had but one note and was sad,
"Twould sound just so), and all the silent swirl
Of bats, that seem to follow in the air

Some grand circumference of a shadowy dome
To which we are blind: and then, the nightingales,
Which pluck our heart across a garden-wall
(When walking in the town), and carry it
So high into the bowery almond-trees,
We tremble and are afraid, and feel as if
The golden flood of moonlight unaware
Dissolved the pillars of the steady earth
And made it less substantial. And I knew
The harmless opal snakes, and large mouth'd frogs
(Those noisy vaunters of their shallow streams),
And lizards, the green lightnings of the wall,
Which, if you sit down still, nor sigh too loud,
Will flatter you and take you for a stone,
And flash familiarly about your feet

With such prodigious eyes in such small heads!

I knew them, though they had somewhat dwindled from My childish imagery, and kept in mind

How last I sat among them equally,

In fellowship and mateship, as a child

Will bear him still toward insect, beast and bird,
Before the Adam in him has foregone

All privilege of Eden, making friends

And talk with such a bird or such a goat,
And buying many a two-inch-wide rush-cage
To let out the caged cricket on a tree,

Saying, "Oh, my dear grillino, were you cramp'd?
And are you happy with the ilex-leaves ?
And do you love me who have let you go?
Say yes, in singing, and I'll understand."
But now the creatures all seem'd further off,
No longer mine, nor like me; only there,
A gulf between us. I could yearn indeed,
Like other rich men, for a drop of dew
To cool this heat,-a drop of the early dew,
The irrecoverable child-innocence

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