Nativity once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set in youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

YOUNG LOCHINVAR.

By Sir WALTER SCOTT.

O, YOUNG Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide border his steed was the best;
And, save his good broad-sword, he weapons had none,
He rode all unarmed, and he rode alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

He staid not for brake, and he stopt not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he entered the Netherby hall,

Among bride'smen, and kinsmen, and brothers and all :
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word),
"O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar."

"I long wooed your daughter, my suit you denied ;
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide-
And now am I come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up,
He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup,
She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye,
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar,
“Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reached the hall-door, and the charger stood

near.

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

"She is won! we are gone over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Græmes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran :
There was racing, and chasing, on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar ?

LILIAN.

By COVENTRY PATMORE.

SHE could see me coming to her with the vision of the

hawk;

Always hastened on to meet me, heavy passion in her

walk;

Low tones to me grew lower, sweetening so her honey

talk,

That it filled up all my hearing; drown'd the voices of the

birds,

The voices of the breezes, and the voices of the herds;
For to me the lowest ever were the loudest of her words.

A paleness, as of beauty fainting through its own excess,
But how discourse of features whose least action could

express

What, while it made them lovely, far surpass'd all loveli

ness!

Even when alone together, looks, no utterance can define, Mark'd now and then soul-wanderings, that confirm'd her

half divine:

High treasure, ten times treasured for not seeming wholly

mine!

On her face, then and for ever, was the seriousness within. Her sweetest smiles (and sweeter did a lover never win) Ere half done grew so absent, that they made her fair cheek thin.

On her face, then and for ever, thoughts unworded used to

live;

So that when she whisper'd to me, "Better joy earth cannot

give"

Her lips, though shut, continued, "But earth's joy is fugitive."

For there a nameless something, though suppressed, still spread around;

The same was on her eyelids if she looked towards the ground;

When she spoke, you knew directly that the same was in the sound;

A fine dissatisfaction, which at no time went away,
But mingled with her laughter, even at its brighest play,
Till it touched you like the sunshine in the closing of the
day.

This still and saint-like beauty, and a difference between Our years (she numbered twenty-mine were scarcely then

eighteen)

Made my love the blind idolatry which it could not else have been.

Her presence was the garden where my soul breathed heavenly free,

And lived in naked silence, and felt no perplexity.

When alone with Time I killed him, with a wild and headlong glee.

THE SHAMROCK.

By JOHN LOCKE.

These stanzas appeared in an Irish newspaper. The Ossianic tradition of the Shamrock symbol has been finely illustrated by a painting of Mr. MACMANUs, the Irish artist.

A SHAMROCK for a lovely English maid,

And gathered in the gloom of Christmas even,
When evil spirits in the deep are laid,

And gentle fays to haunted ken are given.

Druids revered it; and in after age,

When scorn was the Missionary's meed,
Patrick appealed to Nature's dewy page,
And by the triune symbol proved his creed.

Symbol alike of fair Victoria's sway,

Three realms grafted on one royal stem-
No rebel hand shall sever one away,

Nor snatch the emerald from her diadem.

Fair girl! when you press this tiny guest
Amid your gay anatomy of flowers,
Remember, who pronounced the humblest best,
And think on Ireland in your Saxon bowers.

Thus alway may the bloom of York abide
In snow unwrinkled on that forehead meek;
Nor ever sentiment of shame, or pride,
Deepen Lancastrian roses on your cheek.

Brilliants.

PRIDE OF BIRTH.

I was born high. I did not spring from mire,
Like the foul fungus; but, from airy heights,
Descended with my branches, and let men
Gather my golden fruits to comfort them.

BARRY CORNWALL.

TOO LATE.

Your gift is princely, but it comes too late,
And falls like sunbeams on a blasted blossom.

HOME.

SUCKLING.

And has the earth lost its so spacious round,
The sky its blue circumference above,
That in this little chamber there are found
Both earth and heaven, my universe of love?
All that my God can give me or remove,
Here sleeping save myself in mimic death?
Sweet, that in this small compass I behove
To live their living, and to breathe their breath!
Almost I wish that, with one common sigh,
We might resign all mundane care and strife,
And seek together that transcendent sky,
Where father, mother, children, husband, wife,
Together pant in everlasting life!

A DEATH BED.

A death-bed's a detector of the heart:
Here tried dissimulation drops her mask:
Virtue alone has majesty in death.

HOOD.

YOUNG.

THE GRASSHOPPER.

The poetry of earth is never dead:

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper's: he takes the lead
In summer luxury, he has never done

With his delights; for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:

On a lone winter evening, when the frost

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one, in drowsiness half-lost,
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.

JOHN KEATS.