Thus, when my soul with parting sigh, Hung on thy hand's bewildering touch, And, timid, asked that speaking eye,

If parting pained thee half so much :

I thought, and, oh! forgive the thought,
For who, by eyes like thine inspired,
Could e'er resist the flattering fault
Of fancying what his soul desired?

Yes-I did think, in Cara's mind,
Though yet to Cara's mind unknown,
I left one infant wish behind,

One feeling, which I called my own!

Oh blest! though but in fancy blest,
How did I ask of pity's care,

To shield and strengthen in thy breast
The nursling I had cradled there.

And, many an hour beguiled by pleasure,
And many an hour of sorrow numbering,

I ne'er forgot the new-born treasure
I left within thy bosom slumbering.

Perhaps indifference has not chilled it,
Haply it yet a throb may give-
Yet no-perhaps a doubt has killed it!
Oh, Cara!-does the infant live?

TO CARA,

ON THE DAWNING OF A NEW YEAR'S DAY.

WHEN midnight came to close the year, We sighed to think it thus should take The hours it gave us-hours as dear

As sympathy and love could make
Their blessed moments! every sun
Saw us, my love, more closely one!

But, Cara, when the dawn was nigh
Which came another year to shed,
The smile we caught from eye to eye
Told us those moments were not fled;
Oh no!-we felt, some future sun
Should see us still more closely one!

Thus may we ever. side by side,
From happy years to happier glide;

And still, my Cara, may the sigh

We give to hours that vanish o'er us,
Be followed by the smiling eye

That Hope shall shed on scenes before us!

TO THE INVISIBLE GIRL.

THEY try to persuade me, my dear little sprite,
That you are not a daughter of ether and light,
Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms
That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms;

That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and your breast,
As mortal as ever were tasted or pressed!

But I will not believe them-no, Science ! to you

I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,

Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they know.
Oh! who, that has ever had rapture complete,
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confused, or how particles fly

Through the medium refined of a glance or a sigh!

Is there one, who but once would not rather have known it, Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?

No, no-but for you, my invisible love,

I will swear you are one of those spirits that rove
By the bank where at twilight the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of Fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue!
Oh! whisper him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears!
Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you for ever invisibly nigh,

Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!

'Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of care,

I might sometimes converse with my nymph of the air,

And turn with disgust from the clamorous crew,

To steal in the pauses one whisper from you.

Oh! come and be near me, for ever be mine,
We shall hold in the air a communion divine,
As sweet as of old was imagined to dwell
In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell.
And oft, at those lingering moments of night,

When the heart is weighed down and the eyelid is light,

You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love,
Such as angel to angel might whisper above!
Oh spirit!-and then, could you borrow the tone
Of that voice, to my ear so bewitchingly known.
The voice of the one upon earth, who has twined
With her essence for ever my heart and my mind!
Though lonely and far from the light of her smile,
An exile and weary and hopeless the while,
Could you shed for a moment that voice on my ear,
I will think at that moment my Cara is near,
That she comes with consoling enchantment to speak,
And kisses my eyelid and sighs on my cheek,
And tells me the night shall go rapidly by,
For the dawn of our hope, of our heaven is nigh!
Sweet spirit! if such be your magical power,
It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour;
And let Fortune's realities frown as they will,
Hope, Fancy, and Cara may smile for me still!

PEACE AND GLORY.

WRITTEN AT THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE PRESENT WAR.

WHERE is now the smile that lightened
Every hero's couch of rest?

Where is now the hope that brightened
Honour's eye and Pity's breast?

Have we lost the wreath we braided
For our weary warrior men?

Is the faithless olive faded?

Must the bay be plucked again?

Passing hour of sunny weather,
Lovely in your light awhile
Peace and Glory, wed together,
Wandered through the blessed isle.
And the eyes of Peace would glisten,
Dewy as a morning sun,

When the timid maid would listen
To the deeds her chief had done.

Is the hour of dalliance over?
Must the maiden's trembling feet
Waft her from her warlike lover
To the desert's still retreat?
Fare you well! with sighs we banish
Nymph so fair and guest so bright;.
Yet the smile, with which you vanish,
Leaves behind a soothing light!

Soothing light! that long shall sparklé
O'er your warrior's sanguine way,
Through the field where horrors darkle
Shedding Hope's consoling ray!

To be the theme of every hour
The heart devotes to Fancy's power,
When her soft magic fills the mind
With friends and joys we've left behind,
And joys return and friends are near,
And all are welcomed with a tear !
In the mind's purest seat to dwell,
To be remembered oft and well

By one whose heart, though vain and wild,
By passion led, by youth beguiled,
Can proudly still aspire to know
The feeling soul's divinest glow !
If thus to live in every part

Of a lone weary wanderer's heart;
If thus to be its sole employ
Can give thee one faint gleam of joy,
Believe it, Mary! oh! believe
A tongue that never can deceive,
When passion doth not first betray
And tinge the thought upon its way!
In pleasure's dream or sorrow's hour,
In crowded hall or lonely bower,
The business of my life shall be,
For ever, to remember thee!

And though that heart be dead to mine,
Since love is life and wakes not thine,
I'll take thy image as the form

Of something I should long to warm,

Which, though it yield no answering thrill, Is not less dear, is lovely still!

I'll take it, wheresoe'er I stray,

!

The bright, cold burthen of my way
To keep this semblance fresh in bloom,
My heart shall be its glowing tomb,
And love shall lend his sweetest care,
With memory to embalm it there!

SONG.

TAKE back the sigh, thy lips of art
In passion's moment breathed to me ;
Yet, no-it must not, will not part,
'Tis now the life-breath of my heart,

And has become too pure for thee!

Take back the kiss, that faithless sigh
With all the warmth of truth imprest;
Yet, no-the fatal kiss may lie,
Upon thy lip its sweets would die,

Or bloom to make a rival blest!

Take back the vows that, night and day,
My heart received, I thought, from thine;
Yet, no-allow them still to stay,
They might some other heart betray,
As sweetly as they've ruined mine!

A BALLAD.

THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMP.

WRITTEN AT NORFOLK IN VIRGINIA.

They tell of a young man who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. As he had frequently it is supposed he

had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger, or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses.'-Anon.

La comme la Nature.'—D'Alembert.

'THEY made her a grave, too cold and damp

For a soul so warm and true;

And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,1
Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,

She paddles her white canoe.

'And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear ;

Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree,
When the footstep of Death is near !'

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds-
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before !

And when on the earth he sunk to sleep,

If slumber his eyelids knew,

He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep

The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,

And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,

middle of it (about seven miles long) is called Drummond's Pond.

The Great Dismal Swamp is ten or twelve miles distant from Norfolk, and the Lake in the