And amid the words of mercy, falling on the soul like balms; 'Mong the gorgeous storms of music in the mellow organcalms ;

'Mong the upward-streaming prayers, and the rich and solemn psalms,

I stood heedless, Barbara!

My heart was otherwhere,
While the organ fill'd the air,

And the priest with outspread hands bless'd the people with a prayer.

But when rising to go homeward, with a mild and saintlike shine

Gleam'd a face of airy beauty with its heavenly eyes on

mine

Gleam'd and vanish'd in a moment. Oh, the face was like to thine,

Ere you perish'd, Barbara!

Oh, that pallid face!

Those sweet, earnest eyes of grace!

When last I saw them, dearest, it was in another place; You came running forth to meet me with my love-gift on your wrist,

And a cursed river kill'd thee, aided by a murderous mist. Oh, a purple mark of agony was on the mouth I kiss'd, When last I saw thee, Barbara!

These dreary years, eleven,

Have you pined within your heaven,

And is this the only glimpse of earth that in that time was

given?

And have you pass'd unheeded all the fortunes of your raceYour father's grave, your sister's child, your mother's quiet face-

To gaze on one who worshipp'd not within a kneeling place? Are you happy, Barbara?

'Mong angels, do you think

Of the precious golden link

I bound around your happy arm while sitting on yon brink? Or when that night of wit and wine, of laughter and guitars, Was emptied of its music, and we watch'd through lattice-bars The silent midnight heaven moving o'er us with its stars, Till the morn broke, Barbara ?

In the years I've changed,

Wild and far my heart has ranged,

And many sins and errors deep have been on me avenged; But to you I have been faithful, whatsoever good I've lack'd;

I loved you, and above my life still hangs that love intact, Like a mild consoling rainbow o'er a savage cataract. Love has saved me, Barbara!

O Love! I am unblest,

With monstrous doubts opprest

Of much that's dark and nether, much that's holiest and best. Could I but win you for an hour from off that starry shore, The hunger of my soul were still'd; for Death has told you

more

Than the melancholy world doth know,-things deeper than all lore.

Will you teach me, Barbara?

In vain, in vain, in vain!

You will never come again :-

There droops upon the dreary hills a mournful fringe of rain, The gloaming closes slowly round, unblest winds are in the

tree,

Round selfish shores for ever moans thehurt and wounded

sea:

There is no rest upon the earth, peace is with Death and thee,

I am weary, Barbara!

FESTUS DESCRIBES HIS FIRST LOVE.

A fine impassioned passage in BAILEY'S Festus.

WHAT'S worse than falsehood? to deny
The God which is within us, and in all,
Is love? Love bath as many vanities

:

As charms and this, perchance, the chief of both :
To make our young hearts break upon the first
And snowlike fall of feeling which overspreads
The bosom of the youthful maiden's mind,
More pure and fair than even its outward type.
If one did thus, was it from vanity ?

Or thoughtlessness, or worse? Nay, let it pass.
The beautiful are never desolate;

But some one always loves them-God or man.—
If man abandons, God himself takes them.

And thus it was. She whom I once loved died.
The lightning loathes its cloud--the soul its clay.
Can I forget that hand I took in mine,

Pale as pale violets; that eye, where mind
And matter met alike divine? Oh, no!

Oh! she was fair: her nature once all spring,
And deadly beauty like a maiden sword;
Startlingly beautiful. I see her now!
Whatever thou art, thy soul is in my mind;
Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain,
And peoples all its pictures with thyself.
Gone, not forgot-pass'd, not lost-thou shalt shine
In heaven like a bright spot in the sun!

She said she wish'd to die, and so she died;
For cloud-like she pour'd out her love, which was
Her life, to freshen this parch'd heart. It was thus :
I said we were to part, but she said nothing.
There was no discord-it was music ceased-
Life's thrilling, bounding, bursting joy. She sate
Like a house-god, her hands fix'd on her knee;
And her dark hair lay loose and long around her,
Through which her wild bright eye flash'd like a flint.
She spake not, moved not, but she look'd the more,
As if her eye were action, speech and feeling.
I felt it all; and came and knelt beside her.
The electric touch solved both our souls together.
Then comes the feeling which unmakes, undoes;
Which tears the sea-like soul up by the roots
And lashes it in scorn against the skies.
Twice did I madly swear to God, hand clench'd,

That not even He nor death should tear her from me.

It is the saddest and the sorest sight,

One's own love weeping; but why call on Go
But that the feeling of the boundless, bounds
All feeling, as the welkin doth the world?

It is this which ones us with the whole and God.
Then first we wept; then closed and clung together!
And my heart shook this building of my breast,
Like a live engine booming up and down.

She fell

upon me like a snow-wreath thawing.

Never were bliss and beauty, love and woe,
Ravell'd and twined together into madness,
As in that one wild hour; to which all else,
The past is but a picture—that alone
Is real, and for ever there in front,
Making a black blank on one side of life
Like a blind eye. But after that I left her:
And only saw her once again alive.

EMBLEM FLOWERS.

The following is taken from the Ulster Times, to which it was contributed by John Locke.

DRESS me a garden, where the brook

Reflects the stooping thorn,
Whereon the redbreast sings at eve,
And timid thrush at morn:
There let the fragrant Myrtle bloom,
Inspiring soft desire,

And that pale, hooded, vestal Bell,
Veil'd in her green attire.

The ever-changeful Iris there
I charge thee not to bring;
And plant not the Narcissus nigh
The margin of the spring:
As transient pleasure makes one sigh,
I'll not have Mignonette;
The Crown Imperial is proud,
Geranium a coquette;

But let me scent the languid bloom
Of the deep-bosom'd Rose,
And Cowslip, breathing youthful hope,
And Poppy, bland repose;
And the purple-lipped Pansy,
That looks all pensiveness,
And the bashful virgin Sensitive,
With her shrinking tenderness.

Dark Yew, and Cypress, be afar,
Life has enough of tears;

Yet dearly love I Rosemary,

Which "buried love endears;"

And oh! of all the gems, that deck
Old Saturn's forehead yet,
Prithee, dear Jessy, don't forget
The modest Violet.

The shrubs and other garniture
Dispose along the green;
And let the lithe Acacia fling
Its graceful wreaths between :
And rear the Jessamine, my love!
Upon the ruin'd wall,

With tiny leaf, and starry flower—
I love it best of all.

I'll tell thee why I love it best ;
And thou wilt blush and smile
At my odd play upon the word
In such poetic style-

For sweetness, grace, and elegance,
'Tis chief in Flora's shrine;
And when I gaze upon the flower

I think on Jessy mine.

TO AGE.

These graceful verses are from the pen of WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

WELCOME, old friend--These many years

Have we lived door by door:

The Fates have laid aside their shears,
Perhaps for some few more.

I was indocile at an age

When better boys were taught;

But thou at length hast made me sage,
If I am sage in aught.

Little I knew from other men,

Too little they from me;

But thou hast pointed well the pen

That writes these lines to thee.