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Fiercely some shall storm and swear,
Beating breasts in black despair;
Others murmur with a sigh,
You must melt or they will die;
Painted words on empty lies,
Grubs with wings like butterflies
Let them die, and welcome too;
Pray what better could they do?

;

Fare thee well, if years efface
From thy heart love's burning trace,
Keep, O keep that hallow'd seat
From the tread of vulgar feet;
If the blue lips of the sea

Wait with icy kiss for me,
Let not thine forget the vow,
Seal'd how often, Love, as now.

EVENING IN THE CITY.

A passage in ALEXANDER SMITH's new volume of City Poems.

OUR stream of talk

Here split in petty rills which ran to waste,

And sank in silence. When that swallows' haunt,
Saint Stephen's, with its showers of silvery chimes,
Stood black against the red dilated sun,

Labour laid down his tools and went away.

The park was loud with games: clear laughter, shrieks, Came from the rings of girls amid the trees;

The cricketers were eager at their play;

The stream was dotted with the swimmers' heads;
Gay boats flashed up and down.

The level sun

Pour'd o'er the sward a farewell gush of light,
And Sport transfigured stood. I hurried on,
Through all the mirth, to where the river ran,
In the grey evening, 'tween the hanging woods,
With a soul-soothing murmur. Seated there,
The darkness closing round me, I could see
A lonely angler like a heron stand,
And hear the blackbird piping to the eve,
And smell the wild-rose on the dewy air.

I reached the park hours later, what a change!
The full-moon fill'd the universal night;

The stream ran white with lustre; walks and trees
Threw their long shadows; a few kine lay dark
In lanes and squares of moonlight; far away
The pallid rim of night was touch'd with fires;
Stillness was deep as death. "The noisy day
Wheels into silence; and this wave of life,
Crown'd with its fretting foam, subsides at last
On shores without a sound. And this our Time-
With throes tyrannic girt by seas of steel;
Wild nations starting up from sleep to chase
A dream of liberty through blood and fire;
White faces down in dungeons cursing kings;
Battle, and wintry siege, and frozen hosts-
Will sink and lose itself in utter peace
Like water spilt on sand. And History,
A mournful follower in the track of man,
Whose path is over ruin and the grave,
May linger for a moment in this place
Beside a worn inscription and be sad."

Across the moonlight spaces and the shades
I walk'd in silence, through pale silver streets,
Athwart a desolate and moon-bleach'd square,
Over a white and solitary bridge,

Until I reach'd my home. I oped the door,
And, ere it closed, I heard a distant spire
Start in its sleep, and murmur of an hour.

HARVEST-HOME.

Extracted from The Guardian Newspaper.

MEN of sinew! hale and hearty,
Brave at scythe and sickle, come;
Come and swell our gleesome party,
Reapers, sturdy reapers, come!
Time for all things, this for leisure,
Time for all things, this for pleasure,
Sing our merry Harvest-home.

Mothers meek! home-troubles leaving,
Join your husband's joy, and come
Honour, love, respect receiving,
From the honest-hearted, come!
Nought unmeet for woman's bearing,
Nought unmeet for woman's hearing,
Blots our merry Harvest-home.

Maidens modest! fear no roughness-
Fathers, brothers are we; come!
Kind and true, despite our bluffness;
Maidens modest! come then, come!
Far away be thoughts of lightness,
With your own unsullied brightness,
Maidens bless our Harvest-home!

Aged folks! our hamlet's glory,
Dames and grandsires, all must come!
Come and tell again the story,

Of the days long bygone, come!
Ye who with life's ills have striven,
And to whom now rest is given,
Welcome to our Harvest-home!

Laughing children! lend your rattle
To our merry-making; come!
Good to hear is childhood's prattle,
Children, merry children, come!
Ye have work'd as hard as others,
Gleaning proud beside your mothers,
Ye must share our Harvest-home.

High and low! with one another,
Young and old! come, join us, come!
Each to each, in God, a brother;
To our village High-Day come!
Well it is that harvest labours,
Richly crown'd, should bind all neighbours
In a thankful Harvest-home.

A LANDSCAPE.

A beautiful passage in Rural Poems, a volume recently published by THOMAS BUCHANAN READ, an American poet.

WITHIN his sober realm of leafless trees

The russet year inhaled the dreamy air,
Like some tanned reaper in his hour of ease,
When all the fields are lying brown and bare.

The grey barns, looking from their hazy hills
O'er the dim waters widening in the vales,
Sent down the air a greeting to the mills,
On the dull thunder of alternate flails.

All sights were mellow'd and all sounds subdued,
The hills seemed farther, and the streams sang low;
As in a dream, the distant woodman hewed

His winter log, with many a muffled blow.

The sentinel cock upon the hill-side crew-
Crew thrice, and all was stiller than before-
Silent till some replying warder blew

His alien horn, and then was heard no more.

Where erst the jay, within the elm's tall crest,
Made garrulous trouble round her unfledged young,
And where the oriole hung her swaying nest,
By every light wind like a censer swung;

Where sang the noisy masons of the eaves,
The busy swallows, circling ever near,
Foreboding, as the rustic mind believes,

An early harvest and a plenteous year;

Where every bird which charm'd the vernal feast
Shook the sweet slumber from its wings at morn,

To warn the reaper of the rosy east

All now was songless, empty, and forlorn.

Alone from out the stubble piped the quail,

And croak'd the crow through all the dreamy gloom; Alone the pheasant drumming in the vale, Made echo to the distant cottage loom.

There was no bud, no bloom upon the bowers;
The spiders wove their thin shrouds night by night;
The thistle-down, the only ghost of flowers,

Sail'd slowly by, pass'd noiseless out of sight.

Amid all this, in this most cheerless air,

And where the woodbine shed upon the porch Its crimson leaves, as if the year stood there Firing the floor with his inverted torch.

THE CASTLE BY THE SEA.

A poem by UHLAND, translated by LONGFELLOW.
"HAST thou seen that lordly castle,
That castle by the sea?
Golden and red above it

The clouds float gorgeously.

“And fain it would stoop downward
To the mirror'd wave below;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening's crimson glow."

"Well have I seen that castle,
That castle by the sea,
And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly."

"The winds and the waves of ocean,
Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear from those lofty chambers,
The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?"

"The winds and the waves of ocean,
They rested quietly,

But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,
And tears came to mine eye."

"And sawest thou on the turrets

The king and his royal bride?

And the wave of their crimson mantles?
And the golden crown of pride?

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