When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one,
In the universal sun.

THE RECOLLECTION.

Now the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace
The epitaph of glory fled,

For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

I.

We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean's foam,
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.

The whispering waves were half asleep,

The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies, Which scattered from above the sun A light of Paradise.

II.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;

Now all the tree tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

III.

How calm it was!-the silence there

By such a chain was bound, That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound

The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew

With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.

There seemed from the remotest seat

Of the wide mountain waste,

To the soft flower beneath our feet,

A magic circle traced,
A spirit interfused around
A thrilling silent life,.
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature's strife ;-
And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one fair form that filled with love

The lifeless atmosphere.

IV.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,
Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day

In which the lovely forests grew,

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,

And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,

A softer day below.

Like one beloved the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast,

Its every

leaf and lineament

With more than truth exprest,

Until an envious wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from the mind's too faithful eye

Blots one dear image out.
Though thou art ever fair and kind,

The forests ever green,

Less oft is peace in S's mind,
Than calm in waters seen.

ΤΟ

THE keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon was rising among them,

Dear * * * !

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them

Again.

As the moon's soft splendour

O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven
Is thrown,

So your voice most tender

To the strings without soul had then given Its own.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

To-night;

No leaf will be shaken

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter

Delight.

Though the sound overpowers,

Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

LINES.

WHEN the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead-
When the cloud is scattered,

The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,

Loved accents are soon forgot.