TO THE SETTING SUN.

STAY, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away;
For now it is that life revives again,
As the red tyrant sinks beneath the hill;

And now soft dews refresh the arid plain;
And now the fair bird's voice begins to thrill;

With hidden dolours making sweet her strain, And wakes the woods that all day were so still.

Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away;

For now the rose and all fair flowers that blow, Give out sweet odours to the perfumed air,

And the white palace marbles blush and glow, And the low, ivy-hidden cot shows fair.

Why are time's feet so swift, and ours so slow? Haste, laggard! night will fall ere you are there.

Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away;

Soon the pale full-faced moon will slowly climb Up the steep sky and quench the star of love.

Moonlight is fair, but fairer far the time

When through the leaves the golden shafts above

Slope, and the minster sounds its faint low chime, And the long shadows lengthen through the grove.

Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast

away;

For, hark! the chime throbs from the darkling tower;

Soon for the last time shall my love be here:

Fair day, renew thy rays for one brief hour.

O sweet day, tarry for us, tarry near;

To-morrow, love and time will lose their power, And sighs be mine, and the unbidden tear.

Stay, O sweet day, nor fleet so fast away.
But, ah! thou may'st not; in the far-off west
Impatient lovers weary till you rise:

Or may be caring nought thou traversest
The plains betwixt thee and thy final skies :

Go, then; though darkness come, we shall be blest,

Keeping sweet daylight, in each other's eyes.

THE

THE TREASURE OF HOPE.

O FAIR bird, singing in the woods,
To the rising and the setting sun,

Does ever any throb of pain

Thrill through thee ere thy song be done :

Because the summer fleets so fast;

Because the autumn fades so soon;

Because the deadly winter treads

So closely on the steps of June?

O sweet maid, opening like a rose
In love's mysterious, honeyed air,
Dost think sometimes the day will come
When thou shalt be no longer fair:
When love will leave thee and pass on

To younger and to brighter eyes;
And thou shalt live unloved, alone,

A dull life, only dowered with sighs?

O brave youth, panting for the fight,
To conquer wrong and win thee fame,

Dost see thyself grown old and spent,

And thine a still unhonoured name : When all thy hopes have come to naught, And all thy fair schemes droop and pine; And wrong still lifts her hydra heads To fall to stronger arms than thine?

Nay; song and love and lofty aims

May never be where faith is not; Strong souls within the present live;

The future veiled,-the past forgot: Grasping what is, with hands of steel,

They bend what shall be, to their will; And blind alike to doubt and dread,

The End, for which they are, fulfil.

THE LEGEND OF FAITH.

THEY say the Lord of time and all the worlds,
Came to us once, a feeble, new-born child;
All-wise, yet dumb; weak, though omnipotent :
Surely a heaven-sent vision, for it tells

How innocence is godlike. And the Lord

Renews, through childhood, to our world-dimmed eyes, The half forgotten splendours of the skies.

And because motherhood is sacreder

And purer far than any fatherhood,

White flowers are fairer than red fruit, and sense
Brings some retributive pain; the virgin queen
Sits 'mid the stars, and cloistered courts are filled
With vain regrets, dead lives, and secret sighs,
And the long pain of weary litanies.

And because we, who stand upon the shore,
See the cold wave sweep up and take with it
White spotless souls, and others lightly soiled,
Yet with no stain God deems indelible :

These are His saints mighty to intercede,