And her eyes turned slowly upward, as I strove to

read her mind,

Slowly dropped her hand unlinken, but the flowers. remained behind.

"Now thy stream is dull and troubled, gilded by no sun thy vale,

Bend thy willows, bow thy poplars, neath the stormgusts of the gale.

On thy banks again I wander, but she walks not at my side;

Once again I clasp the blossoms-'tis to fling them to thy tide.

But a few short weeks I left her, and again she plays

her part,

And another bows before her, lord of what he thinks a heart.

"Lo the blossoms that she gave me; like the love she took they died,

'Gathered for a moment's plaything, then to wither cast aside..

Take them, streamlet, as she gave them, with the cord she drew around:

Let them perish, thread and blossom, in thy whirling eddies drowned.

Yet beyond the beechen hillside on thy bosom let

them lie;

Wandering with her happier wooer she may see them floating by:

So perchance some thought of sorrow may redeem the thing she is,

So when I am gone for ever may a truer love be

his.

Then, O streamlet, roll them onward, roll them onward to the sea;

Let no eastern blast return them, poison-blossoms unto me."

Then he raised his hand to cast them, mingling with the mournful wind

Heard a sob, and turning saw her, her his faithful love, behind.

In her fair blue eyes the teardrops glistened as she raised her head,

In her hand the same sweet emblems, rose and

woodbine, white and red

Emblems they of maiden's fairness, emblems of affec

tion true

Tokens of remembrance constant, with them lay the flowers of blue.

"You had passed," she said, "the hill-side, passed the house without a look;

I with these my heart's first pledges came to meet you at the brook.

Look upon my face, then tell me, looking on the skies above,

If you think a mocking whisper truer than a woman's

love.

If you think me false, then fling them in the tide, a paltry sham:

They may bring, you said, some sorrow to redeem the

That autumn, ere the summer flowers had died, Stood beneath yon steeple peering from the beech hill's russet side

One that, blent with bloom of orange, wore enwreathed

around her head

Blue forget-me-nots, and with them rose and woodbine, white and red.

1867.

LYCIDAS.

In memory of E. L. Bernays, New College, Oxford, Editor or "College Rhymes," drowned August 31st, 1870, while bathing in an estuary of the Bay of Bantry.

AND shall not one brief page be writ,
Not one poor stanza, in his praise,
Whose various ear and tutored wit

Once judged our humble lays—

Himself from out the riming throng
Conspicuous in the power divine
To softly tune the graceful song
Or urge the vigorous line?

Though not to me be given to frame
Sweet hymnings of memorial verse,
I, if none other, to his name

One little lay rehearse.

Yet, though his old familiar foot
We miss, he is not holely fled;
And, though his kindly voice is mute,
He is not holely dead.

But still its subtle fragrance gives

In death the summer's short-lived rose ; And still with us his record lives,

His memory sweetly blows.

And, though I strike with little art
These hasty notes on jarring strings,
To Nature's touch in many a heart
Their untaught burden rings.

1870.