A MEMORY.

ΤΟ

FAIR friend, of the sweet hours that are no more,

Canst thou not charm from chambers of the Past

Those happy days of old, the summer wore

Like roses in her emerald zone set fast?

The dawn returns o'er ocean-meadows blue,
And still the moon in ancient splendour glows;
Alas, the mortal mind no magic knows

To render back the joys that once it knew.

Ah me! that day we sat, two souls in one,

Couched in a rocky vale, the summer hours, And heard in trance the murmurous waters run, And saw the sunbeam sleep amid the flowers.

A mighty boulder, cloven from the steep,

Cast on the meadow-green its silent shade, Where we our pleasant rest together made Till day dipped downwards on the fields of sleep.

From noon till eve the mountain shadows wheeled And slid from slope to slope and cleft the air, The hollow vale with laughing light was filled, wine that brims a flagon fair.

Like sunny

The barren crags gleamed moist with heavenly dew, Forthstreaming from a thousand rills of snow

And dripping dark through mountain halls below Or leaping with the cataract into view.

The clouds rode overhead, as in a dream,
Piled high in shifting splendour grandly calm,
Until, by magic moved, on us did seem

To fall delicious sleep, like some sweet balm
That steeps the soul in memories divine;

And Fancy, soaring high on wings of Love,
Held revel in the heaven of hope above,

Where dawned the daystar of my life and thine.

M

So were the happy hours that were; but now

Only sad echoes of sweet voices heardVisions that flit along the rugged brow

Of that broad-featured past like some swift bird That touching slowly stirs a sleeping flood,

And while its broad face brightens into smiles
Is past already westward many miles,

To where the red sun sinks in fire and blood.

So

pass the years, and ever in the past

Old Nature smiles at us frail houseless things; And if in love or in derision vast

Men scarcely know; alone thy memory brings To me a hope that cannot fail: a calm

That spreads where else despair for in thy soul

:

I see the mould of Nature's mirrored whole

One love, like thine, to shield mankind from harm.

A HAWKWEED.

Now midnoon through the woodland's leafy screen Scarce throws a random ray; the quiet gloom, Spaced out in beauty and sweet sense of room By beechen stems and slender tufts of green, Floats like transparent incense summer-warm

Upon a deep moss floor. The fitful boom Of swift impatient bee breaks not the charm,Yet lacking full completion, till an arm

Of sunlight, pointing, lingers to illume

A starlike weed, which poised in golden grace
Breaks into light-the genius of the place.

BY THE MOUTH OF THE ARNO.

HERE, where the crawling river seaward sets,
And riverward the sea, about a land

Laid under heaven in lonely flats of sand
Saltblackened, where the sluggish water frets
Its margin till marsh-deltas interlace

In reedy desolation; on each hand

The long gray grasses shiver in their grace
Through sun and shadow, till salt winds deface
Their wasted beauty: here-by such a strand-
Pale Shelley passed, and so his course did keep
To sail Death's unexplored and open deep.