Nature, by magnetic laws,
Circle unto circle draws,

But they only touch when met,
Never mingle-strangers yet.

Strangers yet!

Will it evermore be thus-
Spirits still impervious?

Shall we never fairly stand
Soul to soul as hand to hand?
Are the bounds eternal set
To retain us-strangers yet?

Strangers yet!

Tell not Love it must aspire
Unto something other-higher :
God himself were loved the best
Were our sympathies at rest,
Rest above the strain and fret
Of the world of strangers yet!
Strangers yet!

A RECOLLECTION.

I KNEW that I should be his bride, And to my tearful eyes

Lay that fair future, half descried Through a divine surprise :

I knew that I should be his wife, And that his arm would bend Around me down the walks of life, As friend sustaining friend:

And yet when I beheld him there,
Amid a joyous throng,

Amid the witty and the fair,

Who knew and prized him long,— Amid the comrades of his youth, The kinsmen of his line,

I almost faltered at the truth

With which I called him mine.

I saw they thought that I was proud
To claim him as mine own,
While all my being inly bowed
As with a weight unknown.
For if I dared my heart to place
Above its own just meed,

I might be distanced in a race
In which the strong succeed!

But now that years have rolled away,
A variegated stream,

And, one by one, that bright array
Has vanished like a dream;
Now that the very name of wife

Has higher titles earned,
I smile to ponder on that strife
Of feelings undiscerned.

Ah! had I known him but as they,

How weary might have been The intercourse of every day,

The rarely-changing scene,—

The life that over-long may prove

For passion or for power,

But too, too, short for that still love
Which blesses every hour.

RAPTURE.

BECAUSE, from all that round Thee move,
Planets of Beauty, Strength, and Grace,
I am elected to Thy love,

And have my home in Thy embrace;
I wonder all men do not see

The crown that Thou hast set on me.

Because, when, prostrate at Thy feet,
Thou didst emparadise my pain,—
Because Thy heart on mine has beat,
Thy head within my hands has lain,
I am transfigured, by that sign,
Into a being like to Thine.

The mirror from its glossy plain
Receiving still returns the light,
And, being generous of its gain,
Augments the very solar might:
What unreflected light would be,
Is just Thy spirit without me.

Thou art the flame, whose rising spire
In the dark air sublimely sways,
And I the tempest that swift fire
Gathers at first and then obeys :

All that was Thine ere we were wed Have I by right inherited.

Is life a stream? Then from Thy hair

One rosebud on the current fell,

And straight it turned to crystal there, As adamant immovable:

Its steadfast place shall know no more The sense of after and before.

Is life a plant? The King of years
To mine nor good nor ill can bring ;—
Mine grows no more; no more it fears
Even the brushing of his wing:
With sheathed scythe I see him go,-
I have no flowers that he can mow.

THE TREASURE-SHIP.

My heart is freighted full of love,
As full as any argosy,

With gems below and gems above,
And ready for the open sea;
For the wind is blowing summerly.

Full strings of nature's beaded pearl, Sweet tears! composed in amorous ties And turkis-lockets, that no churl

Hath fashioned out mechanic-wise,

But all made up of thy blue eyes.

And girdles wove of subtle sound,
And thoughts not trusted to the air,
Of antique mould,—the same as bound,
In Paradise, the primal pair,

Before Love's arts and niceness were.

And carcanets of living sighs;

Gums that have dropped from Love's own stem,

And one small jewel most I prize

The darling gaud of all of them—

I wot, so rare and fine a gem
Ne'er glowed on Eastern anadem.

I've cased the rubies of thy smiles,
In rich and triply-plated gold;
But this no other wealth defiles,
Itself itself can only hold—
The stealthy kiss on Maple-wold.

FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE.

IF I could coldly sum the love
That we each other bear,

My heart would to itself disprove
The truth of what was there ;-
Its willing utterance should express
Nothing but joy and thankfulness.

Yet Friendship is so blurred a name,
A good so ill-discerned,

That if the nature of the flame

That in our bosoms burned

Were treasured in becoming rhymes,

It might have worth in after-times.