The Lover is a God,-the ground
He treads on is not ours;

His soul by other laws is bound,
Sustained by other powers;

We, children of a lowlier lot,
Listen and understand him not.

Liver of a diviner life,

He turns a vacant gaze
Toward the theatre of strife,
Where we consume our days;
His own and that one other heart
Form for himself a world apart :

A sphere, whose sympathies are wings, On which he rests sublime,

Above the shifts of casual things,

Above the flow of time;

How should he feel, how can he know The sense of what goes on below?

Reprove him not,- -no selfish aim
Here leads to selfish ends;

You might as well the infant blame
That smiles to grieving friends:
Could all thus love, and love endure,
Our world would want no other cure.

But few are the elect, for whom

This fruit is on the stem,

And for that few an early tomb

Is open,-not for them,

But for their love; for they live on,

Sorrow and shame! when Love is gone :

They who have dwelt at Heaven's own gate,
And felt the light within,

Come down to our poor mortal state,
Indifference, care, and sin;

And their dimmed spirits hardly bear
A trace to tell what once they were.

Fever and Health their thirst may slake
At one and the same stream;

The dreamer knows not till he wake

The falsehood of his dream:
How, while I love thee, can I prove
The surer nature of our love?

It is, that while our choicest hours
Are closed from vulgar ken,
We daily use our active powers,—
Are men to brother men,—

It is, that, with our hands in one,
We do the work that should be done.

Our hands in one, we will not shrink
From life's severest due,-

Our hands in one, we will not blink
The terrible and true;

What each would feel a heavy blow
Falls on us both as autumn snow.

The simple unpresumptuous sway,
By which our hearts are ruled,
Contains no seed of self-decay;
Too temperate to be cooled,
Our Passion fears no blast of ill,
No winter, till the one last chill.

And even then no frantic grief
Shall shake the mourner's mind,-
He will reject no small relief
Kind Heaven may leave behind,
Nor set at nought his bliss enjoyed,
When now by human fate alloyed.

THE FLOWER OF FRIENDSHIP.

WHEN first the Friendship-flower is planted
Within the garden of your soul,

Little of care or thought is wanted
To guard its beauty fresh and whole;
But when the full empassioned age
Has well revealed the magic bloom,
A wise and holy tutelage

Alone avoids the open tomb.

It is not Absence you should dread,—
For Absence is the very air

In which, if sound at root, the head
Shall wave most wonderful and fair :
With sympathies of joy and sorrow
Fed, as with morn and even dews,
Ideal colouring it may borrow
Richer than ever earthly hues.

But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere
Refresh the desert, hardly brooks
The common-peopled atmosphere

Of daily thoughts and words and looks;

It trembles at the brushing wings
Of many' a careless fashion-fly,
And strange suspicions aim their stings
To taint it as they wanton by.

Rare is the heart to bear a flower,
That must not wholly fall and fade,
Where alien feelings, hour by hour,
Spring up, beset, and overshade;
Better, a child of care and toil,
To glorify some needy spot,
Than in a glad redundant soil

To pine neglected and forgot.

Yet when, at last, by human slight,
Or close of their permitted day,

From the bright world of life and light
Such fine creations lapse away,—
Bury the relics that retain

Sick odours of departed pride,—

Hoard, as ye will, your memory's gain,

But leave the blossoms where they died.

FAIR-WEATHER FRIEND.

BECAUSE I mourned to see thee fall

From where I mounted thee,
Because I did not find thee all

I feigned a friend should be ;

Because things are not what they seem, And this our world is full of dream,

Because thou lovest sunny weather,
Am I to lose thee altogether?

I know harsh words have found their way,
Which I would fain recall;

And angry passions had their day,
But now-forget them all;

Now that I only ask to share

Thy presence, like some pleasant air, Now that my gravest thoughts will bend To thy light mind, fair-weather friend!

See! I am careful to atone

My spirit's voice to thine;

My talk shall be of mirth alone,

Of music, flowers, and wine!

I will not breathe an earnest breath,

I will not think of life or death,

I will not dream of any end,

While thou art here, fair-weather friend!

Delusion brought me only woe,

I take thee as thou art;

Let thy gay verdure overgrow
My deep and serious heart!
Let me enjoy thy laugh, and sit
Within the radiance of thy wit,
And lean where'er thy humours tend,
Taking fair weather from my friend.

Or, if I see my doom is traced

By fortune's sterner pen,

And pain and sorrow must be faced,—

Well, thou canst leave me then;