No wintry chill should be ours:

We would follow

The swallow,

And follow the flowers.

Our food should be the jasmine's sent,
Our drink the dew on the rose besprent.
The Sylph might boast of a leafy home,
The River Nymph tell of the silver foam,
The Mermaid sing of a deeper wave,
A gem-strewn sand and a coral cave-
Living in joy, living in love,

We'd change not for billow or torrent or grove.

1866.

PHILOMMEIDES.*

SOME have I known of soul as true and tender,
Features as winsome and a heart as free ;
But never saw I yet in other maiden
Like fairy glee-

Glee like the summer waters that, illumined
By the full splendour of the noontide ray,
In one unceasing tide of rippling laughter
Welcome the day.

There is a tale, a simple ancient story,

Told at the humblest and the highest board, Where'er in first calm infant slumber sleepeth Peasant or lord

That, often as within the peaceful cradle
Soft dreamland smiles upon its features rest,
By angel hands the child is girt, by angel
Voices addressed.

* Written to Miss E. H. Boys, now Mrs. Lyne.

But when first sins affix their blot, and darker The stain becometh daily and more wide, Then, one by one, the sorrowing seraphs slowly Forsake its side.

Yet sure the loving spirits longer tarried
By one too pure to be forsaken thus,
And still some angel monitor accosts thee,
Unheard by us.

Or, haply, in thy early spring some seraph Bent o'er thy cot, embracing thee the while, And still there lingers, on those lips imprinted, The angel's smile.

Smile on, laugh on, in all thy youth and fairness; Laugh on, smile on, and gladden still the glad, Rejoice the drooping spirit, make the mourner's Sadness less sad.

So, sorrow banishing from all around thee,
Thou shalt have love of others for thy meed,
And He who dwells above shall smile upon thee
In all thy need.

Till in thy latest hour thou shalt look backward With trustful smile upon thy lifetime past,

And to a joy eternal angels smiling

FLORES-AMORES.

YES, thy wave was calm and golden, golden with the sinking day,

Scarce a zephyr shook thy willows, shook thy poplars tall and gray.

She had plucked a spray of woodbine, roses red that near it grew,

Added from thy bank, O streamlet, many a tiny flower

of blue.

Flowers and hand in mine I clasped them; looking in her face I said,

'Emblems these of love and fairness, rose and woodbine, white and red;

Tokens of remembrance constant these the tiny blossoms blue,

Leave them here with rose and woodbine, if you love me well and true.

If to you I seem too tainted, you that are without a

blot,

If I am too poor and humble, keep them-if you love

me not.'