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.

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;