THE WINTER SPEEDWELL. YE wintry flowers, whose pensive dyes Their low-laid mother's beauty weeps. Oh, not like stars that come at eve, Through dim clouds glimmering one by one, And teach the failing heart to grieve, Because another day is gone! But like the hopes that linger yet The form below, the soul above; Or like the thoughts that bid Despair A GHOST AT NOON. THE day was dark, save when the beam Lo! splendour, like a spirit, came, A shadow like a tree! While there I sat, and named her name, Who once sat there with me. I started from the seat in fear; The seat, the tree, where oft, in tears, She mourn'd her hopes o'erthrown, Her joys cut off in early years, Like gather'd flowers half-blown. Again the bud and breeze were met, And e'en the rose, which she had set, The thrush proclaim'd, in accents sweet, The winter's reign was o'er ; The bluebells throng'd around my feet, But Mary came no more. I think, I feel-but when will she A voice of comfort answers me, And will He waste the hope which grief SONG. LIKE a rootless rose or lily; Tardy day of hoarded ruin, Where the plough makes want its symbol, SONG. SLEEP, sleep my love! thy gentle bard The moon in heaven rides high; She sleeps! but pain, though baffled, streaks, With intermitting blush, her cheeks, And haunts her troubled dream: Yet shalt thou wake to health, my love, And seek again the bluebell'd grove And music-haunted stream. HE WENT. He left me sad, and cross'd the deep, He never will come back again; Bad men had turn'd into a hell The country of his birth; And he is gone who should have stay'd A heaven to me it would have been O bring my William back again, He should have stay'd to overthrow They make oppressors strong: |