That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep-but when the morning came
The lady found her lover dead and cold.

Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on-in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief ;—
Her eye-lashes were torn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead-so

pale;

Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins

And weak articulations might be seen

Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!

“Inheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm, and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were— -Peace!" This was the only moan she ever made.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

THE awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho' unseen among us; visiting

This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower:
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain
shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.—

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? Ask why the sunlight not for ever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom; why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope; No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given: Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavour; Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail

to sever,

From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,

Gives

grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart And come, for some uncertain moments lent. Man were immortal and omnipotent,

Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,

Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies

That wax and wane in lovers' eyes; Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,

Like darkness to a dying flame!

Depart not as thy shadow came:

Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Thro' many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth
is fed:

I was not heard, I saw them not;

When musing deeply on the lot

Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;

I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even

now

I call the phantoms of a thousand hours

Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night: They know that never joy illumed my brow, Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,

Wouldst give what'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene

When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,

Which thro' the summer is not heard nor seen,

As if it could not be, as if it had not been !

Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply

Its calm, to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

I.

THE everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark, now glittering-now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.