POESIES FROM ABROAD.

FROM THE SPANISH OF GUSTAVE BECQUER.

I.

WE were together, her eyes were wet,

But her pride was strong, and no tears would fall; And I would not tell her I loved her yet,

And yearned to forgive her all!

So, now that our lives are for ever apart,
She thinks: "Oh! had I but wept that day!"
And I ask in vain of my lonely heart:

"Ah! why did I turn away?"

II.

When you've drunk one draught of this rosy wine,
To set it aside were fitter;

Though the taste is sweet and the scent divine,.
The dregs, alas! are bitter.

So when passion and youth shall have passed away,
Would we feel no sting, no sorrow,-
Oh, my dear, let us madly love to-day,
But say good-bye to-morrow!

FROM THE GERMAN OF H. HEINE.

She has given a ring to me, knowing
It was meant for another than me,
Yet from her dear eyes there are flowing
Bright tears that come fast and free.

I have taken her ring, and unspoken
Is my thought of another more fair;
Of a ring, and a faith that are broken
Yet I laugh out aloud in despair.

"AN APPEAL."

(AFTER SULLY PRUDHOMME.)

Ah! could you see me weep in anguish sore
By the sad hearth I dare not call a home,
Sometimes, I think, dear
one, before my door

Would you not come?

Could you but guess my joy when your eyes meet
My wearied eyes in one divinest glance,
Up at my window you would look, my sweet,
As if by chance.

If to my wounded heart you knew the balm
Of sympathy, and love that has no guile,
Under my porch,-a sister sweet and calm,
You'd rest awhile.

Ah! darling, if you knew I loved, and how,
A love so great and pure your love must win
Perhaps you'd lift the latch,-yes, even now,
And come within!

"ALONE."

(AFTER SULLY PRUDHOMME.)

Our deepest joy in silence flows,
Like some pure stream, unseen, apart;
What lover tells the bliss he knows?
His mistress only reads his heart.

O well-known tread of lightest feet!
O lips more red than June's red rose!

O sighs and kisses passing sweet!

Words that are neither verse nor prose!

What tenderest rhyme, what thrilling tone
Might speak of you, nor do you wrong?

Ah! happy ones Love makes his own!
Small need have you of lyre or gong!

But he, who all in vain must wait
For arms that fold, or lip that clings,
Will grasp a lute inanimate,

And pour his soul out on its strings;

For glory's fading wreath he lives,
And, to the callous world, and chill,
Fragments of the sad heart he gives
That one great love may never fill.

A PARTING."

(AFTER SULLY PRUDHOMME.)

Why, no, I should not have told you, dear,
But I could not keep back one traitor tear,

It has fallen,-see, on your little hand,—
So the burning confession is written clear,
In letters you cannot but understand.

And our laughter, and dancing of footsteps fleet
Are gone with the joy of the spring-tide sweet;
I tremble, your blushes come and go,-

We cannot meet as we used to meet,

We cannot be friends as of old, I know.

But perhaps our hearts, in their love new-born

(Like two birds in their nest in that pale pink thorn),
Have their wings still weak, and their songs unsung;

For fear they should fly on the morrow morn,
Oh! tear them asunder, they still are young!

Oh! part them ere ever they learn to fly,
Lest in some dark future,-like you and I,—
They may hunger and yearn for each other again;
And through dreary vistas of earth and sky,
Go wearily seeking,—in vain, in vain!

་

AFFINITY.

(AFTER TH. GAUTIER.)

In an old-world temple two blocks of stone,
Where the sky of Athens burns hotly blue,
Have been standing stately, and still, and lone,
Dreaming together the ages through.

There were two pearls hid in the self-same shell
(Like sweet sea-tears that for Venus weep);
They have whispered secrets that none may tell,
Side by side in the heart of the deep.

When Boabdil ruled in the land of Spain.
Two roses grew in a garden rare;
They drank of the fountain's silver rain,
And mingled their scents in the drowsy air,

In Venice, to rest on a golden dome,

Two doves came floating on pinions white;
And they loved each other, and made their home,
Under the stars on a still May night.

But the changeless laws that our lives involve,
Are the laws of Death, and cold decay;
So the temple falls, and the pearls dissolve,—
The birds and the roses must pass away.

Yet each, by a strange metamorphosis

Is born anew in some fairer form;

So the rose may live in red lips that kiss,—
The marble in limbs that are white and warm.

And in hearts of lovers once more may greet
Those doves who dwelt on the dome of gold;
And in mouths of velvet the pearls may meet
To gleam more white than those pearls of old.

For how otherwise grew the wondrous birth
Of the strange and sweet affinity,
That warns two souls in this desert of earth,
They must claim each other where'er they be?

They recall, in a new-found ecstasy,
The dreams of their mystic Long-ago;
By the marble temple, or stormy sea,
Or Moorish garden where roses blow.

And they feel the flutter of snowy wings

On the golden dome of a stately fane ;And the faithful atoms the wild wind brings Must find each other, and love again!

So, my heart that within me burns and glows,
Would read your heart, and ask, you whether
You were pearl, or marble, or dove, or rose,

In that fairer world, when we were together?

FLORENCE HENNIKER.