WHEN LOVE WAS STRICKEN.

WHEN Love was stricken with disgust
At the cold world's unnatural sway,
He shook in scorn the golden dust
From his transparent feet away;

And sought in pilgrim's weeds a spot
For penance fit, lone, dark, and bare:
Where even Hope's wan bloom was not,
He found my heart, and laid him there.

THE WINDOW.

R. Monckton Milnes.

AT my window, late and early,
In the sunshine and the rain,
When the jocund beams of morning
Come to wake me from my napping,
With their golden fingers tapping

At my window-pane :

From my troubled slumbers flitting—

From my dreamings fond and vain,

From the fever intermitting,

Up I start, and take my sitting

At my window-pane.

Through the morning, through the noontide, Fettered by a diamond chain,

Through the early hours of evening,

When the stars begin to tremble,
As their shining ranks assemble
O'er the azure plain :

THE WINDOW.

When the thousand lamps are blazing,
Through the street and lane-

Mimic stars of man's upraising—

Still I linger, fondly gazing

From my window-pane!

For, amid the crowds slow passing,

Surging like the main,

Like a sunbeam among shadows,

Through the storm-swept cloudy masses,

Sometimes one bright being passes

'Neath my window-pane :

Thus a moment's joy I borrow

From a day of pain.

See, she comes! but, bitter sorrow!

Not until the slow to-morrow

Will she come again.

LOVE AND MAY.

D. F. M'Carthy.

WITH buds and thorns about her brow,
I met her in the woods of May
Bending beneath a loaded bough.
She seemed so young, and was so fair,
A rosy freshness in her air

Spoke morning gliding into day.

Wild as an untamed bird of Spring,

She sported 'mid the forest ways, Whose blossoms pale did round her cling. Blithe was she as the banks of June, Where humming-bees kept sweetest tune; The soul of love was in her lays.

LOVE AND MAY.

Her words fell soft upon my ear,

Like dropping dews from leafy spray :
She knew no shame, and felt no fear;
She told me how her childhood grew-
Her joys how keen, her cares how few:
She smiled, and said her name was May.

May of my heart! Oh, darling May!

Thy form is with the shows that fleet;
And I am weak, and worn, and grey!
I see no more the things I loved:
The paths wherein their beauty moved
Do seem to fail beneath my feet.

I marked her for a little space;

And soon she seemed to heed me not,
But gathered flowers before my face.
Oh, sweet to me her untaught ways!
The love I bore her all my days

Was born of that wild woodland spot.

I never called her bride nor wife,

I watched her bloom a little more,

And then she faded out of life:
She quaffed the wave I might not drink,
And I stood thirsting on the brink!

Oh, hurrying tide!-Oh, dreary shore!

They knew not that my heart was torn ;
They said a fever left me mad,
And I had babbled of a thorn,
A withered May, and scattered bloom,
A well of tears, and wayside tomb-

Alas! 'twas all the lore I had!