seeks:

The color flies into his cheeks:

He trusts to light on something fai For all his life the charm did talk About his path, and hover near With words of promise in his walk, And whisper'd voices at his ear.

More close and close his footstep wind:

The Magic Music in his heart Beats quick and quicker, till he find The quiet chamber far apart, His spirit flutters like a lark,

He stoops-to kiss her-on his knee "Love, if thy tresses be so dark, How dark those hidden eyes mus be!"

A TOUCH, a kiss! the charm was snapt There rose a noise of striking clocks, And feet that ran, and doors that clapt, And barking dogs, and crowing cocks;

A fuller light illumined all,

A breeze thro' all the garden swept, A sudden hubbub shook the hall,

And sixty feet the fountain leapt.

The hedge broke in, the banner blew, The butler drank, the steward scrawl'd,

The fire shot up, the martin flew,

The parrot scream'd, the peacock squall'd,

The maid and page renew'd their strife, The palace bang'd, and buzz'd and

And learn the world, and sleep again, To sleep thro' terms of mighty ware, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars,

As wild as aught of fairy lore; And all that else the years will show, The Poet-forms of stronger hours, The vast Republics that may grow, The Federations and the Powers; Titanic forces taking birth

In divers seasons, divers climes; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times.

Ah, yet would I-and would I might! So much your eyes my fancy takeBe still the first to leap to light

That I might kiss those eyes awake! For, am I right, or am I wrong,

To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song. And I will take my pleasure there: And, am I right or am I wrong,

My fancy, ranging thro' and thro',
To search a meaning for the song,

Perforce will still revert to you;
Nor finds a closer truth than this
All-graceful head, so richly curl'd,
And evermore a costly kiss

The prelude to some brighter world.

IV.

For since the time when Adam first
Embraced his Eve in happy hour,
And every bird of Eden burst
In carol, every bud to flower,
What eyes, like thine, have waken'd
hopes?

What lips, like thinc, so sweetly join'd?

Where on the double rosebud droops
The fulness of the pensive mind:
Which all too dearly self-involved,
Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me;
A sleep by kisses undissolved,

That lets thee neither hear nor see: But break it. In the name of wife, And in the rights that name may give,

Are clasp'd the moral of thy life,
And that for which I care to live.

EPILOGUE.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And, if you find a meaning there, O whisper to your glass, and say, "What wonder, if he thinks me fair?"

What wonder I was all unwise,

To shape the song for your delight Like Long-tail'd birds of Paradise, That float thro' Ileaven, and cannot light?

Look'd down, half-pleased, halffrighten'd,

As dash'd about the drunken leaves
The random sunshine lighten'd!
Oh! nature first was fresh to men,

So youthful and so flex:le then,
You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle! shake th
twigs!

And make her dance attendance, Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-se sprigs,

And scirrhous roots and tendons.
'Tis vain! in such a brassy ago
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedgo

Scarce answer to my whistle;
Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,
The passive oxen gaping.

But what is that I hear? a sound
Like sleepy counsel pleading;

O Lord! 'tis in my neighbour's ground,

The modern Muses reading. They read Botanic Treatises,

And Works on Gardening thro
there,

And Methods of transplanting trees,
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbors clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,

By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.
But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed
That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed

Beside its native fountain.

And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil

To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.

ST. AGNES' EVE. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon: My breath to heaven like vapor goes: May my soul follow soon! The shadows of the convent-towers Slant down the snowy sward, Still creeping with the creeping hours That lead me to my Lord: Make Thou my spirit pure and clear As are the frosty skies, Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies.

As these white robes are soil'd and

SWEET Emma Moreland of yonder town

Met me walking on yonder way. "And have you lost your heart?" sho said,

"And are you married yet, Edward Gray ?"

Sweet Emma Moreland spoke to me :
Bitterly weeping I turn'd away:
"Sweet Emma Moreland, love no more
Can touch the heart of Edward Gray.

Fill'd I was with folly and spite, When Ellen Adair was dying for me. "Cruel, cruel the words I said!

Cruelly came they back to-day:
"You're too slight and fickle,' I said,

To trouble the heart of Edward
Gray.'

There I put my face in the grass-
Whisper'd, Listen to my despair:
I repent me of all I did:

Speak a little, Ellen Adair!' "Then I took a pencil, and wrote On the mossy stone, as I lay, Here lies the body of Ellen Adair; And here the heart of Edward Gray!' "Love may come, and love may go, And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree: But I will love no more, no more,

Till Ellen Adair come back to me. "Bitterly wept I over the stone:

Bitterly weeping I turn'd away: There lies the body of Ellen Adair! And there the heart of Edward Gray!"

WILL WATERPROOF'S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE.

MADE AT THE COCK.

O PLUMP head waiter at The Cock,
To which I most resort,

How goes the time? "Tis five o'clock.
Go fetch a pint of port:
But let it not be such as that

You set before chance-comers,
But such whose father-grape grew fat
On Lusitanian summers.

No vain libation to the Muse,
But may she still be kind,
And whisper lovely words, and use
Her influence on the mind,

To make me write my random rhymes,
Ere they be half-forgotten;
Nor add and alter, many times,

Til all be ripe and rotten.

I pledge her, and she comes and dips
Her laurel in the wine,
And lays it thrice upon my lips,
These favor'd lips of mine;
Until the charm have power to make
New lifeblood warm the bosom,
And barren commonplaces break
In full and kindly blossom.

I pledge her silent at the board;
Her gradual fingers steal

And touch upon the master chord

Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans,
And phantom hopes assemble;
And that child's heart within the man's
Begins to move and tremble.
Thro' many an hour of summer suns,
By many pleasant ways,
Against its fountain upward runs
The current of my days:
I kiss the lips I once have kiss'd;
The gas-light wavers dimmer.
And softly, thro' a vinous mist,

My college friendships glimmer.
I grow in worth, and wit, and sense,
Unboding critic-pen,

Or that eternal want of pence,
Which vexes public men,
Who hold their hands to all, and cry
For that which all deny them-
Who sweep the crossing, wet or dry,
And all the world go by them.
Ah yet, tho' all the world forsake,
Tho' fortune clip my wings,

I will not cramp my heart, nor take
Half-views of men and things.
Let Whig and Tory stir their blood;
There must be stormy weather;
But for some true result of good

All parties work together.

Let there be thistles, there are grapes;
If old things, there are new:

Ten thousand broken lights and shapes,
Yet glimpses of the true.

Let raffs be rife in prose and rhyme,
We lack not rhymes and reasons,
As on this whirligig of Time

We circle with the seasons.

This earth is rich in man and maid;
With fair horizons bound:
This whole wide earth of light and
shade

Comes out, a perfect round.
High over roaring Temple-bar,

And, set in Heaven's third story, I look at all things as they are, But thro' a kind of glory.

Head-waiter, honor'd by the guest
Half-mused, or reeling ripe,
The pint, you brought me, was the bea
That ever came from pipe.
But tho' the port surpasses praise,
My nerves have dealt with stiffer.
Is there some magic in the place?
Or do my peptics differ?

For since I came to live and learn,
No pint of white or red
Had ever half the power to turn
This wheel within my head,
Which bears a season'd brain about,
Unsubject to confusion,

Tho' soak'd and saturate, out and out,
Thro' every convolution.

For I am of a numerous house,
With many kinsmen gay,
Where long and largely we carouse