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Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade,

Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her how happy had it been !
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.

THE TOADSTOOL.

HERE 'S a thing that grows by the fainting flower,

And springs in the shade of the lady's bower;

The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale,
When they feel its breath in the summer gale,
And the tulip curls its leaves in pride,

And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare,
For what does the honest toadstool care?

She does not glow in a painted vest,

And she never blooms on the maiden's breast;
But she comes, as the saintly sisters do,
In a modest suit of a Quaker hue.
And, when the stars in the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes,
The toad comes out from his hermit cell,
The tale of his faithful love to tell.

O there is light in her lover's glance,
That flies to her heart like a silver lance;

His breeches are made of spotted skin,

His jacket is tight, and his pumps are thin;
In a cloudless night you may hear his song,
As its pensive melody floats along,

And, if you will look by the moonlight fair,
The trembling form of the toad is there.

And he twines his arms round her slender stem,
In the shade of her velvet diadem;

But she turns away in her maiden shame,
And will not breathe on the kindling flame;
He sings at her feet through the livelong night,
And creeps to his cave at the break of light;
And whenever he comes to the air above,
His throat is swelling with baffled love.

THE MEETING OF THE DRYADS.*

T was not many centuries since,
When, gathered on the moonlit green,
Beneath the Tree of Liberty,

A ring of weeping sprites was seen.

The freshman's lamp had long been dim,
The voice of busy day was mute,

And tortured Melody had ceased

Her sufferings on the evening flute.

* Written after a general pruning of the trees around Harvard College.

They met not as they once had met,

To laugh o'er many a jocund tale:

But every pulse was beating low,

And every cheek was cold and pale.

There rose a fair but faded one,

Who oft had cheered them with her song; She waved a mutilated arm,

And silence held the listening throng.

"Sweet friends," the gentle nymph began, "From opening bud to withering leaf,

One common lot has bound us all,

In every change of joy and grief.

"While all around has felt decay,
We rose in ever-living prime,
With broader shade and fresher green,
Beneath the crumbling step of Time.

"When often by our feet has past

Some biped, Nature's walking whim, Say, have we trimmed one awkward shape, Or lopped away one crooked limb?

"Go on, fair Science; soon to thee

Shall Nature yield her idle boast;

Her vulgar fingers formed a tree,

But thou hast trained it to a post.

"Go paint the birch's silver rind,

And quilt the peach with softer down;

Up with the willow's trailing threads,

Off with the sunflower's radiant crown!

"Go, plant the lily on the shore,

And set the rose among the waves,

And bid the tropic bud unbind

Its silken zone in arctic caves;

"Bring bellows for the panting winds, Hang up a lantern by the moon,

And give the nightingale a fife,

And lend the eagle a balloon!

"I cannot smile, - the tide of scorn,

That rolled through every bleeding vein, Comes kindling fiercer as it flows

Back to its burning source again.

"Again in every quivering leaf

That moment's agony I feel,

When limbs, that spurned the northern blast, Shrunk from the sacrilegious steel.

"A curse upon the wretch who dared
To crop us with his felon saw !
May every fruit his lip shall taste
Lie like a bullet in his maw.

"In every julep that he drinks,

May gout, and bile, and headache be; And when he strives to calm his pain, May colic mingle with his tea.

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May nightshade cluster round his path, And thistles shoot, and brambles cling;

May blistering ivy scorch his veins,

And dogwood burn, and nettles sting.

"On him may never shadow fall,

When fever racks his throbbing brow,
And his last shilling buy a rope

To hang him on my highest bough!"

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She spoke ;
the morning's herald beam
Sprang from the bosom of the sea,
And every mangled sprite returned

In sadness to her wounded tree.*

THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR.

HERE was a sound of hurrying feet,
A tramp on echoing stairs,

There was a rush along the aisles,
It was the hour of prayers.

And on, like Ocean's midnight wave,
The current rolled along,
When, suddenly, a stranger form
Was seen amidst the throng.

He was a dark and swarthy man,
That uninvited guest;

A faded coat of bottle-green

Was buttoned round his breast.

* A little poem, on a similar occasion, may be found in the works of Swift, from which, perhaps, the idea was borrowed; although I was as much surprised as amused to meet with it some time after writing the preceding lines.

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