Nor think that Nature saves her bloom | Be patient! On the breathing page

Yet think not so; Old England's blood Stay, pitying Time, thy foot for him

The man who does not know them well 'T was but the flushing of the bud

And thine, long lingering on the strand,
Its bright-hued streamers furled,
Was loosed by age, with trembling hand,

To seek the silent world.

Not silent! no, the radiant stars
Still singing as they shine,
Unheard through earth's imprisoning
bars,

Have voices sweet as thine.

Wake, then, in happier realms above,

The songs of bygone years,
Till angels learn those airs of love
That ravished mortal ears!

AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS.

"Purpureos spargam flores.'

No more upon its mound I see
The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis;
Where once the tulips used to show,
In straggling tufts the pansies grow;
The grass has quenched my white-rayed

gem,

The flowering "Star of Bethlehem,"
Though its long blade of glossy green
And pallid stripe may still be seen.
Nature, who treads her nobles down,
And gives their birthright to the clown,
Has sown her base-born weedy things
Above the garden's queens and kings.

Yet one sweet flower of ancient race
Springs in the old familiar place.
When snows were melting down the
vale,

And Earth unlaced her icy mail,
And March his stormy trumpet blew,
And tender green came peeping through,
I loved the earliest one to seek
That broke the soil with emerald beak,
And watch the trembling bells so blue
Spread on the column as it grew.
Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame
The sweet, dead poet's holy name;
The God of music gave thee birth,
Called from the crimson-spotted earth,
Where, sobbing his young life away,

THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley His own fair Hyacinthus lay.

gave

Is lying on thy Roman grave,

Yet on its turf young April sets
Her store of slender violets;
Though all the Gods their garlands
shower,

I too may bring one purple flower.

Alas! what blossom shall I bring,
That opens in my Northern spring?
The garden beds have all run wild,
So trim when I was yet a child;
Flat plantains and unseemly stalks
Have crept across the gravel walks ;
The vines are dead, long, long ago,
The almond buds no longer blow.

- The hyacinth my garden gave Shall lie upon that Roman grave!

AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY.

ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay;

On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware!

The cloud has clasped her; lo! it melts

away;

The wide, waste waters, but no sail is

there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea; | Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies, Midnight: with lamps the long veran- Whose open page lay on thy dying

Come, wandering sail, they watch, they Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted

And feet are thronging on the pebbly Breathe for his wandering soul one pass

Slow from the shore the sullen waves And down the bright hillside that wel

His form a nobler element shall We hear the warm panting of beautiful

It is but a word, and the chain is un- | For the sweetest of smiles is the smile bound, as we part, The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to | When the light round the lips is a ray the ground; from the heart;

might swell,

No hand shall replace it, — it rests And lest a stray tear from its fountain where it fell, It is but one word that we all know too We will seal the bright spring with a well.

Yet the hawk with the wildness un

tamed in his eye,

If you free him, stares round ere he springs to the sky;

The slave whom no longer his fetters restrain

Will turn for a moment and look at his chain.

Our parting is not as the friendship of years,

That chokes with the blessing it speaks

through its tears;

We have walked in a garden, and, looking around,

quiet farewell.

THE HUDSON.

AFTER A LECTURE AT ALBANY.

'T WAS a vision of childhood that came with its dawn,

Ere the curtain that covered life's daystar was drawn ;

The nurse told the tale when the shadows grew long,

And the mother's soft lullaby breathed it in song.

"There flows a fair stream by the hills of the west,"

Have plucked a few leaves from the She sang to her boy as he lay on her

myrtles we found.

But now at the gate of the garden we stand,

And the moment has come for unclasp

ing the hand;

66

breast;

'Along its smooth margin thy fathers have played;

Beside its deep waters their ashes are laid."

Will you drop it like lead, and in silence I wandered afar from the land of my

Like the twenty crushed forms from an I saw the old rivers, renowned upon

omnibus seat?

Nay hold it one moment, the last we may share,

I stretch it in kindness, and not for my

fare;

earth,

But fancy still painted that wide-flowing stream

With the many-hued pencil of infancy's dream.

You may pass through the doorway in I saw the green banks of the castle

rank or in file,

crowned Rhine,

If your ticket from Nature is stamped Where the grapes drink the moonlight

with a smile.

and change it to wine;

I stood by the Avon, whose waves as | I care not who sees it,

-no blush for it

Farewell to the deep-bosomed stream of

the West!

I fling this loose blossom to float on its breast;

Nor let the dear love of its children
grow cold,

Till the channel is dry where its waters
have rolled!
December, 1854.

A flattering letter--more's the pity,-
By some contriving junto planned,
And signed per order of Committee;
It touches every tenderest spot,
My patriotic predilections,

My well-known - something - don't

ask what,

— The same old story; that's the chaff To catch the birds that sing the ditties;

My poor old songs, my kind affec- Upon my soul, it makes me laugh

Our friends will come with anxious Why, who am I, to lift me here

faces

(To see our blankets off, no doubt,

And trot us out and show our paces).

And beg such learned folk to listen,— To ask a smile, or coax a tear

Beneath these stoic lids to glisten?