THE FATHER'S LEGACY.

My earliest smiles were thine-my earliest thoughts, Like rosy light in morn's translucent sky, First from thine eye, my spirit's sun, were caught; And as it gleams on days that vanish by, It turns to thee, my fountain shrined on high! -My Sister! is she with thee? where thou art Thy children fain would be!-on starbeams fly, Spirits of Love! and in my raptured heart Make Heaven's own music till my soul in transport part.

And teach me with an awed delight to tread
The darksome vale that all must tread alone,
And gift me with the wisdom of the dead,
Justly to do, yet all unjustly done,
Freely to pardon !-Till the crown is won,
Be with me in the errings of my lot,
The many frailties of thine only son,

And when brief records say that he is not,

Hail his wronged spirit home where sorrow is forgot!

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THE LAST SONG TO CLARA.

Let no man seek

Henceforth to be foretold what shall befall
Him or his children.--MILTON.

"WREATHE thou the laurel with the bay,

And let the Poet's triumph be

The prelude of a lovelier day,

The seal of immortality!

Crown thou the brow of thought divine

With glory born of mind below,

And fill with gifts the holy shrine
Where hopeless spirits kneel and glow-
Not with the light of joy to come,
But in the lurid splendour cast

O'er the wild story of their doom
From the soul's morning beauty past!

So to lorn love thou wilt fulfil

The fate denied in mortal days,
And bear affection's harplike thrill

Through all hearts in thy living lays!"

TO CLARA.

Thus, as beside the tomb of love,
The monument of Heloise,

When seraphs from air thrones above
Leaned and sighed music on the breeze,
I stood in that lone hour of thought,
Which wafts time's shrouded memories on,
And pours upon the waste of nought
The loveliness of rapture flown,
I drank from spring's all spirit air
The accents of a voice unheard,
And clasped one bliss in life's despair,
One thought of joy that in me stirred.

"Thou of the bigot's darkened time!" (I murmured out a faint reply,)

"Wert doomed to bear the brand of crime

In the heart's home of ecstacy;

Martyr and mission'd spirit, sent

From throbbing depths of holiest skies,

To bless earth's love in banishment,

And gladden loneliest destinies.

Come from the fountain home of heaven,
Come from the mountainhaunts of youth,
And o'er me shed the rapture given
To first love in the years of truth!

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Give to the glance of memory's eye

The flight of hope o'er future good,

And to thy temple in the sky

Summon dark thoughts from wave and wood!

I oft have bled in bitter strife,

I oft have dwelt in lady's bower,

But for this fated gift, earth's life,

'Tis time's worst mock and hate's worst dower;
Nought in its heart but care and sorrow,

In anguish born, in darkness ending,
Haunting the footprints of to-morrow,
For hope toward joy in shadows tending!
The world can talk, but I must feel,
And men can counsel while I sigh,
Wealth crowns the spirit that can kneel,
But genius heralds destiny.

They murmur error past—but how?
I was not born to bend and bow,
God made me free and proud and just,
Man, this dark thing of fire and dust—
Thought comes not from the mould of earth,
Nor feeling from the merchant's mart,
And Glory, wed to Mind, has birth

Alone in grief's mausoleum heart—

Would'st thou know more? go ask the fiend
Why he veiled not his seraph head,

Why unto man he scorned to bend

The brow that heaven's own glory shed!
From thy shrined tomb in Paraclete

Breathe yet again thy spirit o'er me,

And I may better learn to meet

The storms and strife that gloom before me !
Thy cloistered wisdom, vesper prayers,

And matin hymns of hallowed love,
Shed o'er these soft translucent airs,

And fill me with the bliss above!

Tell me once more thy pillow now

TO CLARA.

Is Abelard's long widowed bosom,

And smiles may light my clouded brow,

And hope breathe life o'er youth's dead blossom!"

Doomed 'mid a selfish herd to tread,
To loathe yet leave not life's lone way,
To breathe despair among the dead,
And seek the warmth, yet curse the day-
To stand on midnight hills, and grasp
At glory's shapes, and find them madness-
This, Clara, since our last wild clasp,
Hath been my fate in silent sadness.
And as the Meccan pilgrim wends
Alone along the waste of death,

And cheers him, when the sand storm ends,
By the blest hope of Houri wreath,
So I through living solitude

Thine image bear with lonely joy,
And, shadowed by the ancient wood,
Paint thy bright features on the sky.
Then should I not invoke the past
To counsel and console my doom,

And deem I meet thee on the waste
Where towers sublime love's lonely tomb?
Shall not my spirit hover o'er

Thy slumbering brow and bless thee there?
And on thy children's bosoms pour

The incense of a holy prayer?

Sweet Clara! let me breathe my heart

Upon those amulets of bliss,

And, through their lips, to thee impart

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