""Tis youth, 'tis beauty asks; the green Are round her; and half-hid, half-seen, Nursed by the graces, she hath been Blind passion's picture !—Yet for this, Unmindful of the serpent's hiss Beauty-the fading rainbow's pride! Age-strengthened, like the oak, storm-tried, Youth's coffin-hush the tale it tells! And where the grave-mound greenly swells “But what if hers are rank and power, What, if from bannered hall and tower A queen? Earth's regal moons have set. Where perished Marie Antoinette? Where's Bordeaux's mother? where the jetBlack Haytian dame ? And Lusitania's coronet ? And Angoulême ? Empires to-day are upside down : Give me in preference to a crown, "But her who asks, though first among She is your kinswoman in song, A Poet's daughter?-Could I claim Veins of my intellectual frame! Your blood would glow Proudly to sing that gentlest name A Poet's daughter! Dearer word And wind-harp, by the breathing stirred My spirit's wings are weak-the fire Her name needs not my humble lyre, To bid it live : She hath already from her sire All bard can give. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. WHI Love. The imperial votaress passed on I. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. HEN the tree of love is budding first, Ere yet by shower and sunbeam nursed The wild bee's slightest touch might wring As the gentle dip of the swallow's wing II. But when its open leaves have found A home in the free air, Pluck them, and there remains a wound That ever rankles there, The blight of hope and happiness Is felt when fond ones part; And the bitter tear that follows is The life-blood of the heart. III. When the flame of love is kindled first, 'Tis the fire-fly's light at even ; 'Tis dim as the wandering stars that burst In the blue of a summer heaven. A breath can bid it burn no more, Come on the memory, they pass o'er IV. But when that flame has blazed into And smiled in scorn upon the dew That fell in its first warm hour, 'Tis the flame that curls round the martyr's head, Whose task is to destroy : 'Tis the lamp on the altars of the dead, Whose light but darkens joy. V. Then crush, even in their hour of birth, The infant buds of Love; And tread his glowing fire to earth, To shade thy future years; Nor nurse a heart-flame that may be Quenched only with thy tears. FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. The Culprit Fay. "My visual orbs are purged from film, and, lo! I see old fairyland's miraculous show! Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, TENNANT'S ANSTER FAIR. I. IS the middle watch of a Summer's night 'TIS The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light, on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest; She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a silver cone on the wave below. II. The stars are on the moving stream, |