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TO JULIET.

A THOUGHT AT NIGHT.

IN yonder taper's waning light,
An image of my heart I see;
It burns amid a lonely night—
Its life the love of thee-
The stedfast light its passion takes,
But slowly wastes while it illumes;
And while my very life it makes,
My life itself consumes.

TO JULIET.

THE summer-the summer hath come, my love,
And the ring-dove found his bride—

Not a flower below, not a beam above,
But doth thy coyness chide.

I have loved thee well-I have loved thee long

I have loved thyself alone;

There lived not a thought in my burning song, That my heart did not more than own.

Be mine-be mine while the Hours allow
My life to be vowed to Thee;

For the leaves of my youth are round me now

But the worm is in the tree.

And the time, sweet love, is speeding fast,
When the vow shall be ever o'er—
When thy faithful Fountain, dried at last,
Shall leap to the Breeze no more.
Be mine-be mine, ere hath past away
The scent from Life's closing flowers;
And sometime hence it will soothe to say-

66

"I blest his latest hours!"

LOVE'S WATCH.

TO JULIET SLEEPING.

THE moonbeams thro' the lattice fall;
They silver o'er thy blushing cheek ;

And still I wake to feed on all

The love I could not speak.

And thou art mine-all mine at last!

Our world can be earth's world no more,

A gulf between this life hath past,

And that we knew before.

How rush the swelling tides of thought—

All round grows hallowed ground to me!
How tender silence seems! how fraught

The loving air-with THEE!

I ever thought till now, the light

Of Heaven's sweet stars was mixed with sadness;

Now they-now all-drink in my sight

A glory and a gladness!

Sweet love, I bend to kiss thy brow—

I grow enamoured of thy rest;

What dreams of heaven shall haunt me, now
My pillow is thy breast!

ON THE IMITATORS OF BYRON.

A FABLE.

A SWAN hymn'd music on the Muses' waves,
And Song's sweet daughters wept within their caves;
It chanced the Bird had something then deemed new,
Not in the music only-but the hue-

Black were his plumes;—the Rooks that heard on high,
Came envying round, and darkened all the sky;
Each Rook, ambitious of a like applause,

Clapped his grave wings and Pierus rung with caws.

What of the Swan's attraction could they lack,

Their noise as mournful, and their wings as black?
In vain we cry-the secret you mistook,
And grief is d-d discordant in a Rook!

ON THE WANT OF SYMPATHY WE EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD.

"OH for one breast to image ours!"
Youth in its earliest vision sighs;
And Age the same desire devours,
Until---the dreamer dies.

Vain shadows from the friend--the wife
Thou seek'st, how loved soe'er thou art,
The brightest stream that glads thy life,
Can never glass thy heart.

I grant thee, home's endearing sounds,

I grant thee, love's first whispered tone;
But where the breast from which rebounds
The echo to thine own?

Mad are we all---who hath not pined

For something kindred from his birth?
And lost earth's solid joys to find,

What is not of the earth?

Ah! could we to ourselves betroth

One breast, a very shade of ours; Would Time alone not alter both

The creatures of the hours?

Go back into thy lonely soul,

And with a calm and chasten'd eye Survey thy tether, and control

The dreams that seek the sky ;And for ideal shapes, would melt All life into one vague desire ; In that far air wherein thou hast dwelt, Hope's mortal ends expire. Go--seek for joys amid thy kind!

How much has life itself to bless

The one whose wise and healthful mind
Seeks what it can possess !
Ourself may in ourself create,

A tie beyond the dreamer's art;
No bond is made that mocks at Fate,

Like Man's with his own heart.

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