"PERDIDI DIEM."

The Emperor Titus, at the close of a day in which he had neither gained knowledge nor conferred benefit, was accustomed to exclaim, "Perdidi diem," "I have lost a day."

WHY art thou sad, thou of the sceptred hand?
The rob'd in purple, and the high in state?
Rome pours her myriads forth, a vassal band,

And foreign powers are crouching at thy gate;
Yet dost thou deeply sigh, as if oppress'd by fate.

"Perdidi diem!"-Pour the empire's treasure, Uncounted gold, and gems of rainbow dye; Unlock the fountains of a monarch's pleasure

To lure the lost one back. I heard a sigh,One hour of parted time, a world is poor to buy.

"Perdidi diem."-"Tis a mournful story, Thus in the ear of pensive eve to tell,

Of morning's firm resolves, the vanish'd glory,

Hope's honey left within the withering bell,

And plants of mercy dead, that might have bloom'd so well.

Hail, self-communing Emperor, nobly wise!

There are, who thoughtless haste to life's last goal; There are, who time's long squandered wealth despise; Perdidi vitam marks their finished scroll,

When Death's dark angel comes to claim the startled

soul.

TO THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS.

WHO hung thy beauty on such rugged stalk,

Thou glorious flower?

Who pour'd the richest hues,

In varying radiance, o'er thine ample brow,
And like a mesh those tissued stamens laid.
Upon thy crimson lip?—

Thou glorious flower!
Methinks it were no sin to worship thee,

Such passport hast thou from thy Maker's hand,
To thrill the soul. Lone on thy leafless stem,
Thou bidd'st the queenly rose with all her buds
Do homage, and the green-house peerage bow
Their rainbow coronets.

Hast thou no thought?

No intellectual life? thou who can'st wake

Man's heart to such communings? no sweet word
With which to answer him? "Twould almost seem

That so much beauty needs must have a soul,
And that such form, as tints the gazer's dream,
Held higher spirit than the common clod
On which we tread.

TO THE CACTUS SPECIOSISSIMUS.

Yet while we muse, a blight

Steals o'er thee, and thy shrinking bosom shows

The mournful symptoms of a wan disease.

I will not stay to see thy beauties fade.
-Still must I bear away within my heart
Thy lesson of our own mortality,

The fearful withering of each blossom'd bough
On which we lean, of every bud we fain

Would hide within our bosoms from the touch
Of the destroyer.

So instruct us, Lord!

Thou Father of the sunbeam and the soul,
Even by the simple sermon of a flower,

To cling to Thee.

335

ANNA BOLEYN.

On seeing the axe with which Anna Boleyn was beheaded, still preserved in the Tower of London.

STERN minister of fate severe,
Who, drunk with beauty's blood,
Defying time, dost linger here,
And frown with ruffian visage drear,
Like beacon on destruction's flood,-
Say!-when ambition's giddy dream
First lured thy victim's heart aside,
Why, like a serpent, didst thou hide,
'Mid clustering flowers, and robes of pride,
Thy warning gleam?

Hadst thou but once arisen in vision dread,

From glory's fearful cliff her startled step had fled.

Ah! little she reck'd, when St. Edward's crown

So heavily press'd her tresses fair,

That, with sleepless wrath, its thorns of care
Would rankle within her couch of down!