And yet these dreams of fame to thee
Were dearer than reality.

Alas! e'en these have been in vain,
The prize has not been won ;
Thy lute is a forgotten lute,

Thy name, a nameless one;
The wild wind in the pine tree bough,
Is all the requiem for thee now.

And I, who, in vain sympathy,
These mournful words have said,
Not mine the hand that can bestow
The laurel on the dead:

I only know thy nameless fate
To me seems life's most desolate.

Methinks it is not much to die-
To die, and leave behind
A spirit in the hearts of men,
A voice amid our kind;

When fame and death, in unison,

Have given thousand lives for one.

Our thoughts, we live again in them,
Our nature's noblest part;

Our life in many a memory,

Our home in many a heart:

When not a lip that breathes our strain,

But calls us into life again.

No, give me some green laurel leaves

To float down memory's wave:

One tone nemain of my wild songs,
To sanctify my grave;

And then but little should I care

How soon within that grave I were.

THE BLIGHT OF THE SPIRIT.

W. HOWITT.

He stood supreme in lofty genius, proud
In his soul's majesty; young, ardent, fired
With energy that ever swayed the crowd;
The warmest votary that the muse inspired.
Through glorious realms he roamed, with feet
untired;

And in high temples, with meek head, he bowed;
Drinking in inspiration, till the tide,

Like genial waters' flow, his outward life supplied.

On the high mountain's topmost peak he lay,
Feasting his fancy with delicious food;
Amid the lightning's terrible array,

And many-tongued thunders; where had stood
The glorious of old times; till he imbued
His spirit with their greatness-day by day,
Revelling in dreams of poesy divine,

When gods communed with man, the poet with the Nine.

Then sprang the hope of an immortal name,
Kindling his spirit with Promethean fire;
His soul sprang upwards with the glorious aim,
And his hand, trembling, smote the answering wire.

He dwelt upon the beauties of the lyre;
Upon the beautiful, till it became,

Whether in art or nature, life and light, Endowing him with skill, and song's sublimest might.

And, day by day, he proudly pondered o'er
The bliss of his high destiny ;-to raise
Man from his reptile mind, and bid him soar,
Like the young eagle, in the heaven's full blaze;
He listened for the cordial voice of praise
To cheer him on-he heard the sullen roar

Of critic malice, mocking that warm zeal, That fervent strength of song its spirit could not feel.

Still dwelt he 'neath a bright and classic sky; And nature's marvels were around him spread; The mountain's cloudy pinnacle, which high Rears, in the vault of heaven, its splintered head: The ocean's everlasting voice ;-the red, Fierce lightnings, and the thunder's stormy cry. He sojourned in the lands renown'd of old, But now his soul was dim, his drooping fancy cold.

Alas! the curse was on him. The unkind,
Corroding censure of the caustic few,

Blasting his vision, sunk his ardent mind,
And, like the pestilent sirocco, slew.

He pined—the young, the generous, ardent, true ;
Amid his high, but withered hopes, he pined;
And died within the noble land that gave

The aspiring genius fire, the broken heart a grave.

THE DIAL OF FLOWERS.

MRS, HEMANS.

'Twas a lovely thought to mark the hours
As they floated in light away,
By the opening and the folding flowers
That laugh to the summer's day.

Thus had each moment its own rich hue
And its graceful cup or bell,

In whose colour'd vase might sleep the dew,
Like a pearl in an ocean shell.

To such sweet signs might the time have flow'd

In a golden current on,

Ere from the garden, man's first abode,
The glorious guests were gone.

So might the days have been brightly told—
Those days of song and dreams—
When shepherds gather'd their flocks of old,
By the blue Arcadian streams.

So in those isles of delight, that rest
Far off in a breezeless main,

Which many a bark, with a weary quest,
Hath sought but still in vain.

Yet is not life, in its real flight,

Mark'd thus-even thus-on earth,

By the closing of one hope's delight,
And another's gentle birth?

Oh! let us live, so that flower by flower,
Shutting in turn, may leave

A lingerer still for the sun-set hour,
A charm for the shaded eve.

THE DESERTED HOUSE.

TENNYSON.

LIFE and Thought have gone away
Side by side,

Leaving door and window wide :
Careless tenants they!

All within is dark as night:
In the windows is no light;

And no murmur at the door,
So frequent on its hinge before.

Come away: no more of mirth

Is here, or merry-making sound. The house was builded of the earth, And shall fall again to ground.

Come away for Life and Thought
Here no longer dwell;

But in a city glorious

A great and distant city--have bought
A mansion incorruptible.

Would they could have stayed with us!