'Tis of a child of five years old, upon whose peaceful sleep Fair visions of another world with silent footsteps creep; Soft as the dew on summer flowers, or moonlight on the sea, The influence of that blissful dream to Fancy seems to be. The cheek, upon the pillow press'd, wears joy's delightful tinge, The eyes are closed, yet joy's bright tear steals thro' the eyelids' fringe. The lips are voiceless, yet they wear the sweetest smile of bliss A smile so sweet, it well might chide the fondest mother's kiss. Thou happy sleeper, might I tell where now thy spirit roams, The lot it shares-how poor would seem the joys of proudest domes! Fame, wealth, and grandeur, never yet a pleasure could impart So pangless and so pure as those which now possess thy heart. For thou art in the land of thought, and far hast left behind The fading happiness of earth, for raptures more refined; Thine seems a foretaste of the boon appointed for the bless'd, "Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." STANZAS. BYRON. AND thou art dead, as young and fair And form so soft and charms so rare, Though Earth received them in her bed, There is an eye which could not brook I will not ask where thou liest low, There flowers or weeds at will may grow, So I behold them not; It is enough for me to prove That what I loved and long must love, To me there needs no stone to tell; Yet did I love thee to the last As fervently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, The love where Death has set his seal, Nor falsehood disavow; I And, what were worse, thou canst not see Or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers, The silence of that dreamless sleep, Nor need I to repine, That all those charms have pass'd away, The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd, And yet it were a greater grief I know not if I could have borne The night that followed such a morn Thy day without a cloud hath past, As stars that shoot along the sky As once I wept, if I could weep Yet how much less it were to gain, And more thy buried love endears THE WALLFLOWER. MOIR. THE wallflower-the wallflower, It gleams above the ruin'd tower, Around the wrecks of Time ;- Flower of the solitary place! Thy roots outspread the ramparts o'er, The beacon on the hill No more through midnight blazes redBut thou art blooming still! Whither hath fled the choral band O'er many a level grave; In the belfry's crevices the dove Her young brood nurses well, Whilst thou, lone flower, dost shed above A sweet decaying smell. In the season of the tulip cup, |