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SONG.

L. E. LANDON.

I PRAY thee let me weep to-night,
'Tis rarely I am weeping;

My tears are buried in my heart,
Like cave-lock'd fountains sleeping.

But oh, to-night, those words of thine
Have brought the past before me ;
And shadows of long-vanish'd years
Are passing sadly o'er me.

The friends I loved in early youth,

The faithless and forgetting,

Whom, though they were not worth my love, I cannot help regretting ;—

My feelings, once the kind, the warm,
But now the hard, the frozen ;

The errors I've too long pursued,
The path I should have chosen ;—

The hopes that are like falling lights
Around my pathway dying;
The consciousness none others rise,
Their vacant place supplying;—

The knowledge by experience taught,
The useless, the repelling;

For what avails to know how false
Is all the charmer's telling?

I would give worlds, could I believe
One half that is profess'd me;
Affection! could I think it Thee,
When flattery has caress'd me?

I cannot bear to think of this,-
Oh, leave me to my weeping;
A few tears for that grave, my heart,
Where hope in death is sleeping.

THE NIGHTINGALE'S DEATH SONG.

MRS. HEMANS.

MOURNFULLY, sing mournfully,

And die away, my heart!

The rose, the glorious rose is gone,
And I too will depart.

The skies have lost their splendour,
The waters changed their tone,
And wherefore, in the faded world,
Should music linger on ?

Where is the golden sunshine,

And where the flower-cup's glow,
And where the joy of the dancing leaves,
And the fountain's laughing flow?

A voice in every whisper

Of the wave, the bough, the air, Comes asking for the beautiful,

And moaning "Where, oh! where?"

Tell of the brightness parted,

Thou Bee, thou Lamb at play! Thou Lark, in thy victorious mirth! —Are ye, too, pass'd away?

Mournfully, sing mournfully;

The royal Rose is gone :

Melt from the woods, my spirit melt,
In one deep farewell tone!

-Not so 1-swell forth triumphantly
The full, rich, fervent strain!
Hence with young Love and Life I go,
In the Summer's joyous train.

With sunshine, with sweet odour,
With every precious thing,
Upon the last warm southern breeze,
My soul its flight shall wing.

Alone I shall not linger

When the days of hope are past, To watch the fall of leaf by leaf, To wait the rushing blast.

Triumphantly, triumphantly,
Sing to the woods, I go!

For me, perchance, in other lands

The glorious rose may blow.

The sky's transparent azure,

And the greensward's violet breath, And the dance of light leaves in the wind, May these know nought of Death.

No more, no more sing mournfully!
Swell high, then break, my heart!
With love, the Spirit of the Woods,
With Summer I depart!

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

SHELLEY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the river with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a strange emotion:
Nothing in the world is single;
All things, by a law divine,
In one another's being mingle,-
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another!
Nor leaf or flower would be forgiven,
If it disdain'd its brother.
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea :-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

ISMAEL FITZADAM.

A PILGRIM of the Harp was he,
With half a heart for chivalry;
The lone, the marvellous, the wild,
Had charm'd his spirit, man and child;
Graduate in Nature's eldest school,
Of forms all grand and beautiful;
Her manuscript, divinely wrought,
God's own miraculous Polyglot,
Speaking in one all languages-
He studied-rocks, and stars, and seas;
But chief the deep his worship won,
The illimitable ocean-nursed thereon;
With all its workings-maniac hoar,
Even for that madness loved the more;
Kin elements, his moody mind,
A portion of the wave and wind;
And oft the boy would try to weave
His wonder into shapes of song;
And feeling still would only grieve
To find he did his feelings wrong.
He loved, as minstrel elf must prove,
For song itself was born of love;
So the young glow, and melting shower
Of April, animate the flower,-
Perfume, and suppliance of an hour,-
Too exquisitely loved to last,

Such curse upon the lyre is cast.

N

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