("Philip" was Philip Bourke Marston, who afterwards achieved distinction as a poet.) OOK at me with thy large brown eyes, Philip, my King! For round thee the purple shadow lies Of babyhood's regal dignities. Lay on my neck thy tiny hand, With love's invisible scepter laden; I am thine Esther to command, Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden, Oh, the day when thou goest a-wooing, When those beautiful lips 'gin suing; For we that love, ah! we love so blindly, I gaze from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow, Philip, my King! Ay, there lies the spirit, all sleeping now, That may rise like a giant, and make men bow Such graves as his are pilgrim shrines, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. ROBERT RURNS. WHAT HAT bird, in beauty, flight, or song, Who sang as sweet, and soared as strong His plume, his note, his form could Burns He was not one, but all by turns, The black bird, oracle of spring, The swallow wheeling on the wing, The humming-bird, from bloom to bloom, Inhaling heavenly balm; The raven, in the tempest's gloom; The halcyon, in the calm. In "auld kirk Alloway," the owl; At witching time of night; By "Bonnie Doon," the earliest fowl He was the wren amidst the grove, At Bannockburn the bird of Jove, The wood-lark in his mournful hours; The swan, in majesty and grace, Contemplative and still; But roused, no falcon in the chase The linnet, in simplicity; In tenderness the dove; Oh, had he never stooped to shame, How had Devotion loved to name That bird-of-paradise! f COWPER'S GRAVE. T is a place where poets crowned may feel the heart's decaying, It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying; Yet let the grief and humbleness as low as silence languish ! Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish. O poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing! O Christians! at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging! O men! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling! And now, what time ye all may read through brimming tears the story, How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory, And how, when one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed, He wore no less a loving face because so brok- The fever gone, with leaps of heart he sees en-hearted. He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation, And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration; Nor ever shall he be in praise by wise or good forsaken; Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken. With quiet sadness and no gloom I learn to think upon him, With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him, Who suffered once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him, her bending o'er him, Her face all pale from watchful love, the unwearied love she bore him: Thus woke the poet from the dream his life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic eyes, that closed in death to save him! Thus? oh, not thus! no type of earth can image that awaking, Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking, Or felt the new, immortal throb of soul from body parted, But felt those eyes alone, and knew "My Saviour: not deserted!" But gently led the blind along where breath Deserted! who hath dreamt that when the and bird could find him; And wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic senses As hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences: The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number, And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a slumber. While timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home caresses, Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses; The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways removing, Its women and its men became, beside him true and loving. But though, in blindness, he remained unconscious of that guiding, And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing, He testified this solemn truth, while frenzydesolated, Nor man nor nature satisfies whom only God created. Like a sick child that knoweth not his mother while she blesses, ness of her kisses, cross in darkness rested Upon the Victim's hidden face, no love was manifested? What frantic hands outstretched have e'er th' atoning drops averted, What tears have washed them from the soul, that one should be deserted? Deserted! God could separate from his own essence rather, And Adam's sins have swept between the righteous son and Father; Yea, once, Immanuel's orphaned cry his universe hath shaken; It went up, single, echoless: "My God, I am forsaken!" It went up from the Holy's lips amid his lost creation, That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation, That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope's fruition, And I, on Cowper's grave, should see his rapture in a vision! ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. AT THE GRAVE OF BURNS. (Extract.) And drops upon his burning brow the cool-00 frail to keep the lofty vow 300 frail to keep the lofty when his brow That turns his fevered eyes around: "My Was wreathed-"The Vision" tells us howWith holly spray, mother? where's my mother?" As if such tender words and deeds could come He faltered, drifted to and fro, from any other! And passed away. |