A Library of Poetry and Song: Being Choice Selections from the Best Poets

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She took the glass where Love's warm hands

A bright impervious vapor cast, She looks, but cannot see the sands,

Although she feels they 're falling fast. But cold hours came, and then, alas !

She saw them falling frozen through, Till Love's warm light suffused the glass, And hid the loos'ning sands from view !

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY,

DEATH AND CUPID.

AH! who but oft hath marvelled why

The gods, who rule above, Should e'er permit the young to die,

The old to fall in love?

Ah! why should hapless human kind

Be punished out of season?
Pray listen, and perhaps you 'll find

My rhyme may give the reason.
Death, strolling out one summer's day,

Met Cupid, with his sparrows; And, bantering in a merry way,

Proposed a change of arrows.
“Agreed !" quoth Cupid. “I foresee

The queerest game of errors ;
For you the King of Hearts will be,

And I'll be King of Terrors !”
And so 't was done ;-alas, the day

That multiplied their arts !
Each from the other bore away

A portion of his darts.
And that explains the reason why,

Despite the gods above,
The young are often doomed to die,
The old to fall in love !

JOHN GODFREY SAXE,

LOVE-LETTERS MADE OF FLOWERS.

An exquisite invention this,
Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,
This art of writing billet-doux
In buds, and odors, and bright hues !
In saying all one feels and thinks
In clever daffodils and pinks ;
In puns of tulips ; and in phrases,
Charming for their truth, of daisies ;
Uttering, as well as silence may,
The sweetest words the sweetest way.
How fit too for the lady's bosom !
The place where billet-doux repose 'em.

What delight in some sweet spot
Combining love with garden plot,
At once to cultivate one's flowers
And one's epistolary powers !
Growing one's own choice words and fancies
In orange tubs, and beds of pansies ;
One's sighs, and passionate declarations,
In odorous rhetoric of carnations ;
Seeing how far one's stocks will reach,
Taking due care one's flowers of speech
To guard from blight as well as bathos,
And watering every day one's pathos !
A letter comes, just gathered. We
Dote on its tender brilliancy,
Inhale its delicate expressions
Of balm and pea, and its confessions
Made with as sweet a maiden's blush
As ever morn bedewed on bush :
('T is in reply to one of ours,
Made of the 'most convincing flowers.)
Then, after we have kissed its wit,
And heart, in water putting it
(To keep its remarks fresh), go round
Our little eloquent plot of ground,
And with enchanted hands compose
Our answer,

all of lily and rose,
Of tuberose and of violet,
And little darling (mignonette) ;
Of look at me and call me to you
(Words, that while they greet, go through you):
Of thoughts, of flames, forget-me-not,
Bridewort, in short, the whole blest lot
Of vouchers for a lifelong kiss,
And literally, breathing bliss !

LEIGH HUNT.

THE BIRTH OF PORTRAITURE.

As once a Grecian maiden wove

Her garland mid the summer bowers, There stood a youth, with eyes of love,

To watch her while she wreathed the flowers. The youth was skilled in painting's art,

But ne'er had studied woman's brow, Nor knew what magic hues the heart

Can shed o'er Nature's charm, till now.

CHORUS

Blest be Love, to whom we owe
All that 's fair and bright below.

His hand had pictured many a rose,

And sketched the rays that lit the brook ; But what were these, or what were those,

To woman's blush, to woman's look ? “Oh ! if such magic power there be,

This, this,” he cried, “is all my prayer,

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