He'll never meet A joy so sweet In all his noon of fame As when first he sung to woman's ear His soul-felt flame, And at every close she blushed to hear The one loved name ! 0, that hallowed form is ne'er forgot, Which first love traced ; Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot On memory's waste ! 'T was odor fled As soon as shed ; 'T was morning's winged dream ; 'T was a light that ne'er can shine again On life's dull stream ! O, 't was a light that ne'er can shine again On life's dull stream ! Ah ! each sailor in the port Knows that I have ships at sea, And the sailors pity me. Rise and fall, rise and fall. Gazing for them down the bay, Till I turned heart-sick away. One and all, one and all." Nor let hope or courage fail ; And some day, when skies are fair, Up the bay my ships will sail. That is lost, that is lost. Richer, too, than I am now, Or a wrinkle creased my brow, There was one whose heart was mine; But she's something now divine, And though come my ships from sea, They can bring no heart to me Evermore, evermore. THOMAS MOORE. WHEN THE LAMP IS SHATTERED. ROBERT STEVENSON COFFIN. When the lamp is shattered LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM. FROM "IRISH MELODIES." O THE days are gone when beauty bright My heart's chain wove! Was love, still love ! And days may come, As love's young dream ! dream! Though the bard to purer fame may soar, When wild youth's past; Though he win the wise, who frowned before, To sm le at last ; PERCY BYSHE SHELLEY WHITTIER As some tall pine that from a mountain side O'erlooks a hundred verdant vales below, And drinks their balm, and hears their waters flow, And sees athwart the heaven's lurid glow The thunderbolt in zig-zag splendor go. What reed of Pan, however fine it blew, So standest thou within our mortal view. LOUISE A. McGAFFEY November, 1892 From Belford's Magazine, Chicago TAKE, O, TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY.* | Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the self-same plane, TAKE, 0, take those lips away, Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your That so sweetly were forsworn ; souls could be parted again. And those eyes, like break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom But my kisses bring again, of her life's early May ; Seals of love, but sealed in vain. And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day. Hide, O, hide those hills of snow Which thy frozen bosom bears, Nature never stands still, nor souls either: they On whose tops the pinks that grow ever go up or go down ; Are yet of those that April wears ! And hers has been steadily soaring, - but how But first set my poor heart free, has it been with your own ? Bound in those icy chains by thec. SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER. She has struggled and yearned and aspired, grown purer and wiser each year : The stars are not farther above you in yon lumi nous atmosphere ! WHY SO PALE AND WAN ? Why so pale and wan, fond lover ? For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, Pry thee, why so pale ? down yonder, five summers ago, Will, when looking well can't move her, Has learned that the first of our duties to God Looking ill prevail ? and ourselves is to grow. Pr'y thee, why so pale ? Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer; but their Why so dull and mute, young sinner ? vision is clearer as well : Pr'y thee, why so mute ? Her voice ha a tenderer cad ce, but is pure as Will, when speaking well can't win her, a silver bell. Saying nothing do't? Pr'y thee, why so mute ? Her face has the look worn by those who with God and his angels have talked : Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move, The white robes she wears are less white than This cannot take her : the spirits with whom she has walked. If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her : And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have The devil take her! you, too, aspired and prayed ? SIR JOHN SUCKLING Have you looked upon evil unsullied ? Have you conquered it undismayed ? OUTGROWN. Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and the years have rolled on? Nay, you wrong her, my friend, she 's not fickle ; Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the her love she has simply outgrown : triumph of victory won ? One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own. Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood, Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There is much that my heart would say ; Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood ? And you know we were children together, have quarrelled and “made up” in play. Go measure yourself by her standard. Look And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture back on the years that have fled ; to tell you the truth, Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might the love of her girlhood is dead ! in our carlier youtli. She cannot look down to her lover : her love, • The first stanza of this song appears in Shakespeare's like her soul, aspires; Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 1.; the same, with the second He must stand by her side, or above her, who would kindle its holy fires. stanza added. is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's Bloody Brother, Act v. Sc. 4. FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM." Now farewell! For the sake of old friendship Of all the operas that Verdi wrote, I have ventured to tell you the truth, The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore; As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note, in our earlier youth. The souls in purgatory. The moon on the tower slept soft as snow; And who was not thrilled in the strangest way, ALAS! HOWLIGHT A CAUSE MAY MOVE. As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low, “Non ti scordar di me"? Alas! how light a cause may move The emperor there, in his box of state, Dissension between hearts that love ! Looked grave, as if he had just then seen Hearts that the world in vain has tried, The red flag wave from the city gate, Where his eagles in bronze had been. The empress, too, had a tear in her eye : You'd have said that her fancy had gone back Like ships that have gone down at sea, When heaven was all tranquillity! again, For one moment, under the old blue sky, A something light as air, - a look, To the old glad life in Spain. A word unkind or wrongly taken, 0, love that tempests never shook, Well! there in our front-row box we sat A breath, a touch like this has shaken! Together, my bride betrothed and I; And ruder words will soon rush in My gaze was fixed on my opera hat, To spread the breach that words begin ; And hers on the stage hard by. And both were silent, and both were sad ; Like a queen she leaned on her full white arm, With that regal, indolent air she had ; So confident of her charm ! I have not a doubt she was thinking then Of her former lord, good soul that he was, Like broken clouds, - or like the stream, Who died the richest and roundest of men, That smiling left the mountain's brow, The Marquis of Carabas. I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven, Breaks into floods that part forever. Through a needle's eye he had not to pass ; I wish him well for the jointure given To my lady of Carabas. Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love He sits, with flowerets fettered round; As I had not been thinking of aught for years ; Loose not a tie that round him clings, Till over my eyes there began to move Nor ever let him use his wings ; Something that felt like tears. For even an hour, a minute's flight Will rob the plumes of half their light. I thought of the dress that she wore last time, Like that celestial bird, — whose nest When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees together, Is found beneath far Eastern skies, In that lost land, in that soft clime, Whose wings, though radiant when at rest, In the crimson evening weather; Lose all their glory when he flies ! Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot); And her warm white neck in its golden chain ; AUX ITALIENS. And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot, And falling loose again ; At Paris it was, at the opera there ; And she looked like a queen in a book that And the jasmine flower in her fair young breast; night, (O the faint, sweet smell of that jasnuine flower!) With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair, And the one bird singing alone to his nest ; And the brooch on her breast so bright. And the one star over the tower. THOMAS MOORE. |