MY DOVES.

"My little doves have left a nest
Upon an Indian tree,

Whose leaves fantastic take their rest
Or motion from the sea:

For, ever there, the sea-winds go
With sunlit paces, to and fro

"The tropic flowers looked up to it,
The tropic stars looked down:
And there my little doves did sit,
With feathers softly brown,

VOL. II.

And glittering eyes that showed their right
To general Nature's deep delight.

"And God them taught, at every close

Of water far, and wind
And lifted leaf, to interpose
Their chanting voices kind;
Interpreting that love must be
The meaning of the earth and sea.

"Fit ministers! Of living loves,

Their's hath the calmest sound-
Their living voice the likest moves
To lifeless noises round-
In such sweet monotone as clings
To music of insensate things!

"My little doves were ta'en away
From that glad nest of theirs,
Across an ocean foaming aye,
And tempest-clouded airs.

My little doves!-who lately knew

The sky and wave, by warmth and blue!

"And now within the city prison,

In mist and chillness pent,

With sudden upward look they listen
For sounds of past content-
For lapse of water, swell of breeze,

Or nut-fruit falling from the trees!

"The stir without the glow of passion-
The triumph of the mart-

The gold and silver's dreary clashing

19

With man's metallic heart

The wheeled pomp, the pauper tread-
These only sounds are heard instead.

"Yet still, as on my human hand Their fearless heads they lean, And almost seem to understand

What human musings mean(With such a plaintive gaze their eyne Are fastened upwardly to mine!)

"Their chant is soft as on the nest,
Beneath the sunny sky:

For love that stirred it in their breast,
Remains undyingly,

And 'neath the city's shade, can keep
The well of music clear and deep.

"And love that keeps the music, fills
With pastoral memories!
All echoings from out the hills,
All droppings from the skies,

All flowings from the wave and wind
Remembered in their chant I find.

"So teach ye me the wisest part,
My little doves! to move
Along the city ways, with heart
Assured by holy love,

And vocal with such songs as own
A fountain to the world unknown.

"T'was hard to sing by Babel's streamMore hard, in Babel's street!

But if the soulless creatures deem
Their music not unmeet
For sunless walls-let us begin,

Who wear immortal wings, within!

"To me, fair memories belong

Of scenes that erst did bless;
For no regret-but present song,
And lasting thankfulness—
And very soon to break away,
Like types, in purer things than they!

"I will have hopes that cannot fade,
For flowers the valley yields—
I will have humble thoughts, instead
Of silent, dewy fields!

My spirit and my god shall be

My sea-ward hill, my boundless sea."

Unambitious verses these-and haply the fair Elizabeth sets no great store by them-recurring in her day-dreams of fame to "The Seraphim." But they will live in the memory of many a gentle girl-and mothers will ask their daughters to recite them, that they may watch the workings of nature in the eyes loving innocence-and even fathers looking on and listening

"May from their eyelids wipe the tear
That sacred pity had engendered."

Surely poetesses (is there such a word?) are very happy, in spite of all the "natural sorrows, griefs, and pains," to which their exquisitely sensitive being must be perpetually alive. Tighe suffered woman's worstwounded affections; nor was Hemans without a like afflic tion-but she who died first had a cheerful genius, and fancy led her heart into lands of enchantment, where her human life was lulled in repose, and its woes must have often and long been forgotten in the midst of visionary bliss. That other sweetest singer had children round her knees, and sufficient happiness it must have been for her, in that long desertion to see

"How like a new existence to her heart

Uprose those living flowers beneath her eyes,"

now flourishing, when she is gone, in the light of heaven. Lætitia Landon-a name not to be merged-is a joyous spirit not unacquainted with grief-her genius was invigorated by duty-now it is guarded by love-and in good time-may gentler suns shine again on her laurelled head-returning to us from the "far countrie," that may even now be inspiring into her startled imagination the beauty of "a New Song."

And our Elizabeth-she too is happy-though in her

happiness she loveth to veil with a melancholy haze the brightness of her childhood-and of her maidenhood— but the clouds we raise we can ourselves dispel-and far away yet beyond the horizon are those that may gather round the decline of her life.

THE DESERTED GARDEN.

"I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun,
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

"The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And whereso'er had fallen the spade,

The greenest grasses nature led,

To sanctify her right.

"I called it my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I.

The sheep look'd in the grass ť espy,
And passed ne'ertheless.

"And lady stately overmuch,
Who moved with a silken noise,
Blushed near them, dreaming of the voice

That likened her to such!

"And these to make a diadem,

She may have often plucked and twined; Half smiling as it came to mind,

That few would look at them.

"Oh! little thought that lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose, When buried lay her whiter brows,

And silk was changed for shroud!

"Nor thought that gardener, full of scorns,
For men unlearn'd and simple phrase,
A child would bring it all its praise,
By creeping through the thorns:

"To me upon my low moss seat,
Though never a dream the roses sent
Of science or love's compliment,
I ween they smelt as sweet.

"Nor ever a grief was mine, to see
The trace of human step departed—
Because the garden was deserted,
The blither place for me!

"Friends blame me not! a narrow ken Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward! We draw the moral afterward

We feel the gladness then!

"And gladdest hours for me did glide
In silence at the rose-tree wall:

A thrush made gladness musical
Upon the other side.

"Nor he nor I did e'er incline
To mar or pluck the blossoms white-
How should I know but that they might
Lead lives as glad as mine?

"To make my hermit-home complete,
I brought clear water from the spring
Praised in its own low murmuring—
And cresses glossy wet.