SHE WORE A WREATH OF ROSES.

She wore a wreath of roses,

The night that first we met;
Her lovely face was smiling
Beneath her curls of jet.
Her footstep had the lightness,
Her voice the joyous tone,
The tokens of a youthful heart
Where sorrow is unknown.

I saw her but a moment,

Yet methinks I see her now,
With a wreath of summer flowers
Upon her snowy brow.

A wreath of orange blossoms

When next we met she wore;

Th' expression of her features

Was more thoughtful than before;
And standing by her side was one,
Who strove, and not in vain,
To soothe her leaving that dear home
She ne'er might view again.

I saw her but a moment,

Yet methinks I see her now,
With the wreath of orange blossoms
Upon her snowy brow.

And once again I see that brow,
No bridal wreath was there;
The widow's sombre cap conceals
Her once luxuriant hair.

She weeps in silent solitude,

And there is no one near

To press her hand within his own,
And wipe away the tear.

I saw her broken-hearted,

Yet methinks I see her now
In the pride of youth and beauty,
With a garland on her brow.

ISLE OF BEAUTY.

Shades of evening! close not o'er us,
Leave our lonely bark a while;

Morn, alas! will not restore us

Yonder dim and distant isle.

Still my fancy can discover

Sunny spots where friends may dwell;

Darker shadows round us hover:

Isle of beauty, fare thee well!

'Tis the hour when happy faces
Smile around the taper's light;
Who will fill our vacant places?

Who shall sing our songs to-night?
Through the mist that floats above us
Softly chimes the vesper bell,
Like the voice of those that love us,
Breathing fondly, fare thee well!

Round our ship the waves are breaking.
As I pace the deck along,
And my eyes in vain are seeking
Some green leaf to rest upon.
What would I not give to wander
Where my lov'd companions dwell!
Absence makes the heart grow fonder:
Isle of beauty, fare thee well!

W. M. Praed.

Winthrop Mackworth Praed [1802- 1839] was born in London, and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He was called to the bar in 1829, and obtained a seat in Parliament in the following year. About the same time his health began to fail, and he died of consumption at the early age of 37. His poems were collected, and published in 1864, preceded by a biographical notice by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. From his numerous poems we select one which must stir the heart of every German reader. The subject is the last interview of Arminius [Hermann der Deutsche] and his unpatriotic brother Flavius, as he had chosen to call himself, on the opposite banks of the Weser, some time after the defeat of Varus, and subsequent to the capture of Thusnelda. We learn from Tacitus [Annals II. 9, 10] that at first each of the brothers endeavoured to gain over the other to his own party, but as the arguments and persuasions on both sides proved equally unavailing, they parted in resentment, but not before Arminius had overwhelmed his recreant brother with reproaches such as Praed has here attributed to him. The indignant patriot is supposed to speak at

the moment when Flavius, calling aloud for his horse and his arms, made a show of crossing the river, to inflict a chastisement on his fraternal foe.

Back, back! he fears not foaming flood

Who fears not steel-clad line:

No warrior thou of German blood,

No brother thou of mine.

Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
Her gems to deck thy hilt;
And blazon honour's hapless wreck
With all the gauds of guilt.

But would'st thou have me share the prey?
By all that I have done,

The Varian bones that day by day
Lie whitening in the sun,
The legion's trampled panoply,
The eagle's shattered wing,

I would not be for earth or sky
So scorn'd and mean a thing.

Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
Of dark and subtle skill,

To agonise but not destroy,

To curse, but not to kill.

When swords are out, and shriek and shout
Leave little room for prayer,

No fetter on man's arm or heart
Hangs half so heavy there.

I curse him by the gifts the land
Hath won from him and Rome,
The riving axe, the wasting brand,
Rent forest, blazing home;
I curse him by our country's gods,
The terrible, the dark,

The breakers of the Roman rod,
The smiters of the bark.

Oh, misery! that such a ban

On such a brow should be;

Why comes he not, in battle's van
His country's chief to be?
To stand a comrade by my side,
The sharer of my fame,

And worthy of a brother's pride,
And of a brother's name?

But it is past! where heroes press,
And cowards bend the knee,
Arminius is not brotherless,

His brethren are the free.

They come around: one hour, and light
Will fade from turf and tide,
Then onward, onward to the fight,
With darkness for our guide.

To-night, to-night, when we shall meet
In combat face to face,
Then only would Arminius greet
The renegade's embrace.

The canker of Rome's guilt shall be
Upon his dying name;
And as he lived in slavery,

So shall he fall in shame.

Allan Cunningham.

Allan Cunningham, born in Dumfriesshire in Scotland, in the year 1784, lived till 1842. He wrote poems and songs, chiefly but not exclusively in the Scottish dialect, and a drama with the title: Sir Marmaduke Maxwell. One of his finest effusions is the sea-song, A wet sheet and a flowing sea:

1) The lee side of a ship is the side opposite to that against

which the wind blows.

There's tempest in you horned moon,
And lightning in yon cloud;
And hark the music, mariners,
The wind is piping loud;
The wind is piping loud, my boys,
The lightning flashing free
While the hollow oak our palace is,
Our heritage the sea.

Thomas Hood.

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We now come to a poet whose merits are so manifold and strangely diverse we mean Thomas Hood [1798-1845] that we feel puzzled to know whether we should call him a serious or a comic writer. Perhaps no man was ever at once such a consummate master of the art of provoking immoderate laughter, of eliciting sympathy with the unfortunate, and of melting his readers into tears. His friend, Charles Lamb, described him admirably in his punning application of the popular phrase, that he carried two faces [a serious and a comic one] under one hood. This remarkable man was born in London, though his father was a native of Dundee in Scotland. Young Hood was first sent to a private school kept by two maiden sisters with the strange name of Hogsflesh, and then transferred to a "finishing school" in the neighbourhood of London. His father died in 1811, and the boy's health becoming delicate, his mother sent him to his relations in Dundee, where he remained two years. On his return to London he was sent to his maternal uncle, Mr. Sands, to learn the art of engraving; and he made such good progress that he afterwards usually furnished the illustrations for his own poems; but it was not long till he resolved to maintain himself exclusively by his pen. His earliest productions were contributions to the London Magazine, in which journal the first series of his Whims and Oddities originally appeared. A second and a third series were given to the world between 1826 and 1828; and in 1829 he commenced the Comic Annual, which continued for nine years, and was very profi