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TO JULIET.

A THOUGHT AT NIGHT.

In yonder taper's waning light,

An image of my heart I see;
It burns amid a lonely night-

Its life the love of thee-
The stedfast light its passion takes,

But slowly wastes while it illumes ;
And while my very life it makes,

My life itself consumes.

TO JULIET.

The summer--the summer hath come, my love,

And the ring-dove found his bride Not a flower below, not a beam above,

But doth thy coyness chide. I have loved thee well—I have loved thee long

I have loved thyself alone; There lived not a thought in my burning song,

That my heart did not more than own.

Be mine—be mine while the Hours allow

My life to be vowed to Thee;
For the leaves of my youth are round me now-

But the worm is in the tree.
And the time, sweet love, is speeding fast,

When the vow shall be ever o'er-
When thy faithful Fountain, dried at last,

Shall leap to the Breeze no more.
Be mine—be mine, ere hath past away

The scent from Life's closing flowers; And sometime hence it will soothe to say

" I blest his latest hours !"

LOVE'S WATCH.

TO JULIET SLEEPING.

The moonbeams thro’ the lattice fall;

They silver o'er thy blushing cheek ;
And still I wake to feed on all

The love I could not speak.
And thou art mine—all mine at last!

Our world can be earth's world no more,
A gulf between this life hath past,

And that we knew before.

How rush the swelling tides of thought

All round grows hallowed ground to me!
How tender silence seems ! how fraught

The loving air—with THEE!
I ever thought till now, the light

Of Heaven's sweet stars was mixed with sadness;
Now they—now all—drink in my sight

A glory and a gladness!
Sweet love, I bend to kiss thy brow-

I grow enamoured of thy rest;
What dreams of heaven shall haunt me, now

My pillow is thy breast !

ON THE IMITATORS OF BYRON.

A FABLE.

A Swan hymn'd music on the Muses' waves,
And Song's sweet daughters wept within their caves ;
It chanced the Bird had something then deemed new,
Not in the music only—but the hue
Black were his plumes ;—the Rooks that heard on high,
Came envying round, and darkened all the sky;
Each Rook, ambitious of a like applause,
Clapped his grave wings—and Pierus rung with caws.

What of the Swan's attraction could they lack,
Their noise as mournful, and their wings as black ?
In vain we cry—the secret you mistook,
And grief is d-d discordant in a Rook !

ON THE WANT OF SYMPATHY WE EXPERI

ENCE IN THE WORLD.

“Oh for one breast to image ours!”

Youth in its earliest vision sighs;
And Age the same desire devours,

Until---the dreamer dies.
Vain shadows from the friend--the wife

Thou seek'st, how loved soe'er thou art,
The brightest stream that glads thy life,

Can never glass thy heart.
I grant thee, home's endearing sounds,

I grant thee, love's first whispered tone;
But where the breast from which rebounds

The echo to thine own?
Mad are we all-—who hath not pined

For something kindred from his birth ?
And lost earth's solid joys to find,

What is not of the earth ?

Ah! could we to ourselves betroth

One breast, a very shade of ours; Would Time alone not alter both

The creatures of the hours? Go back into thy lonely soul,

And with a calm and chasten d eye Survey thy tether, and control

The dreams that seek the sky ;And for ideal shapes, would melt

All life into one vague desire ;
In that far air wherein thou hast dwelt,

Hope's mortal ends expire.
Go-seek for joys amid thy kind !

How much has life itself to bless
The one whose wise and healthful mind

Seeks what it can possess ! Ourself may in ourself create,

A tie beyond the dreamer's art; No bond is made that mocks at Fate,

Like Man's with his own heart.