PARIS A MACON.

SAW, I saw the lovely child,
I watched her by the way,

I learnt her gestures sweet and wild,
Her loving eyes and gay.

Her name?—I heard not, nay, nor care,

Enough it was for me

To find her innocently fair

And delicately free.

Oh cease and go ere dreams be done,

Nor trace the angel's birth,

Nor find the paradisal one

A blossom of the earth!

Thus it is with our subtlest joys,—
How quick the soul's alarm!
How lightly deed or word destroys
That evanescent charm!

It comes unbidden, comes unbought,
Unfettered flees away,-

His swiftest and his sweetest thought

Can never poet say.

FREDERICK MYERS.

UNREFLECTING CHILDHOOD.

T

T is, indeed, a little while

Since you were born, my happy pet; Your future beckons with a smile,

Your bygones don't exist as yet.

Is all the world with beauty rife?
Are you a little bird that sings
Her simple gratitude for life,
And lovely things?

The ocean, and the waning moons,
And starry skies, and starry dells,
And winter sport, and golden Junes,
Art, and divinest Beauty-spells:

Festa and song, and frolic wit,

And banter, and domestic mirth,They all are ours !-dear child, is it A pleasant earth?

And poet friends, and poesy,

And precious books, for any mood: And then that best of company,

Those graver thoughts in solitude

That hold us fast and never pall:

Then there is You, my own, my fair-And I . . . soon I must leave it all,

-And much you care.

FREDERICK LOCKER.

NATURE REPARATRICI.

RAY cloud, gray veil 'twixt me and youth.
And youth's unclouded weather,
Well mayst thou blot the golden days
And skies effaced for ever.

In vain the veil to silver melts,
And flakes of sun and shadow
Once more invite these alien steps

To chase them o'er the meadow.

Yet nature holds a gracious hand,
Her ancient way pursuing;

And spreads the charms we loved of old,
To aid the heart's renewing.

Here her long crests of fringed crag

Allure the sky-ward swallows;

Here the still dove's low love-note floats

Above her leafy hollows.