'Tis so fair!

would my bite, if I bit it, draw blood? Will it cry if I hurt it? or scold if I kiss? Is it made, with its beauty, of wax or of wood? - Is it worth while to guess at all this?

THE CHESS-BOARD.

My little love, do you remember,
Ere we were grown so sadly wise,
Those evenings in the bleak December,
Curtained warm from the snowy weather,
When you and I played chess together,
Checkmated by each other's eyes?

Ah, still I see your soft white hand
Hovering warm o'er Queen and Knight.

Brave Pawns in valiant battle stand.
The double Castles guard the wings:
The Bishop, bent on distant things,
Moves, sidling through the fight.

Our fingers touch; our glances meet,
And falter; falls your golden hair

Against my cheek; your bosom sweet
Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen
Rides slow her soldiery all between,
And checks me unaware.

Ah me! the little battle 's done,

Disperst is all its chivalry;

Full many a move, since then, have we

'Mid life's perplexing checkers made,

And many a game with Fortune played, —
What is it we have won?

This, this at least if this alone;

That never, never, nevermore,
As in those old still nights of yore
(Ere we were grown so sadly wise),
Can you and I shut out the skies,
Shut out the world, and wintry weather,

And, eyes exchanging warmth with eyes,
Play chess, as then we played, together!

FROM LUCILE.' 19

FROM CANTO IV.

ALAS, friend! what boots it, a stone at his head

And a brass on his breast, — when a man is once dead?

Ay! were fame the sole guerdon, poor guerdon were then Theirs who, stripping life bare, stand forth models for men. The reformer's? - a creed by posterity learnt

A century after its author is burnt!

The poet's? a laurel that hides the bald brow

It hath blighted! The painter's?— ask Raphael now
Which Madonna 's authentic! The statesman's?-
For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim!

a name

The soldier's?-three lines on the cold Abbey pavement!
Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant,

All it ends in, thrice better, Neaera, it were
Unregarded to sport with thine odorous hair,
Untroubled to lie at thy feet in the shade

And be loved, while the roses yet bloom overhead,

Than to sit by the lone hearth, and think the long thought,
A severe, sad, blind schoolmaster, envied for naught
Save the name of John Milton! For all men, indeed,
Who in some choice edition may graciously read,

With fair illustration, and erudite note,

The song which the poet in bitterness wrote,
Beat the poet, and notably beat him, in this

The joy of the genius is theirs, whilst they miss

The grief of the man: Tasso's song, — not his madness ! Dante's dreams, — not his waking to exile and sadness! Milton's music,- but not Milton's blindness!—yet rise, My Milton, and answer, with those noble eyes

Which the glory of heaven hath blinded to earth!

Say the life, in the living it, savors of worth:
That the deed, in the doing it, reaches its aim:
That the fact has a value apart from the fame :
That a deeper delight, in the mere labor, pays
Scorn of lesser delights, and laborious days:

And Shakespeare, though all Shakespeares's writings were lost,

And his genius, though never a trace of it crossed
Posterity's path, not the less would have dwelt

In the isle with Miranda, with Hamlet have felt

All that Hamlet hath uttered, and haply where pure

On its death-bed wronged Love lay, have moaned with the

Moor!

EMILY PFEIFFER.

BROKEN LIGHT.

It was cruel of them to part

Two hearts in the gladsome spring,

Two lovers' hearts that had just burst forth
With each blithe and beautiful thing;

Cruel, but only half

Had they known how to do us wrong,

They had barred the way of the odorous May, They had shut out the wild bird's song.

Your kisses were so embalmed

With spices of beech and fir,

That they haunt my lips in the dead o' the night,

If the night-winds do but stir;

When I rise with the rising dawn,

To let in the dewy south,

Like a fountain spray, or the pride of the day,

They fall on my thirsty mouth.

They should never have let our love

Abroad in the wild free woods,

If they meant it to slumber on, cold and tame,
As the locked-up winter floods;

They should never have let it hide
'Neath the beeches' lucent shade,

Or the upturned arch of the tender larch
That blushed as it heaved and swayed.

Now the young and passionate year

Is no longer itself, but you;

Its conniving woods, with their raptures and thrills, You have leavened them through and through.

The troubadour nightingale

And the dove that o'erbends the bough,

Have both learnt, and teach, the trick of your speech,

As they echo it vow for vow.

My heart is heavy with scorn,

Mine eyes with impatient tears,

But the heaven looks blue through the cherry-blooms, And preaches away my fears!

From the burning bush of the gorse,

Alive with murmurous' sound,

I hear a voice, and it says, Rejoice!'

I stand as on holy ground.

O flower of life! O Love!

God's love is at thy root;

They may dim thy glory, but cannot blight

Or hinder thy golden fruit.

Yet all the same, I am mad,

However the end may fall,

That they dare to wring, in the gladsome spring,
Two hearts that were gladdest of all.

TO NATURE.

IN HER ASCRIBED CHARACTER OF UNMEANING AND ALL-
PERFORMING FORCE.

O NATURE! thou whom I have thought to love,
Seeing in thine the reflex of God's face,
A loathed abstraction would usurp thy place,
With Him they not dethrone, they but disprove.
Weird Nature! can it be that joy is fled,