For prattling poets say

That sweetest is the lovers' walk,

And tenderest is their murmured talk, Beneath its gentle ray.

And there do graver men behold
A type of errors, loved of old,
Forsaken and forgiven;

And thoughts and wishes not of earth,
Just opening in their early birth,

Like that new light in heaven.

OCTOBER.

A SONNET.

Ay, thou art welcome, heaven's delicious breath, When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow

brief,

And the year smiles as it draws near its death.
Wind of the sunny south! oh still delay

In the gay woods and in the golden air,
Like to a good old age released from care,
Journeying, in long serenity, away.
In such a bright, late quiet, would that I

VOL. I.-10

Might wear out life like thee, mid bowers and brooks,

And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, And music of kind voices ever nigh;

And when my last sand twinkled in the glass, Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass.

THE DAMSEL OF PERU.

WHERE olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew,

There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru.

Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to

the air,

Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair;

And sweetly rang her silver voice, within that shady nook,

As from the shrubby glen is heard the sound of hidden brook.

'Tis a song of love and valor, in the noble Spanish tongue,

That once upon the sunny plains of old Castile was sung;

When, from their mountain holds, on the Moorish rout below,

Had rushed the Christians like a flood, and swept away the foe.

Awhile that melody is still, and then breaks forth anew,

A wilder rhyme, a livelier note, of freedom and Peru.

For she has bound the sword to a youthful lover's side,

And sent him to the war the day she should have been his bride,

And bade him bear a faithful heart to battle for

the right,