LOVE, TIME, AND DEATH.

3H me, dread friends of mine,-Love, Time, and Death:

Sweet Love, who came to me on sheeny wing, And gave her to my arms-her lips, her breath, And all her golden ringlets clustering:

And Time, who gathers in the flying years,

He gave me all, but where is all he gave?
He took my love and left me barren tears,
Weary and lone I follow to the grave.
There Death will end this vision half divine,
Wan Death, who waits in shadow evermore,
And silent, ere he gave the sudden sign;

Oh, gently lead me thro' thy narrow door,
Thou gentle Death, thou trustiest friend of mine-
Ah me, for Love-will Death my love restore?

FREDERICK LOCKER.

HOARDED JOY.

SAID: "Nay, pluck not,-let the first fruit be;
Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,

But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
Sees in the stream its own fecundity

And bides the day of fulness.

Shall not we

At the sun's hour that day possess the shade, And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade, And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?"

I

say: "Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun

Too long,-'tis fallen and floats adown the stream. Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,

And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
And the woods wail like echoes from the sea."

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.

RURAL NATURE.

HERE art thou loveliest, O Nature, tell!

Oh where may be thy Paradise? Where

grow

Thy happiest groves? And down what woody dell Do thy most fancy-winning waters flow?

Tell where thy softest breezes longest blow? And where thy ever blissful mountains swell

Upon whose sides the cloudless sun may throw

Eternal summer, while the air may quell

His fury. Is it 'neath his morning car,

Where jewell'd palaces, and golden thrones, Have aw'd the eastern nations through all time?

Or o'er the western seas, or where afar

Our winter sun warms up the southern zones With summer? Where can be the happy climes?

WILLIAM BARNES,
R

HEN man alone, or leagued in governments, The works of Christian duty would fulfil, His faltering steps defeat his anxious will, As heights attain'd reveal but fresh ascents: How poor his efforts to his high intents! Fain would he uproot every human ill; But fields neglected open to him still, And woe on woe its piteous tale presents.

Nature alone succeeds in all she tries:

She drops her dews, and not a flower is miss'd;
She bids the universal grass arise,

Till stony ways and wilds antagonist
Are into emerald beauty softly kiss'd,

To show the power in gentleness that lies.

JAMES HEDDERWICK,

HERE never yet was flower fair in vain,
Let classic poets rhyme it as they will:

The seasons toil that it may blow again,
And summer's heart doth feel its every ill;

Nor is a true soul ever born for naught;
Wherever any such hath lived and died,

There hath been something for true freedom wrought,
Some bulwark levelled on the evil side:
Toil on, then, Greatness! thou art in the right,
However narrow souls may call thee wrong;
Be as thou wouldst be in thine own clear sight
And so thou wilt in all the world's ere long;
For worldlings cannot, struggle as they may,
From man's great soul one great thought hide away.

JAMES RUSSELL. LOWELL.