A CHILD'S EVENING PRAYER.

ERE on my bed my limbs I lay,

God grant me grace my prayers to say:
O God! preserve my mother dear

In strength and health for many a year;
And, O! preserve my father too,

And may I pay him reverence due;
And may I my best thoughts employ
To be my parents' hope and joy ;
And, O! preserve my brothers both
From evil doings and from sloth,
And may we always love each other,
Our friends, our father, and our mother.
And still, O Lord, to me impart,
An innocent and grateful heart,
That after my last sleep I may
Awake to thy eternal day!

Amen.

THE VISIONARY HOPE.

SAD lot, to have no hope! Though lowly kneeling
He fain would frame a prayer within his breast,
Would fain entreat for some sweet breath of healing,
That his sick body might have ease and rest;

He strove in vain! the dull sighs from his chest

Against his will the stifling load revealing,

Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest,
Some royal prisoner at his conqueror's feast,
An alien's restless mood but half concealing,
The sternness on his gentle brow confessed,
Sickness within and miserable feeling :

Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams,
And dreaded sleep, each night repelled in vain,
Each night was scattered by its own loud screams:
Yet never could his heart command, though fain,
One deep full wish to be no more in pain.

That Hope, which was his inward bliss and boast, Which waned and died, yet ever near him stood, Though changed in nature, wander where he wouldFor Love's despair is but Hope's pining ghost! For this one hope he makes his hourly moan,

He wishes and can wish for this alone!

Pierced, as with light from Heaven, before its gleams (So the love-stricken visionary deems)

Disease would vanish, like a summer shower,

Whose dews fling sunshine from the noontide bower!
Or let it stay! yet this one Hope should give
Such strength that he would bless his pains and live

THE HAPPY HUSBAND.

OFT, oft methinks, the while with Thee
I breathe, as from the heart, thy dear
And dedicated name, I hear

A promise and a mystery,

A pledge of more than passing life,
Yea, in that very name of Wife!

A pulse of love, that ne'er can sleep!
A feeling that upbraids the heart
With happiness beyond desert,
That gladness half requests to weep !
Nor bless I not the keener sense
And unalarming turbulence

Of transient joys that ask no sting

From jealous fears, or coy denying ;

But born beneath Love's brooding wing

And into tenderness soon dying,

Wheel out their giddy moment, then

Resign the soul to love again ;

A more precipitated vein,

Of notes, that eddy in the flow

Of smoothest song, they come, they go,

And leave their sweeter understrain
Its own sweet self-a love of Thee
That seems, yet can not greater be!

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE

I.

How warm this woodland wild Recess !
Love surely hath been breathing here;
And this sweet bed of heath, my dear
Swells up, then sinks with faint caress,
As if to have you yet more near.

II.

Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from hidden rills Float here and there, like things astray, And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills.

No voice as yet had made the air
Be music with your name; yet why
That asking look? that yearning sigh?
That sense of promise everywhere?
Beloved! flew your spirit by?

IV.

As when a mother doth explore
The rose-mark on her long lost child,
I met, I loved you, maiden mild !
As whom I long had loved before—
So deeply, had I been beguiled

V.

You stood before me like a thought,

A dream remembered in a dream. But when those meek eyes first did seem To tell me, Love within you wroughtO Greta, dear domestic stream!

VI.

Has not, since then, Love's prompture deep, Has not Love's whisper evermore

Been ceaseless as thy gentle roar?
Sole voice, when other voices sleep,
Dear under-song in clamor's hour.

ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE,

AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDA-
TION NOT TO BATHE.

GOD be with thee, gladsome ocean!
How gladly greet I thee once more!
Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion,
And men rejoicing on thy shore.

Dissuading spake the mild physician,

"Those briny waves for thee are death!" But my soul fulfilled her mission,

And lo! I breathe untroubled breath!

Fashion's pining sons and daughters,
That seek the crowd they seem to fly,
Trembling they approach thy waters;
And what cares Nature, if they die?

Me a thousand hopes and pleasures,
A thousand recollections bland,
Thoughts sublime, and stately measures,
Revisit on thy echoing strand:

Dreams, (the soul herself forsaking,)
Tearful raptures, boyish mirth;
Silent adorations, making

A blessed shadow of this Earth!

O ye hopes, that stir within me,
Health comes with you from above!
God is with me, God is in me!

I can not die, if Life be Love.

III. MEDITATIVE POEMS.

IN BLANK VERSE.

YEA, he deserves to find himself deceived,
Who seeks a heart in the unthinking Man.
Like shadows on a stream, the forms of life
Impress their characters on the smooth forehead:
Naught sinks into the bosom's silent depth.
Quick sensibility of pain and pleasure
Moves the light fluids lightly; but no soul
Warmeth the inner frame.

HYMN

SCHILLER.

BEFORE SUNRISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

Besides the Rivers, Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and within a few paces of the Glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers with its "flowers of loveliest blue."

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star

In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc !
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air, and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshiped the Invisible alone.

G*