"The face, the form, are fair to view,
But is the likeness just and true ?”
“'Tis thus, in every age," he said,
"The God of Love has been pourtrayed.
"What marvel then his praise is sung
By nymphs and swains-by old and young?
Oh! form, all other forms transcending,
In thine all other beauties blending,
Come, take possession of my breast,
And soothe its every care to rest!"
She praised the painter's matchless art,
And pressed it to her lips and heart.
Oh! fatal fancy, fond and brief!
Oh! pleasure dearly bought by grief!
That heart was thenceforth doomed to pain,
Those lips-they never smiled again!
A second time the Lady came-
THE Lady?-could it be the same?
The rose that decked her cheek was dead,
The fire that lit her eye was fled.
Sighs from her tortured bosom broke,
And thus in faltering tones she spoke ; —
"I come the picture to restore-
Paint me a pigmy child no more;
Paint me of gigantic size,
A monster towering to the skies.
Paint me a demon dark and foul,
With lips that writhe, and eyes that scowl, With locks turned grey by pining care,
And forehead wrinkled by despair;
Feeding on a human heart,
Torn from some victim of his art;
Take from Time his swifter wing,
Dip his dart in Lethe's spring.
Take from the basilisk his eyes,"-
The Painter stopped her in surprise.
"Wherefore, Lady, should I draw
A fiend the wide world never saw ?"-
"Paint him first, and then I'll tell;
The world! it knows him all too well!"
The Artist wondered, but obeyed-
"This is Love!" the Lady said. "7
THE DIALOGUE OF EXISTENCE.
Why start at Death? where is he? Death arrived
Is past; not come or gone-he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, Death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm.
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
HENCE, horrible phantom! away from my sight,
Is it Death, the destroyer, I see?
Hence, foe to humanity! formed but to blight
The flowers that are reared in her pathway by me.
Nay, chide not thine offspring-my parent art thou, But for thee I could never have been.
If cruel thou call'st me, reveal to me how,
And tell me in what is my tyranny seen?
Thou hast stole to the cradle-where calmly reposed
An Infant, the joy and the hope of its sire
And in slumbers more lasting its sleeping eye closed,
While with it his pride and his pleasure expire.
And which was the favoured? the infant that found
A harbour when scarcely embarked on the wave?
Or the sire, to the oar of existence still bound,
Who sighs for the same peaceful haven—the grave?
On the Maiden's fair cheek thou hast blighted the bloom, Thou hast bade me for thee her young beauties to nurse, For her bridal couch spread the cold pomp of the tomb, And decked with the dark-waving plumes of the hearse.
She sleeps
the soft Maiden! and light on her breast
Lies the grass-covered hillock that marks my domain;
Shall we mourn that of life she but rifled the best,
Nor drained to the dregs the sure cup of its pain?
From the hand of the Bard thou hast wrested the lyre,
Thou hast guided the dart to the breast of the Free, And the Statesman, all glowing with patriot fire, Submits to a lord and a tyrant in thee.
From sullying the fame they so nobly had earned,
From the slow-wasting pangs of consuming disease, From beholding their hopes and their projects o'erturned, Death, the bard and the hero and patriot, frees.
The orphan who weeps at the tomb of his sire,
The widow, whose desolate age is forlorn,
In vain at thy hands their protector require,
In vain for the spouse and the parent they mourn.
If Childhood is happy when called to resign
The cup which it scarcely hath raised to its lipIf for Manhood and Youth 'twere unmeet to repine, When summoned away, though enraptured they sip
How blest are the Aged! who, sinking to rest,
When the friends of their early existence are fled,
Can quit thy vain dreams, when deprived of their zest,
And pillow on my peaceful bosom their head.
Mere sophistry all! 'tis in vain that we strive
To quench the fond hope, or allay the cold fear; There beats not the breast where they will not revive, Where Death is not dreadful, and Life is not dear.
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