"And with us two the play is played:

Thou art weak and I am old!"

The yellow leaves whirled round the house, The autumn wind blew cold.

Who had been there had wept to hear

The two so sadly speak:

But there was not a single tear

On either woful cheek!

MARY HOWITT.

SONNET.

TO A LADY.

THY soft seraphic beauty, as I gaze,
Sinks through the passive senses to the heart,
And builds its dwelling there;-becoming part
Of my mind's airy kingdom. It allays
The restless fever that for ever preys
Upon the vitals of my joy :-no art
Can win that withering demon to depart;
But in thy sight I scarcely feel it stays;
My being becomes merged and lost in thine,
Blended and interfused, and making one
With that I look upon. These thoughts of mine,
That, when they turn from thee, blind and alone
And weary, over trackless deserts roam,-
Can nowhere else find rest-a Temple, or a
Home!

A. E. M.

THE LAMENT OF AN INDIAN CHIEF.

WHERE is the foam of the waters;

White on the golden sand it shone: But a wave from the deep came dark and highI looked and the foam was gone!

It might not linger!

Where is the snow-wreath of winter?

Pure in the forest depths it lay:

But the Great Spirit looked from the stormless heavens,

And the snow-wreath passed away

In its own breathing!

Where is the cloudlet of summer? Palely it slept on the sky's calm breast: But the winds blew strong and the tempest roseThe cloud found a darker rest,

No more returning!

Lovely wast thou, my sister,

Gentle and sad as the night's cold breath! Ah! if thou hadst been less sweet and fair, Thou wouldst not have charmed cold death, Nor grieved Omeena!

Vain is the voice of my sorrow!
Never again to the earth nor me

Thy spirit returns from the Shadowy Land:
And with tears shall I gaze, like thee,
On stars and flowers!

Yet will I cease from my mourning, Child of the moon-lit Ocean-foam! For a captive, and orphan, and lonely in woe, Manitto hath called thee home,

To meet the long lost!

Soon may I come to thee, dearest! Sorrow and tears and the tomb are not there, And the flowers have no fading, the storm never

comes,

And joy fills the boundless air.—

Sleep, sleep, thou dreamless!

LINES

G. H. COTTON.

TO THE DUCHESS OF ST. ALBANS.

'Tis said we may commune with Nature's face Till her images pass to our own

That the features borrow a finishing grace
From those which they rest upon.

LINES.

Thus, Lady, methinks in thy glance I trace The look of thy Falcons, their pride of place, And their eye, that affronts the full sun.

Yet how still they sit, in their hooded shade,
At thy side-as if changed to doves!
As docile-As gentle !-So changes the maid
When wed to the lord she loves!

71

So changed art thou-but for him alone;-
So thy Falcons are changed for thee!
The aspiring spirit still dwells in both;
The mounting thoughts,-that, nothing loth,
Now cling to the Earth,-oft yearn to be free,
And wing the free air in their strong heart-glee!

Yet these flowers tell that thy gentle soul

Can take from the low Earth themes of joyThat thy woman's heart owns no control

Can its sex's sweetest passion destroy.

While thy soul, then, soars, like thy Falcons, to Heaven,

And thy Heart, like the Flowers, to Earth is

given,

What wonder if Beauty Immortal hath found

thee,

And flung all its spells, like spirits, around thee, Shielding thy thoughts from all annoy,

And making thy life one long dream of joy!

ANN PONSONBY.

TO A STAR.

THOU little star, that in the purple clouds Hang'st, like a dew-drop, in a violet bed; First gem of evening, glittering on the shrouds, 'Mid whose dark folds the day lies pale and

dead,

As through my tears my soul looks up to thee,
Loathing the heavy chains that bind it here,
There comes a fearful thought that misery
Perhaps is found, even in thy distant sphere.
Art thou a world of sorrow and of sin,
The heritage of death, disease, decay;
A wilderness, like that we wander in,

Where all things fairest soonest pass away; And are there graves in thee, thou radiant world,

Round which life's sweetest buds fall withered, Where Hope's bright wings in the dark earth lie furled,

And living hearts are mouldering with the dead?

Perchance they do not die that dwell in thee,

Perchance theirs is a darker doom than ours; Unchanging wo, and endless misery,

And morning that hath neither days nor bours.