MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

"No writing lifts exalted man so high,
As sacred and soul-moving poesy;

No kind of work requires so nice a touch,

And if well finished, nothing shines so much."

SHEFFIELD, DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM.

THE WANDERER TO HIS SISTER.

My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny

A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

The first were nothing-had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness ;

But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling; as it lies beyond redress:

Reversed for him our grandsire's fate of yore,— He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, unlook'd or unforeseen,

I have sustain’d my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;

I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe.

Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift,-
‚—a fate, or will, that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,

And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay :
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

Kingdoms and empires in my little day
I have outlived, and yet I am not old;
And when I look on this, the pretty spray
Of my own years of trouble, which have roll'd

Like a wild bay of breakers, melts away :
Something I know not what-does still uphold
A spirit of slight patience; not in vain,
Even for its own sake, do we purchase pain.

I feel almost at times as I have felt

In happy childhood; trees and flowers, and brooks,
Which do remember me of where I dwelt

Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition of their looks;
And even at moments I could think I see
Some living thing to love-but none like thee,
Here are the alpine landscapes which create
A fund for contemplation ;—to admire
Is a brief feeling of a trivial date-

But something worthier do such scenes inspire:
Here to be lonely is not desolate,

For much I view which I could most desire,
And, above all, a lake I can behold

Lovelier, not dearer, than our own of old.

I did remind thee of our own dear lake,
By the old hall which may be mine no more,
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc time must with my memory make
Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before;

Though, like all things which I have loved, they are Resign'd for ever, or divided far.

R

The world is all before me; I but ask

Of nature that with which she will comply—

It is but in her summer's sun to bask,

To mingle with the quiet of her sky,
To see her gentle face without a mask,
And never gaze on it with apathy.

She was my early friend, and now shall be
My sister—till I look again on thee.

With false ambition what had I to do?

Little with love, and least of all with fame;
And yet they came unsought, and with me grew,
And made me all which they can make—a name.
Yet this was not the end I did pursue ;
Surely I once beheld a nobler aim.

But all is over-I am one the more

To baffled millions which have gone before.

LORD BYRON.

A STORM AT SEA.

THAT Sky of clouds is not the sky
To light a lover to the pillow
Of her he loves-

The swell of yonder foaming billow
Resembles not the happy sigh

That rapture moves.