Lines on May-Day. 91 Lines on may-Day. FROM A PICTURE BY LESLIE. BY MISS LANDON, (L. E. L.) BEAUTIFUL and radiant May, Is not this thy festal day? Is not this spring revelry In the midst, like the young queen, Farewell, cities! who could bear All their smoke, and all their care?— Give me woodbine-scented bowers, Clear sky, fresh air, sweet birds, and trees, The Traveller AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. BY MRS HEMANS. N sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown, IN A wanderer proudly stood Beside the well-spring, deep and lone, Of Egypt's awful hood The cradle of that mighty birth So long a hidden thing to earth. He heard its life's first murmuring sound, A low mysterious tone A music sought, but never found, By kings and warriors gone; He listen'd, and his heart beat high That was the song of victory. The rapture of a conqueror's mood Rush'd through his burning frame; The depths of that green solitude There stillness lay, with Eve's last smile, The Traveller. Night came with stars; across his soul A shadow dark and strange Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall No more than this! what seem'd it now They call'd him back to many a glade, Where brightly through the beechen shade They call'd him, with their sounding waves, But darkly mingling with the thought Rose up a fearful vision, fraught With all that lay between The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom, The whirling sands, the red simoom. Where was the glow of power and pride ?— His alter'd heart within him died 93 He wept !-the stars of Afric's heaven E'en on that spot where Fate had given O Happiness! how far we flee Thine own sweet paths in search of thee! "BY The Bachelor's Dilemma. BY ALARIC A. WATTS. Y all the bright saints in the Missal of Love, They are both so intensely, bewitchingly fair, That, let Folly look solemn, and Wisdom reprove, I can't make up my mind which to choose of the pair. "There is Fanny, whose eye is as blue and as bright As the depth of spring skies in their noontide array; Whose every fair feature is gleaming in light, Like the ripple of waves on a sunshiny day; "Whose form, like the willow, so slender and lithe, Has a thousand wild motions of lightness and grace; Whose heart, as a bird's, ever buoyant and blithe, Is the home of the sweetness that breathes from her face. "There is Helen, more stately of gesture and mien, Whose beauty a world of dark ringlets enshroud; With a black regal eye, and the step of a queen, And a brow like the moon breaking bright from a cloud. |