GOOD-NIGHT? ah, no! the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, though* understood,
That it will be good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.
I PANT for the music which is divine,
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.
Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound; More, O more!-I am thirsting yet;
Altered from thought, understood: Prof. Craik's correction
It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart, to stifle it;
The dissolving strain, through every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain.
As the scent of a violet withered up,
Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,
And mist there was none its thirst to slakeAnd the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue
As one who drinks from a charmed cup
Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine, Whom a mighty enchantress, filling up,
Invites to love with her kiss divine
ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep :
See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the dead-cold year to-day;
Solemn hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child,
So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year:-be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes,
January gray is here,
Like a sexton by her grave;
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps-but, O ye hours!
Follow with May's fairest flowers.
THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins.
Except that from the catalogue of sins
Nature had rased their love-which could not be
But by dissevering their nativity.
And so they grew together, like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
Which the same hand will gather-the same clime
Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see
All those who love, and who e'er loved like thee,
Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,
Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
The ardours of a vision which obscure
The very idol of its portraiture;
He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
But thou art as a planet sphered above,
But thou art love itself-ruling the motion
Of his subjected spirit:-such emotion
Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May
Had not brought forth this morn-your wedding.
day.
ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another.
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not,The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow?
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