The bee that once did suck thee,

And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive,
And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive,
If passing now-would blindly overlook thee.

The heart doth recognize thee,

Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet, Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete, Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.

Yes, and the heart doth owe thee

More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold
As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold!--
Lie still upon this heart, which breaks below thee!

GARDEN FANCIES.

BY ROBERT BROWNING.

ERE'S the garden she walked across,
Arm in my arm, such a short while since:

Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss

Hinders the hinges and makes them wince! She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned, To feed and forget it the leaves among.

Down this side of the gravel-walk

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box: And here she paused in her gracious talk,

To point me a moth on the milk-white flox. Roses, ranged in valiant row,

I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know:

But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,

Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim;
Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip,
Its soft meandering Spanish name.
What a name! was it love or praise?

Speech half-asleep, or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Roses, if I live and do well,

I may bring her, one of these days, To fix you fast with as fine a spell,

Fit you each with his Spanish phrase! But do not detain me now; for she lingers There, like sunshine over the ground, And ever I see her soft white fingers

Searching after the bud she found.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow n
Stay as you are, and be loved for ever!
But, if I kiss you, 'tis that you blow not,

Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle,

Twinkling the audacious leaves between, Till round they turn and down they nestleIs not the dear mark still to be seen?

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee;

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish,

June's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud, show me the least of her traces,

Treasure my lady's lightest foot-fall,

Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces-
Roses, you are not so fair after all!

CHAUCER.

BY HIRAM CORSON.

HE comparatively few obsolete words which are sprinkled over the surface of Chaucer's pages, together with his antiquated orthography, have deterred many from attacking what appeared at first sight to require more time and study to master than

they were able to bestow. The old poet has accord. ingly been entirely neglected by some, while others have taken up with modernized versions of his works. But the true spirit of his poetry can be reached only through its original language, and not through modernized versions, which convey, however well done, no adequate conception of its subtler elements. The life, the soul of all poetry, is inseparable from its form, and this is especially true of Chaucer's poetry. What is addressed to the insulated understanding can be equally well expressed in any cultivated language; but poetry, whose domain is the sensibilities, owes its peculiar potency to the form in which it was originally conceived by the poet's imagination. Divorced from this, its essence evaporates, and but little more remains than the mere thought which is secreted in it, and which by itself is not poetry at all. Another serious loss incurred by resorting to modernized versions, is the valuable knowledge to be derived from the original, of the roots and formation of our noble tongue, which "in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, is inferior to that of Greece alone."

To possess an intimate acquaintance with the poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer, in its original form, is the duty, as it is one of the high privileges, of every cultivated Englishman and Anglo-American, who would know the elements, resources, and capabilities of his native language. Five hundred years and more have passed

since Chaucer commenced to write, and four hundred and sixty-three years, this October, since his death in the concluding year of the fourteenth century. During this period, English literature has been enriched by immortal works of genius, that have eclipsed the masterpieces of all other literatures, both ancient and modern; and yet, at this hour, Geoffrey Chaucer, who wrote with no native models before him, and who, out of a semi-barbarous medley of Saxon and Norman French, was obliged to mould his language and poetic forms, continues to rank with the greatest poets and literary princes of his country. He has lost nothing, but rather gained, by the increase of civilization and culture. He has more readers in the present generation than in any previous one; and his language and the secrets of his harmonies are now perhaps better understood and appreciated than they were even in the reign of Elizabeth, which was nearer by almost three centuries to his own times.

It was long the fashion among Chaucer's critics to deny him any claims to being regarded as a melodious versifier, while fully admitting the superior quality of his matter his robust understanding, his deep insight into human character, his wide knowledge of the world, and his profound sympathy with all the forms of nature and of human life.

In the Preface to his Fables from Boccaccio and Chaucer, Dryden professes to hold the old bard in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer.