Oh! how mournfully, how mournfully the thought comes o'er my brain,

When I think thou ne'er may'st be that free and girlish thing again.

I would that as my heart dictates, just such might be my lay,

And my voice should be a voice of mirth, a music like the May;

But it may not be !-within my breast all frozen are the springs,

The murmur dies upon the lip-the music on the strings.

But a voice is floating round me, and it tells me in my rest,

That sunshine shall illume thy path, that joy shall be thy guest,

That thy life shall be a summer's day, whose evening shall go down,

Like the evening in the eastern clime, that never knows a frown.

When thy foot is at the altar, when the ring hath press'd thy hand,

When those thou lov'st, and those that love thee, weeping round thee stand,

Oh! may the verse that friendship weaves, like a spirit of the air,

Be o'er thee at that moment-for a blessing and a prayer!

BYRON.

BY W. KENNEDY.

THE forfeit's paid,—we pardon thee,—
Thy faults shall fade away;
The beauty of thy memory

Will never know decay.
Thy errors, like a cloud or two,
Upon a heaven of holiest blue,
But intercept the ray,
To make its fervour less intense,
For trembling mortals' shrinking sense.

The monarch of the melody
Is risen from his throne,

And who shall lead the harmony,
When he, our feast, hath flown?
His harp obeys no stranger hand,
Nor have we one whose chords command
The wild heart-piercing tone,
That swell'd above each heavy hymn
Of those, who would have rival'd him.

Attendant on the minstrel's form

A band of spirits came,

From earth and air, in calm and storm, In water and in flame;

The children of the Universe

Obey'd the magic of his verse,
And, at his will, became

Things lovely, to the wondering eyes
Which gloried in their mysteries.

He died too, as he wish'd to die,
A fair and full grown tree,
Whose stem shot proudly to the sky,
And bloom'd luxuriantly.
No dotage of a slow decay,
No canker of rebellious clay,
E'er fix'd its taint on thee;
Thy spirit sprang from its abode,
In summer beauty to its God.

And in that latest loneliest hour,
When human aid is vain,

There lives for me a thought with power
To soothe the sense of pain.
The consciousness that I shall be
In realms of immortality,

Permitted to obtain

A place in thy community

With those who most resemble thee.

STANZAS FOR EVENING.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

THERE is an hour when leaves are still, and winds sleep on the wave;

When far beneath the closing clouds the day hath found a grave;

And stars that at the note of dawn begin their circling flight,

Return, like sun-tired birds, to seek the sable boughs of night.

The curtains of the mind are closed, and slumber is most sweet,

And visions to the hearts of men direct their fairy feet;

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STANZAS FOR EVENING.

The wearied wing hath gain'd a tree, pain sighs itself

to rest,

And beauty's bridegroom lies upon the pillow of her breast.

There is a feeling in that hour which tumult ne'er hath known,

Which nature seems to dedicate to silent things alone; The spirit of the lonely wakes, as rising from the dead, And finds its shroud adorn'd with flowers, its nightlamp newly fed.

The mournful moon her rainbows hath, and mid the blight of all

That garlands life, some blossoms live, like lilies on a pall;

Thus while to lone affliction's couch some strangerjoy may come,

The bee that hoardeth sweets all day hath sadness in its hum.

Yet some there are whose fire of years leaves no remember'd spark,

Whose summer-time itself is bleak, whose very daybreak dark.

The stem, though naked, still may live, the leaf though perish'd cling;

But if at first the root be cleft, it lies a branchless thing.

And oh! to such, long, hallow'd nights their patient music send;

The hours like drooping angels walk, more graceful as they bend;

And stars emit a hope-like ray, that melts as it comes

nigh,

And nothing in that calm hath life that doth not wish to die.

FAREWELL TO WALES.

BY MRS. HEMANS.

THE Voice of thy streams in my spirit I bear.
Farewell! and a blessing be with thee, green land!
On thy halls, on thy hearths, on thy pure mountain air,
On the strings of the harp and the minstrel's free hand!
From the love of my soul with my tears it is shed,
Whilst I leave thee, oh land of my home and my dead!

I bless thee! yet not for the beauty which dwells
In the heart of thy hills, on the waves of thy shore;
And not for the memory set deep in thy dells
Of the bard and the warrior, the mighty of yore;
And not for thy songs of those proud ages fled,
Green land, poet land of my home and my dead!

I bless thee for all the true bosoms that beat
Where'er a low hamlet smiles under thy skies;
For thy peasant hearths burning the stranger to greet,
For the soul that looks forth from thy children's kind
eyes!

May the blessing, like sunshine, around thee be spread,
Green land of my childhood, my home, and my dead!

THE RHINE.

THE Rhine! the Rhine!-May on thy flowing river The sun for ever shine!

And on thy banks may freedom's light fade never!— Be blessings on the Rhine!

The Rhine! the Rhine!-My fancy still is straying,
To dream of Wilhelmine,

Of auburn locks in balmy zephyrs playing :-
Be blessings on the Rhine!