""Tis youth, 'tis beauty asks; the green
And growing leaves of seventeen

Are round her; and half-hid, half-seen,
A violet flower,

Nursed by the graces, she hath been
From childhood's hour."

Blind passion's picture !—Yet for this,
We woo the life-long bridal kiss,
And blend our every hope of bliss
With hers we love;

Unmindful of the serpent's hiss
In Eden's grove.

Beauty-the fading rainbow's pride!
Youth 'twas the charm of her who died
At dawn, and by her coffin's side
A grandsire stands,

Age-strengthened, like the oak, storm-tried,
Of mountain lands.

Youth's coffin-hush the tale it tells!
Be silent, memory's funeral-bells!
Lone in one heart, her home, it dwells
Untold till death,

And where the grave-mound greenly swells
O'er buried faith.

“But what if hers are rank and power,
Armies her train, a throne her bower,
A kingdom's gold her marriage-dower,
Broad seas and lands?

What, if from bannered hall and tower
A queen commands?

A queen? Earth's regal moons have set. Where perished Marie Antoinette?

Where's Bordeaux's mother? where the jetBlack Haytian dame ?

And Lusitania's coronet ?

And Angoulême ?

Empires to-day are upside down :
The castle kneels before the town;
The monarch fears a printer's frown,
A brick-bat's range:

Give me in preference to a crown,
Five shillings change.

"But her who asks, though first among
The good, the beautiful, the young,
The birthright of a spell more strong
Than these hath brought her;

She is your kinswoman in song,
A Poet's daughter."

A Poet's daughter?-Could I claim
The consanguinity of fame,

Veins of my intellectual frame!

Your blood would glow

Proudly to sing that gentlest name
Of all below!

A Poet's daughter! Dearer word
Lip hath not spoke nor listener heard;
Fit theme for song of bee and bird
From morn till even,

And wind-harp, by the breathing stirred
Of star-lit heaven!

My spirit's wings are weak-the fire
Poetic comes but to expire:

Her name needs not my humble lyre,

To bid it live :

She hath already from her sire

All bard can give.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

WHI

Love.

The imperial votaress passed on
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

I.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

HEN the tree of love is budding first,
Ere yet its leaves are green,

Ere yet by shower and sunbeam nursed
Its infant life has been ;

The wild bee's slightest touch might wring
The buds from off the tree,

As the gentle dip of the swallow's wing
Breaks the bubbles on the sea.

II.

But when its open leaves have found

A home in the free air,

Pluck them, and there remains a wound

That ever rankles there,

The blight of hope and happiness

Is felt when fond ones part;

And the bitter tear that follows is

The life-blood of the heart.

III.

When the flame of love is kindled first, 'Tis the fire-fly's light at even ;

'Tis dim as the wandering stars that burst In the blue of a summer heaven.

A breath can bid it burn no more,
Or if, at times, its beams

Come on the memory, they pass o'er
Like shadows in our dreams.

IV.

But when that flame has blazed into
A being and a power,

And smiled in scorn upon the dew

That fell in its first warm hour,

'Tis the flame that curls round the martyr's head, Whose task is to destroy :

'Tis the lamp on the altars of the dead,

Whose light but darkens joy.

V.

Then crush, even in their hour of birth,

The infant buds of Love;

And tread his glowing fire to earth,
Ere 'tis dark in clouds above.
Cherish no more a cypress-tree

To shade thy future years;

Nor nurse a heart-flame that may be

Quenched only with thy tears.

FITZ-GREENE HALLECK.

The Culprit Fay.

"My visual orbs are purged from film, and, lo!
Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales,

I see old fairyland's miraculous show!

Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,

Her ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze,
And fairies, swarming

TENNANT'S ANSTER FAIR.

I.

IS the middle watch of a Summer's night

'TIS

The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high

But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue,

A river of light, on the welkin blue.

The moon looks down on old Cronest;

She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,

And seems his huge gray form to throw

In a silver cone on the wave below.
His sides are broken by spots of shade,
By the walnut bough and the cedar made,
And through their clustering branches dark
Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark-
Like starry twinkles that momently break
Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack.

II.

The stars are on the moving stream,
And fling, as its ripples gently flow,
A burnished length of wavy beam
In an eel-like, spiral line below;