But live the sweet unconscious life

That breathes from yonder jasmine-tree.

Upon the glittering pageantries

Of gay Damascus streets I look,
As idly as a babe that sees

The painted pictures of a book.

Forgotten now are name and race;
The past is blotted from my brain ;
For Memory sleeps, and will not trace
The weary pages o'er again.

I only know the morning shines,
And sweet the dewy morning air;
But does it play with tendrilled vines?
Or does it lightly lift my hair?

Deep sunken in the charmed repose,
This ignorance is bliss extreme:

And, whether I be Man or Rose,
Oh pluck me not from out my

dream!

FROM THE NORTH.

ONCE more without you !-sighing, dear, once more,
For all the sweet accustomed ministries
Of wife and mother: not as when the seas
That parted us my tender message bore
From the grey olives of the Cretan shore
To those that hid the broken Phidian frieze
Of our Athenian home,-but far degrees,
Wide plains, great forests, part us now. My door
Looks on the rushing Neva, cold and clear:
The swelling domes in hovering splendour lie,
Like golden bubbles eager to be gone,
But the chill crystal of the atmosphere
Withholds them; and along the northern sky
The amber midnight smiles in dreams of dawn.

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

[Born in 1825. Author of Footprints, a volume of poems published in 1848; Adventures in Fairyland, in prose; and many miscellaneous writings].

SPRING.

THE trumpet winds have sounded a retreat,
Blowing o'er land and sea a sullen strain;
Usurping March, defeated, flies again,
And lays his trophies at the Winter's feet.
And lo!-where April, coming in his turn,
In changeful motleys, half of light and shade,
Leads his belated charge, a delicate maid,
A nymph with dripping urn.

Hail! hail thrice hail !—thou fairest child of Time,
With all thy retinue of laughing Hours,
Thou paragon from some diviner clime,

And ministrant of its benignest powers!
Who hath not caught the glancing of thy wing,
And peeped beneath thy mask, delicious Spring?
Sometimes we see thee on the pleasant morns
Of lingering March, with wreathèd crook of gold,
Leading the Ram from out his starry fold,
A leash of light around his jagged horns!
Sometimes in April, goading up the skies
The Bull, whose neck Apollo's silvery flies
Settle upon, a many-twinkling swarm;
And when May days are warm,
And drawing to a close,

And Flora goes

With Zephyr from his palace in the west,
Thou dost upsnatch the Twins from cradled rest,
And strain them to thy breast,

And haste to meet the expectant bright new-comer,
The opulent queen of Earth, the gay, voluptuous Summer.

Unmuffled now, shorn of thy veil of showers,

Thou tripp'st along the mead with shining hair
Blown back, and scarf out-fluttering on the air,

White-handed, strewing the fresh sward with flowers.
The green hills lift their foreheads far away;

But where thy pathway runs the sod is pressed
By fleecy lambs, behind the budding spray;
And troops of butterflies are hovering round,
And the small swallow drops upon the ground
Beside his mate and nest.

A little month ago, the sky was grey;

Snow tents were pitched along the mountain-side,
Where March encamped his stormy legions wide,
And shook his standard o'er the fields of Day.
But now the sky is blue, the snow is flown,
And every mountain is an emerald throne,
And every cloud a daïs fringed with light,
And all below is beautiful and bright.

The forest waves its plumes,-the hedges blow,—
The south wind scuds along the meadowy sea
Thick-flecked with daisied foam,-and violets grow
Blue-eyed, and cowslips star the bloomy lea.
The skylark floods the scene with pleasant rhyme;
The ousel twitters in the swaying pine;
And wild bees hum about the beds of thyme,
And bend the clover-bells and eglantine;
The snake casts off his skin in mossy nooks;
The long-eared rabbits near their burrows play;
The dormouse wakes; and see! the noisy rooks
Sly foraging about the stacks of hay!

What sights! what sounds! what rustic life and mirth!
Housed all the winter long from bitter cold,
Huddling in chimney-corners, young and old
Come forth and share the gladness of the Earth.
The ploughmen whistle as the furrows trail
Behind their glittering shares, a billowy row;
The milkmaid sings a ditty while her pail
Grows full and frothy; and the cattle low;
The hounds are yelping in the misty wood,
Starting the fox: the jolly huntsmen cheer;
And winding horns delight the listening ear,
And startle Echo in her solitude;

The teamster drives his waggon down the lane,
Flattening a broader rut in weeds and sand;
The angler fishes in the shady pool;

And, loitering down the road with cap in hand, The truant chases butterflies-in vain,

Heedless of bells that call the village lads to school.

Methinks the world is sweeter than of yore, More fresh and fine, and more exceeding fair; There is a presence never felt before,

The soul of inspiration everywhere; Incarnate Youth in every idle limb,

My vernal days, my prime, return anew; My tranced spirit breathes a silent hymn, My heart is full of dew!

A DIRGE.

A FEW frail summers had touched thee,
As they touch the fruit;

Not so bright as thy hair, the sunshine,-
Not so sweet as thy voice, the lute.
Hushed the voice, shorn the hair, all is over:
An urn of white ashes remains;
Nothing else save the tears in our eyes,
And our bitterest, bitterest pains!

We garland the urn with white roses,
Burn incense and gums on the shrine,
Play old tunes with the saddest of closes,
Dear tunes that were thine !

But in vain, all in vain;

Thou art gone-we remain !

THE YELLOW MOON.

THE yellow moon looks slantly down,
Through seaward mists, upon the town;
And like a dream the moonshine falls.
Between the dim and shadowy walls.

I see a crowd in every street,

But cannot hear their falling feet;

They float like clouds through shade and light,
And seem a portion of the night.

The ships have lain, for ages fled,
Along the waters, dark and dead;
The dying waters wash no more
The long black line of spectral shore.

There is no life on land or sea,
Save in the quiet moon and me;

Nor ours is true, but only seems,

Within some dead old world of dreams.

HENRY W. PARKER.

[Born in 1825. Mr. Parker, a grand-nephew of the eminent lexicographer Noah Webster, is a minister of the Presbyterian Church].

THE DEAD-WATCH.

EACH saddened face is gone, and tearful eye,
Of mother, brother, and of sisters fair;
With ghostly sound their distant footfalls die
Through whispering hall, and up the rustling stair.
In yonder room the newly dead doth sleep;
Begin we thus, my friend, our watch to keep.

And now both feed the fire and trim the lamp;
Pass cheerly, if we can, the slow-paced hours;
For all without is cold, and drear, and damp,

And the wide air with storm and darkness lours;
Pass cheerly, if we may, the livelong night,
And chase pale phantoms, paler fear, to flight.

We will not talk of death, of pall and knell-
Leave that, the mirth of brighter hours to check;
But tales of life, love, beauty, let us tell,

Or of stern battle, sea, and stormy wreck;

Call up the visions gay of other days-
Our boyhood's sports and merry youthful ways.