"PILGRIMS THAT JOURNEY FOR A CERTAIN TIME-WEAK BIRDS OF PASSAGE CROSSING STORMY SEAS-(NORTON)

NOBLE DEEDS SHOULD HALLOW NOBLE NAMES."-NORTON.

[MRS. NORTON comes of distinguished lineage, the lineage of genius, for she is the grand-daughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She was born about 1808, and educated by her mother, Lady Elizabeth Sheridan, at Hampton Court. In her nineteenth year she married the Hon. George C. Norton; but the union proved an unhappy one, and was dissolved in 1840. Shortly after her marriage she published her first poem, "The Sorrows of Rosalie," which both critics and public received with genuine favour. Her literary labours, in prose and verse, have been indefatigable, but her fertility has proceeded from a cultivated mind and a gentle heart. Her principal poetical compositions are "The Dream, and Other Poems" (1840); the "Child of the Islands" (1846); the "Undying One" (1853); and "Lady of La Garaye" (1861). She has also written the justly popular novels of "Wife and Woman's Reward," "Stuart of Dunleath," "Lost and Saved," and "Old Sir Douglas" (1867).

The Quarterly Review has termed Mrs. Norton "the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel.” "In her tenderer moods," says Moir, "she pitches on a key somewhat between Goldsmith and Rogers-with here the sunset glow of the first, and there the twilight softness of the latter; in her more passionate ones we have a reflex of Byron; but it is a reflex of the pathos, without the misanthropy of that great poet. Her ear for the modulation of verse is exquisite ; and many of her lyrics and songs carry in them the characteristic of the ancient Douglases, being alike 'tender and true.""

TO REACH A BETTER AND A BRIGHTER CLIME, WE FIND OUR PARALLELS AND TYPES IN THESE."-MRS. NORTON.

W

THE MOTHER'S HEART.

HEN first thou camest, gentle, shy, and fond,

My eldest born, first hope, and dearest treasure,
My heart received thee with a joy beyond
All that it yet had felt of earthly pleasure;
Nor thought that any love again might be
So deep and strong as 'that I felt for thee.

"LIFE'S DIVERGING ROADS ALL LEAD TO HIM."-MRS. NORTON.

"GOD HATH BUILT UP A BRIDGE 'TWIXT MAN AND MAN, WHICH MORTAL STRENGTH CAN NEVER OVERTHROW;

our life's abiLITY, WHICH IS AS NAUGHT;-(MRS. NORTON)

Faithful and true, with sense beyond thy years,

And natural piety that leaned to heaven;
Wrung by a harsh word suddenly to tears,

Yet patient of rebuke when justly given-
Obedient, easy to be reconciled,

And meekly cheerful-such wert thou, my child.

Not willing to be left: still by my side,

Haunting my walks, while summer day was dying;
Nor leaving in thy turn; but pleased to glide
Through the dark room where I was sadly lying;
Or by the couch of pain, a sitter meek,
Watch the dim eye, and kiss the feverish cheek.

O boy! of such as thou are oftenest made
Earth's fragile idols; like a tender flower,
No strength in all thy freshness-prone to fade-

And bending weakly to the thunder shower-
Still round the loved thy heart found force to bind,
And clung like woodbine shaken in the wind.

Then thou, my merry love, bold in thy glee,
Under the bough, or by the firelight dancing,

With thy sweet temper and thy spirit free,
Didst thou come restless as a bird's wing glancing,
Full of a wild and irrepressible mirth,
Like a young sunbeam to the gladdened earth!
Thine was the shout, the song, the burst of joy!
Which sweet from childhood's rosy lip resoundeth !
Thine was the eager spirit naught could cloy,

And the glad heart from which all grief reboundeth ;
And many a mirthful jest and mock reply
Lurked in the laughter of thy dark-blue eye!

OUR LIFE'S DURATION, WHICH IS BUT A SOUND."-NORTON.

OVER THE WORLD IT STRETCHES ITS DARK SPAN: THE KEYSTONE OF THAT MIGHTY ARCH IS WOE!"-NORTON.

"DOUBT NOT, CLEAR MIND, THAT WORKEST OUT THE RIGHT FOR THE RIGHT'S SAKE: THE THIN THREAD MUST BE SPUN,

"JOY'S RAINBOW GLORIES VISIT EARTH AND GO;-(NORTON)

And thine was many an art to win and bless,

The cold and stern to joy and fondness warming;
The coaxing smile—the frequent soft caress—

The earnest, tearful prayer, all wrath disarming!
Again my heart a new affection found,

But thought that love with thee had reached its bound.

At length thou camest-thou the last and least,
Nicknamed "the Emperor" by thy laughing brothers,
Because a haughty spirit swelled thy breast,

And thou didst seek to rule and sway the others,
Mingling with every playful infant wile
A mimic majesty that made us smile.

And oh! most like a regal child wert thou!

An eye of resolute and successful scheming-
Fair shoulders, curling lip, and dauntless brow-
Fit for the world's strife, not for poet's dreaming:
And proud the lifting of thy stately head,
And the firm bearing of thy conscious tread.

Different from both, yet each succeeding claim,

I, that all other love had been forswearing,
Forthwith admitted, equal and the same;

Nor injured either by this love's comparing,
Nor stole a fraction from the newer call,
But in the mother's heart found room for all.
[From "The Child of the Islands."]

GRIEF'S FOUNDATIONS HAVE BEEN FIXED BELOW."-NORTON.

AND PATIENCE WEAVE IT, ERE THAT SIGN OF MIGHT, TRUTH'S BANNER, WAVE FULL FLASHING TO THE LIGHT."-NORTON.

[MR. COVENTRY PATMORE, one of the Assistant Librarians to the British Museum, was born at Woodford, in Essex, on the 2nd of July 1823. He made his first appearance as an author in 1844. His principal works-all characterized by graceful sentiment and a classic felicity of expression"Tamerton Church Tower," and "The Angel in the House,❞—the latter, a poem in four parts, devoted to the idealization of married life. He has also edited "A Garland of Poems for Children."]

are

"STRONG PASSIONS MEAN WEAK WILL; AND HE WHO TRULY KNOWS THE STRENGTH AND BLISS

WHICH ARE IN LOVE, WILL OWN WITH ME NO PASSION, BUT A VIRTUE, 'TIS."-COVENTRY PATMORE.

A WEDDING SERMON.

I.

|HAT good, which does itself not know,
Scarce is. Good families are so,
Less through their coming of good kind,
Than having borne it well in mind;
And this does all from honour bar,
The ignorance of that they are.

In the heart of the world, alas! for want
Of knowing aright what light souls taunt
As lightness, but which God has made
Such that for even its feeble shade,
Evoked by falsely fair ostents
And soiling of its sacraments,
Great statesmen, poets, warriors, kings,
Have honour and all other things
Gladly accounted nothing, what
Fell fires of Tophet burn forgot!

II.

The truths of love are like the sea
For clearness and for mystery.

Of that sweet love which, startling, wakes
Maiden and youth, and mostly breaks

FOR STRANGERS, BUT RESPECT YOUR FRIEND."-PATMORE.

"HOW FOREIGN IS THE GARB HE WEARS; AND HOW HIS GREAT DEVOTION MOCKS

HOW STRANGE A THING A LOVER SEEMS

A WEDDING SERMON.

The word of promise to the ear,
But keeps it, after many a year,
To the full spirit, how shall I speak ?

My memory with age is weak,
And I for hopes do oft suspect
The things I seem to recollect.

Yet who but must remember well

'Twas this made heaven intelligible
As motive, though 'twas small the power
The heart might have, for even an hour,
To hold possession of the height
Of nameless pathos and delight!

III.

In Godhead rise, thither flow back
All loves, which, as they keep or lack,
In their turn, the course assigned,
Are virtue or sin. Love's every kind,
Lofty or low, of spirit or sense,
Desire is, or benevolence.
He who is fairer, better, higher
Than all his works, claims all desire,
And in his poor, his proxies, asks
Our whole benevolence: he tasks,
Howbeit, his people by their powers;
And if, my children, you, for hours
Daily untortured in the heart,
Can worship, and time's other part
Give, without rough recoils of sense,
To claims ingrate of indigence,
Happy are you, and fit to be
Wrought to rare heights of sanctity
For the humble to grow humbler at.
But if the flying spirit falls flat,

TO ANIMALS THAT DO NOT LOVE!"-PATMore.

OUR POOR PROPRIETY, AND SCARES THE UNDEVOUT WITH PARADOX!"-PATMORE.

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