A simple maiden in her flower
Is worth a hundred coats-of-arins.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Some meeker pupil you must find,
For were you queen of all that is,
I could not stoop to such a mind.
You sought to prove how I could love,
And my disdain is my reply.
The lion on your old stone gates
Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange memories in my head.
Not thrice your branching limes have blown
Since I beheld young Laurence dead.
Oh your sweet eyes, your low replies:
A great enchantress you may be;

But there was that across his throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

When thus he met his mother's view,

She had the passions of her kind,

She spake some certain truths of

Indeed I heard one bitter word

That scarce is fit for you to hear;

Her manners had not that repose

you.

Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

There stands a spectre in

your hall:

The guilt of blood is at your door:

You changed a wholesome heart to gall. You held your course without remorse,

To make him trust his modest worth, And, last, you fixed a vacant stare,

And slew him with your noble birth.

Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,

From yon blue heavens above us bent,
The grand old gardener and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
"Tis only noble to be good.
Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.

I know you, Clara Vere de Vere:

You pine among your halls and towers: The languid light of your proud eyes Is wearied of the rolling hours. In glowing health, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease,

You know so ill to deal with time,

You needs must play such pranks as these.

Clara, Clara Vere de Vere,

If Time be heavy on your hands,
Are there no beggars at your gate,
Nor
any poor about your lands?
Oh! teach the orphan-boy to read,
Or teach the orphan-girl to sew,
Pray heaven for a human heart,
And let the foolish yeoman go.

'

EXTRACTS FROM IN MEMORIAM."

ENVY not, in any moods,

The captive void of noble rage, The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods.

I envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfettered by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth,
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth-
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate'er befall-
I feel it, when I sorrow most-
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

WITH trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possessed the earth
And sadly fell our Christmas eve.

At our old pastimes in the hall

We gambolled, making vain pretence Of gladness, with an awful sense Of one mute Shadow watching all.

We paused; the winds were in the beech-
We heard them sweep the winter land;
And in a circle hand in hand

Sat silent, looking each at each.

Then echo-like our voices rang;

We sang, though every eye was dim—
A merry song we sang with him
Last year: impetuously we sang;

We ceased.

A gentler feeling crept

Upon us; surely rest is meet;

66

"They rest," we said; their sleep is sweet." And silence followed, and we wept.

Our voices took a higher range;

Once more we sang: "They do not die,

Nor lose their mortal sympathy,

Nor change to us, although they change:

"Rapt from the fickle and the frail, With gathered power, yet the same, Pierces the keen seraphic flame

From orb to orb, from veil to veil.

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Rise, happy morn! rise, holy morn!
Draw forth the cheerful day from night!
O Father! touch the east, and light

The light that shone when Hope was born!"

Dost thou look back on what hath been,

As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green?

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;.

Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys-
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,

The limit of his narrower fate,

While yet beside its vocal springs
He played at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;

Who ploughs with pain his native lea,
And
reaps the labor of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands :
"Does my old friend remember me?"

WITCH-ELMS, that counterchange the floor

Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright; And thou, with all thy breadth and height Of foliage, towering sycamore;