The bright scenes of my youth, — all gone out now.

How eagerly its flickering blaze doth catch

On every point now wrapped in time's deep shade!

Into what wild grotesqueness by its flash

And fitful checkering is the picture made!

When I am glad or gay,

Let me walk forth into the brilliant sun,

And with congenial rays be shone upon:

When I am sad, or thought-bewitched would be,

Let me glide forth in moonlight's mystery,

But never, while I live this changeful life,

This past and future with all wonders rife,

Never, bright flame, may be denied

to me

Thy dear, life-imaging, close sympathy.

What but my hopes shot upwards e'er so bright?

What but my fortunes sank so low in night?

Why art thou banished from our hearth and hall,

Thou who art welcomed and beloved by all?

Was thy existence then too fanciful For our life's common light, who are so dull ?

Did thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold

With our congenial souls? secrets too bold?

Well, we are safe and strong; for now we sit

Beside a hearth where no dim shadows flit;

Where nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire

Warms feet and hands, nor does to

Old books to read!

Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum-writ, Time-honored tomes!

The same my sire scanned before, The same my grandsire thumbed oʻer, The same his sire from college bore,

The well-earned meed

Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,

Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gerrase Markham's venerie-
Nor leave behind

The Holy Book by which we live and die.

IV.

Old friends to talk!

Ay, bring those chosen few, The wise, the courtly, and the true, So rarely found;

Him for my wine, him for my stud, Him for my easel, distich, bud

In mountain walk!

Bring Walter good:

With soulful Fred; and learned Will, And thee, my alter ego, (dearer still For every mood).

R. H. MESSINGER.

TO A CHILD.

I WOULD that thou might always be As innocent as now,

That time might ever leave as free Thy yet unwritten brow.

I would life were all poetry

To gentle measure set,

That nought but chastened melody
Might stain thine eye of jet,
Nor one discordant note be spoken,
Till God the cunning harp had broken.
I fear thy gentle loveliness,
Thy witching tone and air,
Thine eye's beseeching earnestness
May be to thee a snare.

The silver stars may purely shine,
The waters taintless flow;

But they who kneel at woman's shrine

Breathe on it as they bow.

N. P. WILLIS.

THE CHILDREN'S HOUR.

BETWEEN the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to

lower,

Comes a pause in the day's occupations

That is known as the children's hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,

Descending the broad hall-stair,

Grave Alice and laughing Allegra, And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence;
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning
together

To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall:
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall.

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my
chair;

If I try to escape, they surround me:
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses;
Their arms about me intwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine.

"He that's for heaven itself unfit, Let him not hope to merit me."

And though her charms are a strong law

Compelling all men to admire, They are so clad with lovely awe,

None but the noble dares desire.

He who would seek to make her his, Will comprehend that souls of

grace

Own sweet repulsion, and that 'tis

The quality of their embrace

To be like the majestic reach

Of coupled suns, that, from afar, Mingle their mutual spheres, while each

Circles the twin obsequious star:

And in the warmth of hand to hand, Of heart to heart, he'll vow to note And reverently understand

How the two spirits shine remote;

And ne'er to numb fine honor's nerve, Nor let sweet awe in passion melt, Nor fail by courtesies to observe

The space which makes attraction felt;

Nor cease to guard like life the sense Which tells him that the embrace of love

Is o'er a gulf of difference
Love cannot sound, nor death re-

move.

COVENTRY PATMORE.

DUCHESSE BLANCHE.

IT happed that I came on a day
Into a place, there that I say,
Truly the fairest companey
Of ladies that ever man with eye
Had seen together in one place, -
Shall I clepe it hap or grace?
Among these ladies thus each one
Sooth to say I saw one

That was like none of the rout,
For I dare swear without doubt,
That as the summer's Sunne bright
Is fairer, clearer, and hath more light

Than any other planet in Heaven,
The moone, or the starres seven,
For all the world, so had she
Surmounten them all of beauty,
Of manner, and of comeliness,
Of stature, and of well set gladnesse,
Of goodly heed, and so well besey,1-
Shortly what shall I more say,
By God, and by his holowes twelve,
It was my sweet, right all herselve.
She had so stedfast countenance
In noble port and maintenance,
And Love that well harde my bone
Had espied me thus soone,
That she full soone in my thought
As, help me God, so was I caught
So suddenly that I ne took
No manner counsel but at her look,
And at my heart for why her eyen
So gladly I trow mine heart, seyen
That purely then mine own thought
Said, Twere better to serve her for
nought

Than with another to be well.

I saw her dance so comely,
Carol and sing so swetely,
Laugh and play so womanly,
And look so debonairly,

So goodly speak, and so friendly,
That certes I trow that evermore
N'as seen so blissful a treasore,
For every hair on her head,
Sooth to say, it was not red,
Nor neither yellow nor brown it n'as,
Methought most like gold it was,
And such even my lady had.
Debonnaire, good, glad, and sad,
Simple, of good mokel, not too wide,
Thereto her look was not aside,
Nor overt whart, but beset so well
It drew and took up every dell.
All that on her 'gan behold
Her eyen seemed anon she would
Have mercy.-folly wenden so,
But it was never the rather do.
It was no counterfeited thing
It was her own pure looking
That the goddess Dame Nature
Had made them open by measure
And close; for, were she never so
glad

6

Her looking was not foolish sprad Nor wildly, though that she played; But ever methought her eyen said

1 Beseen, appearing.

2 Saints.
Boon, petition.

4 Quantity. 5 Thought. Spread.