Boy, let
yon liquid ruby flow
And bid thy pensive heart be glad,

Whate'er the frowning zealots say:
Tell them their Eden cannot show
A stream so clear as Rocnabad,

A bower so sweet as Mosellay.

Oh, when these fair perfidious maids
Whose eyes our secret haunts infest

Their dear destructive charms display, Each glance my tender breast invades And robs my wounded soul of rest,

As Tartars seize their destined prey.

In vain with love our bosoms glow:
Can all our tears, can all our sighs,

New lustre to those charms impart?
Can cheeks where living roses blow,
Where Nature spreads her richest dyes,
Require the borrowed gloss of art?

Speak not of fate-ah! change the theme, And talk of odors, talk of wine,

Talk of the flowers that round us bloom: 'Tis all a cloud, 'tis all a dream ; To love and joy thy thoughts confiue,

Nor hope to pierce the sacred gloom.

Beauty has such resistless power
That even the chaste Egyptian dame
Sighed for the blooming Hebrew boy;
For her how fatal was the hour
When to the bank of Nilus came

A youth so lovely and so coy!

But ah! sweet maid, my counsel hear— Youth should attend when those advise

Whom long experience renders sage: While music charms the ravished ear, While sparkling cups delight our eyes,

Be gay and scorn the frowns of age.

What cruel answer have I heard?
And yet, by Heaven, I love thee still;
Can aught be cruel from thy lip?
Yet say how fell that bitter word
From lips which streams of sweetness fill,
Which naught but drops of honey sip?

Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like Orient pearls at random strung:
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say ;
But oh, far sweeter if they please

II.

I WOULD NOT SHRINK.

I WOULD not shrink if some dear ghost,
One of the dead's unnumbered host,
Should rise in silence of the night
Shrined in an aureole of light
And pale as snowdrop in the frost.

No! If the brother loved and lost
For me the silent river crossed,
For me left worlds all fair and bright,
I would not shrink.

sung.

Translation of SIR WILLIAM JONES.

Dear would the dead be to my sight:
A vision from the other coast
Of one on earth I cherished most
Would be a measureless delight;
I would not shrink.

CHARLES D. BELL.

THE GOLDEN RINGLET.

HERE is a little golden tress

Of soft unbraided hair, The all that's left of loveliness That once was thought so fair; And yet, though time hath dimmed its sheen,

Though all beside hath fled,

I hold it here, a link between
My spirit and the dead.

Yes, from this shining ringlet still
A mournful memory springs
That melts my heart and sheds a thrill
Through all its trembling strings:

I think of her, the loved, the wept,
Upon whose forehead fair

For eighteen years like sunshine slept
This golden curl of hair.

274

O sunny tress! the joyous brow Where thou didst lightly wave With all thy sister-tresses now Lies cold within the grave. That cheek is of its bloom bereft, That eye no more is gay:

Of all her beauties thou art left, A solitary ray.

M

AMELIA B. WELBY.

MINE BE A COT.

INE be a cot beside the hill:

gloom,

The abode of the dead and the place of the tomb.

Shall we build to Ambition? Oh no! Affrighted, he shrinketh away;

For see! they would pin him below In a small narrow cave, and, begirt with cold clay, To the meanest of reptiles a peer and a prey.

To Beauty? Ah, no! she forgets

A willowy brook that turns a mill,
With many a fall, shall linger near.

The swallow oft beneath my thatch

Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch

And share my meal, a welcome guest. Around

my ivied porch shall spring Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew, And Lucy at her wheel shall sing gown and apron blue.

In russet

Nor knows the foul worm that he frets The skin which but yesterday fools could adore

For the smoothness it held or the tint which it wore.

Shall we build to the purple of Pride, The trappings which dizen the proud? Alas! they are all laid aside,

And here's neither dress nor adornment

allowed

But the long winding-sheet and the fringe of the shroud.

To Riches? Alas! 'tis in vain : Who hid, in their turn have been hid;

The treasures are squandered again, And here in the grave are all metals forbid But the tinsel that shines on the dark coffinlid.

To the pleasures which Mirth can afford, The revel, the laugh and the jeer?

Ah! here is a plentiful board! But the guests are all mute as their pitiful

cheer,

And none but the worm is a reveller here.