Dora's eyes of heavenly blue,
Pass all painting's reach;
Ring-dove's notes are discord to
The music of her speech.

Artists! Margaret's smile receive,
And on canvass show it;
But for perfect worship leave
Dora to her poet.

A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY THE NEW YEAR.

THE more we live, more brief appear
Our life's succeeding stages;
A day to childhood seems a year,
And years like passing ages.

The gladsome current of our youth,
Ere passion yet disorders,

Steals, lingering like a river smooth

Along its grassy borders.

But as the care-worn cheek grows wan,

And sorrow's shafts fly thicker,

Ye stars, that measure life to man,

Why seem your courses quicker?

When joys have lost their bloom and breath,

And life itself is vapid,

Why, as we reach the Falls of death,

Feel we its tide more rapid?

It may be strange-yet who would change,
Time's course to slower speeding;
When one by one our friends have gone,
And left our bosoms bleeding?

Heaven gives our years of fading strength
Indemnifying fleetness;

And those of Youth, a seeming length,
Proportioned to their sweetness.

SONG.

How delicious is the winning
Of a kiss at Love's beginning,
When two mutual hearts are sighing
For the knot there's no untying!

Yet, remember, 'midst your wooing,
Love has bliss, but Love has ruing;
Other smiles may make you fickle,
Tears for other charms may trickle.

Love he comes, and Love he tarries,
Just as fate or fancy carries;
Longest stays, when sorest chidden;
Laughs and flies, when pressed and bidden.

Bind the sea to slumber stilly,

Bind its odor to the lily,

Bind the aspen ne'er to quiver,

Then bind Love to last for ever!

Love's a fire that needs renewal

Of fresh beauty for its fuel;

Love's wing moults when caged and captured,
Only free, he soars enraptured.

Can you keep the bee from ranging,

Or the ring-dove's neck from changing?

No! nor fettered Love from dying,

In the knot there's no untying.

THE POWER OF RUSSIA.

So all this gallant blood has gushed in vain! And Poland by the Northern Condor's beak And talons torn, lies prostrated again. O, British patriots, that were wont to speak Once loudly on this theme, now hushed or meek! O, heartless men of Europe - Goth and Gaul Cold, adder-deaf to Poland's dying shriek ;That saw the world's last land of heroes fallThe brand of burning shame is on you all - all - all!

But this is not the drama's closing act!
Its tragic curtain must uprise anew.
Nations, mute accessories to the fact !

That Upas-tree of power, whose fostering dew
Was Polish blood, has yet to cast o'er you
The lengthening shadow of its head elate -
A deadly shadow, darkening Nature's hue.

To all that's hallowed, righteous, pure, and great, Wo! wo! when they are reached by Russia's withering hate.

Russia, that on his throne of adamant,

Consults what nation's breast shall next be gored: He on Polonia's Golgotha will plant

His standard fresh; and, horde succeeding horde, On patriot tomb-stones he will whet the sword, For more stupendous slaughters of the free. Then Europe's realms, when their best blood is poured, Shall miss thee, Poland! as they bend the knee, All-all in grief, but none in glory likening thee.

Why smote ye not the Giant whilst he reeled!
O, fair occasion, gone forever by!

To have locked his lances in their northern field,
Innocuous as the phantom chivalry

That flames and hurtles from yon boreal sky!
Now, wave thy pennon, Russia, o'er the land
Once Poland; build thy bristling castles high;
Dig dungeons deep; for Poland's wrested brand
Is now a weapon new to widen thy command –

1

An awful width! Norwegian woods shall build
His fleets; the Swede his vassal, and the Dane;
The glebe of fifty kingdoms shall be tilled
To feed his dazzling, desolating train,
Camped sumless, 'twixt the Black and Baltic main
Brute hosts, I own; but Sparta could not write,
And Rome, half-barbarous, bound Achaia's chain:
So Russia's spirit, midst Sclavonic night,

Burns with a fire more dread than all your polished light

But Russia's limbs (so blinded statesmen say)
Are crude, and too colossal to cohere.

O, lamentable weakness! reckoning weak
The stripling Titan, strengthening year by year.
What impliment lacks he for war's career,
That grows on earth, or in its floods and mines,
(Eighth sharer of the inhabitable sphere)

Whom Persia bows to, China ill confines,

And India's homage waits, when Albion's star declines?

But time will teach the Russ, even conquering War

Has handmaid arts: ay, ay, the Russ will woo

All sciences that speed Bellona's car,

All murder's tactic arts, and win them too;

But never holier Muses shall imbue

His breast, that's made of nature's basest clay:
The sabre, knout, and dungeon's vapor blue

His laws and ethics: far from him away

Are all the lovely Nine, that breathe but Freedom's day.

Say, even his serfs, half-humanized, should learn Their human rights, will Mars put out his flame In Russian bosoms? no, he'll bid them burn A thousand years for nought but martial fame, Like Romans:-yet forgive me, Roman name! Rome could impart what Russia never can; Proud civic rights to salve submission's shame. Our strife is coming; but in Freedom's van The Polish eagle's fall is big with fate to man.

Proud bird of old! Mohammed's moon recoiled
Before thy swoop: had we been timely bold,
That swoop, still free, had stunned the Russ, and foiled
Earth's new oppressors, as it foiled her old.
Now thy majestic eyes are shut and cold:
And colder still Polonia's children find

The sympathetic hands, that we outhold.

But, Poles, when we are gone, the world will mind, Ye bore the brunt of fate, and bled for humankind.

So hallowedly have ye fulfilled your part,
My pride repudiates even the sigh that blends
With Poland's name name written on my heart,
My heroes, my grief-consecrated friends!