The white owl in my chamber dreams all day,
For there is no one cares to frighten him away.
What hollow gusts through broken casements stream,
Moving the ancient portraits on the wall!
I see them stirring by the moon's pale beam,
Their floating costumes seem to rise and fall;
And as I come and go, move where I will,
Their dull white deadly eyes, turning, pursue me still.
And when a dreary slumber o'er me creeps,
The old house-clock rings out its measured sound, I hear a warning in the march it keeps;
Anon the rusty vane turns round and round: These are sad tones, for desolation calls,
And ruin loudly roars around my father's halls.
The fish-ponds now are mantled o'er with green,
The rooks have left their old ancestral trees;
Their silent nests are all that now is seen;
No oxen lowing o'er the winding leas;
No steeds neigh out, no flocks bleat from the fold;
Upland, and hill, and vale, are empty, brown and cold.
And dance and song within these walls have sounded,
And breathing music roll'd in dulcet strains;
And lovely feet have o'er these gray stones bounded,
In snowy kirtles and embroider'd trains;
Such things have been, and now are gliding past,
And then our race is done;-I live, and die,-the last!
A playful and graceful little poem by LAMAN BLANCHARD,
SOOTH 'twere a pleasant life to lead,
With nothing in the world to do,
But just to blow a shepherd's reed
The silent seasons through ;-
And just to drive a flock to feed,
Sheep, quiet, fond, and few!
Pleasant to breathe beside a brook,
And count the bubbles-love-worlds-there,
To muse within some minstrel's book,
Or watch the haunted air;-
To slumber in some leafy nook,
Or-idle anywhere.
And then, a draught of Nature's wine,
A meal of summer's daintiest fruit;
To take the air with forms divine:
Clouds, silvery, cool, and mute;
Descending, if the night be fine,
In a star-parachute.
Give me to live with love alone,
And let the world go dine and dress;
For love hath lowly haunts-a stone
Holds something meant to bless.
If life's a flower, I choose my own-
'Tis "Love in Idleness!""
From a periodical called The Germ, which was blighted in the bud. 'The writer was Miss CHRISTINA G. ROSETTI.
LOVE, strong as death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers;
A green turf at his head,
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the spring,
And died before the harvesting;
On the last warm summer day
He left us ;--he would not stay
For autumn twilight, cold and grey;
Sit we by his grave and sing,
To few chords, and sad, and low,
Sing we so.
Be our eyes fix'd on the grass,
Shadow-veil'd, as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.
These stanzas are taken from one of the American papers, the Literary World, published at New York.
LEAD me 'mong blossoms white
In the early amber light,
Away from teasing Care,
And let the charméd air,
With luscious tone,
Soothe me with strains unknown.
Oh! heap the blossoms sweet
About my face and feet,
Till half the blushing sky,
And the nook wherein I lie,
Are curtain'd most deliciously.
With odors deluge me,
With rose-light and low melody ;-
For I would dream, until earth seems
What once it promised in my dreams.
Oh, radiant land! where my young eyes
Saw angels in the rainbow skies,
And felt Love's arms in all the air,
And heard Hope singing everywhere-
Sweet land of boyhood! Rose unblown!
Delicious heart-enfolded zone!
How soon-too soon!
The burning Noon
Drank all thy dew from bud and leaf,
And sear❜d the bowers of Young Belief:-
The drifting sands before me spread
With murky redness overhead;
I faint with fighting wrong and sin;
To-day, oh, let me enter in
The gardens beautiful of yore,
And live again my May-life o'er.
I may come forth more firm and strong
To deal with error, blame, and wrong;
Upon my heart fresh dew shall lie,
And heaven seem nearer to mine eye.
A DREAM OF RESURRECTION.
The following very original poem appeared some time ago anonymously in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, whence it is extracted.
So heavenly beautiful it lay,
It was less like a human corse
Than that fair shape in which perforce
A dead hope clothes itself alway.
The dream show'd very plain: the bed
Where that known unknown face reposed-
A woman's face with eyelids closed,
A something precious that was dead:
A something lost, on this side life,
By which the mourner came and stood,
And laid down, ne'er to be renew'd,
All glittering robes of earthly strife ;—
Shred off, like votive locks of hair,
Youth's ornaments of joy and strength,
And cast them in their golden length
The silence of that bier to share.
No tears fell-but a gaze, fix'd, long,
That memory might print the face
On the heart's ever vacant space
With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.
Then kisses dropping without sound;
And solemn arms wound round the dead;
And lifting from the natural bed
Into the coffin's strange new bound;
Yet still no parting-no belief
In death; no more than we believe
In some dread falsehood that would weave
The world in one black shroud of grief.
And still, unanswer'd kisses; still,
Warm clingings to the image cold,
With an impossible faith's close fold,
Creative, through its fierce "I will."
Hush, hush! the marble eyelids move;
The kiss'd lips quiver into breath;
Avaunt, thou ghastly seeming Death!
Avaunt! we are conquerors—I and Love!
Corse of dead hope, awake, arise!
A living hope, that only slept
Until the tears thus overwept
Had wash'd the blindness from our eyes.
Come back into the upper day!
Dash off those cerements! Patient shroud,
We'll wrap thee as a garment proud
Round the bright shape we thought was clay.
Clasp arms! Cling, soul! Eyes, drink anew,
Like pilgrims at a living spring!
Faith, that out-loved this perishing,
May see this resurrection too.
YE ARE NOT MISSED, FAIR FLOWERS.
YE are not miss'd, fair flowers, that late were spreading
The summer's glow by fount and breezy grot;
There falls the dew, its fairy favours shedding,
The leaves dance on, the young birds miss you not.
Still plays the sparkle o'er the rippling water,
O Lily! whence thy cup of pearl is gone;
The bright wave mourns not for its loveliest daughter,
There is no sorrow in the wind's low tone.
And thou, meek hyacinth! afar is roving
The bee that oft thy trembling bells hath kiss'd.
Cradled ye were, fair flowers! midst all things loving,
A joy to all-yet, yet ye are not miss'd!
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