Lines on May-Day.

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Lines on may-Day.

FROM A PICTURE BY LESLIE.

BY MISS LANDON, (L. E. L.)

BEAUTIFUL and radiant May,

Is not this thy festal day?

Is not this spring revelry
Held in honour, queen, of thee?
'Tis a fair; the booths are gay
With green boughs and quaint display;
Glasses where the maiden's eye
May her own sweet face espy;
Ribands for her braided hair,
Beads to grace her bosom fair;
From yon stand the juggler plays
With the rustic crowd's amaze;
There the morris-dancers stand,
Glad bells ringing in each hand;
Here the maypole rears its crest,
With the rose and hawthorn dress'd;
And beside are painted bands
Of strange beasts from other lands.

In the midst, like the young queen,
Flower-crown'd, of the rural green,
Is a bright-cheek'd girl, her eye
Blue, like April's morning sky,
With a blush like what the rose
To her moonlight minstrel shows;
Laughing at her love the while-
Yet such softness in the smile,
As the sweet coquette would hide
Woman's love by woman's pride.

Farewell, cities! who could bear

All their smoke, and all their care?—
All their pomp, when woo'd away
By the azure hours of May?

Give me woodbine-scented bowers,
Blue wreaths of the violet flowers,

Clear sky, fresh air, sweet birds, and trees,
Sights, and sounds, and scenes like these.

The Traveller

AT THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.

BY MRS HEMANS.

N sunset's light, o'er Afric thrown,

IN

A wanderer proudly stood

Beside the well-spring, deep and lone,

Of Egypt's awful hood

The cradle of that mighty birth

So long a hidden thing to earth.

He heard its life's first murmuring sound,

A low mysterious tone

A music sought, but never found,

By kings and warriors gone;

He listen'd, and his heart beat high

That was the song of victory.

The rapture of a conqueror's mood

Rush'd through his burning frame;

The depths of that green solitude
Its torrents could not tame:

There stillness lay, with Eve's last smile,
Round those far fountains of the Nile.

The Traveller.

Night came with stars; across his soul
There swept a sudden change,
E'en at the pilgrim's glorious goal

A shadow dark and strange

Breathed from the thought, so swift to fall
O'er triumph's hour,-and is this all?

No more than this! what seem'd it now
First by that spring to stand?
A thousand streams of lovelier flow
Bathed his own mountain land,
Whence far o'er waste and ocean track
Their wild sweet voices call'd him back.

They call'd him back to many a glade,
His childhood's haunt of play,

Where brightly through the beechen shade
Their waters glanced away;

They call'd him, with their sounding waves,
Back to his fathers' hills and graves.

But darkly mingling with the thought
Of each familiar scene

Rose up a fearful vision, fraught

With all that lay between

The Arab's lance, the desert's gloom,

The whirling sands, the red simoom.

Where was the glow of power and pride ?—
The spirit born to roam?

His alter'd heart within him died
With yearnings for his home—
All vainly struggling to repress
That gush of painful tenderness.

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He wept !-the stars of Afric's heaven
Behold his burning tears,

E'en on that spot where Fate had given
The mead of toiling years.—

O Happiness! how far we flee

Thine own sweet paths in search of thee!

"BY

The Bachelor's Dilemma.

BY ALARIC A. WATTS.

Y all the bright saints in the Missal of Love, They are both so intensely, bewitchingly fair, That, let Folly look solemn, and Wisdom reprove,

I can't make up my mind which to choose of the pair.

"There is Fanny, whose eye is as blue and as bright As the depth of spring skies in their noontide array; Whose every fair feature is gleaming in light,

Like the ripple of waves on a sunshiny day;

"Whose form, like the willow, so slender and lithe, Has a thousand wild motions of lightness and grace; Whose heart, as a bird's, ever buoyant and blithe,

Is the home of the sweetness that breathes from her face.

"There is Helen, more stately of gesture and mien, Whose beauty a world of dark ringlets enshroud; With a black regal eye, and the step of a queen, And a brow like the moon breaking bright from a cloud.