Come to me, dear, ere I die of my sorrow,
Rise on my gloom like the sun of to-morrow;
Strong, swift, and fond as the words which I
speak, love,

With a song on your lip and a smile on your cheek, love.

Come, for my heart in your absence is weary, Haste, for my spirit is sickened and dreary, Come to the arms which alone should caress thes, Come to the heart that is throbbing to press thee! JOSEPH BRENNAN.

I dote on his very absence.

PRESENCE IN ABSENCE.

Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

A Valediction forbidding Mourning.

DK.; DONNE

SONNET.

Young Jamie lo'ed me weel, and sought me for his bride;

skies,

How silently, and with how wan a face!
What may it be, that even in heavenly place
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries?
Sure, if that long with love acquainted eyes
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case;
I read it in thy looks, thy languished grace
To me that feel the like thy state descries.
Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me,

Is constant love deemed there but want of wit?
Are beauties there as proud as here they be?
Do they above love to be loved, and yet
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess?
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness?

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

THE BANKS O' DOON.

YE banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary, fu' o' care?

Thou 'It break my heart, thou warbling bird,
That wantons through the flowering thorn;
Thou minds me o' departed joys,
Departed never to return.

Thou'lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird,

That sings beside thy mate; For sae I sat, and sae I sang, And wistna o' my fate.

Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;
And ilka bird sang o' its luve,
And, fondly, sae did I o' mine.
Wi' lightsome heart I pou'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;
And my fause luver stole my rose,
But ah! he left the thorn wi' me.

ROBERT BURNS.

AULD ROBIN GRAY.

To make the crown a pound, my Jamie gaed to

at hame,

When a' the weary world to sleep are gane,
The waes o' my heart fa' in showers frae my e'e,
While my gudeman lies sound by me.

I darena think o' Jamie, for that wad be a sin. But I will do my best a gude wife aye to be, For Auld Robin Gray, he is kind to me.

LADY ANNE BARNARD.

THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE.

FROM "MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," ACT I. SC. 1.

For aught that ever I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth :
But, either it was different in blood,
Or else misgraffed in respect of years;
Or else it stood upon the choice of friends;
Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentary as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream ;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, - Behold!
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

SHAKESPEARE.

BYRON'S LATEST VERSES.

[Missolonghi, January 23, 1824. On this day I completed my thirty-sixth year ]

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it has ceased to move : Yet, though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

My days are in the yellow leaf,

The flowers and fruits of love are gone : The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone.

The fire that in my bosom preys Is like to some volcanic isle ; No torch is kindled at its blaze, A funeral pile.

The hope, the fear, the jealous care, The exalted portion of the pain And power of love, I cannot share, But wear the chain.

But 't is not thus, and 't is not here,

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now,

Where glory decks the hero's bier,

Or binds his brow.

The sword, the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece about us see; The Spartan borne upon his shield Was not more free.

Awake! --not Greece, she is awake! Awake my spirit! think through whom Thy life-blood tastes its parent lake,

And then strike home!

They build a wall between us twain,
Which may not be thrown down again,
Alas! for 1, the long years through,
Have loved you better than you knew.

Your life's proud aim, your art's high truth,
Have kept the promise of your youth;
And while you won the crown, which now
Breaks into bloom upon your brow,
My soul cried strongly out to you
Across the ocean's yearning blue,
While, unremembered and afar,
I watched you, as I watch a star
Through darkness struggling into view,
And loved you better than you knew.

I used to dream in all these years
Of patient faith and silent tears,
That Love's strong hand would put aside
The barriers of place and pride,
Would reach the pathless darkness through,
And draw me softly up to you;

But that is past. If you should stray
Beside my grave, some future day,
Perchance the violets o'er my dust
Will half betray their buried trust,
And say, their blue eyes full of dew,
"She loved you better than you knew.”

ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN (Florence Percy).

LINDA TO HAFED.

FROM "THE FIRE-WORSHIPPERS.'

"How sweetly," said the trembling maid,
Of her own gentle voice afraid,
So long had they in silence stood,
Looking upon that moonlight flood,
"How sweetly does the moonbeam smile
To-night upon yon leafy isle!
Oft in my fancy's wanderings,
I've wished that little isle had wings,
And we, within its fairy bowers,

Were wafted off to seas unknown,
Where not a pulse should beat but ours,
And we might live, love, die alone!
Far from the cruel and the cold,

Where the bright eyes of angels only Should come around us, to behold

A paradise so pure and lonely! Would this be world enough for thee?" Playful she turned, that he might see

The passing smile her cheek put on ; But when she marked how mournfully

His eyes met hers, that smile was gone; And, bursting into heartfelt tears, "Yes, yes," she cried, "my hourly fears, My dreams, have boded all too right, forever part o-night!

We part

I knew, I knew it could not last,

'T was bright, 't was heavenly, but 't is past!
O, ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I've seen my fondest hopes decay;
I never loved a tree or flower

But 't was the first to fade away.
I never nursed a dear gazelle,

To glad me with its soft black eye,
But when it came to know me well,
And love me, it was sure to die!
Now, too, the joy most like divine
Of all I ever dreamt or knew,

To see thee, hear thee, call thee mine,
O misery! must I lose that too?"

There is the ancient family chest,

There the ancestral cards and hatchel ; Dorothy, sighing, sinks down to rest, Forgetful of patches, sage, and satchel. Ghosts of faces peer from the gloom

Of the chimney, where, with swifts and reel, And the long-disused, dismantled loom,

Stands the old-fashioned spinning-wheel.