STANZAS. WE met but in one giddy dance; That all the world grows older, If I have never touch'd the string, When you were by to hear one,- Yet do not, though the world's cold school But Folly little recks what name Farewell!-Oh, life is dark and light, My cup shall be, to-morrow; Whose health makes bright my burgundy, REPROACH ME NOT. OH! gentle shade,-reproach me not, However wild the revelry. For o'er the silent goblet, thou Art still remember'd,-and a cloud Comes o'er my heart, and o'er my brow; And I am lone, while all are loud. Reproach me not,-Reproach me not To think on joys which but have been ; Must haunt my life, and speed my fall! Some minds would struggle to forget, But mine would fain remember all! I think on thee,—I think and sigh,— That gives a loveliness to pain; 134 REPROACH ME NOT. But yet, ah! gentle saint, forgive The faults this wretched breast hath known! Had fate allow'd thee but to live, Those shadowing faults had ne'er been shown. Thy friends are fading from my sight, From this dark world,-since thou art gone! Thy picture! It is life,-health,-love,— O'er thy still 'semblance, charm'd from pain, That I have thought the living light Came beaming from those eyes again! In my dark heart thy image glows, In shape and light divinely fair;— In loneliness 'tis ne'er forgot,- AN ITALIAN BOAT SONG. BY E. L. BULWER. THE moon shines bright, As the stag bounds over the lea; Of the sailor's life, And we love our dark blue sea. Now high, now low, To the depths we go, Now rise on the surge again; We make a track O'er the ocean's back, And play with his hoary mane. Fearless we face The storm in its chase, When the dark clouds fly before it ; And meet the shock Of the fierce siroc, Though death breathes hotly o'er it. The landsman may quail Is the lot of the sailor boy. THE BRIDAL DIRGE. BY BARRY CORNWALL. THE bride is dead! The bride is dead! And the breeze above her sigheth, Once, but what can that avail,— Mourn! the sweetest bride is dead, And her knight is sick with sorrow, That her bloom is 'lapp'd in lead :' Yet he hopeth, fancy-fed, He may kiss his love to-morrow. But the breezes-what say they? "Fled away! Fled away! !". |