LOVE.

WE cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,

The reflex act of life; and when we bear
Our virtue outward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be

Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air,
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both
Make mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

HEAVEN AND EARTH.

'And there was silence in heaven for the space of half-an-hour.' Revelation.

GOD, who, with thunders and great voices kept
Beneath thy throne, and stars most silver-paced
Along the inferior gyres, and open-faced
Melodious angels round,-canst intercept
Music with music,-yet, at will, hast swept
All back, all back, (said he in Patmos placed)
To fill the heavens with silence of the waste
Which lasted half-an-hour!-lo, I who have wept
All day and night, beseech Thee by my tears,
And by that dread response of curse and groan
Men alternate across these hemispheres,
Vouchsafe us such a half-hour's hush alone,
In compensation for our stormy years!

As heaven has pausedfrom song, let earth, from moan.

THE PROSPECT.

METHINKS We do as fretful children do,

Leaning their faces on the window-pane

To sigh the glass dim with their own breath's stain,
And shut the sky and landscape from their view.
And thus, alas! since God the maker drew
A mystic separation 'twixt those twain,
The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,

We miss the prospect which we are called unto
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,
O man, my brother! hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul's large window pure from wrong,-
That so, as life's appointment issueth,

Thy vision may be clear to watch along
The sunset consummation-lights of death.

HUGH STUART BOYD.

HIS BLINDNESS.

GOD would not let the spheric Lights accost
This God-loved man, and bade the earth stand off
With all her beckoning hills, whose golden stuff
Under the feet of the royal sun is crossed.
Yet such things were to him not wholly lost,—
Permitted, with his wandering eyes light-proof,
To catch fair visions, rendered full enough
By many a ministrant accomplished ghost,—
Still seeing, to sounds of softly-turned book-leaves,
Sappho's crown-rose, and Meleager's spring,
And Gregory's starlight on Greek-burnished eves!
Till Sensuous and Unsensuous seemed one thing,
Viewed from one level,-earth's reapers at the sheaves
Scarce plainer than Heaven's angels on the wing!

HUGH STUART BOYD.*

HIS DEATH, 1848.

BELOVED friend, who living many years
With sightless eyes raised vainly to the sun,
Didst learn to keep thy patient soul in tune
To visible nature's elemental cheers!

God has not caught thee to new hemispheres
Because thou wast aweary of this one;-
I think thine angel's patience first was done,
And that he spake out with celestial tears,
'Is it enough, dear God? then lighten so
This soul that smiles in darkness!'

Stedfast friend,

Who never didst my heart or life misknow,
Nor either's faults too keenly apprehend,
How can I wonder when I see thee go
To join the Dead found faithful to the end?

HUGH STUART BOYD.

LEGACIES.

THREE gifts the Dying left me,-Eschylus
And Gregory Nazianzen, and a clock,
Chiming the gradual hours out like a flock
Of stars whose motion is melodious.

To whom was inscribed, in grateful affection, my poem of 'Cyprus Wine.' There comes a moment in life when even gratitude and affection turn to pain as they do now with me. This excellent and learned man, enthusiastic for the good and the beautiful, and one of the most simple and upright of human beings, passed out of his long darkness through death in the summer of 1848, Dr. Adam Clarke's daughter and biographer, Mrs. Smith, (happier, in this than the absent) fulfilling a doubly filial duty as she sate by the death-bed of her father's friend and hers.

VOL. II.-9

The books were those I used to read from, thus
Assisting my dear teacher's soul to unlock

The darkness of his eyes.

Now, mine they mock, Blinded in turn, by tears! now, murmurous

Sad echoes of my young voice, years agone Entoning from these leaves the Grecian phrase, Return and choke my utterance. Books, lie down In silence on the shelf there, within gaze;

And thou, clock, striking the hour's pulses on, Chime in the day which ends these parting days!

THE LOST BOWER.

I.

In the pleasant orchard closes,
'God bless all our gains,' say we;

But 'May God bless all our losses,'
Better suits with our degree.

Listen gentle-ay, and simple! listen children on the knee!

II.

Green the land is where my daily
Steps in jocund childhood played,
Dimpled close with hill and valley,
Dappled very close with shade;

Summer-snow of apple blossoms running up from

glade to glade.

III.

There is one hill I see nearer

In my vision of the rest;

And a little wood seems clearer

As it climbeth from the west,

Sideway from the tree-locked valley, to the airy upland crest.

IV.

Small the wood is, green with hazels,

And, completing the ascent,

Where the wind blows and sun dazzles

Thrills in leafy tremblement,

Like a heart that, after climbing, beateth quickly through content.

V.

Not a step the wood advances
O'er the open hill-top's bound.

There, in green arrest, the branches

See their image on the ground:

You may walk beneath them smiling, glad with sight and glad with sound.

VI.

For you harken on your right hand,
How the birds do leap and call

In the greenwood, out of sight and
Out of reach and fear of all;

And the squirrels crack the filberts through their cheerful madrigal.

VII.

On your left, the sheep are cropping
The slant grass and daisies pale,

And five apple-trees stand dropping

Separate shadows toward the vale,

Over which in choral silence, the hills look you their 'All hail!'