SWEET THINGS.

'TIS sweet to hear,

At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep, The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep; 'Tis sweet to see the evening star appear;

'Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. 'Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark

Our coming, and look brighter when we come;

'Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark,

Or lulled by falling waters; sweet the hum
Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds,
The lisp of children, and their earliest words.
Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes
In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth,
Purple and gushing; sweet are our escapes
From civic revelry to rural mirth;
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps;
Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth;
Sweet is revenge-especially to women,
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen.
Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet

The unexpected death of some old lady
Or gentleman of seventy years complete,

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Who've made us youth" wait too, too long already For an estate, or cash, or country-seat,—

Still breaking, but with stamina so steady,
That all the Israelites are fit to mob its
Next owner for their double-damned post-obits.
'Tis sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels,
By blood or ink; 'tis sweet to put an end
To strife; 'tis sometimes sweet to have our quarrels,
Particularly with a tiresome friend;
Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels ;

Dear is the helpless creature we defend
Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot
We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot.

Byron.

BROKEN FRIENDSHIP.

ALAS! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth;

But constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny and youth is vain;
And to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spake words of high disdain,

And insult to his heart's best brother;
They parted-ne'er to meet again!

But never either found another
To free the hollow heart from paining;
They stood aloof, the scars remaining
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder:
A dreary sea now floats between-
But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.

Coleridge.

ODE TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

OH for a draught of vintage that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sun-burnt mirth.
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the blue, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret,

Here, where men sit, and hear each other groan ;

Where palsy shakes a few sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies, Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs,

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new love pine again before to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy,

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards : Already with thee! tender is the night,

And happy the Queen Moon is on her throne,

Clustered around by all her starry fays;

But here there is no light,

Save what from heaven is by the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But in embalmèd darkness guess each sweet,

Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ;
White hawthorn and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves,
And Mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen, and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath.
Now more than ever seems it sweet to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul on high
In such an ecstasy!

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain,
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn,

The same that oft times hath

Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.

Forlorn!-the very sound is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self:
Adieu !-the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.

Adieu !-adieu! Thy plaintive anthem fades-
Past the near meadows-over the still stream-

Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep

In the next valley's glades:

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music! Do I wake or sleep?-Keats.

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CARPE DIEM.

LET not the frowns of fate

Disquiet thee, my friend;

Nor, when she smiles on thee, do thou, elate,
With vaunting thoughts ascend

Beyond the limits of becoming mirth;

For, Dellius, thou must die, become a clod of earth!

Whether thy days go down

In gloom and dull regrets,

Or shunning life's vain struggle for renown,

Its fever and its frets,

Stretched on the grass, with old Falernian wine,
Thou giv'st the thoughtless hours a rapture all divine.

Where the tall spreading pine

And white-leaved poplar grow,

And, mingling their broad boughs in leafy twine,

A grateful shadow throw,

Where down its broken bed the wimpling stream

Writhes on its sinuous way with many a quivering gleam,

There wine, there perfumes bring,

Bring garlands of the rose,

Fair and too short-lived daughter of the spring,

While youth's bright current flows

Within thy veins,-ere yet hath come the hour

When the dread Sisters Three shall clutch thee in their power.

Thy woods, thy treasured pride,

Thy mansion's pleasant seat,

Thy lawns washed by the Tiber's yellow tide,

Each favourite retreat,

Thou must leave all-all, and thine heir shall run

In riot through the wealth thy years of toil have won.

It recks not whether thou

Be opulent and trace

Thy birth from kings, or bear upon thy brow

Stamp of a beggar's race;

In rags or splendour, death at thee alike,

That no compassion hath for aught of earth, will strike.

One road, and to one bourne

We all are gcaded.

Late

Or soon will issue from the urn

Of unrelenting Fate

The lot, that in yon bark exiles us all

To undiscovered shores, from which is no recall.

Horace (trans. Theo. Martin).

FROM COLERIDGE'S "CHRISTABEL."

THE night is chill, the forest bare ;
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
There is not wind enough in the air
To move away the ringlet curl
From the lovely lady's cheek;
There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

Hush! beating heart of Christabel !
Jesu Maria shield her well!

She foldeth her arms beneath her cloak,
And stole to the other side of the oak.
What sees she there?

There she sees a damsel bright,
Dressed in a silken robe of white,
That shadowy in the moonlight shone :
The neck that made that white robe wan,
Her stately neck and arms were bare ;
Her blue-veined feet unsandalled were;
And wildly glittered here and there
The gems entangled in her hair.
I guess 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she-
Beautiful exceedingly!

WASTED YOUTH.

BUT now at thirty years my hair is gray-
(I wonder what it would be like at forty!

I thought of a peruke the other day)—

My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I Have squandered my whole summer while 'twas May, And feel no more the spirit to retort; I

Have spent my life, both interest and principal,
And deem not, what I deemed, my soul invincible.

No more-no more-Oh never more on me
The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,
Which out of all the lovely things we see
Extracts emotions beautiful and new,
Hived in our bosoms like the bag o' the bee,
Think'st thou the honey with these objects grew?
Alas! 'twas not in them, but in thy power

To double even the sweetness of a flower.