LOVE, THE AWAKENER.

Love, through the stars, swoop'd down the violet sky; His flaming feet caught at a fountain-brim ; And crouching there, sweet taper limb to limb, He stood his rebeck on his moonlit thigh, : Toss'd back his pinions, wreath'd in pansied rim, Shaking off silver, and stroked out thereby His twinkling strings to swooning harmony; And tinseling sprays the fountain spill'd on him.

Anear, through a low window left unclose,
The sound stole on through breathing trails of rose,
And kiss'd the sleeping courtier's comely head;
Who, starting up, felt all his soul on fire,
Rack'd and rent back by some sad strange desire,

And sleep for ever banish'd from his bed.

BAGATELLES.

THE wanton bee that suck'd the rose
Has loved a leaf away ;

The love that in my bosom glows
Must stay, and stay, and stay.

And when the rose began to die,
The bee ran up away;
But Kitty in my love shall lie
Beyond the dying day.

FOR Kitty has a golden head
As never stood on stalk or stem,
Nor Solomon's seal so dainty set,
Nor burning star of Bethlehem,

And Solomon's in the strange old story,

And Bethlehem's in the new,

And Kitty in her golden glory

Is my religion too.

I'd like to be the lavender

That makes her linen sweet,

And swoon and sweeten in her breast, And faint around her feet.

She'd hardly think of me at all,
And shake out lawn and sheet;

And yet I'd be the lavender,

And make her linen sweet.

To you who have no thought of God,
What fear is there of thunder?

And you who never saw her face,
What want of love or wonder?

For like as lightning strikes one dead To clangs of God's cithole,

Her face so rose-bud rare and red

Strikes life into my soul !

CHELSEA.

AND life is like a pipe,

And love is the fusee;

The pipe draws well, but bar the light,
And what's the use to me?

So light it up, and puff away

An empty morning through,

And when it's out-why love is out,

And life's, as well out too!

THE lords of state, and the thieving sparrows,
Have settled noisily back to town;

The girls with flowers and shrill calabrians
Drone in the distance, up and down.

I cannot write, or read, or practise;
I sit and grumble and curse the May;
The lime's one legion of smelling blossom,
And hides her windows over the way.

TRAGEDIES.

SHE was a dancer,-I was her master;
Our troupe was rollicking on at the fair :
She and a stranger bit at one sweeting,-
A large pale-green one ripe for eating.

(She has soft brown eyes and soft brown hair)— 'Twas down at the back of the booth, my sweeting, You never knew I was there!

My brain was fire. At fall of night,

By a great black cedar, dagger'd dead,
She lay, turn'd clear to the wind's quick cries,
In the long grass writhing with flamed fire-flies,

And the white stars shrinking, high overhead.
And he was dreaming of paradise,

In a laughing wanton's bed!