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INDIAN.

And thou lovest not?

If so Young as thou art, thou canst afford to weep.

LADY.

Oh! would that I could claim exemption
From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
I loved, I love, and when I love no more
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair
To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
The shadow of his presence made my world
A paradise. All familiar things he touched,
All common words he spoke, became to me
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
He came, and went, and left me what I am.
Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
Have sat together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
Strewn by the nurslings that linger there,
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson
snow,

Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own.

INDIAN.

Your breath is like soft music, your words are The echoes of a voice which on my heart

Sleeps like a melody of early days. But as you said—

LADY.

He was so awful, yet

So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
Soothes the unquiet sea :--and yet not so,
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
But he was not of them, nor they of him,
But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
More need was there I should be innocent,
More need that I should be most true and kind,
And much more need that there should be found one
To share remorse, and scorn, and solitude,
And all the ills that wait on those who do
The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
He fled, and I have followed him.

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MISCELLANEOUS.

ΤΟ

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THE INVITATION.

BEST and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which like thee to those in sorrow
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough year just awake
In its cradle on the brake.

The brightest hour of unborn spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found it seems the haleyon morn,
To hoar February born;
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free;
And waked to music all their fountains,
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May,

Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs-
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress

Its music, lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind,
While the touch of Nature's art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor :-
"I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields ;-
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside of Sorrow.-
You with the unpaid bill, Despair,
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave.-
Expectation too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough;
Hope in pity mock not woe

With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment good
After long pain-with all your love,
This you never told me of."

Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake! arise! and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
To the pools where winter rains
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be
And the sandhills of the sea,
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets,
And wind-flowers and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue,
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dim and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous
Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one,
In the universal sun.

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The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play,
And on the bosom of the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay;

It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise.

п.

We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.

And soothed by every azure breath,
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree tops lay asleep,

Like green waves on the sea,
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean woods may be.

ΙΠ.

How calm it was !-the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy wood-pecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;

The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,

To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced,

A spirit interfused around

A thrilling silent life,

To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife ;And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there,

Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere.

IV.

We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough,

Each seemed as 'twere a little sky
Gulfed in a world below;

A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay,

More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day

In which the lovely forests grew,

As in the upper air,

More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there.

There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn
And through the dark green wood

The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.

Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen,

Were imaged by the water's love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,

An atmosphere without a breath,
A softer day below.

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Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now reigns vanity-in nine years more
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound as an orphan's cry,
The patience of the great Avenger's ear.

THIRD SPEAKER (a youth).

Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see,
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden

By God or man ;-'tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream

From which men wake as from a paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?

Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the

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And open-eyed conspiracy, lie sleeping
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship him who giveth joys
With his own gift.

SECOND SPEAKER.

How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this grey world! Canst thou not think
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor?

The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done;
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
My inn of lasting rest, but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.

*

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FIRST SPEAKER.

That

Is the Archbishop.

SECOND SPEAKER.

*

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