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THE WINTER SPEEDWELL.

YE wintry flowers, whose pensive dyes
Wake when the summer's lily sleeps!
Ye are like orphans, in whose eyes

Their low-laid mother's beauty weeps.

Oh, not like stars that come at eve,

Through dim clouds glimmering one by one, And teach the failing heart to grieve, Because another day is gone!

But like the hopes that linger yet
Upon the grave of sorrow's love,
And dare Affection to forget

The form below, the soul above;

Or like the thoughts that bid Despair
Repose in faith on Mercy's breast;
Givers of wings-from toil and care-
To fly away and be at rest!

A GHOST AT NOON.

THE day was dark, save when the beam
Of noon through darkness broke;
In gloom I sate, as in a dream,
Beneath my orchard oak;

Lo! splendour, like a spirit, came,

A shadow like a tree!

While there I sat, and named her name, Who once sat there with me.

I started from the seat in fear;
I look'd around in awe;
But saw no beauteous spirit near,
Though all that was I saw;

The seat, the tree, where oft, in tears,

She mourn'd her hopes o'erthrown,

Her joys cut off in early years,

Like gather'd flowers half-blown.

Again the bud and breeze were met,
But Mary did not come;

And e'en the rose, which she had set,
Was fated ne'er to bloom!

The thrush proclaim'd, in accents sweet, The winter's reign was o'er ;

The bluebells throng'd around my feet, But Mary came no more.

I think, I feel-but when will she
Awake to thought again?

A voice of comfort answers me,
That God does nought in vain :
He wastes nor flower, nor bud, nor leaf,
Nor wind, nor cloud, nor wave;

And will He waste the hope which grief
Hath planted in the grave?

SONG.

LIKE a rootless rose or lily;
Like a sad and life-long sigh;
Like a bird pursued and weary,
Doom'd to flutter till it die;
Landless, restless, joyless, hopeless,
Gasping still for bread and breath,
To their graves by trouble hunted,
Albion's helots toil for death.

Tardy day of hoarded ruin,
Wild Niagara of blood!
Coming sea of headlong millions,
Vainly seeking work and food!
Why is famine reaped for harvest?
Planted curses always grow;

Where the plough makes want its symbol,
Fools will gather as they sow.

SONG.

SLEEP, sleep my love! thy gentle bard
Shall wake, his fever'd maid to guard:

The moon in heaven rides high;
The dim stars through thy curtains peep;
Whilst thou, poor sufferer, triest to sleep,
They hear thy feeble cry.

She sleeps! but pain, though baffled, streaks, With intermitting blush, her cheeks,

And haunts her troubled dream: Yet shalt thou wake to health, my love, And seek again the bluebell'd grove

And music-haunted stream.

HE WENT.

He left me sad, and cross'd the deep,
A home for me to seek;

He never will come back again;
My heart, my heart will break!
To see me toil for scanty food,
He could not bear, he said,
But promised to come back again,
His faithful Ann to wed.

Bad men had turn'd into a hell

The country of his birth;

And he is gone who should have stay'd
To make it heaven on earth:

A heaven to me it would have been
Had he remain'd with me;

O bring my William back again,
Thou wild heart-breaking sea!

He should have stay'd to overthrow
The men who do us wrong;
When such as he fly far away,

They make oppressors strong:

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