FLORENCE DELMAR, UNDER A FICTITIOUS NARRATIVE, TAXES HER SUITOR WITH HIS ESTRANGED AFFECTION .

Tem. What moves you thus?
Flo. That which I read. And yet,
'Tis a stale sorrow; but a woman's wrong.
Tem. You give these moods of sentiment, these dreams
Of fancy too much sway. I pray you, Florence,
Follow example and conform your course
To custom, and the fashion of the times.
What air-spun grief o'erwrought you?
Flo. I have said,

LAURA HALLERTON, A WOMAN OF FASHION, STRIVES TO WIN THE AFFECTIONS OF TEMPLE FROM FLORENCE DELMAR .

Tem. I cannot bar her image from my thought.
Here too has art shaped in her costlier mould,
The vision of the Carthaginian Queen.
O stone! Thou hast more life than breathing forms,
Save her thou copiest. What sorcery
Masters my will and conscience? In this frame
Two lives are struggling. Now the syren's strain
Allures me unresisting, and anon,
Between its pauses, glides a purer sound,

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem
Her white showery petals; none regarded them;
The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;
Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.

Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,
Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light:

XI.

" Yet bitter days, methinks, have earned
A right to pluck with tears,
The flower that my rugged way
With God's own promise cheers;
And I will live one hour with thee,
To soothe my coming years.

XII.

" And if there be a future home,
As saintly hearts believe,
Where kindred souls with Freedom crowned,
Earth's destinies retrieve,
By the delight that fills us now,

I.

I N Life's divine and wondrous song,
Youth's invocation swells
To Manhood's warfare fierce and vain,
Which Age serenely tells;
Yet blissful moments intervene.
Where Eden's glory dwells.

II.

And these the bard should ever strive,
By numbers sweet and terse,
To consecrate for other souls
In his melodious verse;
Then list, while I, with humble zeal,
One episode rehearse.

I wander forth. About my feet
The sward is fresh and doubly sweet
The loved air on my salvid brow.
Be still. Be still. For hearken: now
A second voice behind the grove
Uprises tremulous with love.
How hushed, how moody is the strain!
Pleading — O, surely, not in vain!
Sombrely rises every note,
Lingers, and in dark dells remote
Echoes until another come.

Philomel herself falls dumb.

Philomel herself falls dumb,
Mindful of her shadowy home;
Of a slowly falling surge
Sounding its unending dirge

Forth from the forest wend I slowly,
While in my ears yet rings the holy
Dithyramb. The noon is past,
But the sun rages. There is cast
A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.
Down to the river then will I,
Slowly about its depths to swim,
While the stream fondles every limb
And soothes its ache. Deep I will dip,
And, blowing, raise my locks, that drip
Till the slim Hyads troop to see,
And revel, too, and play with me,
Hanging my ears with humid weed
Or mounting me as water steed.
Then, musing I will on, and so

Now plunge I into deepest woods,
Where everlastingly there broods
Such quiet and glamour as must be
Beneath the threshing upper sea.
Here burns no sun, but tawny light
Pervades the vistas still and bright
Of mazy boles and fallen leaves. . . .
I press yet on. At length there cleaves
The twilit hush a pillared gleam.
The leafed floor rises. 'Tis a beam
Of sunlight fallen in a dell
Beyond the mound. There will I dwell,
Soothed by sunned quietude. For there
A carved rock spouts and moists the air

The Naiads . Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses lightlier run
Than the traceries of the sun
By the lolling water cast
Up grey precipices vast,
Lifting smooth and warm and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters,
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters.
Are but the echoes of the deep

I know a spot
Where, to the sound of water sighing,
The Naiads, when the sun is lying
Heavy on mead and fronded tree,
When birds are silent and the bee
Swoons in the dewed heart of the rose,
Sing hushedly.
I will repose
Upon its banks and to the spring
An answer make with hands that cling
Over this lost lyre's murmurous chords
And with their voiced quiet mingle words
Such as my shrouded soul affords
When the warm blood within my veins
Throbs heavily, and the noon sun reigns,
Who would heaven and earth unite