The flowers you gave, dear girl, will fade,
Nor shun the common lot, to die;
The thoughts they spoke, still undecayed,
Shall bloom immortal as the sky.

Beneath the sun's meridian ray,
They'll fade and leave no trace behind:
The love they woke shall ne'er decay,
But be immortal like the Mind.

I dreamed last night, my lady-love,
A dear, delicious dream;
'Twas not in bower or blooming grove,
Nor by the sylvan stream.

'Twas in thy father's noble hall,
In dreams I saw thee, lady love!
Yet 'twas no gorgeous festival,
No flowers beneath--no lights above.

It was a sacred, simple scene,
Thy smiling sisters gathered round,
With kindly air, and gentle mien,
And spoke--a magic, home-born sound!

Then thou and I, sweet lady-love!
Roved out amid the garden green,
Whilst Day and Night together strove,

'Twas evening's hour of magic power,
The sun went brightly down,
And shadows fell as with a spell,
Along the mountains brown.

On high the sky, with gorgeous dye,
Then glittered bright and wide,
And westward far, the evening star,
Came trembling like a bride.

The birds did chime their drowsy rhyme,
As day was getting o'er,
The rippling wave, did sweetly lave
The winding, pebbly shore.

There walked beside that crystal tide,
Fair Holston's lovely stream,
My lady bright, at soft twilight,
In beauty's matchless gleam.

When Hesper shows his rosiate lamp of love,
High in yon lofty arch of dewy blue;
When gentle dews distilling from above,
Sparkle upon the spreading grass and groves of yew--
When sinks to rest the faintly murmuring breeze,
And dim and indistinct the landscape view--
Lonely I stray among the poplar trees
And muse, dear Eleanor, dear love, on you.

When Luna looks upon yon mountains brown,
And gilds the winding stream with silvery hue,
And Silence, like a fall of whitest down,
Falls where the sylphs their elfin dance renew

The fairest of our village maids,
Was blue-eyed Lilly May;
Her brow was decked with golden curls,
Her laugh was wild and gay:
And spotless as a ray of heaven,
Young love within her lay.

The rose which decked the fairy vale,
Near by our rural town,
Showed not a deeper tint of blood,
Than dyed her cheeks of down,
And innocence like that of heaven,
Her fair, young head did crown.

Oh Lilly May! Oh! Lilly May!
My heart was all thine own,
Earth ne'er gave me a sweeter sound,
Than thy low, loving tone;

The Summer's sunset throws a tender spell,
Along the hills, o'er ocean's softened swell;
The God of day goes flaming down the sky,
And zephyr floats on perfumed pinions by.
Oh! who can gaze upon this gorgeous sight,
Nor feel his bosom chain'd by deep delight,
This hour when beauty wears her richest dye,
And love o'erflows charmed ocean, earth and sky;
Till fancy, dreaming in her lovely bower,
Hears far off strains of deep, o'erwhelming power,
And, lifting up her pensive orbs above,
Spies Angels winging through yon vault of love,

Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams,
Still debating, still delay,
And the world's a ghost that gleams -
Wavers--vanishes away!

We must live while live we can;
We should love while love we may.
Dread in women, doubt in man . . .
So the Infinite runs away.

The twilight fleeted away in pearl on the stream,
And night, like a diamond dome, stood still in our dream.
Your eyes like burnished stones or as stars were bright
With the sudden vision that made us one with the night.

We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting here
The breasts that were lit with life and the lips so near;
Till the wizard willows waved in the wind and drew
Me away from the fulness of love and down to you.

Our love was so vast that it filled the heavens up:
But the soft white form I held was an empty cup,

The level sands and grey,
Stretch leagues and leagues away,
Down to the border line of sky and foam,
A spark of sunset burns,
The grey tide-water turns,
Back, like a ghost from her forbidden home!

Here, without pyre or bier,
Light Love was buried here,
Alas, his grave was wide and deep enough,
Thrice, with averted head,
We cast dust on the dead,
And left him to his rest. An end of Love.

"No stone to roll away,
No seal of snow or clay,
Only soft dust above his wearied eyes,
But though the sudden sound
Of Doom should shake the ground,

Of woman was I born, and man I am.
I come to teach the greatest, yet the most meek
Of all true lessons which man e'er can learn--
God's man was made to love, and nought to hate,
Except the Ill which God and angels hate.
Oh! this grand lore hath fallen on my heart
Like smiling sunlight on a gloomy ocean.
Oft have I heard and felt great throbs of love
Vibrating through the universe of worlds,
Through every grain of matter, through the hearts
That live and swarm beneath the eye of God.
Oft standing mid the holy calm of night,