SONG.

I.

I SAW thee on thy bridal day,

When a burning blush came o'er thee; Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee:

II.

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on earth my aching sight

Of loveliness could see.

III.

That blush perhaps was maiden shame,

As such it well may pass,

Though its glow hath raised a fiercer flame In the breast of him, alas,

IV.

Who saw thee on that bridal day,

When that deep blush would come o'er thee; Though happiness around thee lay,

The world all love before thee.

TO M. L. S.

Of all who hail thy presence as the morning--
Of all to whom thine absence is the night-
The blotting utterly from out high heaven
The sacred sun-of all who, weeping, bless thee
Hourly for hope—for life—ah, above all,
For the resurrection of deep buried faith
In truth, in virtue, in humanity-

Of all who, on despair's unhallowed bed
Lying down to die, have suddenly arisen

At thy soft-murmured words, "Let there be light!"
At thy soft-murmured words that were fulfilled

In the seraphic glancing of thine eyes

Of all who owe thee most, whose gratitude

Nearest resembles worship,-oh, remember
The truest, the most fervently devoted,

And think that these weak lines are written by him--
By him who, as he pens them, thrills to think

His spirit is communing with an angel's.

ΤΟ HELEN.

HELEN, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy land!

Bell & Bain, Printers, Glasgow.