A LITTLE BOY LOST.

OUGHT loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to thought
A greater than itself to know.

“And, father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird

That picks up crumbs around the door."

The Priest sat by and heard the child;
In trembling zeal he seized his hair,

He led him by his little coat,

And all admired the priestly care

And standing on the altar high,

“Lo, what a fiend is here!" said he: "One who sets reason up for judge Of our most holy mystery."

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain :
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain,

And burned him in a holy place

Where many had been burned before;

The weeping parents wept in vain.

Are such things done on Albion's shore?

A LITTLE GIRL LOST.

HILDREN of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time

Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

In the age of gold,

Free from winter's cold,

Youth and maiden bright,

To the holy light,

Naked in the sunny beams delight.

Once a youthful pair,

Filled with softest care,
Met in garden bright

Where the holy light

Had just removed the curtains of the night.

Then, in rising day,

On the grass they play;

Parents were afar,

Strangers came not near,

And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

Tired with kisses sweet,.

They agree to meet

When the silent sleep

Waves o'er heaven's deep,

And the weary tired wanderers weep.

To her father white

Came the maiden bright;

But his loving look,

Like the holy book,

All her tender limbs with terror shook.

"Ona, pale and weak,

To thy father speak!
Oh the trembling fear!

Oh the dismal care

That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!"

A DIVINE IMAGE.

RUELTY has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,

The human heart its hungry gorge.

A CRADLE SONG.'

LEEP, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming in the joys of night;
Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.

Sweet babe, in thy face
Soft desires I can trace,
Secret joys and secret smiles,
Little pretty infant wiles.

As thy softest limbs I feel,
Smiles as of the morning steal
O'er thy cheek, and o'er thy breast
Where thy little heart doth rest.

Oh the cunning wiles that creep
In thy little heart asleep!
When thy little heart doth wake,
Then the dreadful light shall break.

1 This poem was not included in Blake's own edition of the Songs of Experience. But (as observed by D. G. Rossetti in Gilchrist's Life of Blake) it was obviously written to match with the Cradle Song pertaining to the Songs of Innocence, and here it finds its proper place.

THE SCHOOLBOY.

LOVE to rise on a summer morn,
When birds are singing on every

tree;

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

And the skylark sings with me:
Oh what sweet company!

But to go to school in a summer morn,—
Oh it drives all joy away!

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah then at times I drooping sit,

And spend many an anxious hour;
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,

Worn through with the dreary shower.

How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?

How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring?

father and mother, if buds are nipped,

And blossoms blown away;

And if the tender plants are stripped
Of their joy in the springing day,

By sorrow and care's dismay,