FAIRY LAND.

DIM vales-and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,

Whose forms we can't discover
For the tears that drip all over
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again-again-again—

Every moment of the night—
Forever changing places-

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.

About twelve by the moon-dial

One more filmy than the rest

(A kind which, upon tria,

They have found to be the best)

Comes down-still down-and down
With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain's eminence,
While its wide circumference

In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,

Wherever they may be―

O'er the strange woods-o'er the sea

Over spirits on the wing-
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light—

And then, how deep!-O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,

With the tempests as they toss,
Like almost any thing-
Or a yellow Albatross.

They use that moon no more
For the same end as before--
Videlicet a tent-

Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,

Of which those butterflies,
Of Earth, who seek the skis,
And so come down again
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

THE LAKE-TO

THE LAKE-TO

In spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less-
So lovely was the loneliness

Of a wild lake, with black rock bouna,
And the tall pines that towered around.

But when the Night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody-

Then-ah then I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.

Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight-

A feeling not the jewelled mine

Could teach or bribe me to define

Nor Love-although the Love were thine.

Death was in that poisonous wave,

And in its gulf a fitting grave

For him who thence could solace bring

To his lone imagining—

Whose solitary soul could make

An Eden of that dim lake.

SONG.

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:

And in thine eye a kindling light

(Whatever it might be)

Was all on Earth my aching sight

Of Loveliness could see.

That blush, perhaps, was maiden shame-
As such it well may pass-

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

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

Or 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 the 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.