The burden of the mystery of my heart,

And all that burns within

perchance to burn

Until that heart shall be of earth,* or bathed
In some sweet dews † of heaven, or yet again
Baptized in fire, § its element and life.
Nor solace only had I sought in her,

But something higher: in that breast I found,
I felt, a high, free heart that beat for truth
And right and freedom, and, so gentle still, ||
With quiet scorn and holy hate of all
The falsehood and oppressions of the earth;
A heart as true as heroine dedicate
To a high purpose and a glorious hope,

+

"I tell thee that this poor scorned heart
Is of thine earth, thine earth a part.
It cannot love thee now."

E. BARRETT BROWNING.

"Von allem Wissenqualm entladen

In deinem Thau gesund mich baden."— Faust.

"I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!"— Luke xii. 50.

§ "And with fire."- Matt. iii. 11.

"I know a wench of excellent discourse;

Pretty and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle."

Comedy of Errors.

D

To a true champion's purpose, hopes, and fates;-
A woman's and a martyr's spirit, true

Through all the war of life, and in his peace

Beyond it - true to him and to his grave.

I saw her such; and if but in a dream,

*

It was a waking dream: not the fond heart's
Alone I dwelt on that fair thing, my thought,
Within my purer mind. And was she not
All like her soul-breathed strains, her heavenly
song?

Her vocal spirit winged the thrilling air,

Laden with sweetness, winged it up to heaven,
Into the heaven of heavens, and bore afar
With her the rapt one who with her explored
The heaven of immortality and love,

And heard the choral seraphim, evoked

And led by her—heard all, saw her alone.

How had I glorified thee, had I been
Inspired as who but by those eyes might be !

* "Such a man were one for whom a woman's heart should beat constant while he breathes, and break when he dies. She spoke with so much energy that the water sparkled in her eyes, and her cheek coloured with the vehemence of her feelings."- Peveril of the Peak.

I would weave amaranth with the rose for thee,
And o'er thy dark, fire-darting glances wreath
The lightnings that the eagle Genius wields;
And Southern constellations and the North
Should yield their fairest, brightest flowers to gem
A starry aureole for those locks of gold.

And thou should'st sit, like " that starred Queen,"

among

"The splendours of the firmament of Time,"
The Leonora or the Beatrice,

Hymned in high lays, perhaps long resonant
Through distant days; in song enshrining half
Thy beauty, and in song exalting thee,
Thou soul of song-a sweet theme wafted far
By heavenly voices, blent with heavenly strains
Of the then music; breathed with art like thine-
That heaven-evoking, heaven-creating art

Of song and music

and in heavenly hearts,

Fair bosoms, echoing. Into that thy sphere
Of song and music thou should'st so have been
Exalted, the Cecilia of the heart.

I gazed, and saw thee of th' angelic choir
Of earth's high saints and heroines who to us
Are as the stars, the far celestial spheres ;
And of the sweeter still and lovelier, whom

We yet more love· the heroines of the heart,
Once of the world, and ever of the sky,

Or born of thoughts of beauty, deemed "ideal."

Ah! let me muse on them.

I see them.

Now

I repossess the thoughts of many an hour
Of inner vision, many a beauteous thing
Of song or story, rising real within,

And bodied forth, where Shakspeare,* Eschylus,
Scott, Schiller, and the spells of that romance ‡
Of France and Revolution, made the place
Enchanted ground · my study once -or in
My mountain musings, when my swelling heart
Sought open air, or by the murmuring brook,
Or in the brooding forest, or along

The boundless swell of ocean.

* Helena (both), Portia, Beatrice, Viola, Isabella, Miranda, Juliet, Imogen, Cordelia; and Cressida, and Cleopatra.

+ Julia Mannering, Isabella Wardour, Di Vernon, Edith Bellenden, Annot Lyle, Rebecca, Catherine Seyton, Fenella, Clara Mowbray.

Histoire des Girondins.

Let me dream.

'Tis Juliet at the window, leaning, sighing*
A sweet night-flower, all opening to the night.f
'Tis Juliet in the early morning, clinging

Round him, while she still hears, and still will hear,
The nightingale, and will not hear the lark.

I see the long fair locks and form like thine-
I see that lovely lady - all like thee-
I see her, in the sunset glow, half kneeling,
Half lying there, before the altar laid. ‡

I see that fair Louisa, with her book,§

*

"Juliet leaning

Amid her window-flowers,* — sighing."— KEATS.

+ See Act iii. sc. 2.

"Es war eine Dame

Nein! Ich hatte bis auf diesen Augenblick dies
Geschlecht nie gesehen!

Mit unaussprechlicher Anmuth —halb knieend,
halb liegend-war sie vor einem Altare hinge-
gossen."-SCHILLER, Der Geisterse her.

§ SCHILLER, Kabale und Liebe, 1 akt. 2 scene.

* "Whatever is most intoxicating in the odour of a southern spring, languishing in the song of the nightingale, or voluptuous on the first opening of the rose, is breathed into this poem," &c.—A. W. V. SCHLEGEL.