HEY may rail at this life-from the hour I began it, I found it a life full of kindness and bliss; And, until they can show me some happier planet, More social and bright, I'll content me with this. As long as the world has such lips and such eyes, As before me this moment enraptured I see, They may say what they will of their orbs in the skies, But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me. In Mercury's star, where each moment can bring them In that star of the west, by whose shadowy splendour But tho' they were even more bright than the queen As for those chilly orbs on the verge of creation, Oh! think what a world we should have of it here, And leave earth to such spirits as you, love, and me. THE DAY-DREAM. HEY both were hush'd, the voice, the chords,— And few the notes, and few the words, Traces remember'd here and there, Like echoes of some broken strain ; Links of a sweetness lost in air, That nothing now could join again. Ev'n these, too, ere the morning, fled; And though the charm still linger'd on, That o'er each sense her song had shed, The song itself was faded, gone ; Gone, like the thoughts that once were ours, In vain, with hints from other strains, In vain :-the song that Sappho gave, At length, one morning, as I lay In that half-waking mood, when dreams Unwillingly at last give way To the full truth of daylight's beams, A face the very face, methought, From which had breath'd, as from a shrine Of song and soul, the notes I soughtCame with its music close to mine; And sung the long-lost measure o’er,— Like parted souls, when, mid the Blest Nor even in waking did the clue, Thus strangely caught, escape again; For never lark its matins knew So well as now I knew this strain. And oft, when memory's wondrous spell I sing this lady's song, and tell The vision of that morning hour. |