HOME.

MY WIFE'S A WINSOME WEE THING. But rather raised to be a nobler man,

And more divine in my humanity,

As knowing that the waiting eyes which scan
My life are lighted by a purer being,

And ask meek, calm-browed deeds, with it agree-
ing.

Our love is not a fading, earthly flower :
Its winged seed dropped down from Paradise,
And, nursed by day and night, by sun and
shower,

Doth momently to fresher beauty rise :

To us the leafless autumn is not bare,
Nor winter's rattling boughs lack lusty green.
Our summer hearts make summer's fulness, where
No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen:
For nature's life in love's deep life doth lie,
Love, whose forgetfulness is beauty's death,
Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I
Into the infinite freedom openeth,

And makes the body's dark and narrow grate
The wind-flung leaves of Heaven's palace-gate.

My Love, I have no fear that thou shouldst die; I THOUGHT our love at full, but I did err;
Albeit I ask no fairer life than this,

Whose numbering-clock is still thy gentle kiss,
While Time and Peace with hands unlockèd fly,-
Yet care I not where in Eternity

We live and love, well knowing that there is
No backward step for those who feel the bliss
Of Faith as their most lofty yearnings high :
Love hath so purified my being's core,
Meseems I scarcely should be startled, even,
To find, some morn, that thou hadst gone before;
Since, with thy love, this knowledge too was
given,

Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not

see

That sorrow in our happy world must be
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter.
But, as a mother feels her child first stir
Under her heart, so felt I instantly
Deep in my soul another bond to thee
Thrill with that life we saw depart from her;
O mother of our angel child! twice dear!
Death knits as well as parts, and still, I wis,
Her tender radiance shall infold us here,
Even as the light, borne up by inward bliss,

Which each calm day doth strengthen more and Threads the void glooms of space without a fear,

more,

That they who love are but one step from Heaven.

To print on farthest stars her pitying kiss.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWEll.

I CANNOT think that thou shouldst pass away,

Whose life to mine is an eternal law,
A piece of nature that can have no flaw,
A new and certain sunrise every day;
But, if thou art to be another ray
About the Sun of Life, and art to live
Free from all of thee that was fugitive,
The debt of Love I will more fully pay,

ADAM TO EVE.

FROM "PARADISE LOST," BOOK IX.

O FAIREST of creation, last and best
Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled
Whatever can to sight or thought be formed,
Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!
How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,
Defaced, deflowered, and now to death devote!

Not downcast with the thought of thee so high, Rather, how hast thou yielded to transgress

The strict forbiddance, how to violate

The sacred fruit forbidden! Some cursèd fraud
Of enemy hath beguiled thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die.

How can I live without thee, how forego
Thy sweet converse, and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

However, I with thee have fixed my lot,
Certain to undergo like doom; if death
Consort with thee, death is to me as life;
So forcible within my heart I feel
The bond of nature draw me to my own,
My own in thee, for what thou art is mine;
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,
One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.

MILTON.

"Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply

I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

“O, that,” she said, "is no reason! Such knots. If a man finds a woman too fair, he means

are quickly undone,

simply adapted too much

To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise! - shall
I thank you for such?

"Too fair? - not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,

I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop You attain to it, straightway you call us no

stroke's fatal at times.

rings still from the limes."

longer too fair, but too vile.

If two should smell it, what matter? who grum- I must utter, though womanly custom would set bles, and where's the pretence?"

"But I," he replied, "have promised another, when love was free,

"You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.

To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matme."

ter! I've broken the thing.

I pray your attention ! a poor word in my head

I have

it down better unsaid.

"You did me the honor, perhaps, to be moved | And all stood back, and none my right denied, at my side now and then And forth we walked: the world was free and wide In the senses, a vice, I have heard, which is Before us. Since that day common to beasts and some men.

I count my life: the Past is washed away.

It was no dream, that vow :

It was the voice that woke me from a dream,

A happy dream, I think; but I am waking now,
And drink the splendor of a sun supreme
That turns the mist of former tears to gold.
Within these arms I hold

The fleeting promise, chased so long in vain :
Ah, weary bird! thou wilt not fly again:
Thy wings are clipped, thou canst no more de-
part,

Thy nest is builded in my heart!

I was the crescent; thou

About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, The silver phantom of the perfect sphere,

betray, and supplant,

Held in its bosom: in one glory now
Our lives united shine, and many a year-

"I determined to prove to yourself that, what- Not the sweet moon of bridal only

e'er you might dream or avow

One lustre, ever at the full, shall be:

we

By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me One pure and rounded light, one planet whole, than you have now.

"There! Look me full in the face! - in the

face. Understand, if you can,

That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

'Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar,

One life developed, one completed soul !
For I in thee, and thou in me,
Unite our cloven halves of destiny.

God knew his chosen time.

He bade me slowly ripen to my prime,
And from my boughs withheld the promised fruit,
Till storm and sun gave vigor to the root.
Secure, O Love! secure

Thy blessing is: I have thee day and night:

You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for Thou art become my blood, my life, my light :

the women we are.

God's mercy thou, and therefore shalt endure.

BAYARD TAYLOR.

THE DAY RETURNS, MY BOSOM BURNS.
THE day returns, my bosom burns,

The blissful day we twa did meet ;
Though winter wild in tempest toiled,

Ne'er summer sun was half sae sweet.
Than a' the pride that loads the tide,
And crosses o'er the sultry line,
Than kingly robes, and crowns and globes,
Heaven gave me more; it made thee mine.

While day and night can bring delight,
Or nature aught of pleasure give,
While joys above my mind can move,
For thee and thee alone I live;
When that grim foe of life below

Comes in between to make us part,
The iron hand that breaks our band,
It breaks my bliss, it breaks my heart.

ROBERT BURNS.