If, when this dust to dust restored,
My soul shall float on airy wing,
How shall thy glorious name adored
Inspire her feeble voice to sing!

But, if this fleeting spirit share

With clay the grave's eternal bed,
While life yet throbs I raise my prayer,
Though doomed no more to quit the dead.

To Thee I breathe my humble strain,
Grateful for all thy mercies past,

And hope, my God, to thee again
This erring life may fly at last.

FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

IN moments to delight devoted,

"My life!" with tend'rest tone, you cry: Dear words! on which my heart had doted, If youth could neither fade nor die. To death even hours like these must roll. Ah! then repeat those accents never, Or change "my life!" into "my soul!" Which, like my love, exists for ever.

CHURCHILL'S GRAVE.

A FACT LITERALLY RENDERed.

I STOOD beside the grave of him who blazed
The comet of a season, and I saw

The humblest of all sepulchres, and gazed
With not the less of sorrow and of awe
On that neglected turf and quiet stone,
With name no clearer than the names unknown,
Which lay unread around it; and I asked
The Gardener of that ground, why it might be
That for this plant strangers his memory tasked
Through the thick deaths of half a century;
And thus he answered - "Well, I do not know
Why frequent travellers turn to pilgrims so;
He died before my day of Sextonship,
And I had not the digging of this grave."
And is this all? I thought, — and do we rip
The veil of Immortality? and crave
I know not what of honor and of light
Through unborn ages, to endure this blight?
So soon and so successless? As I said,
The Architect of all on which we tread,
For Earth is but a tombstone, did essay
To extricate remembrance from the clay,
Whose minglings might confuse a Newton's thought
Were it not that all life must end in one,

Of which we are but dreamers; - as he caught
As 't were the twilight of a former Sun,

Thus spoke he, "I believe the man of whom You wot, who lies in this selected tomb,

Was a most famous writer in his day,

And therefore travellers step from out their way To pay him honor, and myself whate'er

Your honor pleases,"

then most pleased I shook

From out my pocket's avaricious nook

Some certain coins of silver, which as 't were
Perforce I gave this man, though I could spare
So much but inconveniently;- Ye smile,
I see ye, ye profane ones! all the while,
Because my homely phrase the truth would tell.
You are the fools, not I - for I did dwell
With a deep thought, and with a softened eye,
On that Old Sexton's natural homily,

In which there was Obscurity and Fame,
The Glory and the Nothing of a Name.

STANZAS TO THE RIVER PO.

RIVER, that rollest by the ancient walls,
Where dwells the lady of my love, when she
Walks by thy brink, and there perchance recalls
A faint and fleeting memory of me;

What if thy deep and ample stream should be
A mirror of my heart, where she may read
The thousand thoughts I now betray to thee,
Wild as thy wave, and headlong as thy speed!

What do I say - - a mirror of my heart?

Are not thy waters sweeping, dark and strong? Such as my feelings were and are, thou art;

And such as thou art were my passions long.

Time may have somewhat tamed them, - not for ever,

Thou overflow'st thy banks, and not for aye

Thy bosom overboils, congenial river!

Thy floods subside, and mine have sunk away.

But left long wrecks behind, and now again,
Borne in our old unchanged career, we move,
Thou tendest wildly onwards to the main,
And I to loving one I should not love.

The current I behold will sweep beneath

Her native walls and murmur at her feet;
Her eyes will look on thee, when she shall breathe
The twilight air, unharmed by summer's heat.

She will look on thee, I have looked on thee,

Full of that thought; and from that moment, ne'er Thy waters could I dream of, name, or see, Without the inseparable sigh for her;

Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream, -
Yes! they will meet the wave I gaze on now:
Mine cannot witness, even in a dream,

That happy wave repass me in its flow!

The wave that bears my tears returns no more:
Will she return by whom that wave shall sweep?
Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I by thy source, she by the dark blue deep.

But that which keepeth us apart is not

Distance, nor depth of wave, nor space of earth, But the distraction of a various lot,

As various as the climates of our birth.

A stranger loves the lady of the land,

Born far beyond the mountains, but his blood Is all meridian, as if never fanned

By the bleak wind that chills the polar flood.

My blood is all meridian; were it not,

I had not left my clime, nor should I be, In spite of tortures ne'er to be forgot,

A slave again of love, at least of thee.

"Tis vain to struggle let me perish young

--

Live as I lived, and love as I have loved;

To dust if I return, from dust I sprung,
And then, at least, my heart can ne'er be moved.

A LOVE-SONG.

REMIND me not, remind me not,

Of those beloved, those vanished hours,
When all my soul was given to thee;

Hours that may never be forgot,
Till time unnerves our vital powers,
And thou and I shall cease to be.