Without the porch, one summer noon,
The Hermit-dweller see!

In musing silence bending down,
The book upon his knee.

Who stands between thee and the sun?

A cloud herself, the Wandering One! —

A vacant sadness in the eyes,

The mind a razed, defeatured scroll;
The light is in the laughing skies,

And darkness, Eva, in thy soul!
The beacon shaken in the storm
Had struggled still to gleam above
The last sad wreck of human love,
Upon the dying child to shed

One ray

extinguished with the dead : O'er earth and heaven then rushed the night!

A wandering dream, a mindless form A Star hurled headlong from its height, Guideless its course, and quenched its light. Yet still the native instinct stirred

The darkness of the breast She flies, as flies the wounded bird

Unto the distant nest.

O'er hill and waste, from land to land,
Her heart the faithful instinct bore;
And there, behold the Wanderer stand

Beside her Childhood's Home once more!

XI.

LIGHT AND DARKNESS.

When earth is fair, and winds are still,
When sunset gilds the western hill,
Oft by the porch, with jasmine sweet,
Or by the brook, with noiseless feet,
Two silent forms are seen;

So silent they the place so lone

They seem like souls, when life is gone,
That haunt where life has been:

And his to watch, as in the past

Her soul had watched his soul. Alas! her darkness waits the last, The grave the only goal!

It is not what the leech can cure

An erring chord, a jarring madness:

A calm so deep, it must endure –

So deep, thou scarce canst call it sadness;

A summer night, whose shadow falls

On silent hearths in ruined halls.

Yet, through the gloom, she seemed to feel His presence like a happier air,

Close by his side she loved to steal,

As if no ill could harm her there!

And when her looks his own would seek,
Some memory seemed to wake the sigh,
Strive for kind words she could not speak,
And bless him in the tearful eye.
O sweet the jasmine's buds of snow,
In mornings soft with May,

And silver-clear the waves that flow

To shoreless deeps away!

But heavenward from the faithful heart
A sweeter incense stole ; -

The onward waves their source desert,

But Soul returns to Soul!

THE FAIRY BRIDE.

A TALE. *

PART I.

“AND how canst thou in tourneys shing
Or tread the glittering festal floor?
On chains of gold and cloth of pile,
The looks of high-born Beauty smile;
Nor peerless deeds, nor stainless line,
Can lift to fame the Poor!"

His Mother spoke; and Elvar sighed

The sigh alone confessed the truth;
IIe curbed the thoughts that galled the beast —
High thoughts ill suit the russet vest;
Yet Arthur's Court, in all its pride,
Ne'er saw so fair a youth.

* As the subject of this tale is suggested by one of the Fabliaux, the author has represented Arthur and Guenever according to the view of their characters taken in those French Romances- which he hopes he need scarcely say is very different from that taken in his maturer Poem upon the adventures and ordeal of the DragonKing.

Far, to the forest's stillest shade,

Sir Elvar took his lonely way;

Beneath an oak, whose gentle frown

Dimmed noon's bright eyes, he laid him down; And watched a Fount that through the glade Sang, sparkling up to day.

“As sunlight to the forest tree”

'T was thus his murmured musings ran "And as amidst the sunlight's glow, The freshness of the fountain's flow

So (ah, they never mine may be !) –

Are Gold and Love to Man.”

And while he spoke, a gentle air

Seemed stirring through the crystal tides;
A gleam, at first both dim and bright,
Trembled to shape, in limbs of light,
Gilded to sunbeams by the hair
That glances where IT glides; *

Till, clear and clearer, upward borne,
The Fairy of the Fountain rose:
The halo quivering round her grew
More steadfast, as the shape shone through—
O sure, a second, softer Morn

The Elder Daylight knows!

Born from the blue of those deep eyes,
Such love its happy self betrayed

* "With hair that gilds the water as it glides."

MARLOWE, Edw. II.

As only haunts that tender race,

With flower or fount, their dwelling-place — The darling of the earth and skies

"Listen!" she said, and wave and land Sighed back her murmur, murmurously – "A love more true than minstrel sings, A wealth that mocks the pomp of kings, To him who wins the Fairy's hand A Fairy's dower shall be.

"But not to those can we belong

Whose sense the charms of earth allure? If human love hath yet been thine, Farewell, our laws forbid thee mine. The Children of the Star and Song, We may but bless the Pure!"

"Dream-lovelier far than e'er, I ween,
Entranced the glorious Merlin's eyes -
Through childhood, to this happiest hour,
All free from human Beauty's power,
My heart unresting still hath been
A prophet in its sighs.

"Though never living shape hath brought Sweet love, that second life, to me,

Yet over earth, and through the heaven,

The thoughts that pined for love were driven : I see thee and I feel I sought

Through Earth and Heaven for thee!"