Give their true witchery to the flowers; - thine own Youth, in their youth renew.

Avarice, remember when the cowslip's gold
Lured and yet lost its glitter in thy grasp.
Do thy hoards glad thee more than those of old?
Those withered in thy clasp,

From these thy clasp falls palsied. It was then
That thou wert rich-thy coffers are a lie;
Alas, poor fool, Joy is the wealth of men,
And Care their penury.

Come, foiled Ambition, what hast thou desired? Empire and power? — O wanderer, tempest-tost! These once were thine, when life's gay spring inspired Thy soul with glories lost.

Let the flowers charm thee back to that rich time
When golden Dream-land lay within thy chart,
When Love bestowed a realm indeed sublime
The boundless human heart.

Hark, hark again, the tread of bashful feet!
Hark the boughs rustling round the trysting-place!
Let air again with one dear breath be sweet,
Earth fair with one dear face.

Brief-lived first flowers-first love! The hours steal

on

To prank the world in summer's pomp of hue,

But what can flaunt beneath a fiercer sun
Worth what we lose in you?

Oft by a flower, a leaf, in some loved book

We mark the lines that charm us most;· Retrace Thy life; recall its loveliest passage; — Look,

Dead violets keep the place!

LOVE AND DEATH.

O STRONG as the eagle,
O mild as the dove,
How like and how unlike
O Death and O Love!

Knitting earth to the heaven,
The near to the far,
With the step in the dust,

And the eye on the star.

Ever changing your symbols
Of light or of gloom;
Now the rue on the altar,

The rose on the tomb.

From Love, if the infant
Receiveth his breath,
The love that gave life

Yields a subject to Death.

When Death smites the aged, Escaping above

Flies the soul re-delivered

By Death unto Love.

And therefore in wailing
We enter on life;
And therefore in smiling
Depart from its strife.

Thus Love is best known
By the tears it has shed;
And Death's surest sign

Is the smile of the dead.

The purer the spirit,

The clearer its view, The more it confoundeth The shapes of the two;

For, if thou lov'st truly,

Thou canst not dissever

The grave from the altar,
The Now from the Ever

And if, nobly hoping,

Thou gazest above,

In Death thou beholdest

The aspect of Love.

GANYMEDE.

"When Ganymede was caught up to Heaven, he let fall his pipe, on which he was playing to his sheep."- ALEXANDER Ross, Myst. Poet.

UPON the Phrygian hill

He sat, and on his reed the shepherd played.
Sunlight and calm: noon in the dreamy glade,
Noon on the lulling rill.

He saw not, where on high

The noiseless eagle of the Heavenly King

Rested, till rapt upon the rushing wing
Into the golden sky.

When the bright Nectar Hall

And the still brows of bended gods he saw,
In the quick instinct both of shame and awe
His hand the reed let fall.

Soul! that a thought divine

Bears into heaven,

thy first ascent survey!

What charmed thee most on earth is cast away;· To soar is to resign!

MEMNON.

WHERE Morning first appears, Waking the rathe flowers in their Eastern bed,

Aurora still, with her ambrosial tears,

Weeps for her Memnon dead.

Him the Hesperides

Nursed on the marge of their enchanted shore, And still the smile that then the Mother wore Dimples the Orient seas.

He died; and lo, the while

The fire consumed his ashes, glorious things, With joyous songs, and rainbow-tinted wings, Rose from the funeral pile.

He died; and yet became

A music; and his Theban image broke
Into sweet sounds that with each sunrise spoke
The Mighty Mother's name.

O type, thy truth declare!

Who is the Child of the Melodious Morn?

Who bids the ashes earth receives adorn
With new-born choirs the air?

What can the Statue be

That ever answers with enchanted voices
Each rising sun that on its front rejoices?
Speak!"I AM POETRY!"