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276

AUTUMN FLOWERS.

Pale flowers!-Pale perishing flowers!
Ye 're types of precious things;
Types of those bitter moments,
That flit like life's enjoyments,
On rapid, rapid wings.

Last hours with parting dear ones
(That time the fastest spends),
Last tears in silence shed,

Last words, half uttered,

Last looks of dying friends!

Who but would fain compress
A life into a day;

The last day spent with one,
Who, ere the morrow's sun,
Must leave us, and for aye?

O, precious, precious moments!
Pale flowers! ye 're types of those-
The saddest! sweetest! dearest !
Because, like those, the nearest
Is an eternal close.

Pale flowers!-Pale perishing flowers!
I woo your gentle breath;
I leave the summer rose-
For younger, blither brows,

Tell me of change and death!

STANZAS WRITTEN AT NAPLES.

THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent light Around its unexpanded buds;

Like many a voice of one delight— The winds, the birds, the ocean floods: The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's.

I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweed strown ; I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown: I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth,
The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned-
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;

To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

LYRE.

A a

278

STANZAS WRITTEN AT NAPLES.

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are:
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death, like sleep, might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament-for I am one

Whom men love not :-and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun

Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

WRITTEN IN A LADY'S ALBUM.

BY JOHN MALCOLM.

As sweeps the bark before the breeze,
While waters coldly close around,
Till of her pathway through the seas
The track no more is found;
Thus passing down Oblivion's tide,
The beauteous visions of the mind
Fleet as that ocean pageant glide,
And leave no trace behind.

But the pure page may still impart
Some dream of feeling, else untold,—
The silent record of a heart,

E'en when that heart is cold:
Its long memorials here may bloom,-
Perchance to gentle bosoms dear,
Like flowers that linger o'er the tomb
Bedewed with Beauty's tear.

I ask not for the meed of fame,
The wreath above my rest to twine,-
Enough for me to leave my name
Within this hallowed shrine ;-
To think that o'er these lines thine eye
May wander in some future year,
And Memory breathe a passing sigh
For him who traced them here.

Calm sleeps the sea when storms are o'er,
With bosom silent and serene,
And but the plank upon the shore
Reveals that wrecks have been.
So some frail leaf like this may be
Left floating on Time's silent tide,-
The sole remaining trace of me,—
To tell I lived and died.

THE CHURCHYARD.

BY MISS BOWLES.

THE thought of early death was in my heart,
Of the cold grave, and "dumb forgetfulness;"
And with a weight like lead,

An overwhelming dread
Mysteriously my spirit did oppress.

And forth I roamed in that distressful mood,
Abroad into the sultry, sunless day;
All hung with one huge cloud,

That like a sable shroud

On Nature's deep sepulchral stillness lay.

Black fell the shadows of the churchyard elms (Instinctively my feet had wandered there), And through that awful gloom,

Headstone and altar tomb

Among the dark heaps gleamed with ghastlier glare.

Death-death was in my heart, as there I stood;
Mine eyes fast fixed on a grass-grown mound;
As though they would descry
The loathsome mystery
Consummating beneath that charnel ground.

Death, death was in my heart-Methought I felt
A heavy hand that pressed me down below-
And some resistless power

Made me, in that dark hour,

Half long be, where I abhorred to go.

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