THE ANNOYER.

"Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever."

SHELLEY.

LOVE knoweth every form of air,
And every shape of earth,
And comes, unbidden, everywhere,
Like thought's mysterious birth.
The moonlit sea and the sunset sky
Are written with Love's words,
And you hear his voice unceasingly,

Like song in the time of birds.

He peeps into the warrior's heart

From the tip of a stooping plume,

And the serried spears, and the many men
May not deny him room.

He'll come to his tent in the weary night,

And be busy in his dream;

And he'll float to his eye in morning light

Like a fay on a silver beam.

He hears the sound of the hunter's gun,
And rides on the echo back,

And sighs in his ear like a stirring leaf,

And flits in his woodland track.

The shade of the wood, and the sheen of the river

The cloud, and the open sky

He will haunt them all with his subtle quiver,

Like the light of your very eye.

The fisher hangs over the leaning boat,

And ponders the silver sea,

For Love is under the surface hid,

And a spell of thought has he,

He heaves the wave like a bosom sweet,
And speaks in the ripple low,

Till the bait is gone from the crafty line,
And the hook hangs bare below.

He blurs the print of the scholar's book,
And intrudes in the maiden's prayer,

And profanes the cell of the holy man,
In the shape of a lady fair.

In the darkest night, and the bright daylight,

In earth, and sea, and sky,

In every home of human thought,

Will Love be lurking nigh.

ROARING BROOK.

(A PASSAGE OF SCENERY IN CONNECTICUT.)

It was a mountain stream that with the leap
Of its impatient waters had worn out
A channel in the rock, and wash'd away
The earth that had upheld the tall old trees,
Till it was darken'd with the shadowy arch
Of the o'er-leaning branches. Here and there
It loiter'd in a broad and limpid pool
That circled round demurely, and anon
Sprung violently over where the rock
Fell suddenly, and bore its bubbles on,
Till they were broken by the hanging moss,

As anger with a gentle word grows calm.

In spring-time, when the snows were coming down, And in the flooding of the Autumn rains,

No foot might enter there-but in the hot

And thirsty summer, when the fountains slept,

You could go up its channel in the shade,

To the far sources, with a brow as cool
As in the grotto of the anchorite.

Here when an idle student have I come,
And in a hollow of the rock lain down
And mus'd until the eventide, or read
Some fine old poet till my nook became
A haunt of faery, or the busy flow

Of water to my spell-bewilder'd ear

Seem'd like the din of some gay tournament.

Pleasant have been such hours, and tho' the wise

Have said that I was indolent, and they

Who taught me have reprov'd me that I play'd

The truant in the leafy month of June,

I deem it true philosophy in him

Whose path is in the rude and busy world,

To loiter with these wayside comforters.