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ON A PICTURE OF A VERY YOUNG NUN,

NOT READING A DEVOTIONAL BOOK, AND NOT CONTEMPLATING A CRUCIFIX PLACED BESIDE HER.

So young, too young, consign'd to cloistral shade,
Untimely wedded,-wedded, yet a maid;
And hast thou left no thought, no wish behind,
No sweet employment for the wandering wind,
Who would be proud to waft a sigh from thee,
Sweeter than aught he steals in Araby?

Thou wert immured, poor maiden, as I

guess,

In the blank childhood of thy simpleness;

Too young to doubt, too pure to be ashamed,
Thou gavest to God what God had never claim'd,
And didst unweeting sign away thine all
Of earthly good,—a guiltless prodigal.
The large reversion of thine unborn love
Was sold to purchase an estate above.
Yet by thy hands, upon thy bosom prest,

I think, indeed, thou art not quite at rest;
That Christ that hangs upon the sculptured cross
Is not the Jesus to redeem thy loss;

Nor will that book, whate'er its page contain,
Convince thee that the world is false and vain.
E'en now there is a something at thy heart
That would be off, but may not, dare not, start;
Yes, yes! thy face, thine eyes, thy closed lips, prove

Thou wert intended to be loved and love.

Poor maiden! victim of the vilest craft

At which e'er Moloch grinn'd or Belial laugh'd,
May all thy aimless wishes be forgiven,

And all thy sighs be register'd in Heaven,
And God his mercy and his love impart

To what thou should'st have been, and what thou art!

BEAUTY.

OH! why is beauty still a bud unfolding,
A greater beauty that can never be,
Yet always is its faint fair self beholding,
In all of fair and good that man may see?

Nay, beauty is with thee the power of life,
The germ and sweet idea of thy being;
As beauty fashion'd that first maid and wife,
That made primeval man rejoice in seeing.

He dream'd of beauty, and he wish'd to see A form to be the substance of his dream; So want begot a child of vacancy,

And that now is which did before but seem.

Adam did love before he look'd on Eve;

He found himself unblest in Eden's bower. A love there is that does not yet conceive

Its own existence: 'tis a simple power,-

A power that most does recognise its might

In weakness, want, and everlasting yearning; Whose heaven is soaring, seeking, endless flight, Whose hell is thirst and everlasting burning.

For what is hell, but an eternal thirst,

And burning for the bounty once rejected? And what is heaven, but God on earth rehearsed, In the calm centre of the Lord perfected?

Then ask not why is beauty but a bud,

That never more than half itself discloses ; Sweet flower, like thee is every human good,

And love divine is seen in unblown roses.

FAIRY LAND.

YES, I am old, and older yet must be,

Drifting along the everlasting sea;

And yet, through puzzling light and perilous dark,

I bear with me, as in a lonely ark,

A precious cargo of dear memory;

For, though I never was a citizen,
Enroll'd in Faith's municipality,

And ne'er believed the phantom of the few
To be a tangible reality,

Yet I have loved sweet things, that are not now,
In frosty starlight, or the cold moonbeam.

I never thought they were; and therefore now
No doubt obscures the memory of my dream.
My Fairy Land was never upon earth,
Nor in the heaven to which I hoped to go;
For it was always by the glimmering hearth,
When the last fagot gave its reddest glow,
And voice of eld wax'd tremulous and low,
And the sole taper's intermittent light,
Like a slow-tolling bell, declared good night.
Then could I think of Peri and of Fay,

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