Of that by which it charms the ear,

The eye, of him that passes near

A lamp is lit in woman's eye

That souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.

UNSEEN SPIRITS.

THE shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight-tide-

And slowly there a lady fair

Was walking in her pride.
Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,

Walk'd spirits at her side.

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,

And Honor charm'd the air;

And all astir look'd kind on her,

And call'd her good as fair

For all God ever gave to her
She kept with chary care.

She kept with care her beauties rare
From lovers warm and true-

For her heart was cold to all but gold,
And the rich came not to woo-

But honor'd well are charms to sell

If priests the selling do.

Now walking there was one more fair

A slight girl, lily-pale;

And she had unseen company

To make the spirit quail—

"Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn, And nothing could avail.

No mercy now can clear her brow
For this world's peace to pray ;
For, as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,
Her woman's heart gave way!—

But the sin forgiven by Christ in heaven
By man is cursed alway!

BETTER MOMENTS.

My mother's voice! how often creeps
Its cadence on my lonely hours!
Like healing sent on wings of sleep,
Or dew to the unconscious flowers.

I can forget her melting prayer
While leaping pulses madly fly,

But in the still, unbroken air,

Her gentle tone comes stealing byAnd years, and sin, and manhood flee, And leave me at my mother's knee.

The book of nature, and the print
Of beauty on the whispering sea,
Give aye to me some lineament

Of what I have been taught to be.
My heart is harder, and perhaps

My manliness hath drunk up tears;
And there's a mildew in the lapse
Of a few swift and chequer'd years—
But nature's book is even yet
With all my mother's lessons writ.

I have been out at eventide

Beneath a moonlight sky of spring, When earth was garnish'd like a bride, And night had on her silver wingWhen bursting leaves, and diamond grass, And waters leaping to the light, And all that make the pulses pass

With wilder fleetness, throng'd the night

When all was beauty-then have I

With friends on whom my love is flung

Like myrrh on winds of Araby,

Gazed up where evening's lamp is hung, And when the beautiful spirit there

Flung over me its golden chain,

My mother's voice came on the air
Like the light dropping of the rain-
And resting on some silver star

The spirit of a bended knee,

I've pour'd out low and fervent prayer
That our eternity might be

To rise in heaven, like stars at night,
And tread a living path of light.

I have been on the dewy hills,

When night was stealing from the dawn, And mist was on the waking rills,

And tints were delicately drawn In the gray East-when birds were waking, With a low murmur in the trees, And melody by fits was breaking Upon the whisper of the breezeAnd this when I was forth, perchance As a worn reveller from the danceAnd when the sun sprang gloriously And freely up, and hill and river

Were catching upon wave and tree
The arrows from his subtle quiver-

I say a voice has thrill'd me then,
Heard on the still and rushing light,
Or, creeping from the silent glen,
Like words from the departing night,
Hath stricken me, and I have press'd
On the wet grass my fever'd brow,
And pouring forth the earliest

First prayer, with which I learn'd to bow,
Have felt my mother's spirit rush
Upon me as in by-past years,

And, yielding to the blessed gush
Of my ungovernable tears,

Have risen up the gay, the wild-
Subdued and humble as a child.

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,