THE BLIND MAN'S ADDRESS TO HIS LOVE.

THERE is a beauty in the mind,

That makes thee fair to me,

Sweet Mary Anne, though I am blind,

And blind I still must be.

I sit in darkness; but I know

If thou to me art near,

Through all my limbs I feel a glow,

A sudden gush of cheer.

Put thy least finger's smallest tip

Upon my wildest hair,

Each vein and nerve in me will skip,—

I know that thou art there.

They tell me thou art fair to see,

And of thy waist so trim;

I know thou art straight as poplar tree,
And delicately slim.

They tell me that thine eyes are black,
As black as burning coal :

I look, but find my eye-balls lack
The light that 's in my soul.

Thy hand is very soft I know

They tell me it is white;

But it is not like the falling snow,

Because it does not bite.

For cold and biting are the flakes,

The melting flakes of snow,

When the blinding snow-storm overtakes

The blind men as they go.

But thy hand is soft, it melts away,
And then I hear thee speak;

And ever thy words are blithe and gay.
But thy voice is smooth as thy cheek.

So well I love the thought I have,

I do not wish to see;

I will live on in

my

darksome cave,

So thou wilt live with me.

OLD I am, yet not past feeling,

Maiden think not so;

Time, the thief, for ever stealing

Moments as they go.

Still the moment dear has left me,

Moment that of self bereft me,

Moment that did wound with healing,

Cause and cure of woe.

Hope, and yet not hope, it gave me—

Oh! that lovely smile

Hope, alas! too brief to save me,

Yet 'twas sweet the while,

Bright as joy, and sweet as pity,

Little like thyself, and pretty,
Nought beside can now enslave me,
Nothing else beguile

VOL. II.

P

Old I am and daily older,

Not in days alone,

Yet, methinks, that I am bolder

Since that grey I'm grown;

Young, I had not dared address thee,

Old, I

may presume to bless thee, Hope is dead and fancies moulder,

All but Love is flown.

Smile again. The look that gazes,

Asks not, wants not, no; Laugh at me and all my praises, Laugh at all my woe.

But when I have done with sighing, In the quiet churchyard lying,

Softly smile upon the daisies

On my grave that grow.

ON SEEING THREE YOUNG LADIES ON

WITHIN the

GRASMERE LAKE.

compass of a little vale

There lies a Lake unknown in Fairy tale,

Which not a Poet knew in ancient days,
When all the world believed in Ghosts and Fays;
Yet on that Lake I have beheld a Boat
That seemed a fairy Pinnace all afloat,
On some bless'd mission to a distant isle,
To do meet worship to some ruined pile,
Where long of yore the Fairies used to meet
And haply hallow with their last retreat ;
For all alone the boat was on the waters,
And in it three of "Beauty's youngest daughters."
Sometimes at rest, like infant on a pillow,
Then gliding soft as light upon a billow,
When lady's hand drew nigh to lady's breast

The oar, so fond :—yet there it might not rest,
But thence dispatched, went forth like errant knight
For new achievement on the plain so bright.