MY OWN FUNERAL.

FROM DE BERANGER.

THIS morning, as in bed I lay,

Half waking and half sleeping, A score of Loves, immensely gay,

Were round my chamber creeping;
I could not move my hand or head

To ask them what the stir meant;
And "Ah," they cried, "our friend is dead;
Prepare for his interment !"

All whose hearts with mine were blended,
Weep for me! my days are ended!

One drinks my brightest Burgundy,
Without a blush, before me;
One brings a little rosary,

And breathes a blessing o'er me;
One finds my pretty chambermaid,
And courts her in dumb crambo;
Another sees the mutes arrayed
With fife by way of flambeau :
In your feasting and your fêting,
Weep for me! my hearse is waiting.

Was ever such a strange array?

The mourners all are singing; From all the churches on our way

A merry peal is ringing;

The pall that clothes my cold remains,
Instead of boars and dragons,

Is blazoned o'er with darts and chains,
With lutes, and flowers, and flagons:
Passers-by their heads are shaking!
Weep for me! my grave is making.

And now they let my coffin fall;
And one of them rehearses,
For want of holy ritual,

My own least holy verses:
The sculptor carves a laurel-leaf,
And writes my name and story;
And silent Nature in her grief
Seems dreaming of my glory:
Just as I am made immortal,-
Weep for me!-they bar the portal.

But Isabel, by accident,

Was wandering by that minute; She opened that dark monument, And found her slave within it; The clergy said the Mass in vain, The College could not save me;

But life, she swears, returned again
With the first kiss she gave me:
You who deem that life is sorrow,
Weep for me again to-morrow!

(1826.)

TIME'S SONG.

O'ER the level plains, where mountains greet me as I go,

O'er the desert waste, where fountains at my bidding flow,

On the boundless beam by day, on the cloud by

night,

I am riding hence away: who will chain my flight?

War his weary watch was keeping, I have crushed his spear;

Grief within her bower was weeping,—I have dried her tear;

Pleasure caught a minute's hold, then I hurried

by,

Leaving all her banquet cold, and her goblet

dry.

Power had won a throne of glory: where is now his fame?

Genius said, “I live in story:" who hath heard his name?

Love beneath a myrtle-bough whispered, "Why so fast?"

And the roses on his brow withered as I passed.

I have heard the heifer lowing o'er the wild wave's bed;

I have seen the billow flowing where the cattle

fed;

Where began my wanderings? Memory will not

say!

Where will rest my weary wings? Science turns away!

(1826.)

FROM METASTASIO.

THE venomous serpent, dearest,
Shall couch with the cushat dove,
Ere a true friend, as thou fearest,
Shall ever be false in love.

From Eden's greenest mountain

Two separate streamlets came;
But their source was in one fountain,
Their waters are the same!

(MAY 21, 1826.)

LINES

WRITTEN ON THE EVE OF A COLLEGE EXAMINATION.

I.

ST. MARY'S tolls her longest chime, and slumber softly falls

On Granta's quiet solitudes, her cloisters and

her halls;

But trust me, little rest is theirs, who play in

glory's game,

And throw to-morrow their last throw for academic fame;

Whose hearts have panted for this hour, and, while slow months went by,

Beat high to live in story-half a dozen stories

high.