FICTION AND TRUTH.

THERE was a glare of light, a mass
Of things that perish as they pass;
A fiction of the eye and ear,

And living hearts not more sincere.

Mine nursed a wound they could not heal,

Mine saw a scene they could not see;

How little I for them might feel,

How less could they for me!

I knew not why I wandered there,
In secret hopes or dim despair;
Or in that dream of mute surprise
That leads us to a brink, and flies.
But there I breathed amid the throng,
As one who walks a foreign strand,
Watching the waves that roll along,
And part him from his land.

When, sudden as a star that drops
Behind the far-off forest tops,

Brief as the quick and quivering spark
On struggling waters wide and dark-

There came a spirit on my path,
A beauty dying in its birth,
Gifted with all that woman hath
Of music and of mirth.

A brow, the whitest world of thought
That ever pen or pencil wrought;
A breast as wonderful and warm
As ever love-dream failed to form.
Methought although of mortal mould
It held the flame of years to come :
I asked my heart-'twas sick and cold ;
My hope-but it was dumb.

It came and claimed no kindred there ; But glanced on me as though a hair, Plucked from the brow of Time, might be A chain to bind it unto me.

On me it gazed, an instant gazed,

Then passed through closing crowds again, A pinnace on the sea-foam raised

To strike the swimmer's brain.

Thus fairest things should vanish fleet
Ere earth hath stained their falling feet,

And all the blossoms she may shed
Are destined to adorn the dead.

I wished its momentary stay,

Could be my term of life below,
Unknown to pass in still display,
By one regretted go.

Its presence came so brightly brief,
Its gladness bore no tinge of grief,
The cheek of hope but not its fears,
The eyes of love without their tears.
Alas, the eye that chased my pain
May now be weeping o'er its own;
The breast where angels might have lain
Tears may have turned to stone.

And where that light was found and lost, I counted o'er a cloud-like host,

Bright with the sunshine which they shade, While all beneath them freeze and fade. The flame had sunk where it began,

The scene was still a painted show; They said 'twas truth-I turned to Man, And sighed to find it so.

M

TO GREECE.

(A FRAGMENT.)

O, MISTRESS of rich seas, whose every billow

Hath hymned a hope, or been some poet's pillow;

Mother of mountain isles, whose every stone

Hath borne the glory of some name unknown!

Whose shores a holy echo still repeat,

And show the sun-prints of immortal feet;
Where but to thee shall youthful spirits turn,
Finding an orient cradle in thine urn!

O, scenes where HOMER lived and BYRON died,
Greece of the angel-sun the earthly bride,
How dost thou win our worship! To thy shores,
The mind's first Eden though profaned by crime,
How flies untutored Poesy, and pours
Its song of triumph on thy hills sublime,
Pavilioned by the skies! Thy temple roof
Now forms the pavement for an impious hoof;
And o'er the land a blighting breath is spread
To hide the heaven still bright above thy head-
A banner for thy cause, a mantle for thy dead!

THE SHADOWS OF LIFE.

THE secret world in human eyes
Is deluged still with tears;
Our breath is turned to feverish sighs,
And nature mused in fears.
Cannot life rend its thin disguise,
Or be what it appears!

All passion is a blazing brand
Thrown on a ready pile;
Friendship a pressure of the hand;

Pity a winter smile;

And hope but winds across the sand, That forms, and fails the while.

Our life is as an idle boat

Along a winding river;

An aimless arrow sprung remote
From an ethereal quiver;

And pilotless it still must float,

And aimless speed for ever.