PART I.

POEMS OF SENTIMENT.

A POET'S BRIDE.

SHE stood beside the ruin of a wall

Painted and carved; where unplucked flowers and moss O'ergrew the beauty of the ruling Cross:

And sainted foreheads, which in other time

Had bowed their earth in heaven's cloud-columned hall, Were queenly wreathed in mockery of age.

And here a bank its purple shadow kept

Above a lake, where Hope perchance had wept,
Ere yet a tear was made the mirror of a crime.
And here a monument whose ice-like page
Dropt as the day perused it-though a bard
Had found therein the coldness of reward.
Dark trees were dying round it. Farther on
A grey and falling bridge sent gentle strife
Through waters, which, unstained with human life,
Made music 'mid the roots that twined the stone.
And far beyond a plain, where living forms
Flashed in the lustre of warm summer hours;

And a thick world of forest, whose deep tune

And shadows stretched where no sear leaves were strewn, Stood hills, the hiding-place of sunny-storms

That laughed amid the light in sudden showers.

II

She looked not on the pride of marble, built
By mortal hands, but happy, yet afraid
Of her sweet soaring, still unweighed by guilt,
Gazed on the light that man could never shade,
Nature's first spirit. O'er the sands she strayed
Mute as a wish within a human breast;

And ever where her step its footmark made
Some wave did woo its faintness into rest.

Or, as the fairy wind, her travels passed

O'er bud and leaves, that bowed but did not break. Her heart was as a vase where Love at last

Had found a warmth to keep his flowers awake;

A twilight fount, whose varied currents take
The hue of heaven and fall with it to earth,
Lending life beauty, and affliction mirth.
Her eye had many shadows, as each dye,
Each tinge of thought dissolved into its sky.
Their lids encircled with small beams of gold
Were silver clouds; and showed the sun behind
A world of deepening blue, that chased the cold
Left on her temples by some wandering wind;
Feeding with light, or sending fitful showers
To wash her warm cheek's fondest passion-flowers.