Of human griefs, and human pleasures,
Upon her new-found child.

And "oh!" she saith, "my spirit doth seem
To have risen to-day from a pleasant dream;
A long, long dream-but I feel it breaking!
Painfully sweet is the throb of waking;"
And then she laughed, and wept again:
While, gazing on her heart's first rain,
Bound in its turn by a magic chain,
The silent youth stood there:

Never had either been so blest;—

You that are young may picture the rest,

You that are young and fair.

Never before, on this warm land,

Came Love and Reason hand in hand.

When you are blest, in childhood's years, With the brightest hopes and the lightest fears, Have you not wandered, in your dream,

Where a greener glow was on the ground,

And a clearer breath in the air around,

And a purer life in the gay sunbeam,
And a tremulous murmur in every tree,

And a motionless sleep on the quiet sea?

And have you not lingered, lingered still,

All unfettered in thought and will,

A fair and cherished boy;

Until you felt it pain to part

From the wild creations of your art,

Until your young and innocent heart
Seemed bursting with its joy?

And then, oh then, hath your waking eye
Opened in all its ecstasy,

And seen your mother leaning o'er you,
The loved and loving one that bore you,

Giving her own, her fond caress,

And looking her eloquent tenderness?

Was it not heaven to fly from the scene

Where the heart in the vision of night had been,

And drink, in one o'erflowing kiss,

Your deep reality of bliss?

Such was LILLIA's passionate madness,

Such the calm of her waking gladness.

Enough! my tale is all too long:

Fair children, if the trifling song,

That flows for you to-night,

Hath stolen from you one gay laugh,

Or given your quiet hearts to quaff

One cup of young delight,

Pay ye the rhymer for his toils

In the coinage of your golden smiles,

And treasure his idle verse,

up

With the stories ye loved from the lips of your nurse.

THE BRIDAL OF BELMONT.