LIV.

LOVE.

They sin who tell us Love can die.
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell;
Earthly these passions of the Earth,
They perish where they have their birth;
But Love is indestructible.

Its holy flame for ever burneth,

From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth;

Too oft on Earth a troubled guest,

At times deceived, at times opprest,
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in Heaven its perfect rest:
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of Love is there.

Southey.

LV.

When Love was a child and went idling round,
'Mid flowers the whole summer day,

One morn in the valley a bower he found,
So sweet it allured him to stay.

O'er head, from the trees hung a garland fair,
A fountain ran darkly beneath ;-

"Twas Pleasure had hung up the flowerets there;
Love knew it, and jumped at the wreath.

But Love didn't know-and at his weak years,
What urchin was likely to know?

That Sorrow had made of her own salt tears
The fountain that murmured below.

He caught at the wreath-but with too much haste,
As boys when impatient will do-

It fell in those waters of briny taste,
And the flowers were all wet through.

This garland he now wears night and day;
And, though it all sunny appears

With Pleasure's own light, each leaf they say,
Still tastes of the Fountain of Tears.

T. Moore.

LVI.

I have led her home, my love, my only friend.
There is none like her, none.

And never yet so warmly ran my blood

And sweetly, on and on

Calming itself to the long-wished-for end,

Full to the banks, close on the promised good.

There is none like her, none.

Nor will be when our summers have deceased.

O, art thou sighing for Lebanon

In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East,

Sighing for Lebanon,

Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased,

Upon a pastoral slope as fair,

And looking to the South, and fed

With honey'd rain and delicate air,

And haunted by the starry head

Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate,
And made my life a perfumed altar-flame;
And over whom thy darkness must have spread
With such delight as theirs of old, thy great
Forefathers of the thornless garden, there

Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came.

Is that enchanted moan only the swell

Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay?
And hark the clock within, the silver knell
Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white,
And died to live, long as my pulses play ;
But now by this my love has closed her sight
And given false death her hand, and stolen away
To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell
Among the fragments of the golden day.
May nothing there her maiden grace affright!
Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell.
My bride to be, my evermore delight,

My own heart's heart, and ownest own, farewell.
It is but for a little space I go:

And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell,
Beat to the noiseless music of the night!

Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow
Of your soft splendours that you look so bright?
I have climbed nearer out of lonely Hell.

Beat, happy stars, timing with things below,

Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell,

Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe

That seems to draw-but it shall not be so:
Let all be well, be well.

A. Tennyson.

LVII.

DOUBT.

Bright laughs the sun; the birds that are to air
Like song to life, are gaily on the wing;
every mead the handmaid hours prepare
The delicates of spring;

In

But, if she love me not!

To me at this fair season still hath been

In

every wildflower an exhaustless treasure,
And when the young-eyed violet first was seen,
Methought to breathe was pleasure;
But, if she love me not!

How, in thy twilight, Doubt, at each unknown
Dim shape, the superstitious Love will start;
How Hope itself will tremble at its own
Light shadow on the heart;

Ah, if she love me not!

Well, I will know the worst, and leave the wind
To drift or drown the venture on the wave;
Life has two friends in grief itself most kind-
Remembrance and the Grave-

Mine, if she love me not.

Sir E. Bulwer Lytton.