Braided tresses, and cheeks of bloom,
Diamond agraff, and foam-white plume;
Censers of roses, vases of light,

Like what the moon sheds on a summer night.
Youths and maidens with linked hands,
Joined in the graceful sarabands,
Smiled on the canvass; but apart

Was one who leant in silent mood
As revelry to his sick heart

Were worse than veriest solitude.
Pale, dark-eyed, beautiful, and young,
Such as he had shone o'er my slumbers,
When I had only slept to dream
Over again his magic numbers.

Divinest Petrarch! he whose lyre,
Like morning light, half dew, half fire,
To Laura and to love was vowed-
He looked on one, who with the crowd
Mingled, but mixed not; on whose cheek
There was a blush, as if she knew
Whose look was fixed on her's.

Her eye,
Of a spring-sky's delicious blue,
Had not the language of that bloom,
But mingling tears, and light, and gloom,
Was raised abstractedly to Heaven :-
No sign was to her lover given.
I painted her with golden tresses,
Such as float on the wind's caresses
When the laburnums wildly fling
Their sunny blossoms to the spring.
A cheek which had the crimson hue
Upon the sun-touched nectarine;
A lip of perfume and of dew;

A brow like twilight's darkened line.
I strove to catch each charm that long
Has lived, thanks to her lover's song!
Each grace he numbered one by one,
That shone in her of Avignon.

Affection's severed links, and be

As true as they themselves are true.
But Love's bright fount is never pure;
And all his pilgrims must endure
All passion's mighty suffering
Ere they may reach the blessed spring.
And some who waste their lives to find
A prize which they may never win:
Like those who search for Irem's groves,
Which found, they may not enter in.
Where is the sorrow but appears
In Love's long catalogue of tears?
And some there are who leave the path
In agony and fierce disdain ;

But bear upon each cankered breast
The scar that never heals again.

My next was of a minstrel too,
Who proved what woman's hand might do,
When, true to the heart pulse, it woke

The harp. Her head was bending down, As if in weariness, and near,

But unworn, was a laurel crown,
She was not beautiful, if bloom

And smiles form beauty; for, like death,
Her brow was ghastly; and her lip
Was parched, as fever were its breath.
There was a shade upon her dark,
Large, floating eyes, as if each spark
Of minstrel ecstacy was fled,
Yet, leaving them no tears to shed;
Fixed in their hopelessness of care,
And reckless in their great despair.
She sat beneath a cypress tree,
A little fountain ran beside,
And, in the distance, one dark rock

Threw its long shadow o'er the tide ;
And to the west, where the nightfall
Was darkening day's gemm'd coronal,
Its white shafts crimsoning in the sky,
Arose the sun-god's sanctuary.
I deemed, that of lyre, life, and love
She was a long, last farewell taking ;-
That, from her pale and parched lips,
Her latest, wildest song was breaking.

SAPPHO'S SONG.

FAREWELL, my lute!-and would that I
Had never waked thy burning chords!
Poison has been upon thy sigh,

And fever has breathed in thy words.

Yet wherefore, wherefore should I blame
Thy power, thy spell, my gentlest lute ?
I should have been the wretch I am,
Had every chord of thiné been mute.

It was my evil star above,

Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong; It was not song that taught me love,

But it was love that taught me song.

If song be past, and hope undone,

And pulse, and head, and heart, are flame; It is thy work, thou faithless one!

But, no !—I will not name thy name!

Sun-god, lute, wreath, are vowed to thee!
Long be their light upon my grave-
My glorious grave-yon deep blue sea:
I shall sleep calm beneath its wave!

FLORENCE! with what idolatry

I've lingered in thy radiant halls, Worshipping, till my dizzy eye

Grew dim with gazing on those walls,
Where Time had spared each glorious gift
By Genius unto Memory left!

And when seen by the pale moonlight,
More pure, more perfect, though less bright,
What dreams of song flashed on my brain,
Till each shade seemed to live again;
And then the beautiful, the grand,
The glorious of my native land,
In every flower that threw its veil
Aside, when wooed by the spring gale;
In every vineyard, where the sun,
His task of summer ripening done,
Shone on their clusters, and a song
Came lightly from the peasant throng ;-
In the dim loveliness of night,
In fountains with their diamond light,
In aged temple, ruined shrine,
And its green wreath of ivy twine ;-
In every change of earth and sky,
Breathed the deep soul of poesy.

As yet I loved not ;-but each wild,
High thought I nourished raised a pyre
For love to light; and lighted once
By love, it would be like the fire
The burning lava floods that dwell
In Etna's cave unquenchable.

One evening in the lovely June,

Over the Arno's water's gliding, I had been watching the fair moon Amid her court of white clouds riding ;

I had been listening to the gale,

Which wafted music from around,

(For scarce a lover, at that hour,

But waked his mandolin's light sound),—

And odour was upon the breeze,
Sweet thefts from rose and lemon trees.

They stole me from my lulling dream,
And said they knew that such an hour
Had ever influence on my soul,

And raised my sweetest minstrel power.
I took my lute,-my eye had been
Wandering round the lovely scene,
Filled with those melancholy tears,
Which come when all most bright appears,
And hold their strange and secret power,
Even on pleasure's golden hour.

I had been looking on the river,
Half-marvelling to think that ever
Wind, wave, or sky, could darken where
All seemed so gentle and so fair:
And mingled with these thoughts there came
A tale, just one that Memory keeps—
Forgotten music, till some chance

Vibrate the chord whereon it sleeps!

A MOORISH ROMANCE.

SOFTLY through the pomegranate groves
Came the gentle song of the doves;
Shone the fruit in the evening light,
Like Indian rubies, blood-red and bright;
Shook the date-trees each tufted head,
As the passing wind their green-nuts shed;
And, like dark columns, amid the sky
The giant palms ascended on high;
And the mosque's gilded minaret
Glistened and glanced as the daylight set.
Over the town a crimson haze

Gathered and hung of the evening's rays;.
And far beyond, like molten gold,

The burning sands of the desert rolled.
Far to the left, the sky and sea
Mingled their gray immensity;

And with flapping sail and idle prow
The vessels threw their shades below.
Far down the beach, where a cypress grove
Casts its shade round a little cove,
Darkling and green, with just a space
For the stars to shine on the water's face,
A small bark lay, waiting for night
And its breeze to waft and hide its flight.
Sweet is the burthen and lovely the freight,
For which those furled-up sails await,
To a garden, fair as those

Where the glory of the rose
Blushes, charmed from the decay
That wastes other blooms away:
Gardens of the fairy tale

Told, till the wood-fire grows pale,
By the Arab tribes, when night,
With its dim and lovely light,
And its silence, suiteth well
With the magic tales they tell.

Through that cypress avenue,
Such a garden meets the view,
Filled with flowers-flowers that seem
Lighted up by the sunbeam ;

Fruits of gold and gems, and leaves
Green as Hope before it grieves
O'er the false and broken-hearted,
All with which its youth has parted,
Never to return again,

Save in memories of pain!

There is a white rose in yon bower, But holds it a yet fairer flower:

And music from that cage is breathing, Round which a jasmine braid is wreathing, A low song from a lonely dove,

A

song such exiles sing and love,

Breathing of fresh fields, summer skies-
Now to be breathed of but in sighs!
But fairer smile and sweeter sigh
Are near when LEILA'S step is nigh!
With eyes dark as the midnight time,
Yet lighted like a summer clime
With sun-rays from within; yet now
Lingers a cloud upon that brow,-
Though never lovelier brow was given
To Houri of an Eastern heaven!
Her eye is dwelling on that bower,
As
every leaf and every flower

Were being numbered in her heart ;

There are no looks like those which dwell

On long-remembered things, which soon

Must take our first and last farewell!

Day fades apace: another day,

That maiden will be far away,
A wanderer o'er the dark-blue sea,

And bound for lovely Italy,

Her mother's land! Hence on her breast

The cross beneath a Moorish vest;

And hence those sweetest sounds, that seem
Like music murmuring in a dream,
When in our sleeping ear is ringing
The song the nightingale is singing;
When by that white and funeral stone,
Half-hidden by the cypress gloom,
The hymn the mother taught her child
sung each evening at her tomb.
But quick the twilight time has past,
Like one of those sweet calms that last
A moment and no more, to cheer
The turmoil of our pathway here.

Is

The bark is waiting in the bay,
Night darkens round:-LEILA, away!
Far, ere to-morrow, o'er the tide,
Or wait and be-ABDALLA's bride!