STANZAS.

BY T. K. HERVEY.

SLUMBER lie soft on thy beautiful eye!

Spirits whose smiles are like thine of the sky,
Play thee to sleep with their visionless strings,
Brighter than thou-but because they have wings!
-Fair as a being of heavenly birth,

But loving and loved as a child of the earth!

Why is that tear? Art thou gone, in thy dream,
To the valley far off, and the moon-lighted stream,
Where the sighing of flowers, and the nightingale's

song,

Flings sweets on the wave, as it wanders along?
Blest be the dreams that restores them to thee,
But thou art the bird and the roses to me!

And now, as I watch o'er thy slumbers, alone,

And hear thy low breathing, and know thee mine own,
And muse on the wishes that grew in that vale,
And the fancies we shaped from the river's low tale,
I blame not the fate that has taken the rest,
While it left to my bosom its dearest and best.

Slumber lie soft on thy beautiful eye!
Dove be a rainbow to brighten thy sky!
Oh! not for sunshine and hope would I part

With the shade time has flung over all-but thy heart!
Still art thou all which thou wert when a child,
Only more holy-and only less wild!

LINES TO A YOUNG LADY,

ON HER MARRIAGE.

BY G. M. FITZGERALD.

THEY tell me, gentle lady, that they deck thee for a bride,

That the wreath is woven for thy hair, the bridegroom by thy side;

And I think I hear thy father's sigh, thy mother's calmer tone,

As they give thee to another's arms-their beautiful -their own.

I never saw a bridal but my eyelid hath been wet, And it always seemed to me as though a joyous crowd were met

To see the saddest sight of all, a gay and girlish thing Lay aside her maiden gladness-for a name and for a ring.

And other cares will claim thy thoughts, and other hearts thy love,

And gayer friends may be around, and bluer skies above;

Yet thou, when I behold thee next, may'st wear upon thy brow,

Perchance, a mother's look of care, for that which decks it now.

And when I think how often I have seen thee, with thy mild

And lovely look, and step of air, and bearing like a child,

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Oh! how mournfully, how mournfully, the thought comes o'er my brain,

When I think thou ne'er may'st be that free and girlish thing again.

I would that as my heart dictates, just such might be my lay,

And my voice should be a voice of mirth, a music like the May;

But it may not be !-within my breast all frozen are the springs,

The murmur dies upon the lip the music on the strings.

But a voice is floating round me, and it tells me in my rest,

That sunshine shall illume thy path, that joy shall be thy guest,

That thy life shall be a summer's day, whose evening shall go down,

Like the evening in the eastern clime, that never knows a frown.

When thy foot is at the altar, when the ring hath pressed thy hand,

When those thou lov'st, and those that love thee, weeping round thee stand,

Oh may the verse that friendship weaves, like a spirit of the air,

Be o'er thee at that moment-for a blessing and a prayer!

BYRON.

BY W. KENNEDY.

THE forfeit's paid,—we pardon thee,—
Thy faults shall fade away ;
The beauty of thy memory

Will never know decay.
Thy errors, like a cloud or two,
Upon a heaven of holiest blue,
But intercept the ray,
To make its fervour less intense,
For trembling mortals' shrinking sense.

The monarch of the melody

Is risen from his throne, And who shall lead the harmony, When he, our feast, hath flown? His harp obeys no stranger hand, Nor have we one whose chords command The wild heart-piercing tone, That swelled above each heavy hymn Of those, who would have rivalled him.

Attendant on the minstrel's form

A band of spirits came,

From earth and air, in calm and storm, In water and in flame;

The children of the Universe

Obeyed the magic of his verse,
And, at his will, became

Things lovely, to the wondering eyes
Which gloried in their mysteries.

BYRON.

He died too, as he wished to die,
A fair and full grown tree,
Whose stem shot proudly to the sky,
And bloomed luxuriantly.
No dotage of a slow decay,
No canker of rebellious clay,

E'er fixed its taint on thee;
Thy spirit sprang from its abode,
In summer beauty to its God.

And in that latest, loneliest hour,
When human aid is vain,

There lives for me a thought with power
To soothe the sense of pain.

The consciousness that I shall be
In realms of immortality,

Permitted to obtain

A place in thy community

With those who most resemble thee.

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STANZAS FOR EVENING.

BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.

THERE is an hour when leaves are still, and winds sleep on the wave;

When far beneath the closing clouds the day hath found a grave;

And stars that at the note of dawn begin their circling flight,

Return like sun-tired birds, to seek the sable boughs of night.

The curtains of the mind are closed, and slumber is

most sweet,

And visions to the hearts of men direct their fairy feet;

LYRE.

Y