'No more! no more! Thank Heaven, you live!'

It was her voice the silence broke,

And Maud looked up with a face surprised,

As if from a pleasant dream awoke.

I read no more.

What need of the rest?
Enough in the sunset I had read.
She loved me, Amy !—her gentle heart
Spoke in the cry that told her dread.

She loved me! Faded the rosy West,

Faded the bloom of the rippling bay;

But night could not chill, nor the dark depress,
While the thought of her love in my bosom lay.

3

34. UNREQUITED.

EW and low were the words I spoke,

FEW

Doubly brief was the cold reply;

Yet in that one moment a man's heart broke,
And the light went out from his eye!

In a little moment of time,

The bright hopes of a life all paled ;
A brave man knew he had dared the leap,
And a proud man knew he had—failed!

Failed! 'tis often a fatal word,

Fraught with the spirit's pain;

For to fail in some of the ventures of life

Is never to try them again.

If the fowler hang o'er the cliff,

Upheld by a treacherous rope,

Should the frail thing break, or the strong man blanch,
He is lost-and beyond all hope.

So I set my hopes on a word,

Launched a shell on a boisterous sea;

And the waves up-rose, and my shell down-sank
It can never come back to me!

35. UNREQUITED.

A REPLY.

HE passes by, with cold and heartless gaze,

And I must brave it-aye, and smile bencath The casual look or word on me that fall,

As snowflakes from a May-day wreath.

And yet no word of mine shall ever break
The silence that between our hearts must lie.
I love him-yet he knows not-never shall;
No look shall tell him, till I die!

I see him yonder, basking in the smiles

Of one whose radiant brow and artful ways Have all enthralled him. Doth she love as I?, No! with his heart she merely plays.

Oh! I could bear it all, did I but know

That love, true, faithful, lay within her heart;

So he might never feel, as I have felt,

Hope slowly, hour by hour, depart.

Oh! masters of our hearts, ye little know

What faith and love ye pass unheeded by ; Or leave for lighter words, or brighter smiles, Without a thought-without a sigh!

2

36. TIS THE HEART THAT GIVES VALUE TO WORDS.

COMEBODY wrote me a sweet little note,

Shall I here tell you what somebody wrote?
No; let the muse keep the secret from air :
But this was the motto the seal had to show,
This-C'est le cœur qui fait valoir les mots.

Somebody walked with me, light was her tread
Over the beautiful sunshiny wold:

Shall I here tell you what somebody said?

fair:

The sunlight has faded, the words have grown cold. Do you believe in the motto, or no?

C'est, c'est le cœur qui fait valoir les mots.

Somebody sang me a dear little song,

Full of all tender, unspeakable things-
Shall I repeat them? No, ever so long

They have flown off on the swiftest of wings;
And the nest they deserted is white with the snow,
Ah! c'est le cœur qui fait valoir les mots.

Shall I with censure link somebody's name

For the note and the walk and the fly-away birds?
No-the dear creature was never to blame,

She had no heart to give value to words.
Sweetly as Hybla her accents may flow-
Mais, c'est le cœur qui fait valoir les mots.

O

37. WOMAN.

WOMAN! lovely woman! thou

Shalt share in the bard's divinest vow;
Shalt share, for thy weal in this life of woe,
The warmest prayer that his heart can know,
Till cold be the heart that shall never find
A kindness, as thine, so deeply kind;
And shrouded this eye that shall brighter be
In its ray to the last to look upon thee!

Without thy tear-thy approving smile,
The heart to melt, and its cares beguile—
Thy form of beauty to meet the eye,
And fill the soul with enchantment high--
Oh! what were the scenes we here survey,
And what the minstrel, and what his lay?
Sweet floweret of beauty, of bliss, and bloom,
How warm is thy heart, and cold its doom-
How tender thy form, and thy being how gay,
Mid the many snares that thy steps belay!
Sweet woman! this eye has wept for thee
When only the angels and God could see :
This bosom has bled, and must bleed again,
To know of thy frailty, thy sorrow, and pain,
And all the evils of falsehood and art
That wither thy warm and thy wareless heart!

But the scene shall change, and the time shall be,
That angels and seraphs shall smile on thee.
Oh! yet shall it be, though thy charms must fade,
And thy form in the coldness of death be laid,
That thine eye of light and thy bosom of snow
No sorrow shall feel and no darkness know-
In climes where thy robes shall be ever new,
Thy food the flower, and thy drink the dew;
And thy thoughts the bliss of the bowers above,
Inwove with the truths of Eternal Love.

2

1

And yet shall it be that the hearts of guile
That have marr'd thy beauty and dimm'd thy smile,
Shall look on thee with anguish more keen
Than that which in thine hath ever been,
And seek from thy glances of power to hide,
Though regions of darkness and sorrow betide.
Yet then-even then, thy bosom of love,
Methinks, shall its wonted sympathy prove;
And the feelings and yearnings of pity live,

That their wrongs to Heaven and thee would forgive.

Frail woman! for thee was the earth accursed,
But thy One shall save that the breast hath nursed;
Thy couch shall be cold, and thy slumber deep,
But thy eye any more shall not wake to weep,
Nor thy heart to bleed with a wild dismay,
Or thy form of beauty to know decay,
But spring as a bud from the drear abode,
And blossom anew in the bowers of God.

Henry Scott Riddell.

38. THE BACHELOR'S DAY.

HE bachelor's morning is weary and sad :

His coffee is cold, and his shoes are not brush'd;
Breakfast thus leaveth him angry and flush'd.

He comforts himself for his sorrows by thinking,

At dinner, at least, he'll have eating and drinking:
'Good ale and beafsteak no misfortune can hinder,'-
But the steak, when brought up, is found burnt to a cinder.

He tugs at the bell-pull, by fury inspired,

To lecture the landlady till he is tired;

But she takes precious care to be out of the way,

When she thinks that her lodger has something to say!