To Love !—for fiends of hate might see Thou dwell'st in love, and love in thee! What wonder, then, though in thy dreams Thy face with mystic meaning beams !

Oh! that my spirit's eye could see
Whence burst those gleams of ecstasy !
That light of dreaming soul appears
To play from thoughts above thy years.
Thou smilest as if thy soul were soaring
To heaven, and heaven's God adoring!
And who can tell what visions high
May bless an infant's sleeping eye?
What brighter throne can brightness find
To reign on than an infant's mind,
Ere sin destroy, or error dim,
The glory of the seraphim ?

A YOUNG GIRL.

L. E. LANDON.

A BEAUTIFUL and laughing thing,
Just in her first appareling
Of girlish loveliness : blue eyes,
Such blue as in the violet dwells,
And rose-bud lips of sweets, such sweets
The bee hoards in his fragrant cells.
'Tis not a blush upon her cheek
Oh, blushes but of love can speak ;
That brow is all too free from care,
For love to be a dweller there.

Alas! that love should ever fling
One shadow from his radiant wing!
But that fair cheek knows not a cloud,
And health and hope are in its dyes, -
She has been over hill and dale,
Chasing the summer butterflies.
Yet there is malice in her smile,
As if she felt her woman's power,
And had a gift of prophecy,
To look upon that coming hour,
When, feared by some, yet loved by all,
Young beauty holds her festival.

THE LILY OE THE VALLEY.

J. H. WIFFEN.

Look on that Flower—the Daughter of the Vale,

The Medicean statue of the shade! Her limbs of modest beauty, aspect pale,

Are but by her ambrosial breath betrayed. There, half in elegant relief displayed,

She standeth to our gaze, half shrinking shuns Folding her green scarf like a bashful maid

Around, to screen her from her suitor suns, Not all her many sweets she lavisheth at once.

Locked in the twilight of depending boughs,

When night and day commingle, she doth shoot Where nightingales repeat their marriage vows;

First by retiring, wins our curious foot,

Then charms us by her loveliness to suit

Our contemplation to her lonely cot !
Her gloom, leaf, blossom, fragrance, form, dispute

Which shall attract most belgrades to the spot,
And loveliest her array who fain would rest unsought.

Her gloom, the aisle of heavenly solitude ;

Her flower, the vestal Nun who there abideth ; Her breath, that of celestials meekly wooed

From heaven; her leaf, the holy veil which hideth ; Her form, the shrine where purity resideth ;

Spring's darling, nature's pride, the Sylvan's queen. To her at eve enamoured Zephyr glideth,

Trembling, she bids him waft aside her sereen, And to his kisses wakes—the Flora of the scene.

MY NATIVE VALE.

CUNNINGHAM.

My native vale, my native vale,

In visions and in dreams
I see your towers and trees, and hear

The music of your streams :
I feel the fragrance of the thorn

Where lovers loved to meet;
I walk upon thy hills and see

Thee slumbering at my feet.
In every knoll I see a friend,

In every tree a brother,
And clasp thy breast, as I would clasp

The bosom of my mother,

There stands the tottering tower I climbed,

And won the falcon's brood ; There flows the stream I've trysted through,

When it was wild in flood !
There is the fairy gler-the pools

I mused in youth among,
The very nook where first I poured

Forth inconsidered song:
And stood with gladness in my heart,

And bright hope on my brow-
Ah! I had other visions then

Than I have visions now.

I went unto my native vale

Alas! what did I see?
At every door strange faces, where

Glad looks once welcomed me:
The sunshine faded on the hills,

The music left the brooks,
The song of its unnumbered larks

Was as the voice of rooks ;
The plough had been in all my haunts,

The axe had touched the grove,
And death had followed—there was nought

Remained for me to love.

My native vale, farewell ! farewell!

My father, on thy hearth
The light's extinguished and thy roof

No longer rings with mirth;
There sits a stranger on thy chair ;

And they are dead and gone

Who charmed my early life-all-all

Sleep 'neath the church-yard stone: There's nought moves save yon round red moon,

Nought lives, but that pure river That lived when I was young-all- all

Are gone--and gone for ever.

Keir with thy pasture mountains green,

Drumlanrig with thy towers ; Carse with thy lily banks and braes,

And Blackwood with thy bowers ;
And fair Dalswinton with thy walks

Of scented thorn and holly,
Where some had toiled the day, and shared

The night 'tween sense and folly.
Farewell, farewell, your flowers will glad

The bird, and feed the bee,
And charm ten thousand hearts--although

No more they'll+gladden me.

I stood within my native vale,

Fast by the river brink,
And saw the long and yellow corn,

'Neath shining sickles sink-
I heard the fair-haired maidens wake

Songs of the latter day ;
And joyed to see the Pndsmen smile,

Albeit their locks were grey ;
I thought on mine own musings—when

Men shook their tresses hoary,
And said, “ alas !" and named my name,

“Thou art no heir of glory!"