CHARLES MACKAY.

So, on the solitary moor,

The soldiers' graves are bright with flowers; The wild thyme blooms, and sweet perfumes Attract the roamers of the bowers.

There strays the bee to gather sweets,
And gives his booming trumpet rest;
There waves the heath its purple wreath,
And there the linnet builds her nest.

So let them rest-the buried griefs,
The place is holy where they lie;

On Life's cold waste their graves are placed--
The flowers look upward to the sky.

LORD LYTTON.

MILTON AND THE LADY.

IT was the Minstrel's merry month of June; Silent and sultry glowed the breezeless noon; Along the flowers the bee went murmuring; Life in its myriad forms was on the wing;

Played on the green leaves with the quivering beam, Sang from the grove, and sparkled from the stream, When, where yon beech-tree veiled the softening ray, On violet banks young Milton dreaming lay.

For him the Earth below, the Heaven above,
Doubled each charm in the clear glass of youth;
And the vague spirit of unsettled love

Roved through the visions that precede the truth,
While Poesy's low voice so hymned through all
That even the very air was musical.

The sunbeam rested, where it pierced the boughs,
On locks whose gold reflected back the gleaming;
On Thought's fair temple in majestic brows,
On Love's bright portal-lips that smiled in dreaming.

LORD LYTTON.

Dreams he of Nymph half hid in sparry cave? Or of his own Sabrina chastely "sitting Under the glassy cool translucent wave," The loose train of her amber tresses knitting? Or that far shadow, yet but faintly viewed, Where the Four Rivers take their parent springs, Which shall come forth from starry solitude,

In the last days of angel visitings,

When soaring upward from the nether storm,

The Heaven of Heavens shall earthly guest receive,

And, in the long lost Eden, smile thy form,
Fairer than all thy daughters, fairest Eve?

Has the dull Earth a being to compare
With those that haunt that spirit-world-the brain?
Can shapes material vie with forms of air,
Nature with Phantasy?-O question vain!

Lo, by the Dreamer, fresh from heavenly hands,
Youth's dream-inspirer-Virgin Woman stands.
She came, a stranger from the Southern skies,
And careless o'er the cloistered garden strayed,
Till, pausing, violets on the bank to cull,
Over the Dreamer bent the Beautiful.

Silent, with lifted hand and lips apart,
Silent she stood, and gazed away her heart.
Like purple Mænad fruits, when down the glade
Shoots the warm sunbeam, into darksome glow
Light kissed the ringlets wreathing brows of snow-
And softer than the rosy hues that flush

Her native heaven, when Tuscan morns arise,
The sweet cheek brightened with the sweeter blush,

MILTON AND THE LADY.

As virgin love from out delighted eyes

Dawned as Aurora dawns.—

Thus looked the maid,

And still the sleeper dreamed beneath the shade.

Image of Soul and Love! So Psyche crept To the still chamber where her Eros slept; While the light gladdened round his face serene, As light doth ever, when Love first is seen.

Felt he the touch of her dark locks descending, Or with his breath her breathing fused and blending, That like a bird we startle from the spray, Passed the light Sleep with sudden wings away?

Sighing he woke, and waking he beheld;

The sigh was silenced as the look was spelled;
Look charming look! the love that ever lies
In human hearts, like lightning in the air,
Flashed in the moment from those meeting eyes,
And opened all the Heaven!

O, Youth beware!
For either light should but forewarn the gaze,
Woe follows love, as darkness doth the blaze!

And their eyes met-one moment and no more;
Moment in time that centred years in feeling;
As when to Thetis, on her caverned shore,

Knelt her young King,-he rose, and murmured, kneeling.
Low though the murmur it dissolved the charm
Which had in silence chained the modest feet;
And maiden shame and woman's swift alarm
Crimsoned her check and in her pulses beat;

LORD LYTTON.

She turned, and as a spell that leaves the place
It filled with phantom beauty-cold and bare,
She fled; and over disenchanted space
Rushed back the common air!

MILTON'S GRAVE.

A DEATH-BELL ceased;-beneath the vault were laid A great man's bones;-and when the rest were gone Veiled, and in sable widowed weeds arrayed,

An agèd woman knelt upon the stone.

Low as she prayed, the wailing notes were sweet
With the strange music of a foreign tongue:
Thrice to that spot came feeble, feebler feet,
Thrice on that stone were humble garlands hung.
On the fourth day some formal hand in scorn
The flowers that breathed of priestcraft cast away;
But the poor stranger came not with the morn,
And flowers forbidden decked no more the clay.
A heart was broken!-and a spirit fled!
Whither let those who love and hope decide—
But in the faith that Love rejoins the dead,
The heart was broken ere the garland died.