Happy husband and wife, and friends conversing together.

Pleasantly murmured the brook, as they crossed the ford in the forest, Pleased with the image that passed, like a dream of love through its bosom,

Tremulous, floating in air, o'er the depths of the azure abysses.
Down through the golden leaves the sun was pouring his splendours,
Gleaming on purple grapes, that, from branches above them suspended,
Mingled their odorous breath with the balm of the pine and the fir-tree,
Wild and sweet as the clusters that grew in the valley of Eshcol.
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,
Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac,
Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,
Love immortal and young in the endless succession of lovers.

So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.

BIRDS OF PASSAGE.

come i gru van cantando lor lai,

Facendo in aer di sè lunga riga.

DANTE.

PROMETHEUS, OR THE POET'S FORETHOUGHT.

OF Prometheus, how undaunted

On Olympus' shining bastions

His audacious foot he planted,

Myths are told and songs are chanted,

Full of promptings and suggestions.

Beautiful is the tradition

Of that flight through heavenly portals,

The old classic superstition

Of the theft and the transmission

Of the fire of the Immortals!

First the deed of noble daring,

Born of heavenward aspiration,

Then the fire with mortals sharing,
Then the vulture, the despairing

Cry of pain on crags Caucasian.

All is but a symbol painted

Of the Poet, Prophet, Seer;

Only those are crowned and sainted
Who with grief have been acquainted,
Making nations nobler, freer.

In their feverish exultations,

In their triumph and their yearning,

In their passionate pulsations,

In their words among the nations,

The Promethean fire is burning.

Shall it, then, be unavailing,

All this toil for human culture P

Through the cloud-rack, dark and trailing,
Must they see above them sailing

O'er life's barren crags the vulture?

Such a fate as this was Dante's,

By defeat and exile maddened; Thus were Milton and Cervantes, Nature's priests and Corybantes,

By affliction touched and saddened.

But the glories so transcendent

That around their memories cluster,

And, on all their steps attendant,

Make their darkened lives resplendent

With such gleams of inward lustre!

All the melodies mysterious,

Through the dreary darkness chanted;

Thoughts in attitudes imperious,

Voices soft, and deep, and serious,

Words that whispered, songs that haunted!