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Nor have any concern with those fanciful forms That dance upon rainbows and ride upon storms; That, in short, you're a woman; your lip and

your eye

As mortal as ever drew gods from the sky.

But I will not believe them-no, Science, to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu :
Still flying from Nature to study her laws,
And dulling delight by exploring its cause,
You forget how superior, for mortals below,

Is the fiction they dream to the truth that they

know.

Oh! who, that has e'er enjoyed rapture complete,
Would ask how we feel it, or why it is sweet;
How rays are confus'd, or how particles fly
Through the medium refin'd of a glance or a sigh;
Is there one, who but once would not rather have
known it,

Than written, with Harvey, whole volumes upon it?

As for you, my sweet-voiced and invisible love,

You must surely be one of those spirits, that rove
By the bank where, at twilight, the poet reclines,
When the star of the west on his solitude shines,
And the magical fingers of fancy have hung
Every breeze with a sigh, every leaf with a tongue.
Oh! hint to him then, 'tis retirement alone
Can hallow his harp or ennoble its tone;
Like

you, with a veil of seclusion between,
His song to the world let him utter unseen,
And like you, a legitimate child of the spheres,
Escape from the eye to enrapture the ears.

Sweet spirit of mystery! how I should love,
In the wearisome ways I am fated to rove,
To have you thus ever invisibly nigh,
Inhaling for ever your song and your sigh!
Mid the crowds of the world and the murmurs of

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Then, come and be near me, for ever be mine, We shall hold in the air a communion divine, As sweet as, of old, was imagin'd to dwell In the grotto of Numa, or Socrates' cell. And oft, at those lingering moments of night, When the heart's busy thoughts have put slumber to flight,

You shall come to my pillow and tell me of love, Such as angel to angel might whisper above.

I should be sorry to think that my friend had any serious intentions of frightening the nursery by this story: I rather hope though the manner of it leads me to doubt that his design was to ridicule that distempered taste which prefers those monsters of the fancy to the "speciosa miracula" of true poetic imagination.

Sweet spirit!-and then, could you borrow the

tone

Of that voice, to my ear like some fairy-song known,

The voice of the one upon earth, who has twin'd
With her being for ever my heart and my mind,
Though lonely and far from the light of her smile,
An exile, and weary and hopeless the while.
Could you shed for a moment her voice on my ear,
I will think, for that moment, that Cara is near;
That she comes with consoling enchantment to
speak,

And kisses my eyelid and breathes on my cheek,
And tells me, the night shall go rapidly by,
For the dawn of our hope, of our heaven is nigh.

Fair spirit! if such be your magical power, It will lighten the lapse of full many an hour; And, let fortune's realities frown as they will, Hope, fancy, and Cara may smile for me still.

THE RING.1

A TALE.

Annulus ille viri.-OvID. Amor. lib. ii. eleg. 15.

THE happy day at length arriv'd
When Rupert was to wed
The fairest maid in Saxony,
And take her to his bed.

As soon as morn was in the sky,
The feasts and sports began;
The men admir'd the happy maid,
The maids the happy man.

In many a sweet device of mirth
The day was pass'd along;
And some the featly dance amus'd,
And some the dulcet song.

The younger maids with Isabel

Disported through the bowers, And deck'd her robe, and crown'd her head With motley bridal flowers.

The matrons all in rich attire,
Within the castle walls,
Sat listening to the choral strains
That echo'd through the halls.

I find, by a note in the manuscript, that he met with this story in a German author, Fromman upon Fascination, book iii. part vi. ch. 18. On consulting the work, I perceive that Fromman quotes it from Beluacensis, among many other stories equally diabolical and interesting. E.

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