Hark! in that primrose vale in the wood
Where the trees no longer are bare!
They ring in the pathway the maiden trod
As she wandered unthinkingly there:
In her loveliness lonely there.

Violet eyes from the banks are peeping,
Watching love's spells around her creeping.
Anemones, with their stems so frail

That yield to each sigh of the murmuring gale,
See the new-born love on her features play
And kiss her feet as she passes away.

Like Anadyomene's form

In Pentelican marble moulded.
Veiled by a sacred mysterious charm
Ere by earthly arms enfolded.
A goddess! that breathes and feels
The incense around her stealing;
Drinking the life of a passionate love
Its first glow of fervour revealing.

The robing of nature in loveliness

The freshness of all that is dear!

If time could but linger there!

Ah! those sweet sweet days, soon past!

Ere a shadow however tender

Was over love's pathway cast.

There is nothing in life so sweet,

There is nothing so sweet so dear; There is naught in the after months

Like the primrose path of the year.

The rippling waves are flowing
Over the king cob grass;
The butterflies fluttering pass;
Favonius softly blowing.

Redolent air of the Meadow-sweet plain!
In thy smooth susurrus we dream again :
Visions of dreamland, early and late,
Jostle and crowd through the ivory gate!

A CLASSIC FRAGMENT.

"Do you ask whence it comes that I write of love so often? whence comes it that my book reads so pleasantly? It is not Calliope inspires my strains nor Apollo."

PROPERTIUS. B. 2. Elegy 1.

As I passed out from under the pronaos of the temple, the moon was shining; that same moon which in its tender infancy softly looked down upon us. Illusive moon! frosting the tall heads of the old cypresses and bathing the trellised vines with seeming coldness; glistening among the tough leaves of the tortuous ivy, and rising like a flood up the space of the gestasio: how it threw strange forms across the avenue of planes, how it shone over the olive grove, and gleamed under the pomegranate trees; and how it seemed to sleep over the boxbordered xystus.

Its light now dwells full upon the sacred laurelslaurels whose leaves find a voice at the near approach of fire, metamorphosis of the startled nymph, who

fled, affrighted, from the ardour of the ever youthful Apollo. Chaste Dian's light, upon the transformed Daphne;-yet though the chill daughter of Peneus avoided the pursuit of her golden-haired adorer, still must she cease to flourish when his face is entirely turned away; a sunless spot to her is desolation, and in such an aspect the harsh breath of Aquilo scatters her shrinking leaves, untimely sere.

Ah! sweet Lymia, when that moonlight in its serene beauty streamed into thy dwelling; flooding the atrium and shining over the cool water of the impluvium; how curiously it seemed to wander, searching among the statues of the cavum aedium and resting at the shaded entrances of the alae. The quaint cut yews in the viridarium, the pride of thy Topiarius, looked more and more strangely shaped as it paused behind them, and crept smiling into the triclinium, peeping after us, inquisitively, as we sat, where the glow from the fire-light only half revealed our shadowy forms.

The Athenian maidens made odorous their bordered chitons with the Median citrus, but the true perfume of the myrtle flower is in every fold of my loved one's drapery.

The seals of love, impressed upon the soul of thy beauty, need no other urn; once there they can never be erased their imprint is indelible,-there they re main for ever, piously enshrined, as the sacred ashes of some loved one whose soul has passed away into the realms of the invisible.

Septem ante Kalendas Decembres. That day was ours, that thrice and four times happy day, when the waters of the Anio were turgid with the land floods, and the yellow Tiber rushed swiftly past its shores

with foaming haste; when the lofty tree tops were tossing their red leaves to the autumn sky, and carpeted our paths with a rustling footway of bright colors. Ever sacred be the memory of its eventide, no cold morning air had chilled our hopes, no scorching ray of garish noon had dazzled thy dove-like eyes: and the sweet repose of solemn evening came, breathing silence around us.

The glowing chariot of streaming haired Phoebus went down beyond the shadowings of the distant mountain peaks, amid a blaze of fervid glory,-deep waves of burning crimson and gleaming amber,—reefs of glistening ruby,-broken bars of jagged sapphire unevenly edged with flame,-purple banks and ridges, along which the sparkle of the topaz lingers,-delicate pencillings of intense vermillion; all animated by one ineffable flood of glorious living light: and between all these, glimpses here and there of a pale clear amethyst sky, the atmosphere of another existence, openings for the mind to dwell upon, glimpses that lead the thoughts far, far away, in the direction of a glorious immortality. Think, dear one, what must be the glory of that future world, of which the goldenhaired Phoebus now only shows us the threshold!

MONTI OF MILAN.

A dream of joy-where the roses are blushing,
And white lily perfume is filling the air;

And a warmer tint first in the young cheek is flushing,

Of a loved one so lovingly lingering there.

A dream of joy-on deep violet pillows
Where beauty and solitude only are near,

And a tremulous thought stirs the soft breathing billows
Beneath almond eyes that to thee are so dear.

A dream of joy-in a forest of flowers,
When revels and dancing are heard in the hall,
And a fairy clad form that we know is all ours
Steals away from the splendour and pride of the ball.

A dream of joy-with the spray sparkle bounding,
And Lurline is singing with mermaiden glee;

And the lap and the lave of the salt waves are sounding,
And a jewelled arm garlands the helmsman's knee.

A dream of joy-where a fair head is lying,
And a tear drop is falling upon his breast;
And whispers are telling how moments are flying
In last, last, last kisses to sweet lips pressed.

A dream of joy-still unchanging, unbroken,
That follows life down the long dim stream of time,
With the echo of words that in rapture were spoken,
In the passionate breath of an orient clime,

A dream of joy-O, true artist lover!

Thy thought in some grove of Elysium was born,
But the veil of Sigalion lifts not to discover
The altars where such inspirations are drawn.

DOWN BY THE DARK RIVER.

Tacitæ amica silentia lunæ.

Down by the dark river silently creeping
Into the valley of night;

Under the gibbous moon hazily steeping
The air in her sea of pale light.

A