A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace, Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the

vase;

And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure

eyes

As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.

I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little check

ered dress

She wore when first I kissed her and she answered

the caress

66

With the written declaration that, as surely as

the vine

Grew round the stump," she loved me-that old sweetheart of mine.

And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand,

As we used to talk together of the future we had planned

When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to do

But write the tender verses that she set the music to:

When we should live together in a cosy little cot, Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot, Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine,

And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine:

When I should be her lover forever and a day, And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray;

And we should be so happy that when either's lips were dumb

They would not smile in Heaven till the other's kiss had come.

But, ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair,

And the door is softly opened, and my wife is standing there;

Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I

resign

To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine.

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.

ROSE AYLMER.

Ан what avails the sceptred race,
Ah what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,

A night of memories and of sighs

I consecrate to thee.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

VIII.

WEDDED LOVE.

LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF

TRUE MINDS.

SONNET CXVI.

LET me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love,
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;

O, no! it is an ever-fixèd mark,

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be

taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

SHAKESPEARE.

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.

VI.

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,

Without the sense of that which I forbore,

Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, he hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

XIV.

IF thou must love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only. Do not say

"I love her for her smile . . . her look ... her

way

Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought

That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day."

For these things in themselves, belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee, and love so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—

A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby.
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

XVIII.

I NEVER gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
"Take it." My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot's glee.
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle tree,

As girls do, any more. It only may

Now shade on two pale cheeks, the mark of tears, Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside Through sorrow's trick. I thought the funeral

shears

Would take this first, but Love is justified,Take it thou, . . . finding pure, from all those years,

The kiss my mother left here when she died.

XXI.

SAY over again, and yet once over again,

That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated

Should seem a "cuckoo-song," as thou dost treat it,

Remember never to the hill or plain,

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain, Comes the fresh spring in all her green completed. Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted