TO A LADY OFFENDED BY A SPORTIVE OBSERVATION THAT WOMEN HAVE NO SOULS. NAY, dearest Anna! why so grave? "Tis I, that have one since I first had you! I HAVE heard of reasons manifold Why Love must needs be blind, But this the best of all I hold His eyes are in his mind. What outward form and feature are But what within is good and fair He seeth with the heart. "THE LOVE THAT MAKETH NOT WHERE true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT. SINCE all that beat about in Nature's range, Fond thought! not one of all that shining swarm Still, still as though some dear embodied good, * This phenomenon, which the author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively in the following passage of the Aids to Reflection. "Pindar's fine remark respecting the different effects of music on different characters, holds equally true of Genius; as many as are not delighted by it are disturbed, perplexed, irritated. The beholder either recognizes it as a projected form of his own being, that moves before him with a glory round its head, or recoils from it as a spectre."-Aids to Reflection, p. 220. O! Ir is pleasant, with a heart at ease, Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies, To make the shifting clouds be what you please Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold "Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land! Or list'ning to the tide, with closed sight, Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. f THE BLOSSOMING OF THE SOLITARY DATE-TREE. A LAMENT. I SEEM to have an indistinct recollection of having read either in one of the ponderous tomes of George of Venice, or in some other compilation from the uninspired Hebrew writers, an apologue or Rabbinical tradition to the following purpose: While our first parents stood before their offended Maker, and the last words of the sentence were yet sounding in Adam's ear, the guileful false serpent, a counterfeit and a usurper from the beginning, presumptuously took on himself the character of advocate or mediator, and pretending to in tercede for Adam, exclaimed: "Nay, Lord, in thy justice, not so! for the man was the least in fault. Rather let the Woman return at once to the dust, and let Adam remain in this thy Paradise." And the word of the Most High answered Satan: "The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Treacherous Fiend! if with guilt like thine, it had been possible for thee to have the heart of a Man, and to feel the yearning of a human soul for its counterpart, the sentence, which thou now counsellest, should have been inflicted on thyself." The title of the following poem was suggested by a fact mentioned by Linnæus, of a date-tree in a nobleman's garden which year after year had put forth a full show of blossoms, but never produced fruit, till a branch from another date-tree had been conveyed from a distance of some hundred leagues. The first leaf of the MS. from which the poem has been tran scribed, and which contained the two or three introductory |