Why?-ask the true heart why

Woman hath been

Ever, where brave men die,

Unshrinking seen?

Unto this harvest ground

Proud reapers came,

Some, for that stirring sound,

A warrior's name;

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Some, for the stormy play
And joy of strife;
And some, to fling away
A weary life;-

But thou, pale sleeper, thou,
With the slight frame,

And the rich locks, whose glow
Death cannot tame;

Only one thought, one power,
Thee could have led,

So, through the tempest's hour,
To lift thy head!

Only the true, the strong,

The love, whose trust Woman's deep soul too long Pours on the dust!

LAND OF DREAMS.

THE LAND OF DREAMS.

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And dreams, in their developement, have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They make us what we were not-what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by.

O SPIRIT-LAND! thou land of dreams!
A world thou art of mysterious gleams,
Of startling voices, and sounds at strife,—
A world of the dead in the hues of life.

BYRON.

Like a wizard's magic glass thou art,
When the wavy shadows float by, and part:
Visions of aspects, now loved, now strange,
Glimmering and mingling in ceaseless change.

Thou art like a city of the past,

With its gorgeous halls in fragments cast,
Amidst whose ruins there glide and play
Familiar forms of the world's to-day.

Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth,
Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth,-

All the sere flowers of our days gone by,
And the buried gems in thy bosom lie.

Yes! thou art like those dim sea-caves,

A realm of treasures, a realm of graves!

And the shapes through thy mysteries that come

and go,

Are of beauty and terror, of power and woe.

But for me, O thou picture-land of sleep!
Thou art all one world of affections deep,-
And wrung from my heart is each flushing dye,
That sweeps o'er thy chambers of imagery.

And thy bowers are fair-e'en as Eden fair;
All the beloved of my soul are there!
The forms my spirit most pines to see,
The eyes, whose love hath been life to me;

They are there, and each blessed voice I hear,
Kindly, and joyous, and silvery clear;

But under-tones are in each, that say,
"It is but a dream; it will melt away!"

I walk with sweet friends in the sunset's glow;

I listen to music of long ago;

But one thought, like an omen, breathes faint through

the lay,

"It is but a dream; it will melt away!"

I sit by the hearth of my early days;

All the home-faces are met by the blaze,-
And the eyes of the mother shine soft, yet say
"It is but a dream; it will melt away!"

And away, like a flower's passing breath, 'tis gone,
And I wake more sadly, more deeply lone!
Oh! a haunted heart is a weight to bear,-
Bright faces, kind voices! where are ye, where?

Shadow not forth, O thou land of dreams,
The past, as it fled by my own blue streams!
Make not my spirit within me burn

For the scenes and the hours that may ne'er return!

THE DESERTED HOUSE.

Call out from the future thy visions bright,

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From the world o'er the grave, take thy solemn light, And oh! with the loved, whom no more I see,

Show me my home, as it yet may be!

As it yet may be in some purer sphere,

No cloud, no parting, no sleepless fear;

So my soul may bear on through the long, long day, Till I go where the beautiful melts not away!

THE DESERTED HOUSE.

GLOOM is upon thy silent hearth,
O silent house! once fill'd with mirth;
Sorrow is in the breezy sound
Of thy tall poplars whispering round.

The shadow of departed hours
Hangs dim upon thy early flowers;
Even in thy sunshine seems to brood
Something more deep than solitude.

Fair art thou, fair to a stranger's gaze,
Mine own sweet home of other days!
My children's birth-place! yet for me,
It is too much to look on thee.

Too much! for, all about thee spread,
I feel the memory of the dead,
And almost linger for the feet
That never more my step shall meet.
VOL. VI.

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