WE walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun:

And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,

The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,

With hair of glittering grey;

As blithe a man as you could see

On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,

And by the steaming rills,

We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun; Then, from thy breast what thought, Beneath so beautiful a sun,

So sad a sigh has brought?'

A second time did Matthew stop;
And fixing still his eye

Upon the eastern mountain-top,
To me he made reply:

'Yon cloud with that long purple cleft Brings fresh into my mind

A day like this which I have left
Full thirty years behind.

'With rod and line I sued the sport

Which that sweet season gave,

And, to the church-yard come, stopped short
Beside my daughter's grave.

'Nine summers had she scarcely seen,
The pride of all the vale;

And then she sang;-she would have been
A very nightingale.

'Six feet in earth my Emma lay;
And yet I loved her more,

For so it seemed, than till that day
I e'er had loved before.

'And, turning from her grave, I met,
Beside the church-yard yew,

A blooming girl, whose hair was wet
With points of morning dew.

TO HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicèan barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
To the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche,
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are holy land!

THE SKYLARK

BIRD of the wilderness,

Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place

Oh, to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud,

Far in the downy cloud,

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth.
Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.

POE.