For they drew no blood,

And they knit no frown.

I knew of them not

Until Cupid laughed loud,
And saying "You're caught!"

Flew off in the cloud.

WHY lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year; Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to

hear;

Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow,

Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow?

Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray?

Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day.

The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on;

There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone.

O Violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and

die,

When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes

sigh;

When Winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting Spring,

And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing.

I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet;
Her morning sun shone bright and calmly purely

set;

When the violets were in their shrouds, and Summer in its pride,

She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died.

THE AMULET

YOUR picture smiles as first it smiled;
The ring you gave is still the same;
Your letter tells, O changing child!
No tidings since it came.

Give me an amulet

That keeps intelligence with you, — Red when you love, and rosier red,

And when you love not, pale and blue.

Alas! that neither bonds nor vows
Can certify possession;

Torments me still the fear that love
Died in its last expression.

THINE EYES STILL SHINED

THINE eyes still shined for me, though far

I lonely roved the land or sea:

As I behold yon evening star,
Which yet beholds not me.'

This morn I climbed the mistỷ hill
And roamed the pastures through;
How danced thy form before my path
Amidst the deep-eyed dew!

When the redbird spread his sable wing,
And showed his side of flame;
When the rosebud ripened to the rose,
In both I read thy name.2

t

EROS

THE sense of the world is short,

Long and various the report,

To love and be beloved;

Men and gods have not outlearned it ;
And, how oft soe'er they've turned it,
Not to be improved.

And, when he heaved a sigh profound,

The sympathetic swallow swept the ground.

'If it be, as they said, she was not fair,
Beauty's not beautiful to me,

But sceptred genius, aye inorbed,
Culminating in her sphere.

This Hermione absorbed

The lustre of the land and ocean,

Hills and islands, cloud and tree,

In her form and motion.

'I ask no bauble miniature,
Nor ringlets dead

Shorn from her comely head,
Now that morning not disdains
Mountains and the misty plains
Her colossal portraiture;
They her heralds be,

Steeped in her quality,

And singers of her fame

Who is their Muse and dame.

Higher, dear swallows! mind not what I say.

Ah! heedless how the weak are strong,

Say, was it just,

In thee to frame, in me to trust,
Thou to the Syrian couldst belong?

'I am of a lineage

That each for each doth fast engage;
In old Bassora's schools, I seemed
Hermit vowed to books and gloom,-
Ill-bestead for gay bridegroom.
I was by thy touch redeemed;
When thy meteor glances came,
We talked at large of worldly fate,
And drew truly every trait.