Never shall weariness make me abjure

The gifts once prized, and cherished still the same. My dreams shall summon back the enchantress pure, And whisper her dear name.

Her eyes shall watch over my soul at last;

And when, dear lamp, shall come that mournful night,
When weeping friends behold me fading fast,
Thy flame shall burn more bright!

That flame has often filled my wondering thought;
The sacred emblem of our transient breath,
Mysterious power, to man's dull uses brought,
Sister of life and death!

A breath creates it, at a breath it dies;
It blots in one brief day a city's name;
Like fate ignored, or held a peerless prize
Like beauty or like fame.

See how it leaps up with a quick desire!
A spirit from on high, to earth no friend;
It takes its flight as human souls aspire,
To seek the unknown end!

All nature slowly to this end is drawn!

'Tis but a sleep, the so-called death of men: The fly shall have its day, the flower its dawn; Our clay shall wake again.

Do we the secrets of all nature know?

The sounds of night that on the horizon fail, The passing cloud that lays the flowers low, The will-o'-the-wisp of the vale?

Know we the secret of the nesting dove?

The cradle whence the tomb has snatched its prey? What is the mystery of grief, or love,

Or night that follows day?

Have not the murmuring winds a voice, a mood?
Is not the leaf a book we cannot read?
The stream that brings us harvest or a flood,
Has not it too its screed?

Let us not strive the kindly veils to raise.

Till all that we should see, life's end shall show:

Better know not than into mysteries gaze!

Better believe than know!

Farewell, my lamp! Blessings upon thy flame!
While I believe and hope, watch thou o'er me!
If ever prideful doubt my soul should claim,
May I go out with thee!

ODE TO THE LAKE OF B

THUS sailing, sailing on forevermore,

Still borne along, to winds and waves a prey,
Can we not, on life's sea without a shore,
Cast anchor for a day?

Dear lake! one little year has scarcely flown,
And near thy waves she longed once more to see,
Behold I sit alone upon this stone,

Where once she sat with me.

As now, thy restless waves were moaning through
The creviced rocks, where they their death did meet;
And flecks of foam from off thy billows blew
Over my dear one's feet.

One night we rode in silence, - dost recall
That night? When under all the starry sky
Was heard alone the beat of oars that fall
In cadenced harmony.

When suddenly, upon the startled ear

Accents unknown to earth melodious break;
And with these mournful words, a voice most dear
Charms all the listening lake:-

"O Time, pause in thy flight! and you, propitious hours, Pause on your rapid ways!

Let us enjoy the springtime of our powers,

The fairest of all days!

"So many wretched souls would speed your flight,
Urge on the lingering suns,

Take with their days the canker and the blight;
Forget the happy ones!

"But all in vain I try to stay its course:
Time slips away and flies.

I say to night, Pass slowly! and the dawn
Breaks on my startled eyes.

"Let us love, then, and love forevermore!
Enjoy life while we may;

Man has no port, nor has time any shore;
It flees, we pass away!"

She paused: our hearts speak through our ardent eyes,
Half-uttered phrases tremble on the air;
And in that ecstasy our spirits rise

Up to a world more fair.

And now we cease to speak; in sweet eclipse
Our senses lie, weighed down with all love's store;
Our hearts are beating, and our clinging lips
Murmur, "Forevermore!"

Great Heaven! can then these moments of delight,
When love all happiness upon us showers,
Vanish away as swiftly in their flight

As our unhappy hours?

Eternity, the Darkness, and the Past,

What have you done with all you've made your prey? Answer us! will you render back at last

What you have snatched away?

O lake, O silent rocks, O verdurous green!

You that time spares, or knows how to renew, -
Keep of this night, set in this lovely scene,
At least a memory true!

A memory in thy storms and thy repose,

O lake! and where thy smiling waters lave The sunny shore, or where the dark fir grows, And hangs above the wave.

In the soft breeze that sighs and then is gone,
In thy shores' song, by thy shores echoed still;
In the pale star whose silvery radiance shone
Above thy wooded hill!

That moaning winds, and reeds that clashing strike,
And perfumes that on balmy breezes moved,
With all we hear, we see, we breathe, alike
May say, "They loved!"

FAR FROM THE WORLD.

FAR from the faithless and the wicked world,
Fly, O my soul! to some deep solitude;
Fly, shaking from our feet the weary dust
Of love, desire, hope, and carking care
Upon the threshold of these deserts wild.

?

Behold the rocks, the forests, and the shores,
Nature has molded with her mighty hands:
The streams alone have hollowed out these paths;
Their foam alone has touched the river banks
Where never human foot has left a trace.

There seek at last for peace within thyself;
Thy dreams of happiness have been but brief!
Drive them forever far from this retreat;

Love nothing but the blue sky that loves thee,
And of the sun alone ask happy days!

To wounded hearts, nature is ever sweet,
And solitude belongs to wretchedness.
Already peace reënters my sad heart;
Already life takes up, without a jar,
Its course suspended by the hand of grief!

THE TEMPLE.

(From "History of the Girondists.")

WE left Louis XVI. at the threshold of the Temple where Pétion had conducted him, without his being able to know as yet whether he entered there as suspended from the throne or as a prisoner. This uncertainty lasted some days.

The Temple was an ancient and dismal fortress, built by the monastic Order of Templars, at the time when sacerdotal and military theocracies, uniting in revolt against princes with tyranny toward the people, constructed for themselves forts for monasteries, and marched to dominion by the double power of the cross and the sword. After their fall their fortified dwelling had remained standing, as a wreck of past times neglected by the present. The chateau of the Temple was situated near the Faubourg St. Antoine, not far from the Bastile; it inclosed with its buildings, its palace, its towers, and its gardens, a vast space of solitude and silence, in the center of a most densely populated quarter. The buildings were composed of a prieuré, or palace of the Order, the apartments of which served as an occasional dwelling for the Comte d'Artois, when that prince came from Versailles to Paris. This dilapidated palace contained apartments furnished with ancient movables, beds, and linen for the suite of the prince. A porter and his family were its only hosts. A garden surrounded it, as empty and neglected as the

palace. At some steps from this dwelling was the donjon of the chateau, once the fortification of the Temple. Its abrupt, dark mass rose on a simple spot of ground toward the sky; two square towers, the one larger, the other smaller, were united to each other like a mass of walls, each one having at its flank other small suspended towers, in former days crowned with battlements at their extremity, and these formed the principal group of this construction. Some low and more modern buildings abutted upon it, and served, by disappearing in its shade, to raise its height. This donjon and tower were constructed of large stones, cut in Paris, the excoriations and cicatrices of which marbled the walls with yellow, livid spots, upon the black ground which the rain and snow incrust upon the large buildings of the north of France. The large tower, almost as high as the towers of a cathedral, was not less than sixty feet from the base to the top. It inclosed within its four walls a space of thirty square feet. An enormous pile of masonry occupied the center of the tower, and rose almost to the point of the edifice. This pile, larger and wider at each story, leaned its arches upon the exterior walls, and formed four successive arched roofs, which contained four guard-rooms. These halls communicated with other hidden and more narrow places cut in the towers. The walls of the edifice were nine feet thick. The embrasures of the few windows which lighted it, very large at the entrance of the hall, sunk, as they became narrow, even to the crosswork of stone, and left only a feeble and remote light to penetrate into the interior. Bars of iron darkened these apartments still further. Two doors, the one of doubled oakwood very thick, and studded with large diamond-headed nails; the other plated with iron, and fortified with bars of the same metal, divided each hall from the stair by which one ascended to it.

This staircase rose in a spiral to the platform of the edifice. Seven successive wickets, or seven solid doors, shut by bolt and key, were ranged from landing to landing, from the base to the terrace. At each one of these wickets a sentinel and a keybearer were on guard. An exterior gallery crowned the summit of the donjon. One made here ten steps at each turn. The least breath of air howled there like a tempest. The noises of Paris mounted there, weakening as they came. Thence the eye ranged freely over the low roofs of the quarter Saint Antoine, or the streets of the Temple, upon the dome of the Pantheon,