And shall the harp of heaven

To Judah's monarch given

Be touched by captive fingers, or grace a fettered hand?

No! sooner be my tongue

Mute, powerless, and unstrung,

Than its words of holy music make glad a stranger land.

May this right hand, whose skill

Can wake the harp at will,

And bid the listeners joys or griefs in light or darkness come, Forget its godlike power,

If for one brief, dark hour,

My heart forgets Jerusalem, fallen city of my home!

Daughter of Babylon!

Blest be that chosen one,

Whom God shall send to smite thee when there is none to save;

He from the mother's breast,

Shall pluck the babe at rest,

And lay it in the sleep of death beside its father's grave.

ΤΟ

THE world is bright before thee,
Its summer flowers are thine,
Its calm blue sky is o'er thee,
Thy bosom Pleasure's shrine;

And thine the sunbeam given

To Nature's morning hour, Pure, warm, as when from heaven It burst on Eden's bower.

There is a song of sorrow,

The death-dirge of the gay,

That tells, ere dawn of morrow, These charms may melt away, That sun's bright beam be shaded, That sky be blue no more,

The summer flowers be faded,

And youth's warm promise o'er.

Believe it not-though lonely

Thy evening home may be ;

Though Beauty's bark can only

Float on a summer sea;

Though Time thy bloom is stealing, There's still beyond his art

The wild-flower wreath of feeling,

The sunbeam of the heart.

LOVE.

The imperial votress passed on

In maiden meditation, fancy free.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?

BENEDICT, in Much Ado about Nothing.

WHEN the tree of Love is budding first,

Ere yet its leaves are green,

Ere yet, by shower and sunbeam nurst

Its infant life has been;

The wild bee's slightest touch might wring

The buds from off the tree,

As the gentle dip of the swallow's wing
Breaks the bubbles on the sea.

But when its open leaves have found

A home in the free air,

Pluck them, and there remains a wound

That ever rankles there.

The blight of hope and happiness
Is felt when fond ones part,

And the bitter tear that follows is

The life-blood of the heart.

When the flame of love is kindled first, 'Tis the fire-fly's light at even,

"Tis dim as the wandering stars that burst In the blue of the summer heaven.

A breath can bid it burn no more,

Or if, at times, its beams

Come on the memory, they pass o'er

Like shadows in our dreams.

But when that flame has blazed into

A being and a power,

And smiled in scorn upon the dew

That fell in its first warm hour,