Be patient! On the breathing page

Still pants our hurried past; Pilgrim and soldier, saint and sage, The poet comes the last!

Though still the lark-voiced matins ring
The world has known so long;
The wood-thrush of the West shall sing
Earth's last sweet even-song!

AFTER A LECTURE ON MOORE.

SHINE Soft, ye trembling tears of light
That strew the mourning skies;
Hushed in the silent dews of night

The harp of Erin lies.

What though her thousand years have past

Of poets, saints, and kings,

Her echoes only hear the last

That swept those golden strings.

Fling o'er his mound, ye star-lit bowers,

The balmiest wreaths ye wear,

Whose breath has lent your earth-born flowers

Heaven's own ambrosial air.

Breathe, bird of night, thy softest tone,
By shadowy grove and rill;

Thy song will soothe us while we own
That his was sweeter still.

Stay, pitying Time, thy foot for him

Who

gave

thee swifter wings,

Nor let thine envious shadow dim

The light his glory flings.

If in his cheek unholy blood
Burned for one youthful hour,
'Twas but the flushing of the bud

That blooms a milk-white flower.

Take him, kind mother, to thy breast,
Who loved thy smiles so well,

And spread thy mantle o'er his rest

Of rose and asphodel.

The bark has sailed the midnight sea,

The sea without a shore,

That waved its parting sign to thee,

"A health to thee, Tom Moore !"

And thine, long lingering on the strand,
Its bright-hued streamers furled,
Was loosed by age, with trembling hand,

To seek the silent world.

Not silent! no, the radiant stars

Still singing as they shine,

Unheard through earth's imprisoning bars,

Have voices sweet as thine.

Wake, then, in happier realms above

The songs of bygone years,

Till angels learn those airs of love

That ravished mortal ears!

AFTER A LECTURE ON KEATS.

"Purpureos spargam flores."

THE wreath that star-crowned Shelley gave

Is lying on thy Roman grave,

Yet on its turf young April sets

Her store of slender violets;

Though all the Gods their garlands shower, I too may bring one purple flower.

Alas! what blossom shall I bring,
That opens in my Northern spring?
The garden beds have all run wild,
So trim when I was yet a child;
Flat plantains and unseemly stalks
Have crept across the gravel walks;
The vines are dead, long, long ago,
The almond buds no longer blow.
No more upon its mound I see

The azure, plume-bound fleur-de-lis ;
Where once the tulips used to show,

In straggling tufts the pansies grow;

The grass has quenched my white-rayed gem, The flowering "Star of Bethlehem,"

Though its long blade of glossy green
And pallid stripe may still be seen.
Nature, who treads her nobles down,
And gives their birthright to the clown,
Has sown her base-born weedy things
Above the garden's queens and kings.

- Yet one sweet flower of ancient race

Springs in the old familiar place.

When snows were melting down the vale, And Earth unlaced her icy mail,

And March his stormy trumpet blew, And tender green came peeping through,

I loved the earliest one to seek

That broke the soil with emerald beak,

- And watch the trembling bells so blue Spread on the column as it grew.

Meek child of earth! thou wilt not shame

The sweet, dead poet's holy name;

The God of music gave thee birth
Called from the crimson-spotted earth,
Where, sobbing his young life away,
His own fair Hyacinthus lay.
-The hyacinth my garden gave
Shall lie upon that Roman grave!