MIDSUMMER.

HERE! Sweep these foolish leaves away,
I will not crush my brains to-day!
Look! are the southern curtains drawn?
Fetch me a fan, and so begone!

Not that, the palm-trees rustling leaf

Brought from a parching coral-reef!
Its breath is heated ;· I would swing

the eagle's wing.

I hate these roses' feverish blood!
Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,

A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.

Rain me sweet odors on the air,

And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise

Flat out before my sleepy eyes.

Of weary fibres stretched with toil,

The pulse that flutters faint and low

When Summer's seething breezes blow?

O Nature! bare thy loving breast,
And give thy child one hour of rest, -
One little hour to lie unseen
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!

So, curtained by a singing pine,

Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine, Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay

In sweeter music dies away.

A PARTING HEALTH.

TO J. L. MOTLEY.

YES, we knew we must lose him, — though friendship

may claim

To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame;
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own,
'Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel,
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, -
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.

What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom,

Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall

bloom,

While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes

That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies!

In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue!

Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed! From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed!

Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom!

The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine,
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed:

THE TRUE KNIGHT OF LEARNING, the world holds

Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!

1857.

A GOOD-BY.

TO J. R. LOWELL.

FAREWELL, for the bark has her breast to the tide,

And the rough arms of Ocean are stretched for his

bride;

The winds from the mountain stream over the bay ;
One clasp of the hand, then away and away!

I see the tall mast as it rocks by the shore;
The sun is declining, I see it once more;
To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field,
To-morrow the spike on a Highlander's shield.

Alone, while the cloud pours its treacherous breath, With the blue lips all round her whose kisses are

death;

Ah, think not the breeze that is urging her sail

Has left her unaided to strive with the gale.