'Tis past, that melancholy dream!
Nor will I quit thy shore

A second time; for still I seem
To love thee more and more.

Among thy mountains did I feel

The joy of my desire;

And she I cherished turned her wheel
Beside an English fire.

Thy mornings showed, thy nights concealed
The bowers where Lucy played;
And thine too is the last green field
That Lucy's eyes surveyed.

"THREE YEARS SHE GREW.'

THREE years she grew in sun and shower,
Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower
On earth was never sown!

This child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make
A lady of my own.

'Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse; and with me

The girl, in rock and plain,

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall feel an overseeing power

To kindle or restrain.

'She shall be sportive as the fawn
That wild with glee across the lawn
Or up the mountain springs;
And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence and the calm

Of mute insensate things.

'The floating clouds their state shall lend To her, for her the willow bend;

Nor shall she fail to see

Even in the motions of the storm

Grace that shall mould the maiden's form
By silent sympathy.

'The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear

In many a secret place

Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.

'And vital feelings of delight

Shall rear her form to stately height,

Her virgin bosom swell;

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give
While she and I together live

Here in this happy dell.'

Thus Nature spake.-The work was done-
How soon my Lucy's race was run!

She died, and left to me

This heath, this calm and quiet scene;

The memory of what has been,

And never more will be.

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'A SLUMBER DID MY SPIRIT SEAL.'

A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees,

Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
With rocks and stones and trees.

MATTHEW.

IF Nature, for a favourite child,
In thee hath tempered so her clay
That every hour thy heart runs wild,
Yet never once doth go astray,

Read o'er these lines; and then review
This tablet, that thus humbly rears

In such diversity of hue

The history of two hundred years.

When through this little wreck of fame,
Cipher and syllable, thine eye
Has travelled down to Matthew's name,
Pause with no common sympathy.

ΤΟ

And, if a sleeping tear should wake,

Then be it neither checked nor stayed: For Matthew a request I make

Which for himself he had not made.

Poor Matthew, all his frolics o'er,
Is silent as a standing pool;
Far from the chimney's merry roar,
And murmur of the village school.

The sighs which Matthew heaved were sighs
Of one tired out with fun and madness;
The tears which came to Matthew's eyes
Were tears of light, the dew of gladness.

Yet, sometimes, when the secret cup

Of still and serious thought went round, It seemed as if he drank it up,

He felt with spirit so profound.

Thou soul of God's best earthly mould!
Thou happy soul! and can it be
That these two words of glittering gold
Are all that must remain of thee?

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