Sweet harp! if hush'd awhile that tuneful sorrow, Which may not flow unintermitted still,

A lover's prayer one strain less sad might borrow, Of all thou pourest at thine own sweet will.

Now when her forehead in that pale moon gleaming,

Yon dark-tressed maid beneath the softening

hour,

As fain to lose no touch of thy sad streaming, Leans to the night from forth her latticed bower;

And the low whispering air, and thy lone ditty, Around her heart their mingled spells have

wove;

Now cease those notes awhile that plain for pity, And wake thy bolder song, and ask for love.

ANON.

POESY.

WILT thou come, and sit with me,
Sweet companion, Poesy?

We will seek some quiet scene,
That thou lovest-where the green,

N

Overarching boughs have made
Coolest twilight with their shade;
Where the golden-pinioned beam
'Mongst the enwoven leaves doth gleam,
In its idlesse working out

Shining tracery all about;

Where, like music in a dream,
Murmureth soft the rippling stream;

Where the small bird, timidly,
Chirpeth low, in flitting by,
And the very wind doth take
Gentler measures so to make
Harmony with all things there;-
Wilt thou seek this refuge fair?
Wilt thou come, and sit with me,
Sweet companion, Poesy?

I am weary of the sound,

That doth compass me around;—
Weary of the strife and toil;
Weary of the vain turmoil:
False and empty seems to me
All this worldly pageantry,
And I long to free again

From the clasping of its chain,
My worn spirit, that doth sigh
For the calm, pure founts, that lie
Underneath thy halcyon sky.

POESY.

Come, and thou shalt weave me there,
With the sunlight and the air,-
With the whispering secrecies
Of the winds and waving trees;-
With the odours, rich and rare,
That to thee a tribute are;
With the silvery sound, that wells
From the ringing lily-bells
With all voices, as they rise,
All sweet, pastoral melodies,
All calm breathings of the earth,
Rapid utterances of mirth,
And her plaintive wailing too,
When she weepeth tears of dew,

And the rayless gloom doth lie
On her glory mournfully ;-

With all these, and more than these,
With thy subtlest phantasies,

Thou shalt weave a web so fine,
Of such workmanship divine,
That no gross, dull thought, I ween,
Shall have power to glide between,
No discordant worldly din,

Break the tranced calm within.

T. WESTWOOD.

195

RECOLLECTION.

ROUND yonder watch-fire's blaze the muleteers In circle close.-The leader of the throng, Fluent and fast, to never sated ears

The tale recites, or chants the Arab song,— Wild stanzas, strange adventures. Loud and long

The applause resounds, as each invented sleight

Of magic art, or fate of Afrite strong

By Genii quelled in preternatural fight, Fills, as the story rolls, each breast with fresh delight.

He little thinks, the tale he loves to tell, Which cheats his willing comrades of their

rest,

Through many a midnight hour defrauds as well,

In foreign garb and other language dressed,
Of slumber's boon the children of the West;
How many a sad or vacant mind the page,
With the same legendary lore impressed,
Has cheered, assuaged life's ills through every

stage,

Given youth one smile the more, one wrinkle snatched from age.

RECOLLECTION.

197

For not alone beneath the palm-tree's shade Amid the nargile's ascending cloud,

Does Eastern fiction dwell, or Scherezade Dispense her favours to the listening crowd. All ranks, all nations at her shrine have bowed;

The pictured forms her lively pencil drew Please in all climes alike; and statesmen proud

In grave debate have owned her lessons true, Finding that ancient lamps sometimes excel the

new.

Far other task meanwhile for me delays

The needful gift of well-earned sleep's repose; The beam that from my tremulous cresset plays,

Its light upon the sacred volume throws.

Oh! who in distant climes the rapture knows, E'en on the spot of which the tale is told, To mark where Tabor frowns or Jordan flows. To feel at morn our steps shall print the mould Where Gideon pitched his camp or Sisera's chariot rolled !

Such rapture ours, when, on Esdraelon's plain, Tabor in front and Jezreel left behind, [again By Kishon's source we pitched. Oh! ne'er Shall joys, of power like these to fill the mind, Rise in the civilized haunts of human kind.