Will never pass the o'erladen by.
My feet are on the mountain steep;
They wind through valleys dark and deep;
They print the hot dust of the plain,
And walk the billows of the main.
Wherever is a load to bear,

My willing shoulder still is there!
Thy toil is done!" He took her hand,
And led her through a May-time laud;
Where round her pathway seemed to wave
Each votive flower she ever gave
To make her favorite altar bright,
As if the angels, at their blight,
Had borne them to the fields of blue,
Where, planted mid eternal dew,
They bloom, as witnesses arrayed

Of one on earth who toiled and prayed.

Thomas Buchanan Read.

VALLOMBROSA.

DARK Vallombrosa! thy Etrurian shade

Is hallowed by a spell that is not thine: A spirit lingers here that doth pervade Thy sanctuary: earth is made divine From human memories, when upon each line Of her calm brow the signet is confessed; Memnonian image! as, with touches fine Morn's fingers music from its bosom pressed, So genius kindles life from thy responsive breast.

Doubt'st thou her inspirations? lo, yon peaks
Titanic, burying their spears in heaven

As if they dared the thunder, or where breaks
Through mist and foam yon torrents headlong driven,
Hurled over trees and precipices riven:

Hark! to their roar in yon Tartarean dell,
Ravings as of the tortured unforgiven;

Type they not elder faiths to us and tell

The strife of powers opposed, the war of heaven and hell?

Lo! round the mountain's scathed sides like a wall, Pines lightning-blasted, wear such forms as wore The thunder-stricken angels: like a pall

The up-seething mists rise shrouding white and hoar, Forests all crushed, still raising from the roar Of waters their wild branches red and sere, Thick as the weeds on ocean's surf-heaped shore; This is the vale of shadow, pause thou here Where deathless Milton trod, the sacred ground revere.

O, while these autumn leaves are round me lying, While thy Etrurian shades o'erarched embower, While the wind seems thy voice to mine replying, Bard of lost Paradise, I call thee, power

That liv'st among us, hear! while the clouds lower, And the leaves mount the whirlwind, I would be Conscious of thy great presence in this hour: I would behold thee, like the prophet, flee Heavenward, but left on earth thy robe of prophecy. John Edmund Reade.

I

Varese, the Lake.

LAGO VARESE.

STOOD beside Varese's Lake,'

Mid that redundant growth

Of vines and maize and bower and brake
Which Nature, kind to sloth,

And scarce solicited by human toil,
Pours from the riches of the teeming soil.

A mossy softness distance lent
To each divergent hill,

One crept away looking back as it went,

The rest lay round and still;

The westering sun not dazzling now, though bright, Shed o'er the mellow land a molten light.

And, sauntering up a circling cove,

I found upon the strand

A shallop, and a girl who strove

To drag it to dry land:

I stood to see the girl look round; her face
Had all her country's clear and definite grace.

She rested with the air of rest

So seldom seen, of those
Whose toil remitted gives a zest,

Not languor, to repose.

Her form was poised yet buoyant, firm though free, And liberal of her bright black eyes was she.

Her hue reflected back the skies
Which reddened in the west;
And joy was laughing in her eyes
And bounding in her breast,

Its rights and grants exulting to proclaim
Where pride had no inheritance, nor shame.

Methought this scene before mine eyes,
Still glowing with yon sun,

Which seemed to melt the myriad dyes
Of heaven and earth to one,

A divers unity, methought this scene,
These undulant hills, the woods that intervene,

The multiplicity of growth,

The cornfield and the brake,
The trellised vines that cover both,

The purple-bosomed lake,

Some fifty summers hence may all be found

Rich in the charms wherewith they now abound.

And should I take my staff again,

And should I journey here,
My steps may be less steady then,

My eyesight not so clear,

And from the mind the sense of beauty may,

Even as these bodily gifts, have passed away;

But grant my age but eyes to see,

A still susceptive mind,

All that leaves us, and all that we

Leave wilfully behind,

And nothing here would want the charms it wore Save only she who stands upon the shore.

Henry Taylor.

LINES WRITTEN BESIDE THE LAGO VARESE.

TILL rise around that lake well sung

STILL

New growths as boon and good

As when, by sunshine saddened, hung
Her poet o'er that flood,

And sang, in Idyl-Elegy, a lay

Which praised things beauteous, mourning their decay.

As then great Nature, "kind to sloth,"

Lets drop o'er all the land

Her gifts, the fair and fruitful both,

Into the sleeper's hand:

On golden ground once more she paints as then
The cistus bower and convent-brightened glen.

Still o'er the flashing waters lean
The mulberry and the maize,
And roof of vines whose purple screen

Tempers those piercing rays,

Which here forego their fiercer shafts, and sleep,

Subdued, in crimson cells, and verdurous chambers deep.