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!

AFTER A LECTURE ON SHELLEY.

ONE broad, white sail in Spezzia's treacherous bay;
On comes the blast; too daring bark, beware!
The cloud has clasped her; lo! it melts away;
The wide, waste waters, but no sail is there.

Morning: a woman looking on the sea;

Midnight with lamps the long verandah burns; Come, wandering sail, they watch, they burn for thee! Suns come and go, alas! no bark returns.

And feet are thronging on the pebbly sands,
And torches flaring in the weedy caves,
Where'er the waters lay with icy hands

The shapes uplifted from their coral graves.

Vainly they seek; the idle quest is o'er;

The coarse, dark women, with their hanging locks,

And lean, wild children gather from the shore

To the black hovels bedded in the rocks.

But Love still prayed, with agonizing wail,

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One, one last look, ye heaving waters, yield!"

Till Ocean, clashing in his jointed mail,

Raised the pale burden on his level shield.

Slow from the shore the sullen waves retire;

His form a nobler element shall claim; Nature baptized him in ethereal fire,

And Death shall crown him with a wreath of flame.

Fade, mortal semblance, never to return;

Swift is the change within thy crimson shroud;

Seal the white ashes in the peaceful urn;

All else has risen in yon silvery cloud.

Sleep where thy gentle Adonais lies,

Whose open page lay on thy dying heart, Both in the smile of those blue-vaulted skies, Earth's fairest dome of all divinest art.

Breathe for his wandering soul one passing sigh,

O happier Christian, while thine eye grows dim,

In all the mansions of the house on high,

Say not that Mercy has not one for him!

AT THE CLOSE OF A COURSE OF LECTURES.

As the voice of the watch to the mariner's dream ;
As the footstep of Spring on the ice-girdled stream,
There comes a soft footstep, a whisper, to me,
The vision is over, the rivulet free!

-

We have trod from the threshold of turbulent March, Till the green scarf of April is hung on the larch, And down the bright hill-side that welcomes the day, We hear the warm panting of beautiful May.

We will part before Summer has opened her wing, And the bosom of June swells the bodice of Spring, While the hope of the season lies fresh in the bud, And the young life of Nature runs warm in our blood.

It is but a word, and the chain is unbound,

The bracelet of steel drops unclasped to the ground; No hand shall replace it,

it rests where it fell,

It is but one word that we all know too well.