So streamed the vision through his sunken eye,
Clad in the splendors of his morning sky.

All the wild hopes his eager boyhood knew,
All the young fancies riper years proved true,
The sweet, low-whispered words, the winning glance
From queens of song, from Houris of the dance,
Wealth's lavish gift, and Flattery's soothing phrase,
And Beauty's silence when her blush was praise,
And melting Pride, her lashes wet with tears,
Triumphs and banquets, wreaths and crowns and cheers,
Pangs of wild joy that perish on the tongue,
And all that poets dream, but leave unsung!

In every heart some viewless founts are fed
From far-off hill-sides where the dews were shed;
On the worn features of the weariest face
Some youthful memory leaves its hidden trace,

As in old gardens left by exiled kings
The marble basins tell of hidden springs,

But, gray with dust, and overgrown with weeds,
Their choking jets the passer little heeds,
Till time's revenges break their seals away,
And, clad in rainbow light, the waters play.

Good night, fond dreamer! let the curtain fall: The world's a stage, and we are players all.

A strange rehearsal! Kings without their crowns,
And threadbare lords, and jewel-wearing clowns,
Speak the vain words that mock their throbbing hearts,
As Want, stern prompter! spells them out their parts.
The tinselled hero whom we praise and pay

Is twice an actor in a twofold play.

We smile at children when a painted screen
Seems to their simple eyes a real scene;
Ask the poor hireling, who has left his throne
To seek the cheerless home he calls his own,
Which of his double lives most real seems,
The world of solid fact or scenic dreams?

Canvas, or clouds, the foot-lights, or the spheres,— The play of two short hours, or seventy years?

Dream on! Though Heaven may woo our open eyes, Through their closed lids we look on fairer skies; Truth is for other worlds, and hope for this; The cheating future lends the present's bliss ; Life is a running shade, with fettered hands, That chases phantoms over shifting sands; Death a still spectre on a marble seat, With ever clutching palms and shackled feet; The airy shapes that mock life's slender chain, The flying joys he strives to clasp in vain, Death only grasps; to live is to pursue, Dream on! there's nothing but illusion true!

THE ISLAND RUIN.

YE that have faced the billows and the spray
Of good St. Botolph's island-studded bay,
As from the gliding bark your eye has scanned
The beaconed rocks, the wave-girt hills of sand,
Have ye not marked one elm-o'ershadowed isle,
Round as the dimple chased in beauty's smile,
A stain of verdure on an azure field,
Set like a jewel in a battered shield?
Fixed in the narrow gorge of Ocean's path,
Peaceful it meets him in his hour of wrath;
When the mailed Titan, scourged by hissing gales,
Writhes in his glistening coat of clashing scales;
The storm-beat island spreads its tranquil green,
Calm as an emerald on an angry queen.

So fair when distant should be fairer near;
A boat shall waft us from the outstretched pier.
The breeze blows fresh; we reach the island's edge,
Our shallop rustling through the yielding sedge.
No welcome greets us on the desert isle;
Those elms, far-shadowing, hide no stately pile:
Yet these green ridges mark an ancient road;
And lo! the traces of a fair abode;

The long gray line that marks a garden-wall,

And heaps of fallen beams, -fire-branded all.

Who sees unmoved, a ruin at his feet,

The lowliest home where human hearts have beat?

Its hearth-stone, shaded with the bistre stain

A century's showery torrents wash in vain;
Its starving orchard, where the thistle blows
And
mossy trunks still mark the broken rows;
Its chimney-loving poplar, oftenest seen
Next an old roof, or where a roof has been;

Its knot-grass, plantain, all the social weeds,

-

Man's mute companions, following where he leads;

Its dwarfed, pale flowers, that show their straggling

heads,

Sown by the wind from grass-choked garden-beds;

Its woodbine, creeping where it used to climb;

Its roses, breathing of the olden time;

All the poor shows the curious idler sees,

As life's thin shadows waste by slow degrees,

Till naught remains, the saddening tale to tell,
Save home's last wrecks, the cellar and the well!
And whose the home that strews in black decay

The one green-glowing island of the bay?
Some dark-browed pirate's, jealous of the fate

That seized the strangled wretch of "Nix's Mate"?

Some forger's, skulking in a borrowed name,

Whom Tyburn's dangling halter yet may claim?
Some wan-eyed exile's, wealth and sorrow's heir,
Who sought a lone retreat for tears and prayer?
Some brooding poet's, sure of deathless fame,
Had not his epic perished in the flame?

Or some gray wooer's, whom a girlish frown
Chased from his solid friends and sober town?
Or some plain tradesman's, fond of shade and ease,
Who sought them both beneath these quiet trees?
Why question mutes no question can unlock,
Dumb as the legend on the Dighton rock?
One thing at least these ruined heaps declare, -
They were a shelter once; a man lived there.

But where the charred and crumbling records fail, Some breathing lips may piece the half-told tale; No man may live with neighbors such as these, Though girt with walls of rock and angry seas, And shield his home, his children, or his wife, His

ways, his means, his vote, his creed, his life, From the dread sovereignty of Ears and Eyes And the small member that beneath them lies.

They told strange things of that mysterious man; Believe who will, deny them such as can;

Why should we fret if every passing sail