English

Soft, soft echoes of twilight eaves,
Dark, dark colors of drawn curtains.
There's only moss upon the floor tiles,
And I seem to see a spider spinning.

Thou glorious spirit of life and love!
There is not a leaf or flower,
That spreads to the sun, when meadow and grove
Awake with the April shower, —
There is not a creature that walks the earth,
And is glad in his liberty,
But feels and knows, from his earliest birth,
How his being is full of thee.

The waters, that fall from the mountain's brow,
Or in verdurous valleys flow;
The waves, that around the gallant prow
In the noon-light flash and glow;
The sea, as it heaves from the line to the pole,

Soul of the lyre and song!
Who comest from the blue and boundless air,
And bearest me along
To read the starry glories gathered there, —

Who callest from the deep
The spirits of the long departed dead,
To move in gallant sweep,
And proud array, above their honored bed:

Whether from air or sea
Thy voice is uttered, or from mountain heights,
Where the hawk hovers free,
And morn and evening hang their thousand lights, —

Whether from cove or stream
Bosomed in shady forests, where of old

Come from thy home in the far blue sky,
Spirit of beauty and love and song!
Hang on thy airy pinions nigh,
When the dreams of my wayward fancy throng;
Give them a brighter and gayer hue,
Shape them to forms of finer mould,
Fairer than ever painter drew,
Brighter than all the gods of old.

Lead me to that delicious clime,
Where the anana swells and glows;
Lay me beneath the flowering lime,
Where the dew in drops of nectar flows:
There let the visions of beauty rise,
And float in fairy trains away,

There is nothing can equal the tender hours,
When life is first in bloom;
When the heart, like a bee in a wild of flowers,
Finds everywhere perfume;
When the present is all, and it questions not
If those flowers shall pass away,
But, pleased with its own delightful lot,
Dreams never of decay.

O, it dreams not the hue that freshly glows
On the cheek shall ever flee,
And fade away like the summer rose,
Or the crimson on the sea,
When far in the west the setting sun
Goes down in the kindled main,

When the woodlands are covered with leaves and flowers,
In the loveliest time of the year;
When the sky is now clear, and now checkered with showers,
And life rambles on through the warm sunny hours,
Undimmed with a shade or a tear;
O, sweet are the feelings that kindle and burn
As we gaze on the flowers and the sky;
But to higher and purer devotion they turn,
As water takes tint from the hue of its urn,
When they burn in the light of thine eye

And when, in the calm of a moonshiny night,
A serenade steals o'er the bay,

Him who extortion deems no crime,
And glories in trespasses,
Now, as a colt, he sports the prime,
Since kick'd down from Parnassus.

Now since I learn you are an ass,
(To write me so was well done)
For every lass swore by the Mass,
You was a famous gelding.

No miser ever yet got up,
To court the Nine's caresses.
Nor drank from Helicon a drop,

Spiders' spun threads spread through curtains
Sweet grasses' knotted blades choke the pathways
Pink cheeks in mute desire weep her life away
Golden orioles fitful flit, flit past
Old love, though old, once was new.
New love, though new, also must grow old.

A CONFERENCE . A.

Why hast thou such a downward look of care,
As if thine eye refused the sweet communion
Of these enchanted skies? I cannot weary
In gazing on them, there is such a clearness
In the mid-noon; and then the calmer hours
Have such a glory round them, that I grow
Enamored of their clouds. O, they have caught
Their hues in heaven, and they come stealing to us
Like messengers of love, to kindle up
This volatile air. How light and thin it floats!

Lean racers had your blust'ring chat,
While I relate a race on fat :
For wagers now are turn'd so common,
'Tween London city and Loch-Lomond,
That racing never will decline,
While we have either pigs or swine.

The racers were two Epicures ,
The umpires were two Embro' whores;
Now the whole beauty of the wager,
The fattest bore me like a cadger;
He was allow'd a mile advance,
Which gave him still an equal chance:
Swift had much need, — his side held ham
More than Ned Bright, or yet Big Sam;