Beside the dusty road of life,
Deflowered with toil and foul with strife,
Lie hid within a charm of dew
Pure harbours made for me and you.

In such a shadowy nook is set
Rest's purple-winged violet;
It nods upon the fitful breeze
Born in the fount's interstices; —

That fount of joy for travellers made,
Ensconced within a dappled shade,
Where still its wings our violet lifts
Beneath the pulsing air that shifts; —

The little fount that bubbles there
Under a veil of maiden-hair,
And coils through many a liquid fold

In the mirk that circles us
Starry clear thy image stood,
Like the gold ranunculus
On the black pools in the wood.

While its pure refulgence shone,
Even despair grew thin and bright,
As behind the burning sun
Darkest ether melts to white.

Now that image quits the sky,
Plunges like a falling star,
Slips, out of the pride on high,
Down, down where the pities are.

What an empty world for me!
What a night without a sound!
Suddenly eternity
With its blackness folds me round.

Love is the link, the knot, the band of unity;
And all that love, do love with their beloved to be.
Love only did decree,
To change his kind in me.
For though I loved with all the powers of my mind,
And though my restless thoughts their rest in her did find,
Yet are my hopes declined,
Sith she is most unkind.
For since her beauty's sun my fruitless hope did breed,
By absence from that sun I hoped to starve that weed;
Though absence did indeed
My hopes not starve, but feed.
For when I shift my place, like to the stricken deer,

Up rose, triumphant, from his seat
The Bayard of the Sea —
The lion of our laureled fleet,
The scourge of Barbary;
His glass abrim with bubbling light,
He pledged that brilliant throng —
" Our Country! — be she ever right;
Our Country! — right or wrong! "

Then round about the oaken board
The goblets leaped and rang,
And fervent fingers pressed the sword
As up the heroes sprang;
No mawkish qualms or doubts had they
That echoed deep and strong,
" Our Country! — ever right, we pray;
Our Country — right or wrong!

The night was scented like a peach,
The balustrade was cold to touch;
The words that linked us, each to each,
Expressed too little, — or too much!
The music sobbed beneath the trees
That soared into a purple sky;
On nights so delicate as these
We dare not dream that we must die.

The breeze came scented o'er the vines
Down limestone mountains ghostly pale;
What boundless hopes the heart confines!
And hopes should never faint nor fail.
The plaintive string, the wailing brass
Struck up a livelier note of glee;

The philosophers, moralists, poets, and those
Who have left their opinions in verse and in prose,
Fine lessons have taught, tho' not all understood,
Yet entirely meant, I dare say, for our good;
The chiefest of which we may readily scan,
That our time here below is no more than a span.

The assertion is just, if with reason we view,
Mortality constantly shews us 'tis true;
Then to fill up this trifle of being below,
Is a doctrine, I think, which we all ought to know:
For a moment attend to my song, if you can,

AND HOW TO GAIN IT .

I.

We want no flag, no flaunting rag,
For Liberty to fight;
We want no blaze of murderous guns,
To struggle for the right.
Our spears and swords are printed words,
The mind our battle-plain;
We've won such victories before,
And so we shall again.

II.

We love no triumphs sprung of force —
They stain her brightest cause:

Afraid of critics! an unworthy fear:
Great minds must learn their greatness and be bold.
Walk on thy way; bring forth thine own true thought;
Love thy high calling only for itself,
And find in working recompense for work,
And Envy's shaft shall whiz at thee in vain.
Despise not censure; weigh if it be just,
And if it be—amend, whate'er the thought
Of him who cast it. Take the wise man's praise,
And love thyself the more that thou couldst earn
Meed so exalted; but the blame of fools
Let it blow over like an idle whiff

Oh faithless world, and thy most faithless part,
A woman's heart!
The true shop of variety, where sits
Nothing but fits
And fevers of desire, and pangs of love,
Which toys remove.
Why was she born to please, or I to trust
Words writ in dust?
Suff'ring her eyes to govern my despair,
My pain for air,
And fruit of time rewarded with untruth,
The food of youth.
Untrue she was, yet I believed her eyes,
Instructed spies;
Till I was taught, that love was but a school
To breed a fool

Ah! why my heart is beating is more than I can tell,
At the hawthorn-bloom like incense in the air,
And the cuckoo in the woodland that is calling like a bell,
Like a cracked bell calling me to prayer;

But I think the ringing cuckoo, with its hard hysteric cry,
Is youth in the spring-movement of the blood,
And the richness of the blossom a reminder we must die,
While life is tasting exquisitely good.

Ah! the falling of the petals in the shivering silver night!
Ah! the turning wheel of years that will not stay!