Some few years ago a collection of fugitive pieces, in prose and verse, was published under the name of PIERCIE SHAFTON, Gentleman. The real name of the author is not known, but they exhibited very considerable merit and attracted much attention at the time. The following song is extracted from the volume, and it will be acknowledged to be a lively lyric, evidently struck off by the hand of a master. It is full of the spirit of the old poets.
It is May, it is May!
And all earth is gay,
For at last old winter is quite away:
He linger'd awhile in his cloak of snow,
To see the delicate primrose blow;
He saw it, and made no longer stay-
And now it is May! it is May!
It is May, it is May!
And we bless the day
When we first delightedly so can say;
April had beams amidst her showers,
Yet bare were her gardens, and cold her bowers;
And her frown would blight, and her smile betray,
But now it is May, it is May!
It is May, it is May!
And the slenderest spray
Holds up a few leaves to the ripening ray,
And the birds sing fearlessly out on high,
For there is not a cloud in the calm blue sky;
And the villagers join the roundelay,
For oh! it is May, it is May!
It is May, it is May!
And the flowers obey
The beams alone which are more bright than they;
Yet they spring at the touch of the sun
And opening their sweet eyes, one by one,
In a language of beauty seem all to say
And of perfume-'tis May, it is May!
It is May, it is May!
And delights that lay
Chill'd and enchain'd beneath winter sway,
Break forth again o'er the kindling soul,
And soften, and sooth it, and bless the whole.
Oh thoughts, more tender than words convey,
Sigh out-it is May, it is May!
Brilliants.
THE SILVERY BROOK.
Yon silvery slipper'd brook
That with a ceaseless prattle from the hills
Comes nimbly tripping o'er the mossy stones,
Cannot contain its joy: "Come thou with me--
Into my being let thy spirit slip,
Gliding as in a dream, and I will take
Thee to the green banks of thy spirit nome."
Sweet! in the land to come we'll feed on flowers,
Droop not, my child. A happy place there is:
Know you it not (all pain and wrong shut out)
Where man may mix with angels. You and I
Will wander there with garlands on our brows
And talk in music. We will shed no tears,
Save those of joy: nor sighs, unless for love,
Look up and straight grow happy. We may love
There without fear: no mothers there, no gold,
Nor hate, nor human perfidy, none, none.
Your gift is princely, but it comes too late,
And falls like sunbeams on a blasted blossom.
Never stoops the soaring vulture
quarry in the desert,
On the sick or wounded bison,
But another vulture, watching
From his high aërial look-out,
Sees the downward plunge, and follows:
And a third pursues the second,
Coming from the invisible ether,
First a speck, and then a vulture,
Till the air is dark with pinions.
So disasters come not singly:
But as if they watch'd and waited,
Scanning one another's motions,
When the first descends, the others
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise
Round their victim, sick and wounded,
First a shadow, then a sorrow,
Till the air is dark with anguish.
The melancholy winds which shun the day,
And mourn abroad at dark, are chanting now
A funeral dirge for me. Sweet, let me lie
Once on thy breast. I will not chill 't, my love,
With my cold cheek: nor stain it with a tear:
It is a shrine where innocent love might lie:
Where murder'd love should end.
So spake the cherub, and his grave rebuke
Severe in youthful beauty, added grace
Invincible: abash'd the devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is.
CHILDREN.
If he had loved,
Ay, loved me, with that retributive face
I might have been a common woman now,
And happier, less known and less left alone:
Perhaps a better woman after all-
With chubby children hanging on my neck
To keep me low and wise. Ah me, the vines
That bear such fruit, are proud to stoop with it.
The palm stands upright in a realm of sand.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
THE GRASSHOPPER.
The poetry of earth is never dead :
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees; a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
That is the grasshopper's: he takes the lead
In summer luxury,—he has never done
With his delights: for when tired out with fun,
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed,
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
On a lone winter evening, when the frost
Has wrote a silence, from the stove there thrills
The cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,
And seems to one, in drowsiness half-lost
The grasshopper's among some grassy hills.
PICTURE OF A HYPOCHONDRIAC.
There sits he, with his arms across his heart,
And melancholy eyelids like the Dawn,
When she (the sun being yet unseen) doth gaze
Coldly upon the wet and frozen flowers.
O GODDESS! bear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung,
Even into thine own soft couch'd ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:
'Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoin'd by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
O latest-born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,
Or Vesper, amorous glowworm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor Virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
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