In your warm and soothing fingers Chilly hands were purely pressed, And I felt, in such compassion, Wretchedness itself were blessed.

“Long I gazed on you in silence,
Printing deeply in my heart
Every look and line of feature,
With a lover's truest art;
Much I wished to pour my feeling
Forth in tears of sweet relief;
But my soul was dark and stifled,
Sealed the bitter fount of grief,

"Vainly, until now, my fancy
Strove to see that look again;
Still the misty, changing image
Came and went to me in vain ;
Still a hundred other faces

Intervened to vex mine eye,
And my soul, with sorrow sinking,
Would not weep, I knew not why,

"But, to-night, my pen had wandered
From the duty of the day,
And unconsciously was sketching
Random faces, in its play;

Suddenly of you I pondered

Ah! some angel present then Breathed on me an inspiration,

Guided my unwitting pen.

EARLY MORN.

"There you were! the half-shut eyelids,
Head inclined and turned aside,
Rounded cheek and hair so silken,
Rounded forehead, high and wide;
There the smile serene, eternal;

There the glance that ne'er was cast
Save by you so melting, earnest―
Ah! I wept and wept, at last."

Here he dropped his pen in wonder,
While a feeling, sweet and new,
Like a sudden light and music,
Thrilled his lonely being through.
Afterward, a message told him,

She, the loved one, died that night,
And he knew that then her spirit
Flew to him with love and light.

EARLY MORN.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY.

I Now, an early riser, love to hail

The dreamy struggles of the stars with light,
And the recovering breath of earth, sleep-drowned,
Awakening to the wisdom of the sun,

And life of light within the tent of Heaven;

To kiss the feet of Morning as she walks
In dewy light along the hills, while they,
All odorous as an angel's fresh-culled crown,
Unveil to her their bounteous loveliness.

81

THE FALL OF NIAGARA.

JOHN G. C. BRAINARD.

"Labitur et labetur."

THE thoughts are strange that crowd into my brain,
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if GOD poured thee from his "hollow hand,"
And hung his bow upon thine awful front;

And spoke in that loud voice, which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Savior's sake,

"The sound of many waters"; and had bade Thy flood to chronicle the ages back,

And notch His cent'ries in the eternal rocks.

Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we,
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
O! what are all the notes that ever rung
From war's vain trumpet, by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make

In his short life, to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM,
Who drowned a world, and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains ?- -a light wave,
That breaks, and whispers of its Maker's might.

FATIMA AND RADUAN.

From the Spanish.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

"Diamante falso y fingido,
Engastado en pedernal, &c."

"FALSE diamond set in flint! the caverns of the mine Are warmer than the breast that holds that faithless heart

of thine;

Thou art fickle as the sea, thou art wandering as the wind, And the restless ever-mounting flame is not more hard to

bind.

If the tears I shed were tongues, yet all too few would be To tell of all the treachery that thou hast shown to me. Oh! I could chide thee sharply-but every maiden knows That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.

"Thou hast called me oft the flower of all Grenada's maids, Thou hast said that by the side of me the first and fairest fades;

And they thought thy heart was mine, and it seemed to every one

That what thou didst to win my love, from love of me was

done.

Alas! if they but knew thee, as mine it is to know,

They well might see another mark to which thine arrows

go;

But thou giv'st me little heed-for I speak to one who knows

That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes.

"It wearies me, mine enemy, that I must weep and bear What fills thy heart with triumph, and fills my own with

care.

Thou art leagued with those that hate me, and ah! thou know'st I feel

That cruel words as surely kill as sharpest blades of steel. 'Twas the doubt that thou wert false that wrung my heart with pain;

But now I know thy perfidy, I shall be well again.

I would proclaim thee as thou art—but every maiden knows That she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes."

Thus Fatima complained to the valiant Raduan,
Where underneath the myrtles Alhambra's fountains ran:
The Moor was inly moved, and blameless as he was,

He took her white hand in his own, and pleaded thus his

cause:

"Oh, lady, dry those star-like eyes—their dimness does me

If

my

wrong;

heart be made of flint, at least 't will keep thy image long;

Thou hast uttered cruel words-but I grieve the less for

those,

Since she who chides her lover, forgives him ere he goes."