EDWARD CRACROFT LEFROY.

CXXVII.

SUBURBAN MEADOWS.

How calmly drops the dew on tree and plant,
While round each pendulous leaf the cool airs blow!
The neighbour city has no sign to show
Of all its grim machines that toil and pant,
Except a sky that coal makes confidant:

But there the human rivers ebb and flow,
And thither was I wonted once to go

With heart not ill at ease or recusant.

Here now I love to wander morn and eve,

Till oaks and elms have grown oracular;

Yet conscious that my soberest thoughts receive

A tinge of tumult from the smoke afar;

And scarcely know to which I most belong—
These simple fields or that unsimple throng.

CXXVIII.

EVENING.

ALREADY evening! In the duskiest nook

Of yon dusk corner, under the Death's-head,
Between the alembics, thrust this legended,

And iron-bound, and melancholy book,

For I will read no longer. The loud brook

Shelves his sharp light up shallow banks thin-spread;

The slumbrous west grows slowly red, and red:

Up from the ripen'd corn her silver hook
The moon is lifting: and deliciously

Along the warm blue hills the day declines:

The first star brightens while she waits for me, And round her swelling heart the zone grows tight: Musing, half-sad, in her soft hair she twines.

The white rose, whispering, "He will come to-night!

ERIC MACKAY.

CXXIX.

A THUNDERSTORM AT NIGHT.

THE lightning is the shorthand of the storm
That tells of chaos; and I read the same
As one may read the writing of a name,-
As one in Hell may see the sudden form

Of God's fore-finger pointed as in blame.

How weird the scene! The Dark is sulphur-warm With hints of death; and in their vault enorme

The reeling stars coagulate in flame.

And now the torrents from their mountain-beds

Roar down uncheck'd; and serpents shaped of mist Writhe up to Heaven with unforbidden heads;

And thunder-clouds, whose lightnings intertwist,

Rack all the sky, and tear it into shreds,

And shake the air like Titans that have kiss'd!

CXXX.

YOUTH AND NATURE.

Is this the sky, and this the very earth
I had such pleasure in when I was young?
And can this be the identical sea-song,
Heard once within the storm-cloud's awful girth,
When a great cloud from silence burst to birth,
And winds to whom it seemed I did belong
Made the keen blood in me run swift and strong
With irresistible, tempestuous mirth?

Are these the forests loved of old so well,

Where on May nights enchanted music was? Are these the fields of soft, delicious grass, These the old hills with secret things to tell? O my dead youth, was this inevitable,

That with thy passing Nature too should pass?

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

CXXXI.

A DREAM.

HERE where last night she came, even she, for whom

I would so gladly live or lie down dead,

Came in the likeness of a dream and said

Some words that thrilled this desolate ghost-thronged

room

I sit alone now in the absolute gloom.

Ah! surely on her breast was leaned my head,

Ah! surely on my mouth her kiss was shed, While all my life broke into scent and bloom. Give thanks, heart, for thy rootless flower of bliss,

Nor think the gods severe though thus they seem, Though thou hast much to bear and much to miss, Whilst thou thy nights and days to be canst deem

One thing, and that thing veritably this-

The imperishable memory of a dream.