yonder stile They come back scarred and battered who | And he's as fond and faithful as when by hale and blooming went, But the Red Cross flag waves o'er them still, I wept and blessed and bade him go: I know and 'tis not soiled nor rent. it by his smile With clarions and with cymbals their merry As he looked up to the window with proud march draws nigh: and glistening eye. Come, Lily, to the lattice come, and see the Come quick, my true and bravest love, belads go by. "Here's Walter in his bravery, so proud and well he may ! Dear fellow but he's handsome now, the bitterest tongue must say. As stern as any lion in the battle-field is he; Now gentle as a mother young with her infant on her knee: Sure from the fiercest enemy he'll never flinch nor fly. fore of joy I die." On his pale brow. Her sister doth not care Her soldier-love to chide, but with an air Half Look, Lily, from the lattice look! How Signs the proud man to sit, a suppliant, at her grave authority, half mockery sweet, gayly they go by! feet. LITERARY SOUVENIR. THE LOVER'S CHOICE. SWEET, I blame you not, for mine the fault was had I not been made of common clay, I had climbed the higher heights unclimbed yet, seen the fuller air, the larger day. and thanking Heaven aloud, And the little tottering children, who clap their hands and cry, 'Hurrah! the glorious victory! The gal-Lit lant Twelfth go by!' From the wildness of my wasted passion I "I can bide here no longer: I'll down into Had my lips been smitten into music by the the street; kisses that but made them bleed, Oh, not in that thronged noisy place should You had walked with Bicè and the angels on such as we two meet; that verdant and enamelled mead. when once the storm of youth is past, Without lyre, without lute or chorus, Death, a silent pilot, comes at last. I had trod the road which Dante treading | Rudderless we drift athwart a tempest; and saw the suns of seven circles shine; Ay! perchance had seen the heavens opening as they opened to the Florentine. And the mighty nations would have crowned me, who am crownless now and without name, And some orient dawn had found me kneeling on the threshold of the house of fame. I had sat within that marble circle where the oldest bard is as the young, And within the grave there is no pleasure, Ah! what else had I to do but love you? And the pipe is ever dropping honey, and I have made my choice, have lived my the lyre's strings are ever strung, poems, and, though youth is gone in wasted days, have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays. OSCAR WILDE. And at springtide, when the apple-blossoms WHERE IS YOUR HAME, MY BONNIE brush the burnished bosom of the dove, BIRD? HERE is your hame, my bonnie bird Your sweet voice pours amain, A hame on yonder tree- That my bonnie mate may hear, "Whence do ye come, my bonnie hound, been Wi' footstep like the fawn, An' whither, whither hae ye Sin I missed ye at the dawn? Oh, did ye gae the game to track Or hear the laverock sing, Or did ye gae the deer to chase. Or plover on the wing?""Oh, I hae been to the field, gudewife, Where the warriors brave are sleeping, And sadly ower each clay-cauld breast Their little ones are weeping. I didna track the fallow-deer Nor chase the winged prey, "And why gae ye sae sad, my heart, An' fill the woods wi' sighing, An' why think ye o' the battle-field Where the clay-cauld dead are lying? An' why beneath the auld aik tree Do ye pour the saut, saut tear, An' alane mak dolesome mane aye An' when nane are near?"groan "Oh, I maun greet, thou waefu' soul, An' oh, but I maun mourn, And ever pour the saut, saut tears O' five braw sons that I hae borne, MISS E. L. MONTAGU. The pebbly shore was covered o'er The sunbeams glittering fell. I wiled thee to a lonely haunt That bashful love might speak Where none could hear what love revealed Or see the crimson cheek; The shore was all deserted And we wandered there alone, From the willow-beaten strand; Far, far we left the seagirt shore Endeared by childhood's dream Beyond those mountains now are all And the grave of him we mourn I. VIOLET TEMPEST. LOVE AND WAR. HEY were all back at the Abbey House again early in June, and Vixen breathed more freely in her sweet native air. How dear, how doubly beautiful, everything seemed to her after even so brief an exile! But it was a grief to have missed the apple-bloom and the bluebells. The woods were putting on their ripe summer beauty; the beeches had lost the first freshness of their tender green; the amber glory of the young oak-leaves was over; the last of the primroses had paled and faded among the spreading bracken; masses of snowy hawthorn bloom gleamed white amidst the woodland shadows: bean-fields in full bloom filled the air with delicate odors; the summer winds swept across the long lush grass in the meadows, beautiful with ever-varying lights and shadows; families of sturdy black piglings were grubbing on the waste turf beside every road, and the forest-fly was getting strong upon the wing. The depths of Mark Ash were dark at noontide under their roof of foliage. Vixen revelled in the summer weather. She was out from morning till evening, on foot or on horseback, sketching or reading in some solitary corner of the woods, with Argus for her companion and guardian. It was So an idle, purposeless existence for a young woman to lead, no doubt, but Violet Tempest knew of no better thing that life offered for her to do. Neither her mother nor Captain Carmichael interfered with her liberty. The captain had his own occupations and amusements, and his wife was given up to frivolities which left no room in her mind for anxiety about her only daughter. long as Violet looked fresh and pretty at the breakfast-table and was nicely dressed in the evening, Mrs. Carmichael thought that all was well, or, at least, as well as it ever could be with a girl who had been so besotted as to refuse a wealthy young nobleman. So Vixen went her own way, and nobody cared. She seemed to have a passion for solitude, and avoided even her old friends the Scobels, who had made themselves odious by their championship of Lord Mallow. The London season was at its height when the Carmichaels went back to Hampshire. The Dovedales were to be at Kensington till the beginning of July, with Mr. Vawdrey in attendance upon them. He had rooms in Ebury street, and had assumed an urban air which in Vixen's opinion made him execrable. "I can't tell you how hateful you look in lavender gloves and a high hat," she said to him one day in Clarges street. "I dare say I look more natural dressed like a gamekeeper," he answered, lightly; "I was born so. As for the high hat, you can't hate it more than I do; and I have |