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A LAMENT.

SWIFTER far than Summer's flight,
Swifter far than youth's delight,
Swifter far than happy night,

Art thou come and gone;

As the earth when leaves are dead,
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,

I am left lone, alone.

The swallow Summer comes again;
The owlet Night resumes her reign;
But the wild swan Youth is fain

To fly with thee, false as thou. My heart each day desires the morrow; Sleep itself is turned to sorrow; Vainly would my Winter borrow Sunny leaves from any bough:

Lilies for a bridal bed,
Roses for a matron's head,
Violets for a maiden dead-

Pansies let my flowers be;
On the living grave I bear,
Scatter them without a tear;
Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear for me.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

"CALM IS THE NIGHT."

CALM is the night, and the city is sleeping-
Once in this house dwelt a lady fair,
Long, long ago, she left it, weeping;
But still the old house is standing there.

Yonder a man at the heavens is staring, Wringing his hands as in sorrowful case; He turns to the moonlight, his countenance baring

O, heaven! he shows me my own sad face!

Shadowy form, with my own agreeing!

Why mockest thou thus, in the moonlight cold,

The sorrows which here once vexed my being Many a night in the days of old?

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HENRY HEINE (German). Translation of CHARLES G. LELAND.

THE FISHING SONG.

THE CASTLE BY THE SEA.

"HAST thou seen that lordly castle, That Castle by the Sea? Golden and red, above it

The clouds float gorgeously.

"And fain it would stoop downward

To the mirrored wave below;
And fain it would soar upward
In the evening's crimson glow."

"Well have I seen that castle,
That Castle by the Sea-
And the moon above it standing,
And the mist rise solemnly."

"The winds and the waves of ocean,
Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,

The harp and the minstrel's rhyme?"

"The winds and the waves of ocean,

They rested quietly;

But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,
And tears came to mine eye."

"And sawest thou on the turrets

The king and his royal bride?

And the wave of their crimson mantles? And the golden crown of pride?

"Led they not forth, in rapture,

A beauteous maiden thereResplendent as the morning sun, Beaming with golden hair?"

"Well saw I the ancient parents,

Without the crown of pride;

They were moving slow, in weeds of woe;

No maiden was by their side!"

LUDWIG UHLAND (German).

Translation of HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

DESOLATION.

THINK ye the desolate must live apart,

By solemn vows to convent-walls confined? Ah! no; with men may dwell the cloistered heart,

And in a crowd the isolated mind.

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Tearless, behind the prison-bars of fate,
The world sees not how desolate they stand,
Gazing so fondly through the iron grate

Upon the promised yet forbidden land— Patience the shrine to which their bleeding feet,

Day after day, in voiceless penance turn; Silence the holy cell and calm retreat

In which unseen their meek devotions burn; Life is to them a vigil which none share, Their hopes a sacrifice, their love a prayer.

HENRY T. TUCKERMAN.

THE FISHING SONG.

Down in the wide, gray river
The current is sweeping strong;
Over the wide, gray river

Floats the fisherman's song.

The oar-stroke times the singing,

The song falls with the oar; And an echo in both is ringing I thought to hear no more.

Out of a deeper current

The song brings back to me A cry from mortal silence Of mortal agony.

Life that was spent and vanished,
Love that had died of wrong,

Hearts that are dead in living,

Come back in the fisherman's song.

I see the maples leafing,

Just as they leafed before;

The green grass comes no greener Down to the very shore

With the rude strain swelling, sinking,
In the cadence of days gone by,
As the oar, from the water drinking,
Ripples the mirrored sky.

Yet the soul hath life diviner;

Its past returns no more, But in echoes, that answer the minor

Of the boat-song, from the shore.

And the ways of God are darkness;

His judgment waiteth long;
He breaks the heart of a woman
With a fisherman's careless song.

ROSE TERRY.

"BREAK, BREAK, BREAK."

BREAK, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy

That he shouts with his sister at play! O well for the sailor lad

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To the haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O sea!

THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.

TEARS, idle tears! I know not what they

mean.

Tears, from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That brings our friends up from the underworld;

Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge:
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer
dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering

square:

So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,

But the tender grace of a day that is dead Deep as first love, and wild with all regret,
Will never come back to me.
O Death in Life! the days that are no more.
ALFRED TENNYSON.

ALFRED TENNYSON.

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