THE SHADOWS OF LIFE.

THE secret world in human eyes
Is deluged still with tears;
Our breath is turned to feverish sighs,
And nature mused in fears.
Cannot life rend its thin disguise,
Or be what it appears!

All passion is a blazing brand
Thrown on a ready pile;
Friendship a pressure of the hand;

Pity a winter smile;

And hope but winds across the sand, That forms, and fails the while.

Our life is as an idle boat

Along a winding river;

An aimless arrow sprung remote
From an ethereal quiver;

And pilotless it still must float,

And aimless speed for ever.

Then let man build upon the grave
A hope that cannot sink,

A wintry waste his foot must brave,
Yet he may find some brink;
Or haply drop within the wave,
Whose wine he thought to drink.

THE POET'S HEART.

'Tis like unto that dainty flower

That shuts by day its fragrance up,

And lifts unto a darkened hour

Its little essence cup.

'Tis as the grape on which it lives, That pleasure-ripened heart must be

In sorrow crushed, or ere it gives
The wine of poesy.

Or like some silver-winged fly,
By taper tempted from its flight,
It sparkles, faints, falls quiveringly,
And mingles with the light.

And sure it bears a fortune such
As waits upon that graceful bird,
Whose music, mute to living touch,

At death's dim porch is heard.

And still the dolphin's fate partakes ;

Though bright the hue which pride hath given, 'Tis pain whose darting pencil wakes

The master-tints of heaven.

A mine where many a living gem
In cell so deep lies casketed,
That man sends down a sigh for them,
And turns away his head.

But not that dainty flower, the grape,
The insect's sufferance and devotion;
The swan's life-ending song, and shape
Diviner with emotion;

And not the dolphin's sacrifice,

The mine's most rare and dazzling part—

O! not all these could pay its price,

Or form one poet's heart.

A HISTORY OF LIFE.

(FROM AN UNpublished Drama.)

LIFE'tis the sickliest shadow that e'er crossed
The goodly green o' the earth; the hoarest sound
That ever smote the silver ear of night

From thunder-throated seas. Man hath not weighed
A thing so light as his own life, that seems
The strength of many things, centre of hope;
And hath its little worlds-love, glory, gain-
Riding around, as buoyant and more brief.
How like the monarch of all life looks man,
Yet doth a lean and livid worm out-reign
The crowned Napoleon in the human heat!
Whate'er our summer, ice begins and ends—
The cradle, and the coffin, of our year.
All earth is but an hourglass, and the sands
That tremble through them are men.
And as they pass
Some sparkle and would linger, but the rest
Come sweeping heavily onward, and tread out
The unredeeming lustre-and all sink.

The starriest page that history hath traced

In her own dubious twilight, is a tale