Spectre of Pride, art thou my own,

My little laughing child?

Whose voice was as a wakening tone,
That might have into music grown,
And made my spirit mild :

Teaching my step once more to wind
Through childhood's grassy way,
And bringing back my infant mind,
When life was a delight refined,
And time kept holiday.

Yes, yes, thou art my own, although
Thy song be tuned to sighs;
Thy dimples made to cradle woe,

Thy cheek's fair sunshine changed to snow,
And love hath left thine eyes.

Oh, yes, thou art my own-the leaf,
The budding of my tree;
A green delight, a blossom brief,
Whose promised glory ends in grief,
Like things that fade and flee.

A harmony within my ears,

A brightness round my brow,

A growing warmth through wintry years.
A star above my tide of tears-
All these to me wert thou!

I

gaze around the freshened earth Which spring hath made so fair;

I hear the lark-voiced morning's mirth; And then I look beside my hearth, And find a winter there.

SUNSET.

THE heavens are dyed with autumn, the dim Day,
Stretched on its purple death-bed, sinks away.
Silence and Even (seldom found apart)

Come forth, to strengthen yet subdue the heart.
But ere thus, missioned with intenser joys,
They veil the deep and lull the forest's noise;
Ere yet the truant winds have home returned,
To cool some leaf whose breast hath all day burned
Ere o'er the waters steal Night's misty feet,

And on the plains of heaven her children meet ;

Nature a moment pauses - nothing heaves

As Time looks back upon the path he leaves.

A scarce felt flush is seen to live and die,
As if the Sun re-oped his heavy eye,

Then by some tending cloud was fanned to sleep,
And bathed his burning forehead in the deep.
Lo! ere he drops, how fast the vapours ride
To dip their feathers in his wealthy tide;
While some to hover round his head repair,
And wind their pallid fingers through his hair ;
Some flap their wings of snow amid his breath,
And on his bosom drinks a golden death;

While others stretch their arms to make a path
Of gentle steps into his ocean-bath!

One swifter-footed star hath reached its throne,
Surveys the west, and rules the east alone;
To share that realm its radiant fellows fly,
Above the azure mountains of the sky—
There on the bluest summits take their stand,
To guard the monarch of that minstrel land,
And warn the night to draw around his rest
The last pale curtain of the purpling west.
All earth seems anchored on the sands of peace,
And life begins where sound and motion cease.
Charmed by the star-break all things stay their flight,
And the fond waters bid the sun 'Good-night!'

ON A SET OF GEMS FROM THE ANTIQUE.

I

WHAT forms are these, touched by the silver hand
Of honouring Time? Methinks I see the face
Of Genius, smiling on the radiant race

That crowned old Greece with glory, and command
Even now the love and praise of every land!

The beauty of the dead herein we trace,
Their very minds seem moulded into grace—
Nay-their most fixed affections may be scanned
In these life-printed pages. Who may tell

How thought hath been inspired! Perchance this form
Was fashioned in the heart's mysterious cell,

An image which young Passion worshipped well;

Or haply in a dream, a visioned storm,

First on the mind it rose, a rainbow bright and warm.

N