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Why impart the gift of seeing

What no power may turn aside,
The foreshadowed must have being,
The predestined must betide!

"Tis profane the cere-cloth riving
Where a spectre lurks beneath.
Error is the law of living,

Knowledge but a name for death;
Take, oh take thy mournful splendor,
From mine eyes, the lurid gleam,
Cursed the mortal thou wouldst render
Mirror to thy heaven-lit beam!

'Give me back my vision bounded,
And my senses' duskened sheen
Song nor voice of joy I've sounded
Since thy mouth-piece I have been ;*
Thou the future hast imparted,
But the present turned to pain,
Rifled me of youth light-hearted;
Take thy treacherous gifts again!

With the Bride's adornment never
I my dewy locks might twine,
Since thy Priestess vowed for ever,

I have served thy mournful shrine;

Some friendly critic regards the phrase 'thy mouthpiece' as an inadequate rendering of deine Stimme, or as a solecism in language; but I think it a fair approximation to the sense, and permissible in form, in the same way as we may speak of Miss Harriet Martineau being in England the mouthpiece of Comte, or Professor Huxley (besides the much more besides that he is in himself) a mouthpiece of the myriad-minded Darwin.

Grief my budding spring-time blighted, Youth exhaled in sighs unblessed; Every pang that near me lighted

Thrilled from my responsive breast.

'Sportive joy of soul revealing,
All around me live and love
In the youthful tide of feeling;
Me, but pain and sorrow move,
Nor for me the spring reviving
Spreads o'er earth its festive green;
Who that owns to joy in living
Down its dark abyss has seen!

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Happy in her blind delirium,

In her hopes ecstatic blessed, To enclasp the dread of Ilium

As a bridegroom to her breast; See my sister's heart proud swelling, Vainly struggling calm to seem; Scarce yon Gods, there o'er us dwelling, Hails she happier in her dream!

'I've too gazed on him entreating

Whom my yearning heart desired, And have shared the blissful greeting

By the glow of love inspired.

But to nuptial dwelling never

With the loved one might depart,

For a Stygian shadow ever

Cast its baleful gloom athwart.

Spectres gaunt and shapes ungainly
Flock from Tartarus' shores to me,
Seeking rest or roaming vainly

From the grisly bands to flee;

Through the youthful sports and babble, Still the phantom troop would steal ; Shuddering grim and hideous rabble, Howe'er could I joyous feel!

'I behold the death-steel glitter,
And the murderer's visage glare,
Can ne'er flitting hither, thither,
'Scape that portent of despair,
Nor my rooted gaze unfasten :
Fixed, foreboded, fearless scanned,

To fulfil my doom I hasten,

Falling on the foemen's land.'

Whilst her plaintive tones thus wander,

Hark! what deafening shouts arise! At Apollo's portal yonder,

Stretched a corpse, Achilles lies. Discord's gory crest proud towers, The protecting Gods are gone, Thunder breaks and darkness lowers O'er devoted Ilion.

V. COMFORT IN TEARS.-Goethe.

WHENCE Comes it, thou thus pensive art
While all else glad appears?

Too well we see, in those sad eyes
The tell-tale trace of tears.

' And tho' I lonely may have wept,
Mine only is the smart;

The tears that trickle down so sweet,
Relieve my gushing heart.'

Thy joyous friends beseech thee come,
Oh! come unto our breast;
There safe, whatever loss has happed,
Unburthen thy unrest.

'Your mirthful fancies ill divine

What makes my bitter pain; Ah! no, 'tis not what I have lost, But what I cannot gain.'

Wake then, and call thy courage up,
Time hath not dulled thy soul;

With thy fresh life, man has the strength
And will, to win the goal.

'Ah! no, the goal I cannot win,
It looms too distant far;

It dwells so high, it shines so bright
As yonder dazzling star.'

The stars one should not covet them,
But glory in their light;

And with enraptured gaze look out

Into the cloudless night.

' And with enraptured gaze I look,
So many a garish day;

For weeping, leave me still the night,
So long as weep I may."

HAVING Since the preceding matter was in type stumbled upon the original free (I should now say, over-free) rendering of Tyrrhena regum, together with a similar one of a portion of Impios parrae (Hor. iii. 27), done at about the same period, and certain other similar effusions, I may as well take this opportunity of ridding my hands of this lumber of unconsidered trifles, which, after all, reviewing them as impartially as I (the author of their being) am able to do, seem to me not vastly inferior in sense and expression to many of the vampedup, far-fetched, transcendental inanities of some of the third-class poetasters of the day which find a ready echo in the press. If Joseph Scaliger thought himself qualified in his twice-edited Cyclometrica Elementa ' to attempt the Quadrature of the Circle, said to have been 'victoriously refuted by Vieta,' by way of teaching their business to the geometricians of his time, and

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* As it seems to be a womanish sort of youth (possibly, even a girl in boy's clothes) who is speaking, I have allowed more so's to stand than might otherwise have been justifiable. It ought to be expressly laid down in future editions of Mary's Grammar' that so is the feminine transcendental pluperfect form of superlative, as, ex. gr. lovely, lovelier, loveliest, so lovely, or such a love.

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