SUGGESTED BY A SITUATION IN A ROMANCE.

LET me dream on!

Break not the spell, oh ever-guiding fate!

Dispel not thou the vision I have nursed—

A dream of love, and home, and all things sweet,
After long years of wandering and toil.

'Tis but a little thing and yet so sweet, A shadow cast within a weary land,

A green spot in the desert of a life,

Glad with its clustering palms and cooling springs.

Let me dream on of home and love with thee:

I dare not think me worthy of thy love :

I dare not tell thee of my trembling pain
Lest the enchantress should wave her wand,

And all my dream evanish as before.

For I have cherished dreams like this of old,

Rich, and beyond expression beautiful!

God gave them, and I gave them back with tears. Oh, bitter tears wrung out of boyish eyes!

Oh, young hopes gathered in their first fresh bloom!

An angel asked them, and I gave them back.

God help me, 'twas my young heart's blood I gave !

Let me dream on! I feel as one who long
Hath lost himself in mountain solitudes
And wearied finds at length a babbling brook,
That seems to sing to him with silveren voice:

Come with me, leave this solitude of thine, Come with me, only for a little way,

I lead thee through the brushwood and the brake;

A little way past foaming waterfalls

That make their way between the rifted crags.

Come with me, let my waters cool thy feet.

Come, I will lead thee to embowered dells,
Sweet with the scent of meadows all in flower,

By orchards weighted with their summer fruit,
By wildrose banks and groves of asphodel,

To quaint old homes where dwell true hearts for thee.

Come with me, I will lead thee by old lanes
Beneath the arms of immemorial elms,

All ivyclad, where youth from olden time
By generations, long have whispered love.'

Dream of my heart! a little longer stay :
Let me dream on !

F

LOST AND FOUND.

THEY found them o'er the mountain edge,

His dog and he together,

Two shrivelled things, some half a yard

Beneath the tufted heather.

His native village lay below,

With trees and meadows blending:

You might trace the brook through each shadowy nook From the rifted ghyll descending.

They laid him by the old churchyard,
Where his early friends were sleeping;

Only the heart of the giant Fell,

His last sad secret keeping.

They took him for some stranger man,

A long lost wanderer only,

Till

up

there came an aged woman,

Unhusbanded and lonely.

'Ah, long lost love!' she said, ' my heart Cease now thy anxious grieving :

Oh lost in life! Oh lost in death!

But never yet deceiving.

'How oft when summer nights were still,

I listened by the fountain,

And thought I could hear his wailing voice Come down from the starlit mountain.

'Oh brow so brent, with locks of gold, How altered now and withered!

Oh blue eyes, sunken now and gone;

Oh flower, so early gathered!