A SOLEMN CONCEIT.

DOTH Love live in Beauty's eyes ? Why then are they so unloving! Patience in her passion proving There his sorrow chiefly lies.

Lives belief in Lovers' hearts?
Why, then, are they unbelieving?
Hourly so the spirit grieving
With a thousand jealous smarts.

Is there pleasure in love's passion? Why, then, is it so unpleasing, Heart and spirit both diseasing, Where the wits are out of fashion?

No: Love sees in Beauty's eyes
He hath only lost his seeing,
Where, in Sorrow's only being
All his comfort wholly dies:

Fain within the heart of love,
Fearful of the thing it hath,
Treading of a trembling path,
Doth but jealousy approve.

In Love's passion, then, what pleasure,

Which is but a lunacy,

Where grief, fear, and jealousy Plague the senses out of measure?

Farewell, then, unkindly fancy,
In thy courses all too cruel:
Woe the price of such a jewel
As turns reason to a frenzy!

NICHOLAS BRETON, 1580.

I THINK OF THEE.

I THINK of thee, in the night,

When all beside is still,

And the moon comes out, with her pale sad light,

To sit on the lonely hill:

When the stars are all like dreams,

And the breezes all like sighs,

And there comes a voice from far-off streams, Like thy spirit's low replies!

I think of thee by day,

'Mid the cold and busy crowd,

When the laughter of the young and gay

Is far too glad and loud;

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I THINK OF THEE.

I hear thy low sad tone,

And thy sweet young smile I see, My heart-my heart were all alone, But for its dreams of thee.

Of thee, who wert so dear,
And yet I do not weep;

For thine eyes were stained by many a tear
Before they went to sleep;

And if I haunt the past,

Yet may I not repine,

That thou hast won thy rest at last,

And all the grief is mine.

I think upon thy gain,

Whate'er to me it cost,

And fancy dwells with less of pain
On all that I have lost;
Hope-like the cuckoo's endless tale,
-Alas! it wears her wing!

And love, that-like the nightingale-
Sings only in the spring!

Thou art my spirit's all,

Just as thou wert in youth;

Still from thy grave no shadows fall
Upon my lonely truth;

A tapir yet above thy tomb,

Since lost its sweeter rays,

And what is memory, through the gloom, Was hope in brighter days!

I am pining for the home

Where sorrow sinks to sleep,

Where the weary and the weeper come, And they cease to toil and weep! Why walk about with smiles,

That each should be a tear,

Vain as the summer's glowing spoils,

Above an early bier.

Oh, like those fairy things,

Those insects of the East,

Which have their beauty in their wings,
And shroud it while they rest;
Which fold their colours of the sky,
When earthward they alight,
And flash their splendours on the eye,
Only to take their flight ;-

I never knew how dear thou wert,
Till thou wert borne away!

I have it yet about my heart,
Thy beauty of that day;

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THE STUDENT'S SONG.

As if the robe thou wert to wear

In other climes were given,
That I might learn to know it there,

And seek thee out in heaven!

T. K. HERVEY.

THE STUDENT'S SONG.

THOUGHTS wild thoughts! O, why will ye

wander,

Wander away from the task that's before ye? Heart-weak heart! O, why art thou fonder, Fonder for her than ever of glory?

What though the laurel for thee hath no glitter, What though thy soul never yearn'd for a

name:

When did Love garland a brow that was fitter To wake in Love's bosom the wild wish of

fame?

Doth she not watch o'er thine every endeavour? Leans not her heart in warm faith on thine

own?

If thou sit doubting and dreaming for ever,

Too late thou'lt discover that her dream is

flown!