Diobe.

(From the French of Théophile Gautier.)

MARBLE phantom on a base of rock,

Head bowed on hand and elbow pressed on knee,
And feet thrust downward rootwise, like a tree,

Sits ever, weeping ever. Ah! what shock
Smote, and what sorrow bows thy stricken head,
And what grief's well-spring fills thy eye that grieves,
O statue? with some inmost anguish fed,

Thy heart bursts, and thy sculptured bosom heaves.

The tears that from thy marble eyelid drip,
The tears that drop by drop flow carelessly,
Have wrought within the marble of thy thigh
A hollow, where the finches drink and dip.
Niobe, childless, mother of seven woes-

On Athos, or on Calvary, a sign

Of all our griefs, what New-World river flows

With strength of stream and tide of woe like thine?

OXFORD.

W.

A Midnight Cruise.

WATCHED the moon sink in her western bed,
· Leaving her throne to a lonely star,—
Till the tiller caught me a bang on the head,
As the rudder bumped on the harbour bar.

Then like a gull with a foam-splashed wing,
Chased by the bellowing gale we flee ;-

And the boom jibbed round with a deuce of a swing,
That very nigh toppled me into the sea.

Never a point from her course she swerves,
And I gaze with delight on our guiding star ;-
But the worst of it is, my olfactory nerves
Are most horribly tried by the odour of tar.

Now deep into caverns of midnight hue,

Now high on the crested waves we shoot;And one of them wetted me through and through, From the crown of my hat to the sole of my boot.

O ye dancing surges that never are still,

I could ride on your bosom for evermore,

If I didn't feel so uncommonly ill:

I would give half the world to be landed on shore !

Halbeast.

HROUGH the garden winds were sighing,
Gleams of mellow moonlight fell

On the couch, where she was lying,
Near the rich-hued oriel.

Streamed the light aslant the bay,

O'er her bosom as she lay,

Freed, at dying of the day,

From life's hard school.

Through the midnight's warm blue air
Stole the silver down her hair,

Down my darling's braided hair-
Oh God! how beautiful!

Soft, rich robes, in which to fold her,
Languid lay around the room;

Flowers bent downward to behold her

Sleeping lonely in the gloom.

Flowers, which we in days gone by
Plucked beneath a cloudless sky;

Flowers, which soon would droop and die
By Death's stern rule!

Slender fingers I had prest

Now were crossed upon her breast,
On my darling's lifeless breast-
Oh God! how beautiful!

Vain to touch each blue-veined finger,
Vain to kiss each dark-fringed eye,
Where love's light was wont to linger
In the sunny days gone by.
Could I place her in the grave
With the tokens that she gave?
Could I see the cold weeds wave,
And bear to wait?-

Wait, till soon a black-robed train
Waft me to a voiceless plain,
Where unresting spirits reign-
Oh God! how desolate!

*

But I knew it was no maiden

Who beneath the moonlight slept,

For a message sorrow-laden

O'er my weary spirit crept: