And mellow echoes breathed and fell:

"O gay spring woods, I loved you well,
For she was there!

Yes! she was there!"

O summer woods,

I hold you very fair!

Your foliaged trees I roamed atween,
I laid amid your leaves of green

My head, and thought on what had been,
And sorely, sorely wept, I ween,—
She was not there!

And mournful echoes rose and fell:

"O summer woods, I loved you well,
When she was there!

When she was there!"

O autumn woods,

I hold you very fair!

The sun had bound his golden zone
On leaf and fern, on mossy stone;
Alone I came to you, alone!

And bitter, bitter was my moan,—
She was not there!

And up the wold, in mournful swell,
The same sad burthen rose and fell :

"O autumn woods, I loved you well,
When she was there!

When she was there!"

B. N. C., OXFOrd.

W.

↑ t t t î î tR 5555555

Only a Dream.

D

SNLY a dream in the night

Of the past and its golden years,

That filled my slumber with light,
But bathed my pillow in tears.

Only the shades returning

From the land of the far unseen, And a sweet and a bitter yearning For the golden past that has been.

They have vanished into the night,

And I would they had never been near, For the vision of vanished delight

Made

VOL. X.

my burden the harder to bear.

K

And yet they had given release
From the Present and all my pain,
And I welcomed the moment of peace,
As I lived in the Past again.

A vision of vanished love

With a strange sad holy smile!
An angel from Heaven above,
That watched at my head awhile!

Music around me falling

Too sweet to belong to men, Yet (I know not how) recalling

The music that charmed me then.

Only a dream of the night!

But the Gods could give no more

Than a vision of past delight

From the shades on the further shore.

I could laugh at my present tears,
At the toil and the heat of to-day,
As I stood in the golden years

With the roses in bloom on my way.

Only a Dream.

A fool and a dreamer of dreams

Men may call me in cynical pride; But the world in its dreariness seems

To hold nothing worth loving beside.

And the shadow of bygone days

Is worth more than the Present can give―
Withered laurels, contemptuous praise,
And the struggle to be and to live.

May the Gods give me one gift more,

In their mercy to hearts that break :

To slay me while sleeping, before

The cold-hearted morning awake.

:

III

H. P. H.