A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring, Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven, There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,

With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,

Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand

Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoo---
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses,

That gave out, in return for the love-light,

Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death

Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

LAD all in white, upon a violet bank

I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd—alas, in sorrow!

:

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses ?
No footstep stirred the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!-oh, God!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
Save only thee and me. I paused-I looked—
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out :
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,

The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odours
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.

All-all expired save thee-save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes-
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.

I saw but them-they were the world to me. I saw but them-saw only them for hoursSaw only them until the moon went down.

How silently serene a sea of pride!

How daring an ambition! yet how deep-
How fathomless a capacity for love!

UT now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;

And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go-they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me--they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers-yet I their slave.

Their office is to illumine and enkindle

My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire,

And sanctified in their elysian fire.

They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope),
And are far up in heaven-the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still-two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!

AN ENIGMA.

ELDOM we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
"Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet-
Trash of all trash!-how can a lady
don it?

Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff—
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.

The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles-ephemeral and so transparent-

But this is, now,--you may depend upon it --
Stable, opaque, immortal-all by dint

Of the dear names that lie conceal'd within 't.

ULALUME.

THE skies they were ashen and sober ;
The leaves they were crisped and sere―
The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;