A voice came from the threshold stone
Of one whom I had earlier known-

Oh, I defy thee, Hell, to show,
On beds of fire that burn below,
An humbler heart, a deeper woe.

XXIII. Father, I firmly do believeI know—for death who comes for me

From regions of the blest afar,
Where there is nothing to deceive,

Hath left his iron gate ajar,
And rays of truth you cannot see

Are flashing through eternity,-
I do believe that Eblis hath
A snare in every human path;
Else how, when in the holy grove
I wandered, of the idol, Love,
Who daily scents his snowy wings
With incense of burnt-offerings
From the most unpolluted things,
Whose pleasant bowers are yet so riven
Above with trellised rays from heaven,
No mote may shun, no tiniest fly,
The lightning of his eagle eye;-
How was it that Ambition crept,

Unseen, amid the revels there, Till, growing bold, he laughed and leapt

In the tangles of Love's very hair ?

M

TO THE RIVER

Fair River, in thy bright clear flow

Of crystal wandering water, Thou art an emblem of the glow

Of beauty, the unhidden heart

The playful maziness of art
In old Alberto's daughter.

II.

But when within thy wave she looks,

Which glistens then and trembles, Why then the prettiest of brooks

Her worshipper resembles;
For in his heart, as in thy stream,

Her image deeply lies—
His heart, which trembles at the beam

Of her soul-searching eyes.

TO

The bowers, whereat, in dreams, I see

The wantonest singing birds, Are lips, and all thy melody

Of lip-begotten words.

Thine eyes, in heaven of heart enshrined,

Then desolately fall,
O God! on my funereal mind

Like starlight on a pall.

III.

Thy heart—thy heart !I wake and sigh,

And sleep to dream till day
Of the truth that gold can never buy-

Of the baubles that it may.

A DREA M.

In visions of the dark night,

I have dreamed of joy departed; But a waking dream of life and light

Hath left me broken-hearted.

That holy dream—that holy dream,

While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam

A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, through storm and night,

So trembled from afar;
What could there be more purely bright

In Truth's day-star ?