Sees whatever fair and splendid Where they twain will spend their days. Bows before him at the door. Not a lord in all the county Is so great a lord as he. All at once the color flushes Her sweet face from brow to chin: As it were with shame she blushes, And her spirit changed within. Then her countenance all over Pale again as death did prove; But he clasp'd her like a lover, And he cheer'd her soul with love. So she strove against her weakness, Though at times her spirits sank; Shaped her heart, with woman's meekness, To all duties of her rank: And a gentle consort made he, And her gentle mind was such, That she grew a noble lady, And the people loved her much. But a trouble weigh'd upon her, And perplex'd her, night and morn, With the burden of an honor Unto which she was not born. Faint she grew, and ever fainter, As she murmur'd-"Oh! that he Were once more that landscape-painter, Three fair children first she bore him, And he look'd at her, and said- THE BUGLE SONG. The splendor falls on castle walls Oh, hark! oh, hear! how thin and clear, O love, they die on yon rich sky, They faint on hill, on field, on river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow for ever and for ever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, CIRCUMSTANCE.1 Two children in two neighbor villages Playing mad pranks along the heathy leas; Two strangers meeting at a festival; Two lovers whispering by an orchard wall; Two lives bound fast in one with golden ease; Two graves grass-green beside a gray church-tower, So runs the round of life from hour to hour. These few lines set before us very pleasantly two villagers-playing, parted, meeting, loving, wedding, dying, and leaving behind them two orphan children. It is difficult to make selections from the "IN MEMORIAM," that will fairly represent it; for one must needs read it as a whole, to get fully into its spirit. The following, however, are some of the beautiful stanzas that can be read with pleasure by themselves. In speaking of his four years' companionship in college with his departed friend, he thus writes: XXII. The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, And glad at heart from May to May: And spread his mantle dark and cold; Nor follow, though I walk in haste; And think that, somewhere in the waste, The Shadow sits and waits for me. The allusion to the time when the "happy sister" was to be their bond of union is very beautiful :— LXXXII. When I contemplate, all alone, The life that had been thine below, To clap their cheeks, to call them mine. Beside the never-lighted fire. I see myself an honor'd guest, With promise of a morn as fair; And all the train of bounteous hours Till slowly worn her earthly robe, Her lavish mission richly wrought, As link'd with thine in love and fate, And he that died in Holy Land What reed was that on which I leant? Ah! backward fancy! wherefore wake The low beginnings of content? The spiritual qualifications for any feeling of communion with the dead are thus finely set forth : XCII. How pure at heart and sound in head, With what divine affections bold, Should be the man whose thought would hold An hour's communion with the dead. In vain shalt thou, or any, call The spirits from their golden day, My spirit is at peace with all. They haunt the silence of the breast, But when the heart is full of din, MRS. NORTON. CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH SHERIDAN is the granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and was born about the year 1808. She early showed that sha inherited the genius of her celebrated ancestor, and in her seventeenth year composed her poem "The Sorrows of Rosalie." "Bereaved by death," as it has been said, "of one to whom she had given her heart, she became, in an unpropitions hour, the wife of the Hon. George Chappel Norton." The union proved a most unhappy one, and was dissolved in 1840, Mrs. Norton having been, for many years, the object of suspicion and persecution of the most mortifying and painful character. That her husband's treatment of her was most unjustifiable, no one who is acquainted with the history of this most unfortunate union for a moment doubts; but that in such cases the fault is all on one side, the world rarely, if ever, believes. It is certainly much in Mrs. Norton's favor that she has not forfeited the confidence of her most intimate friends, and that in the darkest hour of her persecution she enjoyed the esteem of some of the first personages in England. Mrs. Norton's next work was a poem founded on the ancient legend of the "Wandering Jew," which she termed "The Undying One." A third volume appeared from her pen in 1840, entitled "The Dream, and other Poems." These have given her a very high rank among the female poets of England. The "Quarterly Review" says that "she is the Byron of our modern poetesses. She has very much of that intense personal passion by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and deeper communion with man and nature of Wordsworth. She has also Byron's beautiful intervals of tenderness, his strong practical thought, and his forceful expression. It is not an artificial imitation, but a natural parallel." For the honor of the sex, I hope the "natural parallel" cannot be carried any further. Indeed it cannot. Much of Byron's poetry is "earthly, sensual, devilish;" while the moral tone of all that Mrs. Norton has written is pure and elevated. Her poetic powers, naturally of a high order, have been greatly cherished and improved by education and culture, and by a careful study of the best models. But she can speak best for herself. The following impassioned verses are addressed by Mrs. Norton to her to whom she has dedicated her poems : TO THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. Once more, my harp! once more, although I thought A wandering dream thy gentle chords have wrought, And unto thee-the beautiful and pure- |