TAKE, O, TAKE THOSE LIPS AWAY.*

TAKE, O, take those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn ; And those eyes, like break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn; But my kisses bring again, Seals of love, but sealed in vain.

Hide, O, hide those hills of snow

Which thy frozen bosom bears,
On whose tops the pinks that grow
Are yet of those that April wears!
But first set my poor heart free,
Bound in those icy chains by thee.

SHAKESPEARE and JOHN FLETCHER.

WHY SO PALE AND WAN? WHY SO pale and wan, fond lover?

Pr'y thee, why so pale?

Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail?

Pr'y thee, why so pale?

Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Pr'y thee, why so mute?

Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do't?

Pr'y thee, why so mute?

Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move,
This cannot take her :

If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her :

The devil take her!

SIR JOHN SUCKLING.

OUTGROWN.

NAY, you wrong her, my friend, she's not fickle; her love she has simply outgrown : One can read the whole matter, translating her heart by the light of one's own.

Can you bear me to talk with you frankly? There is much that my heart would say; And you know we were children together, have quarrelled and "made up" in play.

And so, for the sake of old friendship, I venture to tell you the truth,

As plainly, perhaps, and as bluntly, as I might in our carlier youth.

263

Five summers ago, when you wooed her, you stood on the self-same plane,

Face to face, heart to heart, never dreaming your souls could be parted again.

She loved you at that time entirely, in the bloom of her life's early May;

And it is not her fault, I repeat it, that she does not love you to-day.

Nature never stands still, nor souls either: they ever go up or go down;

And hers has been steadily soaring, but how has it been with your own?

She has struggled and yearned and aspired, -grown purer and wiser each year: The stars are not farther above you in yon luminous atmosphere !

For she whom you crowned with fresh roses, down yonder, five summers ago,

Has learned that the first of our duties to God and ourselves is to grow.

Her eyes they are sweeter and calmer; but their vision is clearer as well:

Her voice has a tenderer cadence, but is pure as a silver bell.

Her face has the look worn by those who with
God and his angels have talked :
The white robes she wears are less white than
the spirits with whom she has walked.

And you? Have you aimed at the highest? Have you, too, aspired and prayed?

Have you looked upon evil unsullied? Have you conquered it undismayed?

Have you, too, grown purer and wiser, as the months and the years have rolled on? Did you meet her this morning rejoicing in the triumph of victory won?

Nay, hear me! The truth cannot harm you. When to-day in her presence you stood, Was the hand that you gave her as white and clean as that of her womanhood?

Go measure yourself by her standard. Look back on the years that have fled ; Then ask, if you need, why she tells you that the love of her girlhood is dead !

She cannot look down to her lover: her love, like her soul, aspires;

stanza added, is found in Beaumont and Fletcher's Bloody

Brother, Act v. Sc. 2.

would kindle its holy fires.

JULIA C. R. Dorr.

ALAS! HOW LIGHT A CAUSE MAY MOVE.

FROM "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM."

ALAS! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain has tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied ;

That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,

Like ships that have gone down at sea,
When heaven was all tranquillity!

A something light as air, - a look,

A word unkind or wrongly taken, --
O, love that tempests never shook,

A breath, a touch like this has shaken!
And ruder words will soon rush in
To spread the breach that words begin ;
And eyes forget the gentle ray
They wore in courtship's smiling day;
And voices lose the tone that shed
A tenderness round all they said;
Till fast declining, one by one,
The sweetnesses of love are gone,
And hearts, so lately mingled, seem
Like broken clouds, -or like the stream,
That smiling left the mountain's brow,

As though its waters ne'er could sever,
Yet, ere it reach the plain below,

Breaks into floods that part forever.

The best, to my taste, is the Trovatore;
And Mario can soothe, with a tenor note,
The souls in purgatory.

The moon on the tower slept soft as snow;
And who was not thrilled in the strangest way,
As we heard him sing, while the gas burned low,
66 'Non ti scordar di me"?

I have not a doubt she was thinking then
Of her former lord, good soul that he was,
Who died the richest and roundest of men,
The Marquis of Carabas.

I hope that, to get to the kingdom of heaven,
Through a needle's eye he had not to pass;
I wish him well for the jointure given
To my lady of Carabas.

Meanwhile, I was thinking of my first love
As I had not been thinking of aught for, years;
Till over my eyes there began to move
Something that felt like tears.

I thought of the dress that she wore last time,
When we stood 'neath the cypress-trees together,
In that lost land, in that soft clime,
In the crimson evening weather;

Of that muslin dress (for the eve was hot);
And her warm white neck in its golden chain
And her full soft hair, just tied in a knot,
And falling loose again;

night,

With the wreath of pearl in her raven hair,

And the brooch on her breast so bright.

(O the faint, sweet smell of that jasmine flower!) And the one bird singing alone to his nest ;

And the one star over the tower.

The world is filled with folly and sin,
And love must cling where it can, I say:
For beauty is easy enough to win;
But one is n't loved every day.

And I think, in the lives of most women and men, There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,

If only the dead could find out when

To come back and be forgiven.

But O, the smell of that jasmine flower!
And O, that music! and O, the way
That voice rang out from the donjon tower,
Non ti scordar di me,

Non ti scordar di me!

ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON (Owen Meredith).

THE PORTRAIT.

MIDNIGHT past! Not a sound of aught Through the silent house, but the wind at his prayers.

I sat by the dying fire, and thought
Of the dear dead woman up stairs.

A night of tears! for the gusty rain

Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon looked forth, as though in pain, With her face all white and wet:

Nobody with me, my watch to keep,

But the friend of my bosom, the man I love : And grief had sent him fast to sleep

In the chamber up above.

Nobody else, in the country place

All round, that knew of my loss beside, But the good young Priest with the Raphael-face, Who confessed her when she died.

That good young Priest is of gentle nerve,

And my grief had moved him beyond control;
For his lip grew white, as I could observe,
When he speeded her parting soul.

I sat by the dreary hearth alone :
I thought of the pleasant days of yore:
I said, "The staff of my life is gone :
The woman I loved is no more.

"On her cold dead bosom my portrait lies,
Which next to her heart she used to wear
Haunting it o'er with her tender eyes

When my own face was not there.

"It is set all round with rubies red,

And pearls which a Peri might have kept. For each ruby there my heart hath bled: For each pearl my eyes have wept."

--

TRANSIENT BEAUTY.

When new desires had conquered thee, And changed the object of thy will,

FROM" THE GIAOUR."

As, rising on its purple wing,
The insect-queen of Eastern spring,
O'er emerald meadows of Kashmeer,
Invites the young pursuer near,

And leads him on from flower to flower,
A weary chase and wasted hour,
Then leaves him, as it soars on high,
With panting heart and tearful eye;
So Beauty lures the full-grown child,
With hue as bright, and wind as wild ;
A chase of idle hopes and fears,
Begun in folly, closed in tears.
If won, to equal ills betrayed,
Woe waits the insect and the maid:
A life of pain, the loss of peace,
From infant's play and man's caprice;
The lovely toy, so fiercely sought,
Hath lost its charm by being caught;
For every touch that wooed its stay
Hath brushed its brightest hues away,
Till, charm and hue and beauty gone,
"T is left to fly or fall alone.
With wounded wing or bleeding breast,
Ah! where shall either victim rest?
Can this with faded pinion soar
From rose to tulip as before?
Or Beauty, blighted in an hour,
Find joy within her broken bower?
No; gayer insects fluttering by

Ne'er droop the wing o'er those that die,
And lovelier things have mercy shown
To every failing but their own,
And every woe a tear can claim,
Except an erring sister's shame.

WOMAN'S INCONSTANCY.

I LOVED thee once, I'll love no more, Thine be the grief as is the blame ; Thou art not what thou wast before, What reason I should be the same?

BYRON.

He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain :
God send me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.

Nothing could have my love o'erthrown,
If thou hadst still continued mine;
Yea, if thou hadst remained thy own,
I might perchance have yet been thine.
But thou thy freedom did recall,
That if thou might elsewhere inthrall;
And then how could I but disdain
A captive's captive to remain ?

It had been lethargy in me,

Not constancy, to love thee still.

Yea, it had been a sin to go
And prostitute affection so,
Since we are taught no prayers to say
To such as must to others pray.

Yet do thou glory in thy choice,

Thy choice of his good fortune boast; I'll neither grieve nor yet rejoice, To see him gain what I have lost;

The height of my disdain shall be, To laugh at him, to blush for thee; To love thee still, but go no more A begging to a beggar's door.

SIR ROBERT AYTON.

LADY CLARA VERE DE VERE. LADY Clara Vere de Vere,

Of me you shall not win renown; You thought to break a country heart For pastime, ere you went to town. At me you smiled, but unbeguiled I saw the snare, and I retired : The daughter of a hundred Earls, You are not one to be desired.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

I know you proud to bear your name; Your pride is yet no mate for mine,

Too proud to care from whence I came. Nor would I break for your sweet sake A heart that dotes on truer charms. A simple maiden in her flower Is worth a hundred coats-of-arms.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

Some meeker pupil you must find, For were you queen of all that is,

I could not stoop to such a mind. You sought to prove how I could love, And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I.

Lady Clara Vere de Vere,

You put strange memories in my head. Not thrice your branching limes have blown Since I beheld young Laurence dead. O your sweet eyes, your low replies: A great enchantress you may be ; But there was that across his throat Which you had hardly cared to see.