ered wall,
And its feeble light on the stone was flung
Where I sat to hear him call.

And I heard this heremite toad as he sate
In the gloom of his ghastly hermitage,
To himself and the gloom all hollowly prate,
Like a misanthropic sage:

"O, beauty is well and is wealth to all,
But wealth without beauty _makes_ fair;
And beauty with wealth brings wooers tall
Whom she snares in her golden hair.

"Tho' beauty be well and be wealth to all,
And wealth without beauty draw men,
Beauty must come to the vaulted wall,
And what is wealth to her then?...

"This skeleton face was beautiful erst;
These sockets could mammonites sway;
So she barter'd her beauty for gold accurs'd--
But both have vanished away.

"But beauty is well when the mind it reveals
More beautiful is than the head;
For beauty and wealth the tomb congeals,
But the mind grows lovelier dead."

And he blinked at the moon from his grinning cell,
And the darnels and burdocks around
Bowed down in the night, and I murmured "Well!"
For I deemed his judgment sound.

THE HEART OF SPRING.

I.

Whiten, O whiten, ye clouds of fleece!
Whiten like lilies floating above,
Blown wild about like a flock of white geese!
But never, O never; so cease! so cease!
Never as white as the throat of my love!

II.

Blue-black night on the mountain peaks,
Blacker the locks of my maiden love!
Silvery star 'mid the evening streaks
Over the torrent that flashes and breaks,
Brighter the eyes of my laughing love!

III.

Horn of a new moon golden 'mid gold,
Broken, fluted in the tarn's close skies;
Shattered and beaten, wave-like and cold,
Crisper my love's locks fold on fold,
Cooler and brighter where dreaming she lies!

IV.

Silvery star o'er the precipice snow,
Mist in the vale where the rivulet sings,
Dropping from ledge to ledge below,
Where we stood in the roseate glow,
Softer the voice of her whisperings!

V.

Sound o' May winds in the blossoming trees,
Sweeter the breeze my love's breath brings!
Song of wild birds on the morning breeze,
Song o' wild birds and murmur o' wild bees,
Sweeter my love's voice when she sings!