ty;
within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;
And to the fond idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould.

We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fulness; there--forever there--
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art,
We stand as captives, and would not depart."

THE FIRST KISS OF LOVE.

BY LORD BYRON.

Away with those fictions of flimsy romance!
Those tissues of falsehood which folly has wove!
Give me the mild beam of the soul-breathing glance,
Or the rapture which dwells on the first kiss of love.

Ye rhymers, whose bosoms with phantasy glow,
Whose pastoral passions are made for the grove,
From what blest inspiration your sonnets would flow,
Could you ever have tasted the first kiss of love!

I hate you, ye cold compositions of art;
Though prudes may condemn me, and bigots reprove,
I court the effusions that spring from the heart
Which throbs with delight to the first kiss of love.

Oh! cease to affirm that man, since his birth,
From Adam till now, has with wretchedness strove;
Some portion of paradise still is on earth,
And Eden revives in the first kiss of love.

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past--
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove--
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial the first kiss of love.

THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA.

_See Frontispiece._

The Princess of antiquity, most renowned for her personal charms, was in
her unrivalled beauty, her mental perfections, her weaknesses, and the
unhappy conclusion of an amorous existence the counterpart of the most
beautiful queen of later times, the unfortunate Mary of Scotland.

Cleopatra was the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes, king of Egypt. She was
early given to wife to her own brother, Ptolemy Dionysius, and ascended
the throne conjointly with him, on the death of their father. It was
doubtless the policy of the kingdom thus to preserve all the royal
honors in one family--the daughter being the queen, as well as the son
king of the country. But her ambitious and intriguing spirit, restrained
by no ties of reciprocal love to her husband, who was also her brother,
sought for means to burst a union at once unnatural and galling: