an intrusion which would lead to his detection.
G. R. V.
REVES ET SOUVENIRS.
I.
I remember roaming lonely by the mournful forest streams,
The loveliness and melody of childhood's happy dreams;
Pale flowers, the vermeil-tinted, lightly fanned by vernal breeze,
Whose fitful breath went sighingly among the solemn trees;
Sunny streamlets, gushing clearly in their fresh and tameless glee,
Sparkling onward, ever onward, toward a golden summer sea.
Fairy isles of green were sleeping on its softly-heaving breast,
Where the chime of waves low rippling forever lulled to rest.
The slanting sunbeams wandered through each quiet vale and dell,
Shaded glen, and gray old cavern, where the foamy cascade fell;
And birds, the starry-wing'd, flitting through the rich perfume,
Filled with their gladsome minstrelsy the depths of leafy gloom.
II.
I remember, I remember, in my musings sad and lone,
The beauty and the brightness, that have vanished, and are gone,
Rosy clouds at eve reposing in the crimson-curtained west,
Mocking with their tranquil splendor the human heart's unrest.
They are gliding through my visions, as they used to do of yore,
Yet the gentle thoughts they wakened, shall _they_ come back no more?
Oh! many an hour I lingered to watch their gorgeous dyes
In soft and shadowy outlines against the purple skies;
Through their regal halls, air-woven, the parting radiance streamed,
Ever varying like the opal's hue: and often have I deemed
They were come with tender message, in the holy hush of even,
From the Loved of years departed, spirit-guardians in Heaven!
III.
To my memory come back darkly in the stilly midnight hour,
Dim and faded now, the pictures of Life's early glow and power,
When the world was arched with halos of hopes unmixed with fears,
And I marvelled they should tell me but of sorrowing and tears!
When my spirit loved to revel in its palaces of dreams,
Lit with lightning-flash of fancy, rosy bloom and starry gleams;
Listening to the choral harmonies that filled each lofty dome,
Like the clear and liquid music in the Nereid's azure home.
And it looked from its proud towers on the Future's magic scene,
Till the Present grew all gladsome with the brightness of its sheen;
Far off-notes of triumph swelling, floated up from years to come,
Silver blast of
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