ent for thy waking,
Her quick wing glancing through the fragrant air.

Why dost thou pause hard by the rose-wreathed gate,
Why turn thee from the paradise of youth,
Where Love's immortal summer blooms and glows,
And wrap thyself in coldness as a shroud?
Perchance 'tis well for _thee_--yet does the flame
That glows with heat intense and mounts toward heaven.
As fitly emblem holiest purity,
As the still snow-wreath on the mountain's brow.

Thou darest not say I love, and yet thou _lovest_,
And think'st to crush the mighty yearning down,
That in thy spirit shall upspring forever!
Twinned with thy soul, it lived in thy first thoughts--
It haunted with strange dreams thy boyish years,
And colored with its deep, empurpled hue,
The passionate aspirations of thy youth.
Go, take from June her roses--from her streams
The bubbling fountain-springs--from life, take _love_,
Thou hast its all of sweetness, bloom and strength.

There is a grandeur in the soul that dares
To live out all the life God lit within;
That battles with the passions hand to hand,
And wears no mail, and hides behind no shield!
That plucks its joy in the shadow of death's wing--
That drains with one deep draught the wine of life,
And that with fearless foot and heaven-turned eye,
May stand upon a dizzy precipice,
High o'er the abyss of ruin, and not _fall_!

THE LIGHT OF OUR HOME.

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

Oh, thou whose beauty on us beams
With glimpses of celestial light;
Thou halo of our waking dreams,
And early star that crown'st our night--

Thy light is magic where it falls;
To thee the deepest shadow yields;
Thou bring'st unto these dreary halls
The lustre of the summer-fields.

There is a freedom in thy looks
To make the prisoned heart rejoice;--
In thy blue eyes I see the brooks,
And hear their music in thy voice.

And every sweetest bird that sings
Hath poured a charm upon thy tongue;
And where the bee enamored clings,
There surely thou in love hast clung:--

For when I hear thy laughter free,
And see thy morning-lighted hair,
As in a dream, at once I see
Fair upland scopes and valleys fair.

I see thy feet empearled with dews,
The violet's and the lily's loss;
And where the waving woodland woos