MILTON.

It lifts the boughs, whose shadows deep

Are Life's oblivion, the soul's sleep,

And kisses the closed eyes
Of him, who slumbering lies.

O, weary hearts! O, slumbering eyes!
O, drooping souls, whose destinies

Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!

No one is so accursed by fate,
No one so utter desolate,

But some heart, though unknown,
Responds unto his own.

Responds, as if, with unseen wings,
An angel touched its quivering strings;
And whispers, in its song,
"Where hast thou stayed so long?"

Eden.

LONGFELLOW,

EDEN, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound the champain head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied; and overhead up grew

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Insuperable height of loftiest shade,

Cedar, and Pine, and Fir, and branching Palm,
A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre

Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops
The verdurous wall of Paradise upsprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round.
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once a golden hue
Appeared, with gay enamelled colours mixt:

On which the sun more glad impressed his beams
Than in fair evening cloud, or humid bow,

When God hath showered the earth; so lovely seemed
That landscape. And of pure now purer air

Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive

All sadness but despair: now gentle gales
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes, and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambique, off at sea North-east winds blow
Sabæan odours from the spicy shore

Of Araby the blest, with such delay
Well pleased their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles.

* Satan's.

MILTON.

TENNYSON.

Mariana.

"Mariana in the moated grange."-MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

I.

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots

Were thickly crusted, one and all : The rusted nails fell from the knots

That held the peach to the garden-wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch;

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead."

II.

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

Her tears fell ere the dews were dried; She could not look on the sweet heaven, Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,

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And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

III.

Upon the middle of the night,

Waking she heard the night-fowl crow :
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her without hope of change,
In sleep she seemed to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.

She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

IV.

About a stone-cast from the wall

A sluice with blackened waters slept, And o'er it many, round and small,

The clustered marish-mosses crept. Hard by a poplar shook alway,

All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

TENNYSON.

V.

And ever when the moon was low,

And the shrill winds were up and away, In the white curtain, to and fro,

She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,

And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.

She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

VI.

All day within the dreamy house,

The doors upon their hinges creaked; The blue fly sung i' the pane; the mouse

Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about.

Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.

She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"

VII.

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof

The poplar made, did all confound

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