Makes faint withtoo much sweet these heavy-winged

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.

THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea ;-

What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

THE CLOUD.

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams ;

I bear light shades for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,

In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning-star shines dead.
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.

[beneath,

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chain'd to my chair,

Is the million-colour'd bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky:

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,

[gleams,

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.

THE Sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon's transparent light,
The breath of the moist air is light,
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's.

I see the deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown:

I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:

I sit upon the sands alone,

The lightning of the noontide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone

Arises from its measured motion,

How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walk'd with inward glory crown'd-
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Other I see whom these surround-

Smiling they live and call life pleasure ;To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan:
They might lament for I am one
Whom men love not, and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

ill linger, though enjoy'd, like joy in memory yet.

SHALL we roam, my love,

To the twilight grove,

When the moon is rising bright;

Oh, I'll whisper there,
In the cool night-air,

What I dare not in broad day-light!

I'll tell thee a part

Of the thoughts that start

To being when thou art nigh;

And thy beauty, more bright

Than the stars' soft light,

Shall seem as a weft from the sky.

When the pale moonbeam

On tower and stream

Sheds a flood of silver sheen,

How I love to gaze

As the cold ray strays

O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!

Wilt thou roam with me

To the restless sea,

And linger upon the steep,

And list to the flow

Of the waves below

How they toss and roar and leap?

Those boiling waves

And the storm that raves

At night o'er their foaming crest,

Resemble the strife

That, from earliest life,

The passions have waged in my breast.

Oh, come then and rove

To the sea or the grove,

When the moon is shining bright,

And I'll whisper there,

In the cool night-air,

What I dare not in broad day-light.

Her domestic sorrows, and the earnestness with which she devoted herself to literary pursuits, had long before impaired her health; and now her decline became rapid, and induced forebodings of death. Her poems, written in this period, were marked by a melancholy despondency, yet with a Christian resignation. After an illness singularly painful and protracted, she died on the sixteenth of May, 1835, in the forty-second year of her age, and was buried in the vault of St. Anne's, in Dublin.

At nineteen she was married to Captain HEMANS, of the Fourth Regiment. He was of an irritable temperament, and his health had been injured by the vicissitudes of a military life. They lived together unhappily for several years, when Captain HEMANS left England for Italy, and never returned. Mrs. HEMANS continued to reside with her mother and her sister, Miss MARY ANNE BROWNE, now Mrs. GRAY, a poetess of some reputation, near St. Asaph, in North Wales, where she devoted her attention to literature and to the education of her children, five sons, in whom all her affections from this time were centered. Here she wrote The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, Modern Greece, Translations from Camoens, Wallace, Dartmoor, The Sceptic, Welsh Melodies, Historic Scenes, The Siege of Valencia, The Vespers of Palermo, The Forest Sanctuary, The Songs of the Affections, Records of Women, and the Lays of Many Lands.

The death of her mother, in 1827, induced Mrs. HEMANS to leave Wales and reside at Wavertree, near Liverpool. While here she made two visits to Scotland, and was warmly received by JEFFREY, WALTER SCOTT, and the other eminent literary persons of the northern metropolis. On her return from her second tour in Scotland, she changed her residence from Wavertree to Dublin, where she published her Hymns for Children, National Lyrics, and Songs for Music.

The most remarkable characteristics of Mrs. HEMANS's poetry are a religious purity and a

rated, rarely forgotten. Writing less of love, in its more special acceptation, than most female poets, her poems are still unsurpassed in feminine tenderness. Devotion to God, and quenchless affection for kindred, for friends, for the suffering, glow through all her writings. Her sympathies were not universal. They appear often to be limited by country, creed, or condition; and she betrays a reverent admiration for rank, power, and historic renown. The trappings of royalty and nobility are to her no tinsel, but bespeak merit, wisdom, greatness of soul; they imply virtue, and almost excuse vice. The panoply of war she deems a web of finest tissues; the sword the minister of Justice, the avenger of Innocence: forgetful that it has more often availed to commit wrong than to redress wrong, to spread desolation than to arrest it. Yet as the poet of home, a painter of the affections, she was perhaps the most touching and beautiful writer of her age. The tone of her poetry is indeed monotonous; it is pervaded by the tender sadness which for ever preyed upon her spirit, and made her an exile from society; but it is all informed with beauty, and rich with most apposite imagery and fine descriptions.

Many editions of the works of Mrs. HEMANS have appeared in this country, of which the best, indeed the only one that has any pretensions to completeness, is that of Lea and Blanchard, in seven volumes, with a preliminary notice by Mrs. SIGOURNEY.

JOAN OF ARC, IN RHEIMS.

THAT was a joyous day in Rheims of old,
When peal on peal of mighty music roll'd
Forth from her throng'd cathedral; while around,
A multitude, whose billows made no sound,
Chain'd to a hush of wonder, though elate
With victory, listen'd at their temple's gate.
And what was done within? - Within, the light
Through the rich gloom of pictured windows
flowing,

[ing

Tinged with soft awfulness a stately sight.
The chivalry of France, their proud heads bow-
In martial vassalage!-while midst that ring,
And shadow'd by ancestral tombs, a king
Received his birthright's crown. For this the hymn
Swell'd out like rushing waters, and the day
With the sweet censer's misty breath grew dim,
As through long aisles it floated o'er the array
Of arms and sweeping stoles. But who, alone
And unapproach'd, beside the altar-stone,
[ing,
With the white banner, forth like sunshine stream-
And the gold helm, through clouds of fragrance

gleaming,

Silent and radiant stood? -The helm was raised, And the fair face reveal'd, that upward gazed.

Intensely worshipping:-a still, clear face Youthful, but brightly solemn!- Woman's cheek And brow were there, in deep devotion meek,

Yet glorified with inspiration's trace
On its pure paleness; while, enthroned above,
The pictured virgin, with her smile of love,
Seem'd bending o'er her votaress. That slight form!
Was that the leader through the battle-storm?
Had the soft light in that adoring eye

Guided the warrior where the swords flash'd high?
'Twas so, even so!-and thou, the shepherd's child,
Joanne, the lowly dreamer of the wild!
Never before, and never since that hour,

Hath woman, mantled with victorious power,
Stood forth as thou beside the shrine didst stand,
Holy amid the knighthood of the land;
And, beautiful with joy and with renown,
Lift thy white banner o'er the olden crown,
Ransom'd for France by thee!

The rites are done.
Now let the dome with trumpet-notes be shaken,
And bid the echoes of the tombs awaken,

And come thou forth, that Heaven's rejoicing

sun

May give thee welcome from thine own blue skies,
Daughter of victory!-A triumphant strain,
A proud, rich stream of warlike melodies,

Gush'd through the portals of the antique fane, And forth she came. Then rose a nation's sound, Oh! what a power to bid the quick heart bound The wind bears onward with the stormy cheer Man gives to glory on her high career!

Is there indeed such power?-far deeper dwells
In one kind household voice, to reach the cells
Whence happiness flows forth! The shouts that

fill'd

The hollow heaven tempestuously, were still'd One moment; and in that brief pause, the tone As of a breeze that o'er her home had blown,

Sank on the bright maid's heart. - "Joanne!"

Who spoke

[grew Like those whose childhood with her childhood Under one roof? - "Joanne!"-that murmur broke

With sounds of weeping forth!-she turn'd-
she knew

Beside her, mark'd from all the thousands there,
In the calm beauty of his silver hair,
The stately shepherd; and the youth, whose joy
From his dark eye flash'd proudly; and the boy
The youngest-born, that ever loved her best;
"Father! and ye, my brothers!" On the breast
Of that gray sire she sank-and swiftly back,
Even in an instant, to their native track [more-
Her free thoughts flow'd. She saw the pomp no
The plumes, the banners:-to her cabin-door,
And to the Fairy's fountain in the glade,
Where her young sisters by her side had play'd
And to her hamlet's chapel, where it rose
Hallowing the forest unto deep repose,

Her spirit turn'd. The very wood-note, sung

In early spring-time by the bird, which dwelt Where o'er her father's roof the beech-leaves hung, Was in her heart; a music heard and felt, Winning her back to nature. She unbound

The helm of many battles from her head, And, with her bright locks bow'd to sweep the

ground,

Lifting her voice up, wept for joy, and said"Bless me, my father, bless me! and with thee, To the still cabin and the beechen-tree,

Let me return!"

Oh! never did thine eye Through the green haunts of happy infancy Wander again, Joanne!-too much of fame Had shed its radiance on thy peasant name; And bought alone by gifts beyond all price, The trusting heart's repose, the paradise Of home with all it loves, doth fate allow The crown of glory unto woman's brow.

THE AMERICAN FOREST GIRL.

WILDLY and mournfully the Indian drum

On the deep hush of moonlight forests broke;"Sing us a death-song, for thine hour is come,". So the red warriors to their captive spoke. Still, and amidst those dusky forms alone,

A youth, a fair-hair'd youth of England stood, Like a king's son; though from his cheek had flown

The mantling crimson of the island blood, And his press'd lips look'd marble. Fiercely bright, And high around him, blazed the fires of night, Rocking beneath the cedars to and fro, As the wind pass'd, and with a fitful glow Lighting the victim's face. But who could tell Of what within his secret heart befell, [thought Known but to Heaven that hour? - Perchance a Of his far home, then so intensely wrought That its full image, pictured to his eye On the dark ground of mortal agony, Rose clear as day!-and he might see the band Of his young sisters wandering hand in hand,