ERE'S the garden she walked across,

H Arm in my arm, such a short while since:

Hark! now I push its wicket, the moss

Hinders the hinges, and makes them wince. She must have reached the shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail my chance foot spurned, To feed and forget it the leaves among.

Down this side of the gravel-walk

She went while her robe's edge brushed the box; And here she paused in her gracious talk

To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox, Roses, ranged in valiant row,

I will never think that she passed you by! She loves you, noble roses, I know;

But yonder see where the rock-plants lie!

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip,

Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim; Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, Its soft meandering Spanish name. What a name! was it love or praise?

Speech half asleep, or song half awake? I must learn Spanish one of these days, Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Roses, if I live and do well,

I may bring her one of these days, To fix you fast with as fine a spell,

Fit you each with his Spanish phrase.
But do not detain me now, for she lingers
There, like a sunshine over the ground;
And ever I see her soft white fingers
Searching after the bud she found.

Flower, you Spaniard! look that you grow not,-
Stay as you are, and be loved forever!
Bud, if I kiss you, 'tis that you blow not,-

Mind! the shut pink mouth opens never!
For while thus it pouts, her fingers wrestle,
Twinkling the audacious leaves between,
Till round they turn, and down they nestle:
Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

Where I find her not, beauties vanish;
Whither I follow her, beauties flee.

Is there no method to tell her in Spanish

June's twice June since she breathed it with me? Come, bud! show me the least of her traces; Treasure my lady's lightest footfall:

Ah! you may flout and turn up your faces, —
Roses, you are not so fair, after all!

ROBERT BROWNING.

LEAR, placid Leman! thy contrasted lake,
With the wild world I dwelt in, is a thing
Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring.
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing
To waft me from distraction; once I loved
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved,

That I with stern delights should e'er have been so moved.

It is the hush of night, and all between
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear,
Mellowed and mingling, yet distinctly seen,
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear
Precipitously steep; and drawing near,

There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar,

Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more:

The sky is changed!—and such a change! O night, And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, But every mountain now hath found a tongue, And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! LORD BYRON.

CARE not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening
face;

You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave;
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.
JAMES THOMSON.