VI.

SILKWORMS AND SPIDERS.

THE Worm long fosters his transforming sleep,
But claims th' inalienable life again,

Which, though it be but one, yet seemeth twain,
The trance between is all so deadly deep :

The careful spider spreads before his lair
The web, ygathered near his filmy heart
Withouten throes or any vital smart,
And of his entrails makes his foes a snare.
In both a mighty mystery resides,

A truth, on whose development they thrive;
One for the cravings of his life provides,
One weaves himself another way to live.
To reach the secret is beyond our lore,

And man must rest, till God doth furnish more.

FREDERICK TENNYSON.*

I.

THE VILLAGE BENEFACTRESS.

DEAR Village Maid, who from thy little store,
Of knowledge, and of riches, canst supply
The flower and fruitage of humanity,
Balm for thyself,. and comfort for the poor;
I never pass the woodbines round thy door
But in my heart there swells a wistful sigh,-
O, could I change all gauds of vanity
For peace like thine, increasing evermore!
By day thy sweet face, passing through the gate,
Is welcome as the bounty-bearing light,

Thy frugal lamp is to the desolate

-

A star of promise, dawning through the night;

O, if all hearts were only like to thine,

Night would not be, though stars should cease to shine!

"Days and Hours," by Frederick Tennyson, 1854. We have taken a liberty with the author, and with the reader, in calling these stanzas sonnets, and setting them forth in the present manner; for though sonnets they are in point of construction, after a favorite illegitimate fashion, yet the author does not so call them, nor in his pages are they thus distinguished by headings. They form portions,

II.

HER VISITS TO HER MOTHER'S GRAVE.

OFTTIMES I mark thee, while the village tower
Takes the first glow of the new-risen morn,
Bending among the tombs like one forlorn;
There is thy mother's grave; there, sun or shower,
Art thou, and there is cherished every flower

She loved the best; and 't is thy secret trust
That in the blossoms springing from her dust
Lives something of her to this very hour.
There, on the Sabbath days, mayst thou be seen
The first of all, the last to linger there;

Sweet memories of her virtues come between

Thy whispered words, and mingle with thy prayer; And aged women, doomed to endless toil, Stay by the porch, and weep with thee, or smile.

and not even consecutive portions, of a poem consisting of twelve of them, entitled Martha; so that perhaps we have wronged them in that respect also. But they so worthily record a beautiful character, and it is so pleasant to see the names of this family of poets in conjunction, -for Frederick Tennyson is a brother of the Laureate's, that, as he does not appear to have written any sonnets professed, we were tempted to bring him and his heroine into our volume in this manner.

III.

HER SECRET GRIEF.

O, SURE," Some said, "to her kind Heaven hath dealt

Freedom from earthly penance, that can share

The common ills of others, and their care

Surely so free a heart hath never felt

The fetters of great sorrows, that can melt
With simple tears, and laugh with simple joys."
Alas! they had not heard the hidden sighs
Folded within thy conscience, pure of guilt:
There was another's heart that answered thee;
He

grew beside thee, till your hopes were one ;

Far off he sleeps, afar beyond the sea;

And thou hast vowed through Death's great gates alone

To pass into thy bridal, and to lay

His image near thee on thy dying day.

IV.

HER SICKNESS AND RECOVERY.

WHEN thou wert laid in sickness and in pain
Through one sad autumn, O the falling leaf
Fell gentlier by thy casement in its grief,
And still as holy tears, the evening rain;
Methought the hamlet ne'er would wake again,
So mighty was the sorrow and the calm;

And children wailed, and many a withered palm
Was raised to heaven for thee, and not in vain.
The meek, the rugged, wept beside thy door;
The evil-minded took another way;

And fewer were the murmurs of the poor

For their own troubles than thine evil day; And when another May-day brought thee forth, Something from heaven had fallen on the earth.