That she might fling them from her, saying, Thus,
Thus I renounce the world and worldly things!'
When, as she stood, her bridal ornaments
Were, one by one, removed, even to the last,
That she might say, flinging them from her, 'Thus,
Thus I renounce the world!' when all was changed,
And, as a nun, in homeliest guise she knelt,
Veiled in her veil, crowned with her silver crown,
Her crown of lilies as the spouse of Christ,
Well might her strength forsake her, and her knees
Fail in that hour! Well might the holy man,
He, at whose feet she knelt, give as by stealth
('Twas in her utmost need; nor, while she lives,
Will it go from her, fleeting as it was)

That faint but fatherly smile, that smile of love
And pity!

Like a dream the whole is fled;
And they, that came in idleness to gaze
Upon the victim dressed for sacrifice,
Are mingling in the world; thou in thy cell
Forgot, TERESA. Yet, among them all,
None were so formed to love and to be loved,
None to delight, adorn; and on thee now
A curtain, blacker than the night, is dropped
For ever! In thy gentle bosom sleep
Feelings, affections, destined now to die,
To wither like the blossom in the bud,

Those of a wife, a mother; leaving there
A cheerless void, a chill as of the grave,
A languor and a lethargy of soul,

Death-like, and gathering more and more, till Death
Comes to release thee. Ah, what now to thee,

What now to thee the treasure of thy Youth?

As nothing!

But thou canst not yet reflect
Calmly; so many things, strange and perverse,
That meet, recoil, and go but to return,
The monstrous birth of one eventful day,
Troubling thy spirit-from the first, at dawn,
The rich arraying for the nuptial feast,
To the black pall, the requiem. All in turn
Revisit thee, and round thy lowly bed

Hover, uncalled. Thy young and innocent heart,
How is it beating? Has it no regrets?
Discoverest thou no weakness lurking there?
But thine exhausted frame has sunk to rest.
Peace to thy slumbers!

THERE is an Insect, that, when Evening comes,
Small tho' he be, scarcely distinguishable,

Like Evening clad in soberest livery,

Unsheaths his wings and thro' the woods and glades

Scatters a marvellous splendour. On he wheels,

Blazing by fits as from excess of joy,
Each gush of light a gush of ecstacy;
Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling
A radiance all their own, not of the day,

Thousands as bright as he, from dusk till dawn,
Soaring, descending.

In the mother's lap

Well may the child put forth his little hands,
Singing the nursery-song he learnt so soon;
And the young nymph, preparing for the dance
By brook or fountain-side, in many a braid
Wreathing her golden hair, well may she cry,
'Come hither; and the shepherds, gathering round,
Shall say, Floretta emulates the Night,

Spangling her head with stars.'

Oft have I met

This shining race, when in the TUSCULAN groves
My path no longer glimmered; oft among
Those trees, religious once and always green,
That yet dream out their stories of old ROME
Over the ALBAN lake; oft met and hailed,
Where the precipitate ANIO thunders down,
And thro' the surging mist a Poet's house
(So some aver, and who would not believe?)
Reveals itself.-Yet cannot I forget
Him, who rejoiced me in those walks at eve,
My earliest, pleasantest; who dwells unseen,
The glow-worm.

*

And in our northern clime, when all is still, Nightly keeps watch, nightly in bush or brake His lonely lamp rekindling. Unlike theirs, His, if less dazzling, thro' the darkness knows No intermission; sending forth its ray

Thro' the green leaves, a ray serene and clear As Virtue's own.