THE COURIER DOVE

WRITTEN, AT THE DESIRE OF A LADY, UNDER AN ENGRAVING WHICH REPRESENTED A GIRL FASTENING A LETTER TO THE NECK OF A PIGEON.

"Vas, porter cet écret à l'objet de mon cœur !"

Outstrip the winds, my courier dove!
On pinions fleet and free,

And bear this letter to my love

Who's far away from me.

It bids him mark thy plume, whereon

The changing colours range;

But warns him that my peace is

If he should, also, change.

gone

It tells him thou returnest again

To her who set thee free;—

And O! it asks the truant, when

He'll thus resemble thee?

TWILIGHT

That hour when day and darkness join

Like Pluto meeting Proserpine;

And sweetliest sounds in citron shade

The soul-o'erflowing serenade;

And pallid stars in clusters meet,

And the clouds (like false hearts) lose their heat;

And Time a moment stays his flight

That's the Twilight.

The lover seeks the leafy bower,

And bats are wheeling round the tower;

And cawing rooks (right prone to roam),.
Like noisy neighbours, travel home;

And fountains through the foliage flash
Like glances through a dark eyelash;
And the eldritch owl pursues her flight
In the Twilight.

Then hearts expand and flowers close,
And the bee bids farewell to the rose;
And Fancy mounts her shadowy throne,
And poets love to be alone

(Far from the minds of vulgar birth
Which chain the spirit down to earth)
By lapsing brook, or wooded height,
With thee-Twilight!

When he who once saw better days,

(From scorn and pity shrinking) strays, Like his own spectre, from his shedTo seek, perchance, a little bread! Thou turn'st no proud nor prying eye, On the poor bankrupt's misery,

But veil'st the blush of pain from sightGentle Twilight.

The girl by faithless vows betrayed,
Steals out beneath thy pitying shade,—
Wraps her thin cloak across to screen
What Noontide's taunting eye had seen:
In all her grief, and shame, and want,
Thou art, as 'twere, her confidant ;

For sighs and tears betray her plight
To thee, Twilight.

G