[THE following Poem is from the pen of a young author of great promise and rising fame. He has begged us to withhold his name, being unwilling," he says, " to risk any notice he may have gained, on so trifling a production as "The Romance of the Lily." The epithet" trifling" may be applicable to the piece with reference to its length, but we are confident our readers will not deem it so on the score of merit. We think that, in more than one passage of wildness and original beauty, they will be reminded of Mr. Shelley.]

EVER love the Lily pale,

The flower of ladies' breasts;
For there is passion on its cheek,
Its leaves a timorous sorrow speak,
And its perfume sighs a gentle tale
To its own young buds, and the wooing gale,
And the piteous dew that near it rests.

It is no earthly common flower

For man to pull, and maidens wear

On the wreathed midnight of their hair.

Deep affection is its dower;

For Venus kissed it as it sprung,

And gave it one immortal tear,

When the forgotten goddess hung,

Woe-bowed, o'er Adon's daisied bier:

Its petals, brimmed with cool sweet air,
Are chaste as the words of a virgin's prayer-
And it lives alight in the greenwood shade,
Like a love-thought, chequered o'er with fear,
In the memory of that self-same maid.

I ever have loved the lily pale,

For the sake of one whom heaven has ta'en From the prison of man, the palace of pain. In autumn, Mary, thou didst die;

(Die! no, thou didst not-but some other way

Wentest to bliss; she could not die like men;

Immortal into immortality

She went;) our sorrows know she went, and then We laid her in a grassy bed

(The mortal her) to sleep for ever, And there was nought above her head,

No flower to bend, no leaf to quiver.
At length, in spring, her beauty dear,
Awakened by my well-known tear,
And at its thrill returning,

Or her love and anguish burning,
Wrought spells within the earth;

For a human bloom, a baby flower,
Uprose in talismanic birth ;
Where foliage was forbid to wave,

Engendered by no seed, or shower,

A lily grew on Mary's grave.

Last eve I lay by that blossom fair,

Alone I lay to think and weep,

An awe was on the fading hour;
And midst the sweetness of the flower

There played a star of plumage rare,

A bird from off the ebon trees,

That grow o'er midnight's rocky steep;

One of those whose glorious eyes

In myriads sown the restless sees,

And thinks what lustrous dew there lies

Upon the violets of the skies;

And to itself unnumbered ditties

Sang that angel nightingale,

Secrets of the heavenly cities;

And many a strange and fearful word,
Which in her arbour she had heard,
When the court of seraphs sate

To seal some ghost's eternal fate;

And the wind, beneath whose current deep
My soul was pillowed in her sleep—

Thus breathed the mystic warbler's tale :

King Balthasar has a tower of gold,
And rubies pave his hall;

A magic sun of diamond blazes

Above his palace wall;

And beaming spheres play round in mazes, With locks of incense o'er them rolled.

Young Balthasar is the Libyan king,

The lord of wizard sages;

He hath read the sun, he hath read the moon, Heaven's thoughts are on their pages;

He knows the meaning of night and noon,

And the spell on morning's wing:

The ocean he hath studied well,

Its maddest waves he hath subdued

Beneath an icy yoke,

And lashed them till they howled, and spoke

The mysteries of the Titan brood,

And all their god forbade them tell.

He hath beheld the storm,

When the phantom of its form

Leans out of heaven to trace,

Upon the earth and sea,

And air's cerulean face,

In earthquake, thunder, war, and fire,
And pestilence, and madness dire,

That mighty woe, futurity.

From the roof of his tower he talks to Jove,

As the god enthroned sits above;

Night roosts upon his turrets height,

And the sun is the clasp of its girdle of light, And the stars upon his terrace dwell,—

But the roots of that tower are fixed in hell. Balthasar's soul is a curse and a sin,

And nothing is human that dwells within,

But a tender, beauteous love,

That

grows upon his haunted heart

Like a scented bloom on a madhouse wall;

For amid the wrath and roar of all,

It gathers life with blessed art,

And calmly blossoms on above.

Bright Sabra, when thy thoughts are seen
Moving within those azure eyes,

Like spirits in a star at e'en ;

And when that little dimple flies,

To hide behind thy fluttering blush;

When kisses those rich lips unclose,

And love's own music from them flows,-
A god might love-a demon does.

'Tis night upon the sprinkled sky,

And on their couch of roses

The king and lady lie,

While the tremulous lid of each discloses

A narrow streak of the living eye;

As when a beetle, afloat in the sun,
On a rocking leaf, has just begun
To sever the clasp of his outer wing,
So lightly, that you scarce can see
His little lace pinions' delicate fold,
And a line of his body of breathing gold,
Girt with many a panting ring,

Before it quivers, and shuts again,

Like a smothered regret in the breast of men,
Or a sigh on the lips of chastity.

One bright hand, dawning through her hair,
Bids it be black, itself as fair

As the cold moon's palest daughter,
The last dim star with doubtful ray
Snow-like melting into day,

Echoed to the eye on water:
Round his neck and on his breast

The other curls, and bends its bell
Petalled inward as it fell,

Like a tented flower at rest.

She dreams of him, for rayed joys hover

In dimples round her timorous lip,

And she turns to clasp her sleeping lover,

Kissing the lid of his tender eye,

And brushing off the dews that lie

Upon its lash's tip;

And now she stirs no more—

But the thoughts of her breast are still,

As the song of a frozen rill

Which winter spreads his dark roof o'er.