V.

TO E. D. G.

Dear wandering Ellee, five long nights and days
Have dragged their slow and tedious length along,
Since last I heard the music of thy tongue,
Or met thy smile, or felt the gentle rays

Of those dear eyes, whose softest glance allays
Sad thoughts of fear, and makes my spirit strong.
Like the old bard and blind, who sent his song
Complaining to the glorious orb of day,
E'en in this gloom of loneliness, a lay

I wake to thee, my light! unseen too long,
And claim thy swift return, and blame the throng

Of circumstance, that keeps thee thus away.

Dear as the light to orbs long blind, shall be The first bright ray thine eyes shall send to me!

1844.

VI.

TO E. D. G.

Ellee! the sky is dark; and cold and drear

The night-wind groans through many a frozen bough;

Pity the wretch who homeless wanders now, No light to guide him, and no friend to cheer. While the full world holds on its deaf career,

And thoughtless wassail thinks the hours too fast, He lonely struggles with the stormy blast, Or stumbling, makes the icy ground his bier.

Such, Ellee, I, if thou should'st leave my side, A wanderer lonely in a frozen night,

The life of life henceforth to me denied, My path were darkness, 'mid the noonday light. Earth were too poor to yield a spot so blest, Where, reft of thee, this heart might be at rest.

VII.

WORDSWORTH.

1.

Poet of the thoughtful brow! far-sighted seer!
Whose gifted eye, on mountain, peak, and plain,
The eternal heavens and never sleeping main,
Mysterious writings saw, and read with fear.
In the deep silence of the night, thine ear

Heard from the earth a still sad music rise,
Nor less the anthem caught, that midnight skies
Pour through the soul from each rejoicing sphere.

But most thou lov'st, with solemn steps, to take Down through the awful chambers of the soul Thy dreadful way, and hear the billows roll Of that deep ocean, whose far thunders break Upon the everlasting shores, and wake

Echoes that wiser make whom they control.

1845.

VIII.

WORDSWORTH.

2.

Thy song sublime the tinkling charms disdains
And painted trappings of the gaudy muse,
And in such dress as truth and nature use,
Majestic mounts in high Miltonic strains,
And pours its strength along the ethereal plains
Solemn and grand, as when the hills reply
To the full chorus of a stormy sky,

Or ocean round his rock-bound shores complains.
Yet not the highest heaven, amid the "choir

Of shouting angels and the empyreal thrones," Nor louder Erebus, nor chaos old,

Thy chiefest haunt; but with sublimer tones, Through the dark caverns of the mind are rolled The mighty thunders of thy master lyre.

AN INFANT'S EPISTLE.

Wee Ellee G. thanks auntie A.
For the nice present left to-day,
And hopes, ere long, to call and tell
How snug it fits, how warm and well.

Her little head, while round and on it,
Rest the soft folds of auntie's bonnet,
Warm thoughts shall hold, for many a day,
Of the kind gift of auntie A.

Die vitæ 22.

Anno Domini, 1844.