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A beauty ripe as harvest,

Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over,
Than silver, snow, or lilies.

Nor has she

A soft lip,

Would tempt you to eternity of kissing,
And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood.

But we may cease to wonder at their union, when we reflect on the couples we see every day-so totally dissimilar in taste and external appearance, that we may almost believe with St. Pierre, that we love only those who form a contrast to ourselves. "Love," he says, "results only from contrasts, and the greater they are, the more powerful is its energy. I could easily demonstrate this by the evidence of a thousand historical facts. It is well known, for example, to what mad excess of passion that tall and clumsy soldier, Mark Antony, loved and was beloved by Cleopatra; not the person whom our sculptors represent of a tall, portly, Sabine figure, but the Cleopatra whom historians paint as little, lively and sprightly, carried in disguise about the streets of Alexandria, in the night time, packed up in a parcel of goods on the shoulders of Apollodorus, to keep an assignation with Julius Cæsar."

TO NIAGARA.

I've stood, Niagara! on thy Table Rock,

And gazed upon thy falls, in speechless wonder; I've heard the deep reverberating shock

Where plunge thy waters with the voice of thunder;
And now although we are so far asunder,

Nor time, nor distance, can thy scenes efface-
Still still on thine immensity I ponder,

And watch thy billows in their madd'ning race
To that dread verge, where leap they into space.

Thou com'st upon me ever,-day and night;-
Thy rapids, whirling-lashing-foaming-roaring,
Sweeping round Iris island in their flight,

In their strong eddies, ev'ry thing devouring,
Rush on my vision in the downward pouring
So furious-wild-magnificent and vast,

They lift me, mentally, to heaven upsoaring,
To him, from whose eternal hands were cast
Those floods, so many thousand ages past.

Type of our world! thus rush we on forever
In fierce contention, and in endless brawls,
Poor human wretches down life's rapid river
In quick succession unto death's dark falls;
The fearful leap the shudd'ring soul appals;
O'er the dread brink, we all must hurrying go;
The God of heaven alone can heed our calls,
Eternity's vast chasm yawns below;-

But o'er the dark gulf the Lord hath spann'd his bow.

My footsteps track again, that lovely spot,
Thine isle fast anchor'd 'midst the raging flood;
I muse on him, who once there cast his lot,
And fled his fellows, in some angry mood;
At midnight, it is told the mourner stood
Communing with thy cataract-alone-

What were those ills o'er which he loved to brood? What disapointments turn'd his heart to stone?

Or what the cries of conscience, thou alone couldst drown?

I ramble yet on that romantic path

Trod by a countless multitude before;

From dizzying height, look down upon thy wrath,
And gaze until I dare to gaze no more;

Then wand'ring on along thy rock-bound shore,

I see, far off, that solitary land,

That speck of earth, round which you madly roar, Whereon the foot of man shall never stand, Stayed by the terrors of thy dread command.

There 'mid the breakers, lies the old Detroit!
What recollections rise up with her name!
Brave Barclay's ship in Erie's far famed fight,
When Perry wrapp'd her in a sheet of flame-
The trophy of our hero,—there—oh shame!
With sorrowing eyes, her skeleton I view'd,

While the wild waves were howling round her frame

I'll fated ship! once dyed with human blood,
Now torn to fragments, 'midst Niagara's flood.
But most I lov'd, from the Canadian shore,

To view thy horseshoe, in the sun's soft light ;
To hear thy "cavern'd echoes” round me roar,
While sparkling showers swept past me, in their
flight,

For then, like "one entire chrysolite"

One half thy torrent seem'd-the rest pure white Like piles of fleecy clouds at close of day,

But rushing down from that stupendous height With rainbows, gilding the rebounding sprayOh words!-ye are two weak-away-away.

LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE OF MISS A. F. B.

I come lost Anne! from thy father's hall,
Where once it was sweet to be,

When Anne would spring at the sprightly call
On the foot of delight and glee.

She was not there and her playful air
And the voice I loved were fled,
The forehead of snow-the wavy hair,
And the soft and the sylph-like tread.

I clasped her not to my beating heart-
The light of the hall was gone,
And now I come to this spot, apart
To weep by her grave, alone.

Oh God! have they left thee here, sweet child! Deep laid in the silent tomb,

Where willows that weep and hawthorns wild But add to the reigning gloom?

What! thou left here in the dark, dark night
When the air with the tempest roars?
And the heavens gleam with the lightning bright
And the storm in a torrent pours?

What Anne! whose bed a mother once made
And over it fondly hung ?—

Sweet Anne! on a father's breast oft laid
That breast unto madness wrung?

She whose eye was the azure heaven
Lit up by its light divine ?

Her skin the snow in its whiteness driven
And tresses the gay sunshine?

Transition abhorr'd!-oh fearful thought?-
But little one! who sleeps near?—
A brother beneath this grass-grown spot
By the side of his sister dear?

Sweet babes! and have ye no parent now
In the deep and the darksome bed?—
No pitying hand that can gladness throw
O'er the place of the silent dead?

Oh! yes, the book of the holy one
Hath a hope through a Saviour known
The caskets are here, but the gems are gone
To be set by the Sardine throne.

The body sleeps till the trumpet calls-
Lock'd then in endearing arms,
Together ascend to the jasper walls-
The city of eternal charms.

CASTLES IN THE AIR.

A pleasing land of drowsyhead it was

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

Forever flushing round a summer sky.-Thomson.

In yonder clouds by sunset gilt,

I, mimic castles see;

How like the castles that were built

In air-by me, by me.

For soon they fade and pass away,
Bereft, bright sun! of thee;
And mine, alas, how toppled they!
Crumbling-round me, round me.

On bank reclin'd, with half shut eyes,
I'd set my fancy free,

And by my magic wand would rise,
Bright domes-like ye! like ye!

What wanted I with those bright domes?
And who their queen should be?
For whom rose up those sparkling homes?
Lov'd one!-for thee, for thee.

A kg I reign'd in fairy land,
'Midst revelry and glee,—

Who struck the sceptre from my hand
The lov'd!-'twas she, 'twas she,

She broke the magic wand I own'd;
Disdain'd my queen to be;

And ever since, there sits enthron'd
Despair-in me, in me.

Rich sunsets! now, it wakes a pang-
Deep pang, to gaze on ye-

Your gorgeousness but serves to hang
Dark clouds-o'er me, o'er me.

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