"With passion!" did you say, my girl?
The shell that holds the unseen pearl
In its pure concave, doth not clasp
Its treasure in a firmer grasp,

Then I hold thee within my heart :-
'Twas heaven to meet-'twere hell to part.

“With passion!”-sever light from day,
Take from the star its trembling ray,
It's warmth from wine, its soul from song,
From Erin's sons their sense of wrong,
The gleam of beauty from thy brow,
Its whiteness from the untrodden snow,
Do any thing, most hard, and yet
Thon canst not teach me to forget.

"Passion !—for language must be found
Some quicker sense, some stronger sound;
Words must be fire, to tell the pain
And pleasure of my fever'd brain.—
The mother, when her infant child
First in her face unconscious smiled,
And that same mother, when its breath
Was frozen by the touch of death,
Felt joy and anguish-but her sense
Of these was never so intense,

As when athwart my heart and brow
The madd'ning thoughts are flushing now;
When I half hope, half doubt of thee,
Questioning of thy constancy.

"Passion!"-can you not read the tale
Upon my brow?- My cheek is pale-
My falt'ring tongue forgets to speak,
My fever'd pulse is wan and weak,
There's lava fire within my breath,
And in my heart the sense of death :-
Oh! you may read it in my eyes,

I'm Passion's PRIEST and SACRIFICE.

TO LITTLE HARRIET, OF MOSESTOWN.

Little beautiful being! how glorious thou art!
What a lustre springs up to thy eyes from thy heart,
As if thy young spirit, enamour'd of light,

Would settle for ever in dwellings so bright

Round thy lip the rich smile that in extacy glows

Adds a still deeper tint to its exquisite rose ;
The freshness of spirit, bestowed at thy birth,
Has yet caught no taint from its contact with earth;
A halo of Heaven seems round you to shine,
As if thy pure soul made thy body divine.

Oh! still, as you pass through this valley of tears,
When time o'er thy form flings his vesture of years,
Preserve the young glow of thy spirit, which now
Sheds a gladness so holy and pure round thy brow!
Then, whate'er may betide thee of pleasure or pain,
That best of all treasures-content-will remain ;
With that you may laugh at all time, at all change,
At foes who may frown, or at friends who grow strange:
Let the world pass what judgment it may-on thy part
Thou hast still thy appeal to an innocent heart,

FIRST LOVE

A FRAGMENT.

Love! heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-walking, sleep-that is not what it is !-

I had always-I do not know whether on the authority of some commentator or from my own opinion-accustomed myself to consider this passage in our great dramatist, merely as a heaped assemblage of quaint antitheses collected together to startle and enliven by their opposition. A little observation of my own feelings and our own feelings are the best criterion as to the natural in passionhas made me look on it quite differently.

I do not know that I ever found love-with all its incredible inconsistencies-its varying emotions, and conflicting sensations, so strongly and concisely described before. I have not myself, from the age of sixteen, been visited by this spirit; and, since that time, had accustomed myself to consider his influence as a mere toy of youth-his empire as an Utopian kingdom, and himself but as a vision with which boyish fancy loved to cheat its hours of idleness.-That he was of the shadowy race of fairies and genii, whose dwelling is by the vale, and the

forest, and the mountain, and whose town residence (when they come in to winter) is the servant's-hall and nursery fire-side. An event of recent occurrence has sadly convinced me that love is—that my heart, though unknown to me, was his sanctuary, and that I still carried about with me the toys of infancy, though circumstances counteracted my infant propensity to indulge in them.

How fondly the heart rushes back into former feelings, and revels in the remembrance of vanished delights! How ardently do we hasten to acknowledge that "such things were, and were most dear to us," when memory, touching the chain of cherished associations, bids it vibrate to its furthest link. Take all that Hope holds out of bright or alluring-all that anticipation presents in her most Circean cupall that ambition aims at, or possession ensures— compare them with the treasures young Memory has hoarded in her inmost cell, and, though tricked in all the colours of near or actual enjoyment, they shrink before the simple yet cherished pictures of the past, as the fresh but soul-less productions of modern artists, from the touching though faded strokes of a Reubens or a Titian,

About a fortnight since, the wheather being very stormy, I had drawn my chair and table close to the fire, collected as many books as I thought would give variety to the evening, and made all necessary preparation for an intellectual lounge, when I heard one of my sisters whisper the other-"She is dead." "Who?" I inquired—" Ellen- How can I

describe my feeling ?—It was annihilation and sensation combined.-This may seem a strange expression but I felt it-I feel it now-yet can no otherwise describe it than by imagining void with a spirit in it—an infelt sense of sensation with nothing to perceive but your own capability of perception-an endless, boundless, starless night with being in the centre of it. That is annihilation, or there is no such thing a sense of dark, dreary, and interminable existence. To be nothing is to be without loving or being loved.-I loved Ellen-I said it when a boy-I must have thought it when a man-I feel it now! It could not have faded from my bosom, and returned again with such force and freshness, for a word or an event.-It was written in secret on my heart, like letters that come out before the fire; but what heated my heart cooled hersdeath. I cannot be persuaded that love for an object is not born with us-coeval with the first germ of our existence, even though that object may not yet have come into being :-mine was such

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I had not heard Ellen's name for three years, I had no memory of having thought of her, and yet I must have thought of her. Her image was in my heart, veiled-death withdrew the curtain. Oh! how quickly did the visions of youth and youthful extacy spring up to memory! I saw her as I had first seen her with my sister. It was a holyday—we had leave of absence from school, my sister and her friends were emancipated also. We were children, we were