Take away your telescope, sir;

Let me still, as ever, hope, sir.

Ill does it become a lover

All the bare truth to discover.

Reach me, friends, a brimming beaker;
Wine shall make my vision weaker.
Songs of olden days come sing me,
Charms that cheat the senses bring me.
Nay, I have a sweet suspicion

It was a distorted vision.

What I saw that looked so queerly,

Was exaggeration merely.

Things remote by law of nature

Should be kept within their stature.

Telescopic eyes are clever

Things to own; but use them never!

So, fair Moon, again I'm dreaming
On thy face above me beaming!
Orb of beauty, mid star-clusters
Hanging heavy with thy lustres;
Saturated with the sun-fire,

Which thou turnest into moon-fire,
Raying from thy fields and mountains,
Silvering earth's rejoicing fountains,
Crystal vase with light o'erbrimming;
Eye of night with love-tears swimming;
Heaven's left heart, in music beating

Through the cloud-robes round thee fleeting;
Cheering all within, without thee,

Even the wind-chased mists about thee,-
Though I mocked thy face mysterious,
I have grown more sage and serious.

Cold astronomers may show thee
Rough in feature, fair I know thee!
At thy critics thou art laughing,
Spite of all their photographing,
In their rigid prose detailing
Every spot and every failing.
I will be thy enamored poet,
Though my friends may smile to know it;
For my dreams do scorn alliance

With these prying thieves of science.

Senge William Curtis.

EGYPTIAN SERENADE.

Sing again the song you sung
When we were together young-
When there were but you and I
Underneath the summer sky.

Sing the song, and o'er and o'er,
Though I know that nevermore
Will it seem the song you sung
When we were together young.

SPRING SONG.

A bird sang sweet and strong

In the top of the highest tree!

He said "I pour out my heart in song
"For the summer that soon shall be."

But deep in the shady wood,
Another bird sang "I pour

"My heart on the solemn solitude

"For the springs that return no more."

THEODORE WINTHROP.

KILLED AT GREAT BETHEL, JUNE 10, 1861.

How often in the strange old days

Before the war's sharp summons blew, We strolled through all these woodland ways While loud the blue-bird sang and flew.

How gaily of a thousand things

We talked, and rustling through the leaves We sang the songs of other springs

And dreamed the dreams of summer eves.

To this bold height our footsteps came,
Our eyes beheld the distant sea;-
To-day, I sit and call his name,

And know he will not answer me.

O friend beyond this voice of mine,
Beyond these eyes, this baffled hand,
Immortal in a youth divine

I see thy radiant figure stand.

We do not count each other lost

Divided though our ways may be; Two ships by different breezes tost Still sailing the mysterious sea.

No cloud of death can long obscure,
Nor touch with any doubt or fear
The love that keeps the old faith pure,
Contented whether there or here.

C. A dana,

ETERNITY.

Utter no whisper of thy human speech,
But in celestial silence let us tell

Of the great waves of God that through us swell,
Revealing what no tongue could ever teach;
Break not the omnipotent calm, even by a prayer,
Filled with Infinite, seek no lesser boon;

But with these pines, and with the all-loving moon,
Asking naught, yield thee to the Only Fair;
So shall these moments so divine and rare,
These passing moments of the soul's high noon,
Be of thy day the first pale blush of morn;
Clad in white raiment of God's newly born,
Thyself shalt see when the great world is made
That flows forever forth from Love unstayed.

HERZLIEBSTE.

My love for thee hath grown as grow the flowers,
Earthly at first, fast rooted in the earth,

Yet, with the promise of a better birth,

Putting forth shoots of newly-wakened powers,

Tender green hopes, dreams which no God makes ours;