Give back the lost and, lovely!--those for whom The place was kept at board and hearth so long! The prayer went up through midnight's breathless gloom, And the vain yearning woke midst festal song. Hold fast thy buried isles, thy towers o'er-thrown, But all is not thine own. To thee the love of woman hath gone down; Dark flow thy tides o'er manhood's noble head-- O'er youth's bright locks, and beauty's flowery crown; Yet must thou hear a voice--Restore the dead! Earth shall reclaim her precious things from thee! Restore the dead, thou sea! But if she loved in nature, pre-eminently, the beautiful and the serene--or what she could represent as such to her imagination--it was otherwise with human life. Here the stream of thought ran always in the shade, reflecting in a thousand shapes the sadness which had overshadowed her own existence. Yet her sadness was without bitterness or impatience--it was a resigned and Christian melancholy; and if the spirit of man is represented as tossed from disappointment to disappointment, there is always a brighter and serener world behind, to receive the wanderer at last. She writes _Songs for Summer Hours_, and the first is devoted to Death! and a beautiful chant it is. Death is also in Arcadia; and the first thing we meet with in the land of summer is the marble tomb with the "Et in Arcadia Ego." One might be excused for applying to herself her own charming song,-- A WANDERING FEMALE SINGER. Thou hast loved and thou hast suffered! Unto feeling deep and strong, Thou hast trembled like a harp's frail string-- I know it by thy song! Thou hast loved--it may be vainly-- But well--oh! but too well-- Thou hast suffered all that woman's heart May bear--but must not tell. Thou hast wept and thou hast parted, Thou hast been forsaken long; Thou hast watch'd for steps that came not back-- I know it by thy song! By its fond and plaintive lingering On each word of grief so long, Oh! thou hast loved and suffered much-- I know it by thy song! But with this mournful spirit we have no quarrel. It is, as we have said, without a grain of bitterness; it loves to associate itself with all things beautiful in nature; it makes the rose its emblem. It does so in the following lines to THE SHADOW OF A FLOWER. 'Twas a dream of olden days, That Art, by some strange power, The visionary form could raise From the ashes of a flower: That a shadow of the rose, By its own meek beauty bowed, Might slowly, leaf by leaf, unclose, Like pictures in a cloud. . . . . . A fair, yet mournful thing! For the glory of the bloom That a flush around it shed, And the soul within, the rich perfume, Where were _they_?--fled, all fled!