Thou art like the bird That alights and sings Though the frail spray bends-- For he knows he has wings. FANNY KEMBLE (BUTLER) THE POET TO HIS WIFE. _("À toi, toujours à toi.")_ [XXXIX., 1823] To thee, all time to thee, My lyre a voice shall be! Above all earthly fashion, Above mere mundane rage, Your mind made it my passion To write for noblest stage. Whoe'er you be, send blessings to her--she Was sister of my soul immortal, free! My pride, my hope, my shelter, my resource, When green hoped not to gray to run its course; She was enthronèd Virtue under heaven's dome, My idol in the shrine of curtained home. LES VOIX INTÉRIEURES.--1840. THE BLINDED BOURBONS. _("Qui leur eût dit l'austère destineé?")_ [II. v., November, 1836.] Who _then_, to them[1] had told the Future's story? Or said that France, low bowed before their glory, One day would mindful be Of them and of their mournful fate no more, Than of the wrecks its waters have swept o'er The unremembering sea? That their old Tuileries should see the fall Of blazons from its high heraldic hall, Dismantled, crumbling, prone;[2] Or that, o'er yon dark Louvre's architrave[3] A Corsican, as yet unborn, should grave An eagle, then unknown? That gay St. Cloud another lord awaited, Or that in scenes Le Nôtre's art created For princely sport and ease, Crimean steeds, trampling the velvet glade, Should browse the bark beneath the stately shade Of the great Louis' trees? _Fraser's Magazine._ [Footnote 1: The young princes, afterwards Louis XVIII. and Charles X.] [Footnote 2: The Tuileries, several times stormed by mobs, was so irreparably injured by the Communists that, in 1882, the Paris Town Council decided that the ruins should be cleared away.] [Footnote 3: After the Eagle and the Bee superseded the Lily-flowers, the Third Napoleon's initial "N" flourished for two decades, but has been excised or plastered over, the words "National Property" or "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" being cut in the stone profusely.] TO ALBERT DÜRER. _("Dans les vieilles forêts.")_ [X., April 20, 1837.]