Such the gifts our planet proffers, Such the thorny home she offers Spirits fine: Artists, poets, earthward sent us, Heavenly natures, briefly lent us, Droop like thine! Happy if, amid their dreaming, They can feel the glories streaming From above;-- See the light, and hear the flowing, Gushing anthems--melting, glowing Strains of love! Happy Peri! faintly smiling; Quivering lip, the sense beguiling, Dimpled cheek, Form ethereal, heavenly moulded, Shadowing eyelids, soft wings folded Rest to seek,-- All betray thee, young immortal, Eden's child, without its portal Doomed to roam! Yet thy spirit sees the glory, Hears entranced the rapturous story Of thy home. Who, O Fay, would dare to wake thee, From ecstatic visions take thee But to weep? Softly dreaming, waking never Till thy dreams are truths forever, Sweetly sleep! MY LOST DARLING. The boom of cannon in the distance, flags floating gaily in the bright morning air, strains of martial music filling it, a waving of caps and handkerchiefs, shouts in the streets below, and the tramp of many feet. A regiment is passing! To a stern fate, that beckons darkly in the distance, these patriots are moving, with firm, determined tread--to long, exhausting marches, and fireless bivouac; to hunger and cold; to sufferings in varied forms; to wounds and imprisonment; _to death_! God knows when and how they are going;--and, amid the doomed throng slowly passing, the bright face of my darling smilingly upturned to mine. I wave my hand and kiss it; my handkerchief is wet through and through.