WITH THE STREAM. RIFTING along the river, all gleaming With sun-jewels, that sparkled and played on its breast, Down thro' the golden-cupped lillies, and dream ing Of love, as they floated on into the West; Past where the swan mid the sedges was sleeping, Past where the deep blue forget-me-nots flooded The space where they bloomed with a heavenly glow, Where daffodils stoopt from the banks which they studded, Reflecting themselves in the water below. Unconscious the two in the boat as it drifted Of everything round them, and silent was each; For the youth, as he gazed in the sweet eyes uplifted, Discoursed in a language unfettered by speech! RAIN ON THE ROOF. COATES KINNEY. W HEN the humid shadows hover over all the starry spheres, And the melancholy darkness gently weeps in rainy tears, What a bliss to press the pillow of a cottagechamber bed, And to listen to the patter of the soft rain overhead! Every tinkle on the shingles has an echo in the heart; Now in memory comes my mother, as she used, in years agone, To regard the darling dreamers ere she left them till the dawn: So I see her leaning o'er me, as I list to this refrain Then my little seraph sister, with the wings and waving hair, And her star-eyed cherub brother-a serene angelic pair- RAIN ON THE ROOF. 305 Glide around my wakeful pillow, with their praise or mild reproof, As I listen to the murmur of the soft rain on the roof. And another comes, to thrill me with her eyes' delicious blue; And I mind not, musing on her, that her heart was all untrue: I remember but to love her with a passion kin to pain, Art hath naught of tone or cadence that can work with such a spell In the soul's mysterious fountains, whence the tears of rapture well, As that melody of nature, that subdued, subduing strain, Which is played upon the shingles by the patter of the rain. |