WRITTEN AT ROUEN. 5

THE Seine is like a belt of gold,—

Beneath an autumn sky,

That floats, in many a crimson fold,

Like a banner hung on high!

The town hangs darkly o'er the stream,

Where lights and shadows play,

While wave on wave-like dream on dream,

Smile, as they glide away!

And here I stand-as here I stood,

How many years ago!

When life danced onward, like the flood,

With music in its flow!

But now, my breast-like yonder dome,

My spirit keeps the trace, like thee,

Of many a lost parade,—

Dreams of the soul's young chivalry,
Of many a wild crusade!

Like thee, dark town!-like thee, in all
But thy many gushing fountains,

Yet brightened, still, by lights that fall

From heaven,-like thy blue mountains!

ACROSS THE WAVES-AWAY

AND FAR.

Tu pudica, tu proba,

Perambulabis astra, sidus aureum.

HORAT.

ACROSS the waves-away and far,

My spirit turns to thee;

I love thee as men love a star,

The brightest where a thousand are,

Sadly and silently,

With love unstained by hopes or fears,

Too deep for words-too pure for tears!

My heart is tutored not to weep;
Calm, like the calm of even,

Where grief lies hushed, but not asleep,
Hallows the hours I love to keep

For only thee and heaven :-

Too far and fair to aid the birth

Of thoughts that have a taint of earth!

And yet, the days for ever gone,—

When thou wert as a bird,

Living 'mid sun and flowers alone,

And singing in so soft a tone

As I never since have beard,

Will make me grieve that birds, and things

So beautiful, have ever wings!

And there are hours in the lonely night

When I seem to hear thy calls,

Faint as the echos of far delight,

And dreamy and sad as the sighing flight

Of distant waterfalls ;

And then my vow is hard to keep,

For it were a joy, indeed, to weep!

For I feel as men feel when moonlight falls
Amid old cathedral aisles;

Or the wind plays, sadly, along the walls
Of lonely and forsaken halls,

That we knew in their day of smiles;

Or as one who hears, amid foreign flowers,

A tune he had learnt in his mother's bowers.

But I may not and I dare not weep,

Lest the vision pass away,

And the vigils that I love to keep
Be broken up, by the fevered sleep

That leaves me—with the day—

Like one who has travelled far, to the spot

Where his home should be-and finds it not!

Yet then, like the incense of

many flowers,

Rise pleasant thoughts to me;