ABSENCE.

"By absence this good means I gain,

That I can catch her

Where none can watch her,

In some close corner of my brain,

Then I embrace and kiss her,

And so I both enjoy and miss her."

OLD POET.MY love, when I thought of you far away,

At first I shed a tear,

To think that no longer I could stray

With you by the river clear;

To think that no longer we could pore

Over the loved romance,

Or gracefully glide along once more

In the mazy, 'wildering dance.

But when I think of those hours of joy,

I seem to live them again,

Forgetting the moments that could alloy

Pleasure with sharper pain.

But, ah! that rose of paradise,

Her lip so full and red,

Grows pale in the evening light, and dies,

And a pearly whiteness shed

Over her face seems like a pall;

And now the angels' chime

Comes through the air with a rippling fall

From heaven, soft and sublime.

And now they bear my love away

Up heaven's eternal stair,

And leave me to dream my life away,

To sleep and find her there.

B. W. W.