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514        E. JUSTINE BAYARD.

There was a soul in trees, which to my ear
Came often when their leaves of gossamer
Swayed with the soft south wind; I seem'd to hear
Elves all invisible, with singing stir
The quiet atmosphere of summer noon,
A low, and lingering, and loving tune.

The mountains had another tone. Their's was
No melody of voice or instrument,
But verse unrhymed, sublime and stately as 
His words inspired, who saw the firmament
With eyes to earth-scenes wrapt in dark eclipse,
Or the Italian's rapt apocalypse.

And heaven's deep azure, over-arching all,
Spake to my spirit as an old church bell
Heard from afar, with hymnings musical
Drawn from the organ's full melodious swell,
Angelic music with high bliss elate,
To Nature's great Designer consecrate.

The soul of Nature is in Nature still;
But there has gone from me I know not what
Of power to catch her whispers, as they fill
With untaught poesy each lovely spot,
Therefore her beauty most awakes my heart
To mourn the absence of her votary's art

Like those sad exiles from the realm of sound,
Those mute and lone ones, unto whom the hum
Of life comes not, in their deep silence bound
Nature to me is beautiful but dumb;
And wrapt for ever in a speechless gloom,
What is e'en beauty but a living tomb?

E. JUSTINE BAYARD.         515

Ah no! bright goddess, no. I will not stain
The lips which have been thine with words like these;
There are whose sense still notes the exalted strain,
Though mine be deadened to thy minstrelsies.
Sing on for them sweet harmonist divine,
Thine is perennial strength, mute weakness mine.

SONNET.

SPRUNG from the arid rock devoid of soil, 
In vig'rous life I saw one blade of wheat,
Bearing its precious grain, full-lobed and sweet,
Remote from eye of him whose lusty toil
In other harvest recompense hath found;
And it seemed good to me that labour should
Beyond its aim or asking thus abound,
While reaping to itself its purchased food:
So, too, from him, who the prolific thought
Sows in the cultured field of intellect,
A wandering breath its course may intersect,
And bear an embryo with rich promise fraught
Within some barren soul to germinate,
And fill with fruitful life what else were desolate.

SONG.

WE parted at noontide, I met her at night,
(How the inner world mocks at the outer!)
'Twas day in her presence, that spirit of light,
'Twill be more  than midnight without her.

We met amid tears, amid laughter to part,
(How the inner world mocks at the outer!)
Those tears were Hope's baptism sweet to my heart,
That mirth but betrayed me to doubt her.