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TRUE LOVE.

TRUE love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty's law of plainness and content;
A simple, fire-side thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart,
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes

As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.
Such is true love, which steals into the heart,
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn

That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will through blissful gentleness,-
Not like a rocket, which, with savage glare,

Whirrs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night
Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes;

A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,
Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,
But, loving kindly, ever looks them down
With the o'ercoming faith of meek forgiveness;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour
As is the golden mystery of sunset,

Or the sweet coming of the evening star.
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness;
A love that in its object findeth not
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, it sees but heaven-granted types
Of good and beauty in the soul of man ;
And traces in the simplest heart that beats,
A family-likeness to its chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.
For love is blind but with the fleshly eye,
That so its inner sight may be more clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first, as is a hand

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To guide and to uphold an infant's steps:
Great spirits need them not: their earnest look
Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,
With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze,
Yearning to be but understood and loved.

J. R. LOWELL.

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.

Ar the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
There's a Thrush that sings loud-it has sung for three years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? she sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade:
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.

WORDSWORTH.

[graphic]

THE PLEASURES OF RETIREMENT.

THE man, who, from the world escaped,

In still retreats and flow'ry solitudes,

To Nature's voice attends, from month to month,
And day to day, through the revolving year;
Admiring, sees her in her ev'ry shape,
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart;
Takes what she lib'ral gives, nor thinks of more.
He, when young Spring protrudes the bursting gems,
Marks the first bud, and sucks the healthful gale
Into his freshen'd soul; her genial hours
He full enjoys; and not a beauty blows,
And not an op'ning blossom breathes, in vain.

THOMSON.

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