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ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

A MAN'S REQUIREMENTS. Love me, sweet, with all thou art, Feeling, thinking, seeing,Love me in the lightest part,

Love me in full being.

Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
With its silence tender.

Love me with thine azure eyes,
Made for earnest granting!
Taking color from the skies,

Can Heaven's truth be wanting?

Love me with their lids, that fall

Snow-like at first meeting: Love me with thine heart, that all

The neighbors then see beating.

(Born 1839.-Died 1861).

Love me with thine hand stretched out
Freely-open-minded :
Love me with thy loitering foot,—
Hearing one behind it.

Love me with thy voice, that turns

Sudden faint above me;
Love me with thy blush that burns
When I murmur Love me!'

Love me with thy thinking soul-

Break it to love-sighing ; Love me with thy thoughts that roll On through living-dying.

Love me in thy gorgeous airs,

When the world has crowned thee! Love me, kneeling at thy prayers, With the angels round thee.

Love me pure, as musers do,

Up the woodlands shady: Love me gaily, fast, and t: ue, As a winsome lady.

Through all hopes that keep us brave,
Further off or nigher,

Love me for the house and grave,-
And for something higher.
Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear,
Woman's love no fable,

I will ove thee-half-a-year-
As a man is able.

THE LADY'S YES.'

YES!' I answered you last night; 'No!' this morning, Sir, I say. Colors seen by candle-light

Will not look the same by day.

When the viols played their best,

Lamps above, and laughs belowLove me sounded like a jest,

Fit for Yes or fit for No.

Call me false or call me free

Vow, whatever lights may shine, No man on your face shall see

Any grief for change on mine. Yet the sin is on us both

Time to dance is not to wooWooing light makes fickle trothScorn of me recoils on you:

Learn to win a lady's faith

Nobly, as the thing is high; Bravely, as for life and deathWith a loyal gravity.

Lead her from the festive boards, Point her to the starry skies, Guard her, by your truthful words, Pure from courtship's flatteries. By your truth she shall be true

Ever true, as wives of yoreAnd her Yes, once said to you, SHALL be Yes for evermore.

PERPLEXED MUSIC.

EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand
Whence harmonies we cannot understand,
Of God's will in His worlds, the strain unfolds
In sad perplexed minors. Deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur,- Where is any certain tune
Of measured music, in such notes as these?
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded: their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences ;

And, smiling down the stars, they whisper

SWEET.

COWPER'S GRAVE.

I will invite thee, from thy envious herse

To rise, and 'bout the world thy beams to spread, That we may see there 's brightnesse in the dead. HABINGTON.

It is a place where poets crown'd
May feel the heart's decaying-
It is a place where happy saints

May weep amid their praying-
Yet let the grief and humbleness

As low as silence languish ; Earth surely now may give her calm To whom she gave her anguish.

O poets! from a maniac's tongue

Was pour'd the deathless singing!
O Christians! at your cross of hope
A hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood,

Your weary paths beguiling,
Groan'd inly while he taught you peace,

And died while ye were smiling! And now, what time ye all may read Through dimming tears his story How discord on the music fell,

And darkness on the glory

And how, when, one by one, sweet sounds
And wandering lights departed,

He wore no less a loving face,
Because so broken-hearted.

He shall be strong to sanctify
The poet's high vocation,

And bow the meekest Christian down
In meeker adoration:

Nor ever shall he be in praise

By wise or good forsaken; Named softly, as the household name Of one whom God hath taken!

With sadness that is calm, not gloom,
I learn to think upon him;
With meekness that is gratefulness,

On God, whose heaven hath won him-
Who suffer'd once the madness-cloud
Towards His love to blind him;
But gently led the blind along,

Where breath and bird could find him;

And wrought within his shatter'd brain
Such quick poetic senses,

As hills have language for, and stars
Harmonious influences!

The pulse of dew upon the grass
His own did calmly number;
And silent shadow from the trees
Fell o'er him like a slumber.

The very world, by God's constraint, From falsehood's chill removing, Its women and its men became

Beside him true and loving!

And timid hares were drawn from woods
To share his home-caresses,
Uplooking to his human eyes,
With sylvan tendernesses.

But while in blindness he remain'd,
Unconscious of the guiding,
And things provided came without
The sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth,

Though frenzy desolated,—
Nor man nor nature satisfy

Whom only God created!

Like a sick child, that knoweth not
His mother while she blesses,
And droppeth on his burning brow
The coolness of her kisses;
That turns his fever'd eyes around-

"My mother! where's my mother?"As if such tender words and looks

Could come from any other!The fever gone, with leaps of heart He sees her bending o'er him; Her face all pale from watchful love,

Th' unweary love she bore himThus, woke the poet from the dream His life's long fever gave him, Beneath those deep pathetic eyes

Which closed in death to save him!

Thus! oh, not thus! no type of earth
Could image that awaking,
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant
Of seraphs round him breaking-
Or felt the new immortal throb
Of soul from body parted;

But felt those eyes alone, and knew
"My Saviour! not deserted!"

Deserted! who hath dreamt that when
The cross in darkness rested,
Upon the Victim's hidden face

No love was manifested?
What frantic hands outstretched have e'er
Th' atoning drops averted-
What tears have washed them from the soul-
That one should be deserted?

Deserted! God could separate

From His own essence rather:
And Adam's sius have swept between
The righteous Son and Father-
Yea! once, Immanuel's orphan'd cry
His universe hath shaken-
It went up single, echoless,
“My God, I am forsaken!"

It went up from the Holy's lips
Amid his lost creation,

That of the lost, no son should use

Those words of desolation; That earth's worst frenzies, marring hope, Should mar not hope's fruition: And I, on Cowper's grave, should see His rapture, in a vision!

NAPOLEON'S RETURN.

NAPOLEON! years ago, and that great word, Compact of human breath in hate and dread And exultation, skied us overhead

An atmosphere, whose lightning was the sword, Scathing the cedars of the world, drawn down In burnings, by the metal of a crown.

Napoleon! Foemen, while they cursed that name,
Shook at their own curse; and while others bore
Its sound, as of a trumpet, on before,
Brass-fronted legions follow'd, sure of fame-
And dying men, from trampled battle-sods,
Near their last silence, utter'd it for God's.

Napoleon! Sages with high foreheads droop'd,
Did use it for a problem; children small
Leapt up as hearing in't their manhood's call:
Priests bless'd it from their altars, overstoop'd
By meek-eyed Christs,-and widows with a moan
Breathed it, when question'd why they sate alone.

And this name brake the silence of the snows

In Alpine keeping, holy and cloud-hid!
The mimic eagles dared what nature's did,
And over-rush'd her mountainous repose
In search of eyries: and th' Egyptian river
Mingled the same word with its grand "for ever."

Yea! this, they shouted near the pyramidal
Egyptian tombs, whose mummied habitants,
Pack'd to humanity's significance,

Motion'd them back with stillness! Shouts as idle
As the hired artists' work-in myrrh and spice,
Swathing last glories round the Ptolemies.

The world's face changed to hear it. Kingly men
Came down, in chidden babes' bewilderment,
From autocratic places each content
With sprinkled ashes for anointing!-then
The people laugh'd, or wonder'd for the nonce,
To see one throne a composite of thrones.

Napoleon! The cavernous vastitude
Of India felt, in motions of the air,
The name which scatter'd in a ruining blare
All Europe's landmarks, drawn afresh in blood!
Napoleon! from the Russias, west to Spain!
And Austria trembled till we heard her chain.

And Germany was 'ware-and Italy
Forgot her own name so-her laurel-lock'd,
High-ghosted Cæsars passing uninvoked,——
She crumbled her own ruins with her knee,
To serve a newer! But the Gaulmen cast
A future from them, nobler than her past.

For, verily, though Gaul augustly rose
With that raised name, and did assume by such
The purple of the world, none gave so much
As she, in purchase-to speak plain, in loss-
Whose hands to freedom stretch'd, dropp'd para-
Ivzed

To wield a sword, or fit an undersized

King's crown to a great man's head! And though along

Her Paris streets, did float on frequent streams
Of triumph, pictured or enmarbled dreams,
Dreamt right by genius in a world gone wrong,
No dream of all, was beautiful to see,
As the lost vision of her liberty.

Napoleon! 't was a high name lifted high !
It met at last God's thunder,-sent to clear
Our compassing and covering atmosphere,
And open a clear sight, beyond the sky,
Of supreme empire! This of earth's was done-
And kings crept out again to feel the sun.

The kings crept out the people sate at home,—
And finding the long-advocated peace
A pall embroider'd with worn images
Of rights divine, too scant to cover doom,
Gnawed their own hearts, or else the corn that grew
Rankly, to bitter bread, on Waterloo!

A deep gloom center'd in the deep repose-
The nations stood up mute to count their dead-
The bearer of the name which vibrated
Through silence,-trusting to his noblest foes,
When earth was all too gray for chivalry-
Died of their mercies, midst the desert sea.

O wild St. Helen! very still she kept him,
With a green willow for all pyramid,
Stirring a little if the low wind did,-
More rarely, if some pilgrim overwept him
And parted the lithe boughs, to see the clay
Which seem'd to cover his for judgment-day.

Nay! not so long! France kept her old affection,
As deeply as the sepulchre the corse,-
And now, dilated by that love's remorse
To a new angel of the resurrection,

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Take back thy dead! and when thou buriest it, Throw in all former strifes 'twixt thee and me.” Amen, mine England! 'tis a courteous claimBut ask a little room too... for thy shame!

Because it was not well, it was not well,
Nor tuneful with thy lofty-chanted part
Among the Oceanides, that heart

To bind and bare, and vex with vulture fell.
O mine own England! would, we had to seek
All crimson stains upon thy breast-not cheek!
Would hostile fleets had scarr'd thy bay of Tor,
Instead of the lone ship, which waited here
Until thy princely purpose should be clear,
Then left a shadow-to pass out no more!
Not for the moonlight—not for a noontide sun!
Green watching hills, ye witness'd what was done!
But since it was done.-in sepulchral dust,
We fain would pay back something of our debt
To Gaul, if not to honour, and forget
How, through much fear, we falsified the trust

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