ON A HARP,

WITH BROKEN STRINGS.

Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

The soft affections, when they are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring of a nail.

MAN OF FEELING.

MUTE emblem of the broken heart!

To thee my spirit fondly clings;
And memory-ruin as thou art!—
Haunts, like a ghost, thy shivered strings!

Alike, o'er thee, may pass the breeze

That steals along in summer gladness,

Or utters through the leafless trees,
At eve, the soul of sadness!—

To summer's breath, or winter's sigh,
Thy murmurs never more reply!

There was a time-'tis long ago!—
When round thee music loved to linger,
Or sweep thy chords, in softened flow,
Before the little fairy finger

Of that remembered one, whose name

On earth is but an echo now!

Though I have sunned me in the flame

That brightened on her brow,

The pure, glad light, when hope beat high, That sparkled in her holy eye!

When sadness hung upon its blue,—
Like clouds that steal o'er summer skies,
The murmurs that from thee she drew,

Oh! they were music's very sighs!

But, in her gayer hours, thy strains

Breathed like the notes to spirits given,
To soothe them, after all their pains,
From the soft harps of heaven,—
With power to bid all sorrow cease,
And win the bosom back to peace!

'Twas meet that, when the minstrel died, The lyre she cherished should decay:— And never have thy tones replied

To touch, since that bereaving day!
The voice that spoke along each string

Of her pure spirit was a part,

And every sound it used to fling

An echo of her heart!

That heart is gone,—that spirit fled,

And thou-art tuneless as the dead!

Her song-and oh, how sweet she sung !— Is silent now in mortal ears!

But memory, broken lyre! has hung
Round thee the thoughts of other years;

And made thee still a thing divine,

-With many a tear thy chords bedewing,Round which our feelings fondly twine,

Like ivy round a ruin !—

There, in thy loneliness, thou art

Fit emblem of a broken heart!

TO MYRA.

Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.

HORAT.

I LEAVE thee now, my spirit's love!
All bright in youth's unclouded light ;-
With sunshine round, and hope above,
Thou scarce hast learnt to dream of night.

Yet night will come !-thy bounding heart
Must watch its idols melt away;

And, oh! thy soul must learn to part

With much that made thy childhood gay!

E