Ungen’rous deed! to fly the faithful maid
  Who, for thy arms, abandon’d every friend;
Oh! cruel thought, that virtue, thus betray’d,
  Should feel a pang that death alone can end.

Yet I’ll not chide thee—­And when hence you roam,
  Should my sad fate one tear of pity move,
Ah! then return! this bosom’s still thy home,
  And all thy failings I’ll repay with love.

Believe me, dear, at midnight, or at morn,
  In vain exhausted nature strives to rest,
Thy absence plants my pillow with a thorn,
  And bids me hope no more, on earth, for rest.

But if unkindly you refuse to hear,
  And from despair thy poor MATILDA have;
Ah! don’t deny one tributary tear,
  To glisten sweetly o’er my early grave.

MATILDA.

[Footnote 1:  The above lines were written at the request of a lady, and meant to describe the feelings of one “who loved not wisely, but too well.”]

YOUTH AND AGE.

I love the joyous thoughtless heart,
  The revels of the youthful mind,
’Ere sad experience points the dart,
  Which wounds so surely all mankind.

It glads me when the buoyant soul,
  Unconscious ranges, fancy free,
Draining the sweets of pleasure’s bowl,
  And thinking all as blest as he.

Ah! me, yet sad it is to know,
  The many griefs the future brings,
That time must change that note to woe,
  Which now its merry carrol sings.

This “summer of the mind,” alas! 
  Must have its autumn—­leafless, bare,
When all these pleasing phantoms pass,
  And end in winter, age, and care!

Such, such is life, the moral tells—­
  The tempest, and its sunny smiles,
A warning voice the cheerful bells,
  The knell of death, our youth beguiles!

SENT FOR THE ALBUM

OF THE REV.  G——­ C——­,

With a Drawing of the Head of an Eminent Artist.

Dear Sir, you remember, when Herod of Jewry
Had given a ball, how a shocking old fury
Demanded, so bent was the vixen on slaughter. 
The head of St. John at the hand of her daughter: 
Now do not detest me, nor hold me in dread,
Because, like King Herod, I send you a head: 
Not a saint’s, by-the-bye, although taken from life,
But a head of my friend, by the hand of my wife.

WRITTEN

UNDER AN ELEGANT DRAWING OF A DEAD CANARY BIRD,

By Miss A.M.  TURNER, Daughter of the Eminent Engraver.

Death to the very life! not the closed eye,
  Not those small paralytic limbs alone,
But every feather tells so mournfully
  Thy fate, and that thy little life has flown.

Manhood forbids that I should weep, and yet
  Sadness comes o’er my spirit, and I stand
Gazing intensely, and with mute regret,
  Turn from the wonder of the artist’s hand.