SONNET.

ON RECEIVING A GIFT.

Look how the golden ocean shines above
Its pebbly stones, and magnifies their girth;
So does the bright and blessed light of Love
Its own things glorify, and raise their worth. 
As weeds seem flowers beneath the flattering brine,
And stones like gems, and gems as gems indeed,
Ev’n so our tokens shine; nay, they outshine
Pebbles and pearls, and gems and coral weed;
For where be ocean waves but half so clear,
So calmly constant, and so kindly warm,
As Love’s most mild and glowing atmosphere,
That hath no dregs to be upturn’d by storm? 
Thus, sweet, thy gracious gifts are gifts of price,
And more than gold to doting Avarice.

SONNET.

Love, dearest Lady, such as I would speak,
Lives not within the humor of the eye;—­
Not being but an outward phantasy,
That skims the surface of a tinted cheek,—­
Else it would wane with beauty, and grow weak,
As if the rose made summer,—­and so lie
Amongst the perishable things that die,
Unlike the love which I would give and seek: 
Whose health is of no hue—­to feel decay
With cheeks’ decay, that have a rosy prime. 
Love is its own great loveliness alway,
And takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter’s clime.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.[9]

[Footnote 9:  Hood edited The Gem, one of the many annuals of that day, for the year 1829.  The volume is memorable for having contained his fine poem.

“The remarkable name of Eugene Aram, belonging to a man of unusual talents and acquirements, is unhappily associated with a deed of blood as extraordinary in its details as any recorded in our calendar of crime.  In the year 1745, being then an usher and deeply engaged in the study of Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Celtic dialects, for the formation of a lexicon, he abruptly turned over a still darker page in human knowledge, and the brow that learning might have made illustrious was stamped ignominious forever with the brand of Cain.  To obtain a trifling property he concerted with an accomplice, and with his own hand effected the violent death of one Daniel Clarke, a shoe-maker, of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire.  For fourteen years nearly the secret slept with the victim in the earth of St. Robert’s Cave, and the manner of its discovery would appear a striking example of the divine justice even amongst those marvels narrated in that curious old volume alluded to in the Fortunes of Nigel, under its quaint title of ’God’s Revenge against Murther.’

“The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and emphatic declaration of Aram’s accomplice that it could not be that