Thy beauty was diviner,
  Than the summer moon,
And thou didst outshine her,
  At her noon.

Thy brow was like the silver
  On the star-lit sea;
Thy bright eyes did bewilder
  All, as me.

Thy motions were the motions
  Of a charmed bird,
As, poised o’er dream-world oceans,
  His sweet voice is heard.

Thou wast queenlier far
  Than the queenliest flower,
More glorious than a star
  In a fairy bower.

But it can not move thee,
  My mad prayer! 
Though I must ever love thee,
  Coldest fair!

TO MARY.

Dear Mary, if my heart has hushed awhile,
Its loving voice within my breast—­yet there,
Thine image was enshrined the dearest thing,
Which now remains to me in this sad world. 
Thou bad’st me sing a song of thee, and said’st,
That I should make thee to my dreamy thought,
Whoe’er I would, and I will make thee be,
A fair and gentle friend—­a lovely one—­
Ah yes, the nearest, tenderest of all friends. 
Sweet Mary, dost thou read my thought? 
Who will be all in all to me on earth,
Sheathing my soul against the edge of pain,
Even till I seem to dwell in paradise,
With thee my Eve, and we may need no fall. 
See, fairy spring hath walked upon the hills,
Where her foot-prints are green and flowers appear;
The turtle coos within our pleasant land. 
Oh! now I throb to be by thy sweet side,
To sun me in the sweet spring of that smile
Which warms the beauties of my mind to birth. 
Thus, Mary, when afar from thee, amid
The unloving and unloved I muse of thee,
And sing and love thee still, and cannot wish
The thought of thee a moment from my soul. 
Thou art the friend whom I would ever have
Dwell by my soul in absence and when nigh. 
Thou art the friend whom I would have be still,
The loved and guardian angel of my path,
Amid the mazes of a treacherous world. 
Thou art the friend, with whom in smiling peace
I fain would walk, to the not dreadful tomb. 
And now, adieu, sweet Mary!  I must cease
My strain; but, as a wind-strain sleeps
Upon a bed of roses; so the echo
Of this my strain, will find its rest with thee.

WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM.

As stainless thought my hand should write,
Upon this page of spotless white;
Nor would I that thy falling tear
Should blot the wish recorded here.

Oh, like the rose which opens here,
The earliest of the vernal year,
May Mary’s bloom enchant the day,
And bless the Minstrel’s votive lay.

But when the envious, Boreal wind,
Shall leave his Northern cave behind,
And seek to sieze thy beauteous bloom
To deck his dark and dreary tomb: 

May some kind angel swiftly fly,
And leave the region of the sky,
Transplant thee to a clime where ne’er
Sad winter mars the blooming year.