To walk with one, a youth,
  With bright and sunny hair,
Whose words are only truth,
  Whose love is heavenly fair.

God! forgive my grievous sin! 
  God! forgive my erring love! 
Write not my sentence in
  Thine awful scroll above!

God! forgive thy creature’s love,
  Who only loves too well! 
Let not that virtue prove
  My doleful doom to hell.

But make my passion less—­
  Its burning purify;
And make it meet to bless
  My spirit in the sky.

A PORTRAIT.

In those mild eyes, there is a light
Which dwells not with the evil; and
A calm repose upon thy features, which
Says thou art innocent.  Around thee gleaming
There is a robe of more than loveliness,
Of form, and face, and hair:  it is the charm
Of most majestic Goodness; which exalts
An earth-born frame into an angel’s stature. 
Oh! if this world had many like thyself,
It were a heaven for blessed ones to dwell in.

HALLOWED GROUND.

What bids the soul of man to gaze,
  Upon a spot of earth,
As a sun of focal rays? 
  The spell of human worth!

The spot where human virtue stood,
  And struck for holy truth,
Still stirs the world’s ecstatic blood,
  A thing of mighty youth!

When can the name of Marathon,
  Fall powerless, on the soul;
Whilst thoughts of right, or injury, done,
  Along its fibres, roll?

Can Waterloo grow trite by time,
  Or Yorktown fail to fire,
Man’s breast, with hatred most sublime,
  To wrong, till time expire?

What hallows thus the hills of Greece,
  And flings that light o’er Rome,
Which when her very fragments cease,
  Still crowns her history’s dome?

’Tis truth’s great warfare bravely fought,
  That hallows in the core,
A mount—­a plain—­a barren spot—­
  With fame which dies no more.

And when can earth forget to glow,
  Beside each glorious shrine? 
Not till yon stars shall dart below,
  And sun shall cease to shine.

TO SPRING.

Hail, beauteous maiden, gentle spring! 
  I see thee slowly move,
On lowering wings, on yon green hill
  From yon blue fields above.

Hail, beauteous Spring! my bosom swells
  With joy to feel thee near,
Thy joyful advent now dispels
  The winter, dark and drear.

Hail, beauteous Spring, the meads are green,
  The lordly elms rejoice;
Yon river flashes in the light,
  The springs send up a voice.

The blue-bird sings thy welcome sweet
  From yonder blooming tree,
The redbreast pours his simple note,
  A tribute glad, to thee.

The cuckoo comes to join thy train,
  With his melodious lay,
Until his song, a rapture! runs
  O’er all thy pleasant way.