LA MEXICANA.

BY CHARLES SWAIN.

A VISION from the world of thought-
A dream of golden bowers;

When Youth and Time, like happy friends,
Were wandering 'mid the flowers:
When Love came like an angel down,

His radiant spells to weave;

And Hope sang like the lark at morn—
The nightingale at eve.

Within the mirror of the past,

How beautiful arise

The long-lost hues of early life—

The stars of Memory's skies!

When one bright beam of maiden's eye

Was sunlight to the mind;

One voice, a melody more sweet

Than Poesy may find!

LA MEXICANA.

BY CHARLES SWAIN.

A VISION from the world of thought-
A dream of golden bowers;

When Youth and Time, like happy friends,
Were wandering 'mid the flowers :
When Love came like an angel down,
His radiant spells to weave;

And Hope sang like the lark at morn-
The nightingale at eve.

Our painter's hand hath caught the power

And spirit of romance ;

How graceful that declining head!

How soft the downcast glance! She lists!-'tis not the vesper-hymn Along the valley borne,

Nor distant voice of forest-streams'Tis for her hunter's horn!

Her hunter's horn!-at break of day,
She heard his signal sound;
She saw across the misty hills
His own proud courser bound:
With rifle, lance, and bended bow,
To hunt the Llamma there;
Or chace, perchance, a nobler foe—
The panther from his lair.

Why stays he yet?—the lonely moon
Looks o'er the mountains blue;
The wild swan seeks her reedy nest;
The stars gleam faint and few;
The deer lie slumbering by the stream,
Half hid their crested brow;

And dreary chime the midnight bells :-
Where stays her hunter now?

Why spring the startled deer afoot?
Why wake the wild birds near?

She lists!-but, save the midnight chime,
No whisper meets her ear.

Hark! hark! they are his bugle-notes

That up the river glide!

And, swift as echo to the sound,
Her hunter's at her side!

SONNET.

BY F. TENNYSON.

THE violet-mantled Spring is here again:
Oh! let me gaze upon her while I can,
And win from fears and care a little span ;
While winged hopes come flocking to my brain,
Merrily as the swallows in her train;

And fresh as the fresh green, which airs of May
Breathe on the topmost osiers in their way.
My dreamful mood will not go by in vain,
If with the past I can recal the shine

Of this bright morn, its music and its flowers,
Sometime at winter-noon, when I shall pine
For light; and, like sweet Bells, departed hours,
Out of the holy place of memory's pale,

Shall chime unto me, down my life's dim vale.