Here do I sit, and mould
Men after mine own image—
A race that may be like unto myself,
To suffer, weep; to enjoy, and to rejoice;
And, like myself, unheeding all of thee!
We shall close this Number with a ballad of a different cast, but, lest the transition should be too violent, we shall interpolate the space with a very beautiful lyric. We claim no merit for this translation, for, to say the truth, we could not have done it half so well. Perhaps the fair hand that penned it, will turn over the pages of Maga in distant Wales, and a happy blush over-spread her cheek when she sees, enshrined in these columns, the effort of her maiden Muse.
New Love, New Life.
Heart—my heart! what means this feeling?
Say what weighs thee down so sore?
What new life is this revealing!
What thou wert, thou art no more.
All once dear to thee is vanish’d,
All that marr’d thy peace is banish’d,
Gone thy trouble and thine ease—
Ah! whence come such woes as these?
Does the bloom of youth bright-gleaming—
Does that form of purest light—
Do these eyes so sweetly beaming,
Chain thee with resistless might?
When the charm I’d wildly sever—
Man myself to fly for ever—
Ah! or yet the thought can stir,
Back my footsteps fly to her.
With such magic meshes laden,
All too closely round me cast,
Holds me that bewitching maiden,
An unwilling captive fast.
In her charméd sphere delaying,
Must I live, her will obeying—
Ah! how great the change in me!
Love—O love, do set me free!
One other mood of love, and we leave the apprentice of Cornelius Agrippa to bring up the rear. Goethe is said to have been somewhat fickle in his attachments—most poets are—but here is one instance where passion appears to have prevailed over absence.