Aidenn.

OF A SKYLARK.

At dawn I rose from silent sleep,
And heard a sky-lark singing,
Amid the azure far and deep,
Till all the arch was ringing.

And now, as deeper, deeper still
His form sank into heaven,
Me-seemed his heart's concentered thrill,
To his loved Lord was given.

If I possessed such wondrous wings,
I would soar and sing to heaven,
Till my freed soul from sordid things,
Should thus be widely riven.

THE PRINCESS OF PERU.

RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED TO MISS MARY T. ROBERTSON OF ABINGDON, VA.

Far to the wilds of rich Peru,
Gonzalo came--of pallid hue,
Strange in these Western lands of night,
Where nought, save woman's eyes, are bright.
But these have all that outward beam,
Reflected from their glances' gleam
Of light and fire, that kindle bliss;
Or sink to gloom in Death's abyss.
Gonzalo came, a son of Spain,
That land which gleams beyond the main,
And sent its children to these lands,
To gather gold with reckless hands.
And, he, Gonzalo, stood a tower,
In sturdy grace, and manly power;
No Indian's weapon was to him,
More than a sea-reed, slight and slim;
And yet to brown Iola's eye,
He seemed the lord of lady's sigh.
Gonzalo seen, her thought, her dream,
With fancy's love-fraught visions teem.
She deemed that orb of glorious fire,
To which her country's souls aspire,
That crimson god whose glowing face
Illumines all the mortal race:
She deemed his glory, only, vied
With brave Gonzalo's matchless pride.
And down along the green, fresh earth,
Where sin not yet had known its birth;
She knelt, and cast her hands and eyes,
To the bright God of those bright skies;
And worshipped him whose blessed beams,
Had given Gonzalo to her dreams.
Iola, princess of Peru,
Most fair (though of a dusky hue,)
Like this new, unpolluted clime,
Unknown to hate, unknown to crime,
Where all that dwell know but to love,
(The gentleness which marks the dove.)
And like that rich, unguarded shore,
She knew to be, and seem no more;
And like that land so rich in bloom,
Its branches wrought at noon a gloom;
Her form was bright with beauty's hues,
Which each propitious year renews;
And, as within its bosom lay,
Treasures which mocked the sun's bright ray;
In her rich soul shone wealth to shame,
That tropic sun's meridian flame.
She stood a lovely being fraught,
With that most dear to human thought,
The power to love, to force the bliss
Of heaven, to such a world as this.
Iola