s heart would gladly bear
A burthen borne by thine, Love?

* * * * *

Sir Wilfrid sat in thoughtful mood,
When the youthful minstrel's song was ended;
While Edith by her loved sire stood,
And o'er his chair in sadness bended.
The guests were silent;--for the chaunt,
Where all, of late, were jubilant,
Had kindled quick imagining
Who he might be that thus dared sing--
Breathing of deep and fervent feeling--
His tender passion half-revealing.

Soon, sportive sounds the silence broke:
Saint Leonard's lay-brother,
Who seldom could smother
Conception of mischief, or thought of a joke,
Drew forth his old rebeck from under his cloak,--
And touching the chords
To brain-sick words,--
While he mimicked a lover's phantasy,
Upward rolling his lustrous eye,--
With warblings wild
He flourished and trilled,--
Till mother and maiden aloud 'gan to laugh,
And clown challenged clown more good liquor to quaff.

These freakish rhymes, in freakish measure,
He chaunted, for his wayward pleasure.

The Lay-Brother's Love Song.

The lilies are fair, down by the green grove,
Where the brooklet glides through the dell;
But I view not a lily so fair, while I rove,
As the maid whose name I could tell.

The roses are sweet that blush in the vale,
Where the thorn-bush grows by the well;
But they breathe not a perfume so sweet on the gale
As the maid whose name I could tell.

The lark singeth sweetly up in the sky,--
Over song-birds bearing the bell;
But one bird may for music the skylark defy,--
'Tis the maid whose name I could tell.

The angels all brightly glitter and glow,
In the regions high where they dwell;
But they beam not so bright as one angel below,--
'Tis the maid whose name I could tell.

* * * * *

Sport may, a while, defy heart-cares,
And woo faint smiles from pain;
Jesting, a while, may keep down tears--
But they will rise, again!

And saddening thoughts of others' care,
Unwelcome, though they be, to share,--
And though self-love would coldly say
"Let me laugh on, while others bear
Their own grief-fardels as they may!"--
Yet, while in sadness droops a brother,
No brother-heart can sadness smother:
The tear of fellowship will start--
The tongue seek comfort to impart.

And English hearts,