E REID.

Adieu! oh, in the heart's recess how wildly
Echo those painful accents of despair--
And spite our promise given to bear it mildly;
We little knew how hard it was to bear
A destiny so dark: how hard to sever
Hearts linked as ours, hands joined as now I grasp thee
In trembling touch: oh! e'er we part forever,
Once more unto my heart love's victim let me clasp thee!

It is my love's last echo--lone and lonely
My heart goes forth to seek another shrine,
Where it may worship pronely, deeming only
Such images as thee to be divine--
It is the echo of the last link breaking,
For still that link held out while lingering near thee--
A secret joy although with heart-strings aching
To breathe the air you breathed--to see, to hear thee.

And this link now must break--our paths obliquing
May never meet again--oh! say not never--
For while thus speaking, still my soul is seeking
Some hope our parting may not be forever--
And like the drowning straggler on the billow,
Or he that eager watches for the day,
With throbbing brain upon a sleepless pillow--
'Tis catching at the faintest feeblest ray.

Now faint and fainter growing, from thee going,
Seems every hope more vague and undefined--
Oh! as the fiend might suffer when bestowing
A last look on the heaven he left behind:
Or as earth's first-born children when they parted
Slowly, despairingly, from Eden's bowers,
Looked back with many a sigh--though broken-hearted,
Less hopeless was their future still than ours.

If we have loved--if in our hearts too blindly
We have enthroned that element divine--
In this, at least, hath fate dealt with us kindly;
Our mutual images have found a shrine--
An altar for our mutual sacrifice:
And spite this destiny that bids us sever,
Within our hearts that fire never dies--
In mine, at least, 'twill burn and worship on forever.

Thee not upbraiding--thou has not deceived me--
For from the first I knew _thy compromise_--
No, Guadalupe--this hath never grieved me--
I won thy love--so spoke thy lips and eyes:--
The consolation of this proud possessing
Should almost change my sorrow into bliss:
I have thy heart--enough for me of blessing--
Another may take all since I am lord of this.

Why