WINTER IS THE SEASON OF CHARITY.

The wintry wind is howling through the land;

Stern Frost hath grasp'd the mountain, stream and lea.
The patient cattle weep, and cow'ring stand,
Seeking cold shelter of the leafless tree.
The gallant Cock forgets his chivalry;
His dames have ceas'd to occupy his care,
The humbled Turkey quells his bravery,
And famish'd birds chirp for their simple fare

From the good gifts of God, which you so largely share.

Let Charity, thy grateful bosom warm;
Slight not their sorrows; for a God of Love
Hath made you both: and the same potent arm
Which wields the thunder, clothes the trembling dove
That sues to you for food. And trifles prove
The heart of man or woman; for the eye
Which pities the poor bird, will surely move

At griefs, which wring from man the bitter sigh-
The widow's wasting tear, and pining infancy.

Arthur Mordante was in every respect what men call a genius. He was imaginative, susceptible, ardent in his adoration of the beautiful, and painfully, perhaps morbidly, sensitive regarding his own defects. His character was impulsive and passionate, full of that high and generous feeling, whose common fate it is to be thrown back, chilled, unappreciated, and misconstrued, on the warm heart whence it springs. He had grown up, surrounded by the loveliness of his own reflections, and shielded by the tenderest affection from whatever could wound or distress a disposition, whose sad tendencies circumstances had confirmed. Though he occasionally yielded to the dark moods, always the portion of such visionary intellects, the tenor of his usual existence was happy, with the calm, serene enjoyment, more lasting than wilder mirth.

It is a strange thing, how great a waste of feeling marks the experience of a temperament like his; how frequently enthusiasm is awakened by trifles, and strong emotions come forth at the bid

But the Storm comes-Hark! through the crackling wood
The Giant comes, and clad in darkness, lends
Horror to common danger. How the blood
Leaps to the trav'ller's heart, as Mem'ry blends
Thoughts of his home, bright hearth, and smiling friends. ding of events, undeserving such reception. That
Happy, how happy he! O let him feel

For those, to whom the Almighty sends
Cold, sickness, poverty, the scanty meal,

this is the case, the history of many a poet's life bears ample witness, in its wild anticipations, its

And all the nameless woes, which breaking hearts conceal. premature realization of passionate sentiment, and

LOVE SKETCHES.

NO. VI.

THE POET'S LOVE.

A blessed lot 'tis thine to bear

Through trouble's tearful throng,
A haunted heart and a charmed life,
O dreaming child of song!

A spirit whose bewildering thoughts
In starry beauty beam,

A soul to throw the living light
Of glory round a dream.

And oh through all things, still to love
The holy and the high;

Moving among the cares of earth,

A pilgrim from the sky.

last, and truest of all, its inevitable disappointments. With his traits of mind, his vague views and imaginings, his fervent, impetuous affections, Arthur had early knelt down before the beautiful illusion of love. How the lovers had met, or how their tenderness was first excited, matters not now; I would only tell here, that the dream was. What a varied chronicle of mingled hope and doubt and trouble may be traced in those two brief wordsthey loved!

It was the only happy moment Mr. Mordante had known for years, when Edith and his son met him once more. How he was changed! Edith scarcely recognized one familiar trait of her early friend, in the dark, stern man, from whom every token of his youthful enthusiasm had long departed. His appearance was calm and haughty, and his manner cold and reserved-tinged with that involuntary suspicion, which reveals so much of experienced deception and lingering regret, and that "Sarcastic bitterness of tongue,

It needed not the glance of a prophet to read that Arthur Mordante would be a poet. The destiny was written on every line of that mournfully The stinging of a heart the world had stung." earnest face, and told in the impassioned tone of His health was infirm, and his eyes were lustrous his low voice. The quick-coming color to his with that unnatural gleaming which is often the cheek, usually fair and pale, and the deep gaze of outward sign of the sorrow which worketh death. those dark, dreamy eyes, all bespoke him one of Well might tears rush to Arthur's eyes as he looked that martyr-band, the children of song. Ah! theirs on his father's face, for that wan cheek was blanched is a holy lot, with all its innumerable sorrows! It by suffering; and it was easy to see, amid all his is a blessed thing, the power to idealize life, to steal from reality its harshness, from expectation its deception, from thought its evanescence; to paint, in immortal words, visions that but dawn and pass away, and to experience, for awhile at least, that inspiration hath its better world, and that happiness is not wholly an illusion,

VOL. IX-5

assumed tranquillity, that Mordante's was the proud heart, which “brokenly lives on."

The day following their meeting, Arthur, fatigued by his journey, was asleep on a couch, and Edith and Mordante were conversing on the trifling events which had happened to both since their parting. Each instinctively avoided the slightest allu

sion to the painful occurrences of old times, as we" I can look on my altered character, as on that of are apt to do, when the mind is too full of them, a stranger, and moralize calmly on its traits.

It

is one of the signs of that perfect grief, which shuts us entirely from enjoyment, and which has no earthly hope, that the mind enters as if upon a new and separate existence, and we quietly recall

for language to tell all its thoughts. At length there was a pause, and Mordante's gaze rested on his son. Arthur's hair was tossed carelessly away from his forehead--his face was slightly flushed, and his lashes drooped on a cheek, fair and deli-the past, as we would remember another's youth. cate as a girl's. His slumber was not profound, There was a time when it pained me to recollect and his fancies seemed bright ones, for a smile my early ambition, my early expectations, and to see hovered on his lips. Is it an idle belief, that the how both have vanished. Now, even that regret departed revisit us in our visions? Who knows has gone; I have acquired something like resigbut that angels are watching around us in our sleep-nation, and ask nothing in life but its endurances; ing moments? And if the thought be but an illu- for I feel, almost with a spirit of prophecy, that my sion, dispel it not, but thank God that the deception remaining days will be few. You will always be may sometimes be so vivid! Perhaps there were voices whispering to that dreamer's spirit, for the smile brightened on his features, and he murmured "Mother!"

to Arthur, the blessing you have been from his childhood; and I trust you will teach him to shun the passion I have proved so fatal. Ah! Edith, it is a fearful thing to love unwisely, and to confide in vain!"

Mordante heard that word, and its magic charmed him. The habitual reserve and constraint, which Why was it that Edith's cheek grew very pale custom had rendered almost natural, was forgotten as Mordante's words met her ear; and her glance, for a moment: his frame shook with sudden agita- as it encountered his, was almost reproachful in its tion, and he trembled like a little child. What sorrow? And why was it that tears not to be resorrowful spirits that single sound summoned from pressed, filled those eyes usually so calm and the past! What a long, long list of hopes disap- thoughtful? Her companion understood that voicepointed, affections wasted, griefs unshared, and hu-less appeal to his memory of the past; and his tone miliation proudly and silently endured! Slowly was very kind and gentle, as he said, "Forgive his convulsive emotion went by; and when he ad- me, dear Edith, if in the selfishness of my harsher dressed his companion, his voice was low and sad, wrongs, I forgot your uncomplaining but mournful but composed and unfaltering. All that both had experience. We have both endured much, but my suffered all that each knew of the other's expe- pilgrimage is nearly at an end. For you, dear rience, appeared to rise again before them; and Edith, your peace and reward are beyond this the confidence of their young friendship came back, world." strengthened and chastened by the troubles of many Who that has dwelt with meditative gaze on the years. Nothing induces more complete and un- darker truths of common existence, can doubt the questioning trust, than the knowledge of a wrong reality of broken hearts! Many are they, though in common, and the friends had alike been deceived they break in silence, with no poet to trace their by the one they had loved. With the remembrance trials, nor to tell their destiny. We attribute to of this, mingled mutual expectations withered-disease the work often wrought by some hidden, pleasures which left no record but their blight-unmurmuring trouble, which finds no chronicler,ties now painfully divided, and tenderness rejected and many an one goes down to the grave, whose and profaned. Mordante's habitual concealment malady was nothing but grief! gave way before the tide of thronging recollec- Like every poetical disposition, Arthur's was tions, and he spoke of his afflictions with the tran- keenly susceptible to whatever was beautiful in quillity of one who had lost the ardor even of pas-art, and to all that forcibly appealed to imaginative sionate regret.

It would take from transgression its bitterest part, could its punishment rest solely with ourselves; but error is doubly fearful, when its consequences fall on those who are dear to us-when one hour of weakness, one instant of folly, may cast a lasting shadow on the life of the innocent and beloved. It was a sad thing to Edith, to listen to the proud and haughty sorrows of that altered heart, and to mark how wholly the eager enthusiasm, the unsuspecting reliance, had forsaken her friend. They spoke long and earnestly, for Mordante seemed to find relief in this, his first moment of confidence.

feeling. The meeting with his father had imparted to his spirits more than their usual buoyancy; and though Mordante's health was feeble enough to awaken anxiety, Arthur regarded it with the happy hopefulness of youth, and he now followed his favorite enjoyments with redoubled interest. Music was one of his enthusiastic loves, for Arthur's temperament knew no medium; his tastes were all ardent, and, what to others were only feelings, with him, deepened into intense and passionate emotions.

Edith, comme à l'ordinaire, was his inseparable companion, and they were one evening together at a concert. The hall was crowded, for the princi"You find me greatly changed, Edith," he said; pal performer was an Italian singer, whose appear

There had been a period, when even thus that look had followed her and haunted her very dreams; and if, for an instant, she deemed this trial more than she could bear-if her heart grew faint with its own weariness, and her cheek wan with the presence of unutterable grief, blame her not! for the forgetful indifference of one we have held dear, is terrible to endure-and well we know, that human love dieth not at our bidding. But alas! "seulement les femmes n'oublient jamais!"

ance in public was always rapturously greeted. |witching and mysterious idol of his romantic Night after night, Arthur had listened breathlessly youth. to her melodies; and the young poet's ardent ad- One sentence from the lady, of graceful acknowmiration might well be pardoned, for rarely had ledgment of Arthur's politeness, and then they tones more exquisitely thrilling, fallen on mortal separated, and Edith met Lesbourne no more. ear, than those now pouring forth so rich a tide of She turned for a moment, and saw his manner of gushing harmony. There was an indefinable charm rapt attention and his eloquent glance of tendertoo around the songstress, whose dark and stately ness at the fascinating face of his enchantress. beauty spoke volumes of the proud intellect whose lustre it reflected. Hers was a face to look on dreamingly, and to linger long in the gazer's memory. It was not regularly beautiful, but fraught with a nameless fascination, which aroused, even in a careless spectator, something of interest regarding the minstrel's experience in the past. Ah! her's was a painful history, with all its triumphs! It told of a childhood of lowliness and destitution, of a girlhood, when loveliness won praise, and adulation brought ambition. Then, in later years, came gradual but premature worldliness, the tutoring of thought and impulse, and finally, that settled policy of motive and action, he sunk beneath the premature old age of sorrowwhich too often follows aspirations founded on vanity, ending a youth of discontented expectation in a maturity of idle artifice. There had been in her career, many sacrifices of feeling to bear, many It was a beautiful night, and the moon shone suspicions to endure, and regrets which had seared brilliantly through the open window of the invalid's the heart, now throbbing so rapturously with grati-apartment. The air was soft, though the autumn fied anticipation. Arthur listened, absorbed and had nearly past; and the light wind murmured entranced; and when the singer ceased, and the mournfully, as if sighing a farewell to the sweet voice of her song "died into an echo," he felt as if days of sunshine and flowers. the deafening applause which resounded were profanation, and such common plaudits but mocked a being so rarely and radiantly gifted.

During the several following days, Mr. Mordante's illness rapidly increased; his strength declined almost visibly; and in the prime of manhood,

ful humiliation. He spoke of his situation frequently and calmly-with the composure of one, who in leaving life, left no hopes.

Edith watched by Mordante; and for several hours he had seemed to sleep. "You are very kind, dear Edith," he said at last, faintly pressing the hand, which during his slumber had held his own; "but leave me now, for I shall need no attendance, and I would be alone for awhile. God bless you, dearest !"

Arthur and Edith were among the last to leave the apartment, and as they approached the door, the lady came from an adjoining room, and passed before them. A gentleman accompanied her, and she leaned familiarly on his arm. As she moved, Reluctantly his companion obeyed; and the sick the drapery of her dress became entangled, and one was left to the solitude of those sad thoughts, Arthur paused to assist her companion to extricate which were now drawing his career so speedily to it. She turned to thank him with that enchanting its close. The light of the round moon, that light smile, whose witchery so few could resist; and as which looks on death so often and so coldly, shone they lingered, Edith's eyes encountered the gen- full upon his face, lending even more than their tleman's gaze. She read in it no sign of recogni- own paleness to his changed and wasted features. tion. The time which had elapsed since they met, Did he dream, or was there in truth a step beside had erased her from his memory; and now, face to him, and a familiar face bending over him? For face as strangers, they stood, who had been lovers an instant, he doubted his conviction; then the in other years. O! could he have traced the tear-reality could be no longer questioned, and he turned ful agony of the pure heart, beating so near him- with a shudder of agony from his unbidden and could the sweet hopes of his youth have been recalled by the glance, which once gave him rapture, how dark would have appeared the long tissue of falsehood, deception and folly, which made up the dishonorable record of his after life! But it was not thus to be. Lesbourne's experience had been too active and varied, for one such episode to be lastingly remembered. His look of kindness was now for another; and the lustrous eyes which She paused for a reply, and Mordante's answer "spake again," were those of Nina-the be- was low, and spoken painfully. "I had trusted,

unwelcome visiter. Shocked at the impression her unexpected appearance had produced, the stranger knelt in passionate grief by the sufferer, and wildly pressed her lips to his thin white hand.

"Mordante! dearest, speak one word to me! I am not worthy of it; I have sinned beyond man's forgiveness; but you were ever kind and generous. Let me hear your voice once more, and die!"