POETRY.

ON HEARING THE INTRODUCTION TO LOHENGRUN.

TWO SONNETS.

I.

THOSE fine-drawn cat-gut notes so wily smite !

It is as if the bows of sprites could strain The sensitive nerve-fibres of the brain, And tune them to an all too keen delight.

And still as they resound they gather might, Seeming a new-born pulse of life to gain

With each new bar, until the beating rain,—

The deluge of quick sound, is at its height.

Then all our soul is drowned as in a sea Of glad sensation, and we faintly seek

A thought wherewith to shape our ecstacy:

In vain ;—we are but carried down the wake Of Time, to throb awhile primevally With the young World in passion's blind outbreak. II.

Is this the music that the wise presage As of the " Future ?"—this that storms and seeks.

To force each door of sense, and loudest speaks.

Through organs that grow less from age to age?

Alas ! its human burthens so engage The human soul, that not for us there breaks Wave-like as on a life that first awakes The infant joy of Nature's infant stage.

We think, we toil, we hope, we love, we die, We know and we foreknow, we doubt and fear ; Till 'neath thy spell, 0 Wagner ! we put by

FUTURE' and Present too, and drawing near

The base ()ride, thy breath like the glad sigh

Of some forgotten ' PAST' steals on the ear !

EMILY PFEIFFER..