THE NAME OF MARY.

Of all the names that ever pass’d
     The lips of woman, child, or fairy,
The gentlest, and most sweetly chaste,
     Is that of MARY.

Yet not too gentle to be loved

     By men whose nerves were nerves of iron;
How deeply—tenderly—it moved
     The haughty Bryon!

Tom Moore, Corypheus of Song!
     In verse and love no mean empiric,

How gracefully it floats along!
     His beauteous lyric!

Great Burns, the Ploughman-Bard, whose muse
     Was swayed by a more rustic fancy,
Unlike your parlor-bards, could choose

     The homelier Nancy.

But in his most inspired hour,
     Passing the beauties of the dairy,
He struck that note of solemn power
     To her—his Mary!

MARY! sweet name with virtue clothed,
     By dreamy-minded dilettanti,
A sound that might have charmed and soothed
     The gloomy Dante. [Page 122]

Or held in its divine control,

     Bringing it healing balm when weary,
The wild, impassioned Poet-soul
     Of Alfieri.

’Tis true we read of, and despise
     The sighing of a certain varlet,

Werther, who sorrowed for the eyes
     Of queenly Charlotte:

We hear, too, of the Trojan brawl
     That the majestic Paris fell in
With Greece, and famed Achilles, all

     For faithless Helen:

We read, with virtuous amaze,
     Of good Queen Bess and Leicester, or a
Petrarch inditing Canzonas
     To nun-like Laura:

And every day or two, we find
     How foplings drain the poisoned chalice—
Fools! periling their grain of mind
     For Grace or Alice!

We know that there are names that please

     The varied tastes of man and woman—
Ruth, Annie, Nora, are of these,
     All fair and common:

Most welcome, though, to English ears,
     Fit for throned Queen or graceful Fairy, [Page 123]

Is that sweet household word that bears
     The sound of—MARY!

It mingles with our childhood’s games,
     It chastens either birth or bridal;
Mary!—to me the very name’s

     A perfect Idyl. [Page 124]