TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND.

THE seed that wasteful autumn cast
To waver on its stormy blast,
Long o'er the wintry desert tost,
Its living germ has never lost.
Dropped by the weary tempest's wing,
It feels the kindling ray of spring,
And, starting from its dream of death,
Pours on the air its perfumed breath.

So, parted by the rolling flood,

The love that springs from common blood Needs but a single sunlit hour

Of mingling smiles to bud and flower; Unharmed its slumbering life has flown, From shore to shore, from zone to zone, Where summer's falling roses stain

The tepid waves of Pontchartrain,

1852.

Or where the lichen creeps below
Katahdin's wreaths of whirling snow.

Though fiery sun and stiffening cold
May change the fair ancestral mould,
No winter chills, no summer drains
The life-blood drawn from English veins,
Still bearing wheresoe'er it flows

The love that with its fountain rose,

Unchanged by space, unwronged by time,
From age to age, from clime to clime!

VIGNETTES.

1853.

AFTER A LECTURE ON WORDSWORTH.

COME, spread your wings, as I spread mine, And leave the crowded hall

For where the eyes of twilight shine

O'er evening's western wall.

These are the pleasant Berkshire hills,
Each with its leafy crown;

Hark! from their sides a thousand rills
Come singing sweetly down.

A thousand rills; they leap and shine,
Strained through the shadowy nooks,
Till, clasped in many a gathering twine,
They swell a hundred brooks.

A hundred brooks, and still they run
With ripple, shade, and gleam,
Till, clustering all their braids in one,
They flow a single stream.

A bracelet

spun from mountain mist,

A silvery sash unwound,

With ox-bow curve and sinuous twist
It writhes to reach the Sound.

This is my bark, a pigmy's ship;

Beneath a child it rolls;

Fear not, one body makes it dip,

But not a thousand souls.

Float we the grassy banks between ;
Without an oar we glide;

The meadows, drest in living green,

Unroll on either side.

Come, take the book we love so well,

And let us read and dream

We see whate'er its pages tell,

And sail an English stream.

Up to the clouds the lark has sprung,
Still trilling as he flies;

The linnet sings as there he sung;

The unseen cuckoo cries,

And daisies strew the banks along,
And yellow kingcups shine,

With cowslips, and a primrose throng,

And humble celandine.

Ah foolish dream! when Nature nursed

Her daughter in the West,

The fount was drained that opened first; She bared her other breast.

On the young planet's orient shore

Her morning hand she tried;

Then turned the broad medallion o'er

And stamped the sunset side.

Take what she gives, her pine's tall stem,

Her elm with hanging spray; She wears her mountain diadem

Still in her own proud way.