-The song of the ring-dove enamour'd, that floats
Like soft-melting murmurs of grief;

-The song of the red-breast, in ominous notes,
Foretelling the fall of the leaf:

-The song of the bee, in its serpentine flight,
From blossom to blossom that roves;

-The song of the wind, in the silence of night,
When it wakens or hushes the groves:
-Thus sweet in the chorus of rapture and love,
Which God in his temple attends,

With the song of all nature beneath and above,
The voice of these waters ascends.

The beauty, the music, the bliss of that scene,
With ravishing sympathy stole

Through the stranger's lorn bosom, illumined his mien,
And soothed and exalted his soul:

Cold, gloomy forebodings then vanish'd away,

His terrors to ecstasies turn,

As the vapours of night, at the dawning of day,
With splendour and loveliness burn.

The stranger reposed in the lonely retreat,

Now smiling at phantoms gone by,

When, lo! a new welcome, in numbers most sweet,
Saluted his ear through his eye:

It came to his eye, but it went to his soul;

-Some muse, as she wander'd that way,
Had dropt from her bosom a mystical scroll,
Whose secrets I dare not betray.

Strange tones, we are told, the pale mariner hears,
When the mermaids ascend from their caves,
And sing, where the moon's lengthen❜d image appears
A column of gold on the waves;

-And wild notes of wonder the shepherd entrance,
Who dreaming beholds in the vale,

By torchlight of glow-worms, the fairies that dance.
To minstrelsy piped in the gale.

Not less to that stranger, mysteriously brought,
With harmony deep and refined,

In language of feeling and music of thought,
Those numbers were heard in his mind:

Then quick beat the pulse which had languidly crept,
And sent through his veins a spring-tide;
It seem'd as the harp of a seraph were swept
By a spirit that sung at his side.

All ceased in a moment, and nothing was heard,
And nothing was seen, through the wood,
But the twittering cry of a fugitive bird,

And the sunset that blazed on the flood:
He rose, for the shadows of evening grew long,
And narrow the glimpses between ;

The owl in his ambush was whooping his song,
And the gossamer glanced on the green.

Oft pausing, and hearkening, and turning his eye,
He left the sequester'd retreat;

As the stars in succession awoke through the sky,
And the moon of the harvest shone sweet;

So pure was her lustre, so lovely and bright,
So soft on the landscape it lay,

The shadows appear'd but the slumber of light,
And the night-scene a dream of the day.

He walk'd to the mansion,-though silent his tongue,
And his heart with its fulness opprest,

His spirit within him melodiously sung
The feelings that throbb'd in his breast:
"Oh! ye, who inherit this privileged spot!
All blooming like Eden of yore,
What earth can afford is already your lot,
With the promise of life evermore.'

"Here, oft as to strangers your table is spread,
May angels sit down at your board;
Here, oft as the poor by your bounty are fed,
Be charity shown to your Lord;

Thus walking with God in your paradise here,
In humble communion of love,

At length may your spirits, when He shall appear,
Be caught up to glory above."

THE LILY.

TO A YOUNG LADY, E. P.

FLOWER of light, forget thy birth,
Daughter of the sordid earth,
Lift the beauty of thine eye
To the blue ethereal sky!

While thy graceful buds unfold
Silver petals starr'd with gold,
Let the bee among thy bells
Rifle their ambrosial cells,

And the nimble-pinion'd air

Waft thy breath to heaven like prayer.

Cloud and sun alternate shed

Gloom or glory round thine head;
Morn impearl thy leaves with dews,
Evening lend them rosy hues,

Noon with snow-white splendour bless,
Night with glow-worm jewels dress.

-Thus fulfil thy summer-day,

Spring, and flourish, and decay;
Live a life of fragrance,

Disappear, to rise again,

then

When thy sisters of the vale
Welcome back the nightingale.

So may she, whose name I write,
Be herself a flower of light,
Live a life of innocence,
Die to be transplanted hence
To that garden in the skies,
Where the lily never dies.

THE SKY-LARK.

(ADDRESSED TO a friend.)

On hearing one singing at daybreak, during a sharp frost, on the 17th of February, 1832, while the author was on travel, between Bath and Stroud.

O WARN away the gloomy night,
With music make the welkin ring,
Bird of the dawn!-On joyful wing,
Soar through thine element of light,
Till naught in heaven mine eye can see,
Except the morning star and thee.

O welcome in the cheerful day!
Through rosy clouds the shades retire,
The sun hath touch'd thy plumes with fire,
And girt thee with a golden ray:

Now shape and voice are vanish'd quite,
Nor eye nor ear can track thy flight.

Could I translate thy strains, and give

Words to thy notes in human tongue,
The sweetest lay that e'er I sung,
The lay that would the longest live,
I might record upon this page,
And sing thy song from age to age.

But speech of mine can ne'er reveal
Secrets so freely told above,

Yet is their burden joy and love,
And all the bliss a bird can feel,

Whose wing in heaven to earth is bound,
Whose home and heart are on the ground.

Unlike the lark be thou, my friend!

No downward cares thy thoughts engage,

But in thine house of pilgrimage, Though from the ground thy songs ascend, Still be their burden joy and love: -Heaven is thy home, thy heart above.

VOL. II.

THE FIXED STARS.

REIGN in your heaven, ye stars of light!
Beyond this troubled scene;

With you, fair orbs! there is no night,

Eternally serene,

Each casts around its tranquil way,

The radiance of its own clear day;
Yet not unborrow'd.-What are ye?
Mirrors of Deity:

My soul, in your reflective rays,

Him whom no eye hath seen surveys,
As I behold (himself too bright for view)
The sun in every drop of dew.

The gloom that brings, through evening skies,
Your beauty from the deep;
The clouds that hide you from our eyes;
The storms that seem to sweep
Your scatter'd train, like vessels tost
On ocean's waves, now seen, now lost;
-Belong to our inferior ball,

Ye shine above them all:

Your splendour noon eclipses not,

Nor night reveals, nor vapours blot;

O'er us, not you, these changes come and pass;
Ye navigate a sea of glass.

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