To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven-to breathe a

prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel-an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by ; E'en like the passage of an angel's tear

That falls through the clear ether silently.

AFTER dark vapours have oppressed our plains
For a long dreary season, comes a day
Born of the gentle South, and clears away
From the sick heavens all unseemly stains.
The anxious month, relievèd from its pains,

Takes as a long-lost right the feel of May, The eyelids with the passing coolness play, Like rose-leaves with the drip of summer rains. The calmest thoughts come round us-as, of leaves

Budding-fruit ripening in stillness-autumn

suns

Smiling at eve upon the quiet sheaves,Sweet Sappho's cheek,- -a sleeping infant's breath,

The gradual sand that through an hour-glass

runs,

A woodland rivulet,—a Poet's death.

ON A PICTURE OF LEANDER

COME hither, all sweet maidens soberly, Down-looking aye, and with a chasten'd light,

Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joinèd be, As if so gentle that ye could not see,

Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea: 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death; Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips

For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile. O horrid dream! see how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile; He's gone; up bubbles all his amorous breath!

WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charactʼry,

Hold like full garners the full-ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night's starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And feel that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love! then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

IF by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fettered, in spite of painèd loveliness;
Let us find out if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

Jealous of dead leaves in that bay wreath

crown ;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

She will be bound with garlands of her own.