AN EXHIBITION OF A SCHOOL OF How fair upon the admiring sight, With cheek of bloom, and robe of white, There is a bubble on your cup How high its sparkling foam leaps up! And be it far from me to fling On budding joys a blight, Or darkly spread a raven's wing There twines a wreath around your brow, Love lends its flowers a radiant glow, And yet 't were safer there to bind Yet who o'er Beauty's form can hang Unceasing toil, unpitied care, Cold treachery's serpent moan, Ills that the tender heart must bear, Unanswering and alone! But as the frail and fragrant flower, Her steadfast faith, that looks above MRS. SIGOURNEY. GERTRUDE OF WYOMING. THE rose of England bloom'd on Gertrude's cheek- Far western worlds; and there his household fire When fate had reft his mutual heart-but she A loved bequest, and I may half impart, From hours when she would round his garden play; I may not paint those thousand infant charms; The orison repeated in his arms, For God to bless her sire and all mankind; Or how sweet fairy-lore he heard her con, Till now in Gertrude's eyes their ninth blue summer shone. SONG. CAMPBELL. I LIKE not beauty's roseate brightness; Give me the cheek whose marble whiteness Give me the pure and tranquil glance I like not lips for ever smiling; MISS MITFORD WINTER. SEE wither'd Winter bending low his head; So comest thou, Winter, finally to doom The sinking year; and with thy ice-dropp'd sprays, Cypress and yew, engarland her pale tomb, Her vanish'd hopes and aye departed days. ANNA SEWARD. SUMMER. Now on hills, rocks, and streams and vales and plains Full looks the shining day. Our gardens wear The gorgeous robes of the consummate year. With laugh and shout and song, stout maids and swains Heap high the fragrant hay, as through rough lanes Rings the yet empty wagon.-See in air The pendent cherries, red with tempting stains, Gleam through their boughs.-Summer, thy bright career Must slacken soon in Autumn's milder sway; Then thy now heap'd and jocund meads shall stand Smooth, vacant-silent, through th' exulting land As waves thy rival's golden fields, and gay Her reapers throng. She smiles, and binds the sheaves, Then bends her parting step o'er fallen and rustling leaves. ANNA SEWARD. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. How happily, how happily the flowers die away Yet, lo! what goodly raiment they're all apparelled in; No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more bright Than ever brow of eastern queen endiadem'd with light. The young rejoicing creatures! their pleasures never pall; Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to all! The dew, the showers, the sunshine, the balmy, blessed air, Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share. The happy careless creatures! of time they take no heed; Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed; Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away; Nor when 'tis gone, cry dolefully, “would God that it were day!" And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest, Unconscious of the penal doom, on holy Nature's breast; No pain have they in dying-no shrinking from de cay Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they! MISS BOWLES. THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS. THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. Heap'd in the hollows of the grove, the wither'd leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. |