Fresh wreaths from the coral pavement spring,
Like the terraced pride of Assyria's king;
The turf looks green where the breakers roll'd;
O'er the whirlpool ripens the rind of gold;
The sea-snatch'd isle is the home of men,
And mountains exult where the wave hath been.
But why do ye plant, 'neath the billows dark,
The wrecking reef for the gallant bark?
There are snares enough on the tented field,
'Mid the blossom'd sweets that the valleys yield;
There are serpents to coil, ere the flowers are up;
There's a poison-drop in man's purest cup,
There are foes that watch for his cradle-breath,
And why need ye sow the floods with death?
With mouldering bones the deeps are white,
From the ice-clad pole to the tropics bright;—
The mermaid hath twisted her fingers cold
With the mesh of the sea-boy's curls of gold,
And the gods of the ocean have frown'd to see
The mariner's bed in their halls of glee ;-
Hath earth no graves, that ye thus must spread
The boundless sea for the thronging dead?
Ye build,-ye build,-but ye enter not in,
Like the tribes whom the desert devour'd in their sin;
From the land of promise ye fade and die,
Ere its verdure gleams forth on your weary eye:
As the kings of the cloud-crown'd pyramid
Their noteless bones in oblivion hid;
Ye slumber unmark'd 'mid the desolate main,
While the wonder and pride of your works remain.
THE gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
The oaks are budding; and beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.
The welcome guest of settled Spring,
The Swallow too is come at last;
Just at sun-set, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hail'd her as she pass'd.
Come, Summer visitant, attach
Το my reed-roof your nest of clay;
And let my ear your music catch,
Low twittering underneath the thatch,
At the grey dawn of day.
As fables tell, an Indian sage,
The Hindostani woods among,
Could in his desert hermitage,
As if 'twere mark'd in written page,
Translate the wild bird's song.
I wish I did his power possess,
That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee,
What our vain systems only guess,
And know from what wide wilderness
You came across the sea.
I would a little while restrain
Your rapid wing, that I might hear Whether on clouds that bring the rain, You sail'd above the western main, The wind your charioteer.
See the Turkish Fable of the Dervise, Spectator, No. 512.
In Afric, does the sultry gale
Through spicy bower, and palmy grove,
Bear the repeated cuckoo's tale?
Dwells there a time, the wandering Rail
Or the itinerant Dove?
Were you in Asia? O relate,
If there your fabled sister's woes*
She seem'd in sorrow to narrate;
Or sings she but to celebrate
Her nuptials with the rose? +
I would inquire how journeying long,
The vast and pathless ocean o'er,
You ply again those pinions strong,
And come to build anew among
The scenes you left before ;+
But if, as colder breezes blow,
Prophetic of the waning year,
You hide, though none know when or how,
In the cliff's excavated brow,
And linger torpid here ;
Thus lost to life, what favouring dream
Bids you to happier hours awake;
And tells, that dancing on the beam,
The light gnat hovers o'er the stream,
The May-fly on the lake ?
* Alluding to the Ovidian fable of the metamorphosis of Procne and Philomela into the Swallow and Nightingale.-Metam. Lib. vi. Fab. 7 and 8. In allusion to the well-known Persian story of the attachment of the Nightingale to the Rose :
For there-the Rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the Nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to his lover's tale.
Accurate observers have remarked that the same birds return every year to build in the same places they frequented the previous year.
Or if, by instinct taught to know
Approaching dearth of insect food;
To isles and willowy aits you go,
And crowding on the pliant bough,
Sink in the dimpling flood :*
How learn ye, while the cold waves boom
Your deep and oozy couch above,
The time when flowers of promise bloom,
And call you from your transient tomb,
To light, and life, and love?
Alas! how little can be known,
Her sacred veil where Nature draws;
Let baffled Science humbly own,
Her mysteries understood alone,
By HIM who gives her laws.
The Migration of Birds has been justly considered one of the most wonderful instincts of Nature. "Two circumstances," observes Dr. Derham in his Physico-Theology, "are remarkable in this migration: the first, that these untaught, unthinking creatures, should know the proper times for their passage, when to come, and when to go; as also, that some should come, when others go. No doubt the temperature of the air as to heat and cold, and their natural propensity to breed their young, are the great incentives to these creatures to change their habitations. The second remarkable circumstance is, that they should know which way to steer their course, and whither to go. What instinct is it that can induce a poor foolish bird to venture over vast tracts of land and sea? That Great Britain should afford better accommodation than Egypt, the Canaries, Spain, or any of the other intermediate countries?"-Book vii., Chap. 3.
"Gentle bird! we find thee here,-
When Nature wears her Summer vest,
Thou com'st to weave thy simple nest;
And when the chilling Winter lowers,
Again thou seek'st the genial bowers
Of Memphis, or the shores of Nile,
Where sunny hours of verdure smile."
* The absurd theories of torpidity and submersion were entertained by the Naturalists, Klein, Kalm, Linnæus, Pontoppidan, D. Barrington, and White. "Can a bird," says Alexander Wilson, "whose vital functions are destroyed by a short privation of pure air and its usual food, sustain for six months a situation where the most robust man would perish in a few minutes. Away with such absurdities! they are unworthy of a serious refutation."
ON THE GOODNESS OF THE SUPREME BEING.
IMMENSE CREATOR! whose all-powerful hand
Fram'd universal being, and whose eye
Saw like THYSELF, that all things form'd were good,
Where shall the timorous Bard THY praise begin,
Where end the purest sacrifice of song,
And just thanksgiving ?-The thought-kindling light,
THY prime production, darts upon my mind
Its vivifying beams, my heart illumes,
And fills my soul with gratitude and THEE.
Hail to the cheerful rays of ruddy morn,
That paint the streaky East and blithsome rouse
The birds, the cattle, and mankind from rest!
Hail to the freshness of the early breeze,
And Iris dancing on the new-fallen dew!
Without the aid of yonder golden globe,
Lost were the garnet's lustre, lost the lily,
The tulip and auricula's spotted pride;
Lost were the peacock's plumage, to the sight
So pleasing in its pomp and glossy show.
O thrice-illustrious! were it not for THEE,
Those pansies, that reclining from the bank,
View through th' immaculate pellucid stream
Their portraiture in the inverted heaven,
Might as well change their triple boast, the white,
The purple, and the gold, that far outvie
The Eastern monarch's garb, e'en with the dock,
E'en with the baleful hemlock's irksome green.
Without thy aid, without thy gladsome beams,
The tribes of woodland warblers would remain
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