MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

What more felicity can fall to creature

Than to enjoy delight with liberty?

Fate of the Butterfly.-SPENSER.

DEDICATION.

TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

GLORY and loveliness have pass'd away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathed incense do we see upborne
Into the east to meet the smiling day:

No crowds of nymphs soft-voiced and young and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
But there are left delights as high as these.
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please

With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

Places of nestling green for poets made.-Story of Rimini.

I STOOD tiptoe upon a little hill,

The air was cooling, and so very still,

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scanty-leaved, and finely-tapering stems, 5
Had not yet lost their starry diadems

Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new-

shorn,

And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they

slept

On the blue fields of heaven, and then there

crept

A little noiseless noise among the leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves;
For not the faintest motion could be seen

Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.
There was wide wandering for the greediest eye,
To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,
And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim;
To picture out the quaint and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley never-ending:

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh them-
selves.

I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free

As though the fanning wings of Mercury

Had play'd upon my heels: I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures to my vision started;
So I straightway began to pluck a posy
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy.

A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them;
Ah, sure no tasteful nook could be without them!
And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,

And let long grass grow round the roots, to keep them

Moist, cool, and green; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.

A filbert-hedge with wild-briar overtwined, And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind Upon their summer thrones; there too should be The frequent-chequer of a youngling tree, That with a score of light green brethren shoots From the quaint mossiness of aged roots: Round which is heard a spring-head of clear

waters,

Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters,