XIV.

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,ếan 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.

XV.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET.

The poetry of earth is never dead :

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the grasshopper's—he takes the lead

In summer luxury,-he has never done

With his delights, for when tired out with fun, He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never :

On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there

shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever,

And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy

XVI.

TO KOSCIUSKO.

a

Good Kosciusko! thy great name alone

Is a full harvest whence to reap high feeling;

It comes upon us like the glorious pealing Of the wide spheres—an everlasting tone. And now it tells me, that in worlds unknown, The names of heroes, burst from clouds con

cealing, Are changed to harmonies, for ever stealing Through cloudless blue, and round each silver

throne. It tells me too, that on a happy day, When some good spirit walks upon

the earth, Thy name with Alfred's, and the great of yore,

Gently commingling, gives tremendous birth To a loud hymn, that sounds far, far away To where the great God lives for evermore.

XVII.

HAPPY is England ! I could be content

To see no other verdure than its own;

To feel no other breezes than are blown Through its tall woods with high romances blent ; Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment

For skies Italian, and an inward groan

To sit upon an Alp as on a throne, And half forget what world or worldling meant. Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters ;

Enough their simple loveliness for me, Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:

Yet do I often warmly burn to see Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,

And float with them about the summer waters.

25

XVIII.

THE HUMAN SEASONS.

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year ;

There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he

loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness-to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook. He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.