The housewife's spindle whirling round,
Or thread, or straw, that on the ground
Its shadow throws, by urchin sly
Held out to lure thy roving eye ;
Then onward stealing, fiercely spring
Upon the futile, faithless thing.

Now, wheeling round, with bootless skill,

Thy bo-peep tail provokes thee still,

As oft beyond thy curving side

Its jetty tip is seen to glide;
Till, from thy centre starting far,
Thou sidelong rear'st, with tail in air,
Erected stiff, and gait awry,

Like Madam in her tantrums high;
Though ne'er a Madam of them all,
Whose silken kirtle sweeps the hall,
More varied trick and whim displays,
To catch the admiring stranger's gaze.
Doth power in measured verses dwell,
All thy vagaries wild to tell?

Ah no! the start, the jet, the bound,
The giddy scamper round and round,
With leap, and jerk, and high curvet,
And many a whirling somerset,
(Permitted be the modern Muse
Expression technical to use,)

These mock the deftliest rhymester's skill,
But poor in art, though rich in will.

The nimblest tumbler, stage-bedight,

To thee is but a clumsy wight,
Who ev'ry limb and sinew strains
To do what costs thee little pains,
For which, I trow, the gaping crowd
Requites him oft with plaudits loud.
But, stopp'd the while thy wanton play,
Applauses too, thy feats repay:

For then, beneath some urchin's hand,
With modest pride thou tak'st thy stand,
While many a stroke of fondness glides
Along thy back and tabby sides;
Dilated swells thy glossy fur,
And loudly sings thy busy pur,-
As, timing well the equal sound,
Thy clutching feet bepat the ground,

And all their harmless claws disclose,
Like prickles of an early rose;
While softly from thy whisker'd cheek
Thy half-closed eyes peer mild and meek.
But not alone, by cottage fire,
Do rustics rude thy tricks admire ;
The learned sage, whose thoughts explore
The widest range of human lore,
Or, with unfetter'd fancy, fly
Through airy heights of poesy,
Pausing, smiles, with alter'd air,
To see thee climb his elbow chair;
Or, struggling on the mat below,
Hold warfare with his slipper'd toe.
The widow'd dame, or lonely maid,
Who in the still, but cheerless shade
Of home unsocial, spends her age,
And rarely turns a letter'd page;
Upon her hearth for thee lets fall
The rounded cork, or paper ball;
Nor chides thee on thy wicked watch
The ends of ravell'd skein to catch,-
But lets thee have thy wayward will,
Perplexing oft her sober skill.
Even he, whose mind of gloomy bent,
In lonely tow'r or prison pent,
Reviews the wit of former days,
And loathes the world and all its ways,
What time the lamp's unsteady gleam
Doth rouse him from his moody dream,
Feels, as thou gambol'st round his seat,
His heart with pride less fiercely beat,
And smiles, a link in thee to find,
That joins him still to living kind.

Whence hast thou, then, thou witless puss,

The magic power to charm us thus ?

Is it, that in thy glaring eye
And rapid movements, we descry,
While we at ease, secure from ill,
The chimney-corner snugly fill,
A lion, darting on the prey?
A tiger, at his ruthless play?
Or, is it, that in thee we trace,
With all thy varied wanton grace,

An emblem, view'd with kindred eye,
Of tricksy, restless infancy?

Ah! many a lightly-sportive child,
Who hath, like thee, our wits beguiled,
To dull and sober manhood grown,
With strange recoil our hearts disown.
Even so, poor Kit! must thou endure,
When thou becom'st a cat demure,
Full many a cuff and angry word,
Chid roughly from the tempting board.
And yet, for that thou hast, I ween,
So oft our favour'd playmate been,
Soft be the change which thou shalt prove,
When time hath spoil'd thee of our love;
Still be thou deem'd, by housewife fat,
A comely, careful, mousing cat,-
Whose dish is, for the public good,
Replenish'd oft with savoury food.

Nor, when thy span of life be past,
Be thou to pond or dunghill cast;
But gently borne on good man's spade,
Beneath the decent sod be laid;

And children show, with glistening eyes,
The place where poor old Pussy lies.

WELCOME BAT AND OWLET GRAY.

O WELCOME bat and owlet gray,
Thus winging lone your airy way;
And welcome moth and drowsy fly,
That to mine ear come humming by ;
And welcome shadows long and deep,
And stars that from the pale sky peep!
O welcome all! to me ye say,
My woodland love is on her way.
Upon the soft wind floats her hair,
Her breath is in the dewy air,
Her steps are in the whisper'd sound
That steals along the stilly ground.
O dawn of day, in rosy bower,
What art thou in this witching hour?
O noon of day, in sunshine bright,
What art thou to the fall of night?

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A GREAT authority-William Wordsworth-his predecessor in the Laureateship—was among the earliest to estimate the genius of the poet who was destined to be his successor. Writing in 1845. Wordsworth says:-" He is decidedly the first of our living poets, and will live to give the world still better things."

Twenty years have established the fame that was foreseen: the public voice with one accord has pronounced Alfred Tennyson to be the first of living poets.

His poems are so thoroughly known, that any details concerning them are unnecessary; neither can it be needful to offer any comments on their merits; they have made their way to all hearts, and are read with delight by the old and the young. In the first edition of the "Book of Gems," we published some observations then presented to us by Leigh Hunt, whose star was setting when that of the young poet was rising. We cannot do better than reprint them, now that after the lapse of a quarter of a century the poet has become Poet Laureate and ranks high above all his peers. "Alfred Tennyson," Hunt writes, "is of the school of Keats; that is to say, it is difficult not to see that Keats has been a great deal in his thoughts; and that he delights in the same brooding over his sensations and the same melodious enjoyment of their expression. In his desire to communicate this music, he goes so far as to accent the final syllables in his participles passive, -as pleached, crowned, purple-spikéd, &c.,-with visible printers' marks, which subjects him, but erroneously, to a charge of pedantry; though it is a nicety not complimentary to the reader, and of which he may as well get rid. Much, however, as he reminds us of Keats, his genius is his own: he would have written poetry had his precursor written none; and he has, also, a vein of metaphysical subtlety, in which the other did not indulge, as may be seen by his verses entitled,' A Character,' those On the Confessions of a Sensitive Mind,' and numerous others. He is, also, a great lover of a certain home kind of landscape, which he delights to paint with a minuteness that, in the Moated Grange,' becomes affecting, and in the Miller's Daughter,' would remind us of the Dutch school, if it were not mixed up with the same deep feeling, though varied with a pleasant joviality.”

Tennyson entered life under auspicious circumstances; his father was a clergyman, and in his parsonage that of Somerby, near Spilsby the poet was born, in the year 1809. He was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge. While a mere youth he published, in conjunction with his brother Charles, a volume of Poems; and he has been ever since continually before the public-adding to the laurels he had gained. A list of his printed works would now be a long one. It is worthy of note that two other brothers, Frederick and Septimus, as well as Charles, are authors of poems, of considerable merit: their fame has been eclipsed by that of the Laureate.

Tennyson has mixed but little with "the world:" he resides in the Isle of Wight, and is happy in the domestic relations that so thoroughly sweeten and cheer the life of the student. Those who know him dwell with fervour on the estimable nature of the man. And it is certain that he adds another to the, happily, numerous examples of great men, in whom are combined the loftiest endowments of genius with the truest social and moral worth. In one of his minor poems he thus in part pictures his life in the garden of England:"Nor wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love News from the humming city comes to it In sound of funeral or of marriage-Lells And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear The windy clanging of the minster clock, Although between it and the garden lies

A league of grass, washed by a slow broad stream
That, stirred with languid pulses of the oar,
Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on,

Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge
Crowned with the minster towers."

At the Commemoration of 1855, the University of Oxford, "giving expression to the universal foeling of England," conferred on the Poet the honorary Degree of D.C.L. And some time afterwards, the Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, "endorsing the judgment of the sister University," placed a bust of him in the vestibule of their library.

He thought to quell the stubborn hearts of oak,
Madman;-to chain with chains, and bind with bands
That island queen that sways the floods and lands
From Ind to Ind, but in fair daylight woke,
When from her wooden walls, lit by sure hands,
With thunders, and with lightnings, and with smoke,
Peal after peal, the British battle broke,
Lulling the brine against the Coptic sands,
We taught him lowlier moods, when Elsinore
Heard the war moan along the distant sea,

Rocking with shattered spars, with sudden fires

Flamed over; at Trafalgar yet once more

We taught him: late he learned humility,

Perforce, like those whom Gideon schooled with briars.