"When Messrs. Hawes and Fellowes ascended Mont Blanc in July, 1827, they observed a butterfly near the summit. Mr. C. Shewell saw two crimson moths at nearly the same elevation."

WHO would have thought, upon this icy cliff,
Where never ibex bounded,

Nor foot of chamois sounded,
Where scarce the soaring hippogriff
Would venture, unless truly,

To this exalted Thule,

He carried the thought of a metaphysician,
Or theory of an electrician;—

Who would have dream'd of seeing thee,

Softest of summer's progeny?

What art thou seeking? What hast thou lost?

That before the throne of eternal frost

Thou comest to spread the crimson wing,
Thou pretty fluttering thing?

Art thou too fine for the world below?

Or hast thou lived out thy joy and thy spring?

And hast thou sworn

To live forlorn

An anchorite in a cave of snow,

Or Palmer lonely wandering?

Or dost thou fancy, as many have done,
That, because the hill-top is nearest the sun,

The sun loves better the unthaw'd ice,
That does nothing but say that he is bright,
And dissect, like a prism, his braided light—

Than the gardens of bloom and the fields of spice? Didst thou think that the bright orb his mystery

shrouds

In a comfortless mantle of sleet-driving clouds ?
Alas! he never loved this place ;

It bears no token of his grace;

But many a mark of the tempest's lash,

And many a brand of the sulphurous flash.

'Tis better to dwell amid corn-fields and flowers, Or even the weeds of this world of ours,

Than to leave the green vale and the sunny slope, To seek the cold cliff with a desperate hope. Flutter he, flutter he, high as he will,

A butterfly is but a butterfly still.

And 'tis better for us to remain where we are,

In the lowly valley of duty and care,

Than lonely to stray to the heights above,

Where there's nothing to do, and nothing to love.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

A MIGHTY bard there was, in joy of youth,
That wont to rove the vernal groves among,
When the green oak puts forth its scallop'd tooth,
And daisies thick the darkening fallows throng.
He listen'd oft, whene'er he sought to soothe
A fancied sorrow with a fancied song,
For Philomela's ancient tale of ruth,

And never heard it, all the long night long;
But heard, instead, so glad a strain of sound,
So many changes of continuous glee,
From lowest twitter, such a quick rebound,
To billowy height of troubled ecstasy-
Rejoice! he said, for joyfully had he found
That mighty poets may mistaken be.*

Sunday, Sept. 27, 1840.

* See Coleridge's Poems, Vol. i., p. 211.

THE CUCKOO.

THOU indefatigable cuckoo! still

Thy iteration says the self-same thing,
And thou art still an utterance of the spring
As constant as a self-determined will.

The quiet patience of a murmuring rill
Had no beginning and will have no ending;
But thou art aye beginning, never blending
With thrush on perch, or lark upon the wing.
Methinks thou art a type of some recluse
Whose notes of adoration never vary :
Who of the gift of speech will make no use
But ever to repeat her Ave Mary.—

Two syllables alone to thee were given,
What mean they in the dialect of heaven?

May 22, 1848.

THE ANEMONE.

WHO would have thought a thing so slight,
So frail a birth of warmth and light,
A thing as weak as fear or shame,

Bearing thy weakness in thy name,

Who would have thought of finding thee, Thou delicate Anemone,

Whose faintly tinted petals may

By any wind be torn away,

Whose many anthers with their dust,
And the dark purple dome their centre,
When winter strikes, soon as it likes,
Will quit their present rest, and must
Hurry away on wild adventure?
What power has given thee to outlast
The pelting rain, the driving blast;

To sit upon thy slender stem,
A solitary diadem,

Adorning latest autumn with

A relic sweet of vernal pith?