TO A CITY PIGEON.

STOOP to my window, thou beautiful dove!
Thy daily visits have touch'd my love.
I watch thy coming, and list the note
That stirs so low in thy mellow throat,
And my joy is high

To catch the glance of thy gentle eye.

Why dost thou sit on the heated eaves,

And forsake the wood with its freshen'd leaves?

Why dost thou haunt the sultry street,

When the paths of the forest are cool and sweet?

How canst thou bear

This noise of people-this sultry air?

Thou alone of the feather'd race

Dost look unscared on the human face;
Thou alone, with a wing to flee,

Dost love with man in his haunts to be;
And "the gentle dove”

Has become a name for trust and love.

A holy gift is thine, sweet bird!

Thou'rt nam'd with childhood's earliest word!
Thou'rt link'd with all that is fresh and wild
In the prison'd thoughts of the city child,
And thy glossy wings

Are its brightest image of moving things.

It is no light chance. Thou art set apart,
Wisely by Him who has tam'd thy heart,
To stir the love for the bright and fair
That else were seal'd in this crowded air;
I sometimes dream

Angelic rays from thy pinions stream.

Come then, ever, when daylight leaves
The page I read, to my humble eaves,
And wash thy breast in the hollow spout,
And murmur thy low sweet music out!
I hear and see

Lessons of Heaven, sweet bird, in thee!

ON A PICTURE OF A BEAUTIFUL BOY.

"Thou who yet dost keep

Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, readst the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind."

WORDSWORTH.

A BOY

! yet

in his eye you trace

The watchfulness of riper years,

And tales are in that serious face

Of feelings early steep'd in tears;

And in that tranquil gaze

There lingers many a thought unsaid,

Shadows of other days,

Whose hours with shapes of beauty came and fled.

And sometimes it is even so!

The spirit ripens in the germ;
The new-seal'd fountains overflow,

The bright wings tremble in the worm.
The soul detects some passing token,
Some emblem of a brighter world,
And, with its shell of clay unbroken,
Its shining pinions are unfurl'd,

And, like a blessed dream,

Phantoms, apparell'd from the sky,

Athwart its vision gleam

As if the light of Heaven had touched its gifted eye.

'Tis strange how childhood's simple words

Interpret Nature's mystic book—

How it will listen to the birds,

Or ponder on the running brook,
As if its spirit fed.

And strange that we remember not,

Who fill its eye, and weave its lot,

How lightly it were led

Back to the home which it has scarce forgot.