Night is the time for Death ; When all around is peace, Calmly to yield the weary breath, From sin and suffering cease, Think of heaven's bliss, and give the sign To parting friends ;-such death be mine! THE WILD PINK ON THE WALL OF MALMESBURY ABBEY. On seeing a solitary specimen near the Great Archway, and being told that the plant was not to be found elsewhere in the neighbourhood. THE hand that gives the angels wings, Beautiful daughter of a line Of unrecorded ancestry! What herald's scroll could vie with thine, Thy first progenitor had birth While man was yet unquicken'd earth, How camest thou hither? from what soil, Clad by the sun-beams, fed with dew? To bring them wondrous news of thee. How, here, by wren or red-breast dropt, While sailing on the' autumnal wind, On yonder ledge of quarried stone, Then, by some glimpse of moonshine sped, Of lichens, moss, and earthy mould, To rival Babylons of old, In which that single seed she nurst Till forth its embryo-wilding burst. Now, like that solitary star, Last in the morn's resplendent crown, When evening-glooms the sky embrown, Yon arch, beneath whose giant-span Gather'd around the house of God, Is fading like the rainbow's form, Through the slow stress of Time's long storm. But thou may'st boast perennial prime; -The blade, the stem, the bud, the flower, Not ruin'd, but renew'd, by Time, Beyond the great destroyer's power, Like day and night, like spring and fall, Alternate, on the abbey-wall, May come and go, from year to year, Nay, when in utter wreck are strown So be it but the sun is set, My song must end, and I depart ; But bear thee in my inmost heart, How can I doubt that love divine Which watches over me and mine? A SEA PIECE. Scene.-Bridlington Quay, 1824. I. Ar nightfall, walking on the cliff-crown'd shore, Her deck by billow after billow cross'd, While every moment she might be no more : Yet firmly anchor'd on the nether sand, Like a chain'd Lion ramping at his foes, |