But every feather of thy wing
Be quickened where it lies,
And at the soft return of spring,
A fragrant cowslip rise!

Few were thy days, thy pleasures few,
Simple and unconfined;

On sunbeams every moment flew,
Nor left a care behind.

In spring to build thy curious nest,
And woo thy merry bride,
Carol and fly, and sport and rest,
Was all thy humble pride.

Happy beyond the lot of kings,
Thy bosom knew no smart,
Till the last pang, that tore the strings
From thy dissevered heart.

When late, to secret griefs a prey,
I wandered slowly here,

Wild from the copse an artless lay,
Like magic, won mine ear.

Perhaps 't was thy last evening song,
That exquisitely stole

In sweetest melody along,

And harmonized my soul.

Now, blithe musician! now no more
Thy mellow pipe resounds,

But jarring drums at distance roar,

And yonder howl the hounds:

The hounds, that through the echoing wood The panting hare pursue;

The drums, that wake the cry of blood,

-The voice of glory too!

Here at my feet thy frail remains,

Unwept, unburied lie,

Like victims on embattled plains,

Forsaken where they die.

Yet could the muse, whose strains rehearse
Thine unregarded doom,
Enshrine thee in immortal verse,

Kings should not scorn thy tomb.

Though brief as thine my tuneful date,
When wandering near this spot,
The sad memorials of thy fate
Shall never be forgot.

While doomed the lingering pangs to feel
Of many a nameless fear,

One truant sigh from these I'll steal,
And drop one willing tear.

A MIDNIGHT THOUGHT.

IN a land of strange delight,
My transported spirit strayed,
I awake where all is night,
Silence, solitude, and shade.

Is the dream of Nature flown?
Is the universe destroyed,

Man extinct, and I alone

Breathing through the formless void?

No-my soul, in GOD rejoice;

Through the gloom His light I see,

In the silence hear His voice,

And His hand is over me.

When I slumber in the tomb,

He will guard my resting-place;

Fearless in the day of doom,
May I stand before His face!

NIGHT.

NIGHT is the time for rest;-
How sweet, when labours close,
To gather round an aching breast
The curtain of repose,

Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head
Down on our own delightful bed!

Night is the time for dreams;—

The gay romance of life,

When truth that is, and truth that seems,

Mix in fantastic strife;

Ah! visions less beguiling far
Than waking dreams by daylight are!

Night is the time for toil;—
To plough the classic field,
Intent to find the buried spoil
Its wealthy furrows yield;
Till all is ours that sages taught,
That poets sang, and heroes wrought.

Night is the time to weep ;

To wet with unseen tears
Those graves of memory, where sleep
The joys of other years;

Hopes, that were angels at their birth,
But died when young like things of earth.

Night is the time to watch ;—
O'er ocean's dark expanse,
To hail the Pleiades, or catch

The full moon's earliest glance,
That brings into the home-sick mind
All we have loved and left behind.

Night is the time for care;-
Brooding on hours misspent,
To see the spectre of Despair
Come to our lonely tent;

Like Brutus, 'midst his slumbering host,
Summoned to die by Cæsar's ghost.

Night is the time to think ;-
When, from the eye, the soul
Takes flight, and, on the utmost brink
Of yonder starry pole,

Discerns beyond the abyss of night
The dawn of uncreated light.

Night is the time to pray;

Our Saviour oft withdrew
To desert mountains far away;
So will His followers do,

Steal from the throng to haunts untrod,
And commune there alone with GOD.

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 MOLEHILL.

TELL me, thou dust beneath my feet,
Thou dust that once hadst breath!
Tell me how many mortals meet
In this small hill of death?

The Mole, that scoops with curious toil
Her subterranean bed,

Thinks not she ploughs a human soil,
And mines among the dead.

But, oh! where'er she turns the ground,
My kindred earth I see;

Once every atom of this mound

Lived, breathed, and felt, like me.

Like me, these elder-born of clay
Enjoyed the cheerful light,

Bore the brief burden of a day,
And went to rest at night.

Far in the regions of the morn
The rising sun surveys
Palmyra's palaces forlorn,
Empurpled with his rays.

The spirits of the desert dwell
Where Eastern grandeur shone,
And vultures scream, hyænas yell
Round Beauty's mouldering throne.

There the pale pilgrim, as he stands,
Sees, from the broken wall,
The shadow tottering on the sands,
Ere the loose fragment fall.

Destruction joys, amid those scenes,
To watch the sport of Fate,
While Time between the pillars leans,
And bows them with his weight.

But towers and temples crushed by Time,
Stupendous wrecks! appear

To me less mournfully sublime
Than the poor Molehill here.

Through all this hillock's crumbling mould

Once the warm life-blood ran;

Here thine original behold,

And here thy ruins, Man!

Methinks this dust yet heaves with breath:
Ten thousand pulses beat;

Tell me,-in this small hill of death,
How many mortals meet?

By wafting winds and flooding rains
From ocean, earth, and sky,
Collected here, the frail remains
Of slumbering millions lie.

What scene of terror and amaze
Breaks through the twilight gloom?

What hand invisible displays

The secrets of the tomb?