SONNET,

TO

THE AUTHORESS OF THE FLORIST'S MANUAL," IN WHICH

SHE RECOMMENDS THE DESTRUCTION OF INSECTS.

Go, elegant Instructress-teach the fair

To range in order meet her mingled flowers,
In plots, in beds, in borders, and in bowers;
But oh! the bright inhabitants of air,
The insect's animated lustre spare!

Design'd, like thee, to pass their few short hours.
Amidst the sweets indulgent Nature pours,

And every joy with equal right to share.
O, canst thou with delighted sense inhale
The fragrance breathing on the morning gale,
And all the gay parterre with rapture see;

Yet, with relentless hand and envious eyes,
Crush the poor insect, that discursive flies

From flower to flower with bliss unknown to thee.

LINES,

WRITTEN ON PLANTING A YOUNG OAK.

GENIUS of the wood and stream,

Thou, whose voice in morning dream
Across mine ear is wont to come,

Upon the fresh gale's early hum,

Calling me forth to wander free

Thro' twilight groves and meads with thee,

If ever at the dawn of day,

Amid thy forest haunts I stray,

Teach the young ivy how to twine
Around some favourite tree of thine;
And view, but with no evil eye,
Thy rustic tenants sporting nigh,
To whom thy liberal bounty yields
The harvest of thy floods and fields;

Or when the red autumnal leaves

Rustle amongst the mellow sheaves,
When western winds are loud and high,
And shrieking sea-fowl shoreward fly,
At evening season sit alone,

On some gray monumental stone,
Bewailing in unstudied strain
The ruin of thy woodland reign:
If ever sports and tasks like these
May hope thy sylvan pow'r to please,
And merit aught thy grateful care,
Hear, mighty Genius, hear my prayer.

For all my many raptures known, Within thy greenwood range alone; For all the blessings breathing there, From wood and water, earth and air; Thy sunny banks, thy noon-day glooms, And healing gales, and light perfumes, And melodies that Fancy finds

In running streams and whistling winds;

For these delights I vow'd to thee

The honour of a sacred tree.

Then, Genius, bless the hand that now
With pious care fulfils my vow;

And while in genial earth I place
This seedling of a giant race,
Yon ancient oak's perennial fruit
Be near, and bless its infant shoot.

Genius! from her secret glade Call thy fairest Dryad maid, Whose tender duty it shall be To foster thy peculiar tree.

Then, what tho' now its pigmy size Scarce with the neighbouring daisy vies, Tho' the rank grass that springs to-day, And with the morrow dies away,

Shall many a year in summer growth, O'ershoot and scorn its tardy sloth; Yet when the youthful hand that now, With pious care fulfils my vow,

Shall hang inactive by my side,

And, like that grass, in death be dried;
That grass, which where my limbs are laid,
Shall long have learn'd to spring and fade;、
Then shall its vigorous youth maintain
The unrivall'd lordship of the plain;
Within its dark and ample breast,

The thousand fowls of heaven shall rest,
And the rude roamers of the field

Dwell in the shade its branches yield.

Go, offspring of a lordly brood,
Thou rising sovereign of the wood!

Go, and, in patriarchal prime,
Fulfil thy destin'd date of time,

Which even now begins to roll,
Advancing to that distant goal,
Where its majestic course enspheres
The compass of a thousand years.
As thine own leaves, at Nature's call,
With changing seasons rise and fall;