SCENES FAVOURABLE TO MEDITATION.

WILDS horrid and dark with o'ershadowing trees, Rocks that ivy and briers infold,

Scenes nature with dread and astonishment sees,
But I with a pleasure untold;

Though awefully silent, and shaggy, and rude,
I am charm'd with the peace ye afford,
Your shades are a temple where none will intrude,
The abode of my Lover and Lord.

I am sick of thy splendour, O Fountain of day,
And here I am hid from its beams;
Here safely contemplate a brighter display
Of the noblest and holiest of themes.

Ye Forests, that yield me my sweetest repose,
Where stillness and solitude reign,

To you I securely and boldly disclose
The dear anguish of which I complain.

Here, sweetly forgetting and wholly forgot
By the world and its turbulent throng,
The birds and the streams lend me many a note
That aids meditation and song.

Here, wandering in scenes that are sacred to night,
Love wears me and wastes me away;

And often the sun has spent much of his light
Ere yet I perceive, it is day.

While a mantle of darkness envelopes the sphere,
My sorrows are sadly rehearsed;

To me the dark hours are all equally dear,
And the last is as sweet as the first.

Here I and the beasts of the deserts agree;
Mankind are the wolves that I fear,
They grudge me my natural right to be free,
But nobody questions it here.

Though little is found in this dreary abode
That appetite wishes to find,

My spirit is soothed by the presence of God,
And appetite wholly resign'd.

Ye desolate scenes, to your solitude led,
My life I in praises employ,

And scarce know the source of the tears that I shed,
Proceed they from sorrow or joy.

There's nothing I seem to have skill to discern

I feel out my way in the dark,

Love reigns in my bosom, I constantly burn,
Yet hardly distinguish the spark.

I live, yet I seem to myself to be dead;
Such a riddle is not to be found;

I am nourish'd without knowing how I am fed,
I have nothing, and yet I abound.

Oh Love! who in darkness art pleased to abide
Though dimly, yet surely I see

That these contrarieties only reside

In the soul that is chosen of thee.

Ah send me not back to the race of mankind,
Perversely by folly beguiled,

;

For where, in the crowds I have left, shall I find
The spirit and heart of a child?

Here let me, though fix'd in a desert, be free;
A little one whom they despise,

Though lost to the world, if in union with Thee,
Shall be holy and happy and wise.

TRANSLATIONS

FROM

VINCENT BOURNE.

THE THRACIAN.

THRACIAN parents, at his birth,
Mourn their babe with many a tear,

But with undissembled mirth

Place him breathless on his bier.

Greece and Rome with equal scorn,

66

"O the savages!" exclaim,

"Whether they rejoice or mourn,
Well entitled to the name!"

But the cause of this concern

And this pleasure would they trace,
Even they might somewhat learn
From the savages of Thrace.

RECIPROCAL KINDNESS,

THE PRIMARY LAW OF NATURE.

ANDROCLES from his injured lord in dread
Of instant death, to Libya's desert fled.

Tired with his toilsome flight, and parch'd with heat,
He spied, at length, a cavern's cool retreat,

But scarce had given to rest his

weary frame,

When, hugest of his kind, a lion came :
He roar'd approaching; but the savage din
To plaintive murmurs changed,-arrived within,
And with expressive looks, his lifted paw
Presenting, aid implored from whom he saw.
The fugitive, through terror at a stand,
Dared not awhile afford his trembling hand,