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But she with a heart untrained to cool
Its warm emotions by courtly rule,
Will smile on the peasant's dance and lay,
And cheer him to prolong his play;

Yon shepherd-boy,

Who pipes for joy,

May pipe perchance an hour a day.

Hers will it be to fling the door

Of gladness open to all the poor,
To seek the peasant's pathway bare,

And plant a rose or two here and there;

Her loving hand

Shall strew the land

With the simple pleasures that all may share.

Hers, too, to teach how treasure is lost
By gaining treasures at others' cost;
How luxury pines when pine the Poor;
Like him who destroyed his garden-store
Of blossoms and trees,

That his neighbour's bees

Might gather their honey there no more.

Oh! beautiful vision, thanks to thee,
For showing how happy the humble may be ;
How little is wanting to gild the gloom

Of Industry toiling its way to the tomb !

For a spirit is there

In that greenwood fair,

The limb to sustain and the mind to illume.

Comfort thee, mourner! commonest things
Often contain most delicate springs;

The loveliest forms are not the rarest,
Costliest joys are seldom fairest;

The garden shines

More than the mines;

To hope is to have-yet thou despairest ?

Who cannot count, the dreariest here,
A hundred smiles for every tear?

The pleasure of others lessens our pain,

And memory multiplies all again.

Nature is kind!

Shall we be blind,

When even her dreams are not woven in vain !

1836.

THE YOUNG GLEANER.

HER task had been a weary one,
To stoop all day for ears of corn;
All day beneath the harvest-sun;

Yet looks she not forlorn.

Her feet are sore, her limbs are weak,
She leans fatigued against the stile ;
Her lips are parched, and yet her cheek
Half dimples with a smile.

Although her task is done, although

Her arms have dropped their yellow store,

Her heart, untired, would freely go

Back to the field for more.

The spirit of the girl is glad,

You see it looking through her eyes;

Sweet Gleaner, she could not be sad

Beneath such lovely skies.

Though wide the field, though hot the ground,

To gather up her golden spoil,

While Heaven seemed smiling all around,

Was pleasure more than toil.

The morning breeze, the midday calm,

The shower, the blue that o'er her shone, She felt them on her heart as balm,

And sung and gathered on.

To glean what those who gleaned before
Had left, seemed all her soul desired;
And till her long day's task was o'er,
She knew not she was tired.

And now, what waits her homeward way?
Delicious rest and slumbers deep;
These three compose her night and day,
Sweet toil, sweet rest, sweet sleep.

Oh! blest, midst those whom man's hard will Condemns to slavery's ceaseless care,

Are ye who, task-worn, labour still

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Gleaner, thy grief may be assuaged,

Compared with hers thy tasks are mild, That trampled flower, that bird encaged, The pent-up Factory child.

SONG FOR SHAKSPEARE'S BIRTHDAY.

April 23, 1836.

AIR-Nora Creina.

EVER Since the dawn of time,

Have poets told their sylvan stories; Gemming life with truths sublime,

And crowning man with living glories. Sweet their strains, but far less dear

Than his to whom all shapes were given;

Now a breathing violet here,

And now a streaming star in Heaven. Oh! the vast, the varied mind,

The all-encircling line of Shakspeare, Nature yet must feel regret

At losing him-the gentle Shakspeare.

Oh the brightest flame of life,

It burns in those who most adore him ; Envy, hatred, gloom, and strife,

Like snow melt all away before him.

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