M

NIGHT AND DEATH.

YSTERIOUS Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?

Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus, with the host of heaven, came;
And lo! creation widened in man's view.

Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
While fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind? Why do we then shun death with anxious strife? If light can thus deceive, wherefore not life?

Joseph Blanco White.

THE SKYLARK,

IRD of the wilderness,

B Blithesome and cumberless,

Sweet be thy matin o'er moorland and lea!

Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place,

O, to abide in the desert with thee!

Wild is thy lay and loud

Far in the downy cloud,

THE EAGLE.

105

Love gives it

energy, love gave

it birth.

Where, on thy dewy wing,

Where art thou journeying?

Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth.
O'er fell and fountain sheen,

O'er moor and mountain green,

O'er the red streamer that heralds the day,
Over the cloudlet dim,

Over the rainbow's rim,

Musical cherub, soar, singing, away!

Then, when the gloaming comes,

Low in the heather blooms

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be!
Emblem of happiness,

Blest is thy dwelling-place,

O, to abide in the desert with thee!

James Hogg.

THE EAGLE.

E clasps the crag with hookéd hands;

HClose to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

Alfred Tennyson.

H

TO THE SKYLARK.

AIL to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the setting sun,

O'er which clouds are brightening,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

TO THE SKYLARK.

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All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;

Like a glow-worm golden,

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous and fresh and clear thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphant chant,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt,

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?