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As if in his soul the bold animal smiled

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To his friends of the sky, the joint-heirs of the wild.
Yes! fierce looks thy nature, e'en hush'd in repose-
In the depths of thy desert regardless of foes,
Thy bold antlers call on the hunter afar,
With a haughty defiance to come to the war!
No outrage is war to a creature like thee!
The bugle-horn fills thy wild spirit with glee,
As thou barest thy neck on the wings of the wind,
And the laggardly gaze-hound is toiling behind.
In the beams of thy forehead that glitter with death-
In feet that draw power from the touch of the heath-

In the wide-raging torrent that lends thee its roar-
In the cliff that, once trod, must be trodden no more-
Thy trust, 'mid the dangers that threaten thy reign!
But what if the stag on the mountain be slain?
On the brink of the rock-lo! he standeth at bay,
Like a victor that falls at the close of the day:
While hunter and hound in their terror retreat
From the death that is spurn'd from his furious
feet;

And his last cry of anger comes back from the

skies,

As Nature's fierce son in the wilderness dies.

JOHN WILSON (Christopher North).

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HE very soul seems to be refreshed on the bare recollection of the pleasure which the senses receive in contemplating, on a fine vernal morning, the charms of the pink, the violet, the rose, the honey-suckle, the hyacinth, the tulip, and a thousand other flowers, in every variety of figure, scent, and hue; for Nature is no less remarkable for the accuracy and beauty of her works than for variety and profusion.

HE gorse is yellow on the heath,

THE SWALLOW.

The banks with speedwell flowers are gay, The oaks are budding; and beneath, The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath, The silver wreath of May.

The welcome guest of settled spring,
The Swallow too is come at last;
Just at sun-set, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hail'd her as she pass'd.

Come, summer visitant, attach

To my reed-roof your nest of clay; And let my ear your music catch, Low twittering underneath the thatch, At the grey dawn of day.

As fables tell, an Indian sage

The Hindostani woods among, Could, in his distant hermitage, As if 'twere marked in written page, Translate the wild bird's song..

I wish I did his power possess,

That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee, What our vain systems only guess,

And know from what wild wilderness You came across the sea.

I would a little while restrain

Your rapid wing, that I might hear Whether on clouds that bring the rain You sail'd above the western main, The wind your charioteer.

In Afric, does the sultry gale

Through spicy bower and palmy grove Bear the repeated cuckoo's tale? Dwells there a time the wandering rail, Or the itinerant dove?

Were you in Asia? O relate

If there your fabled sister's woes She seemed in sorrow to narrate; Or sings she but to celebrate Her nuptials with the rose?

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"The welcome guest of settled spring,
The Swallow too is come at last.

Or if, by instinct taught to know
Approaching dearth of insect food,
To isles and willowy aits you go,
And, crowding on the pliant bough
Sink in the dimpling flood;

How learn ye, while the cold waves boom
Your deep and oozy couch above,
The time when flowers of promise bloom,
And call you from your transient tomb,
To light, and life, and love?

Alas! how little can be known,

Her sacred veil where Nature draws;
Let baffled Science humbly own
Her mysteries, understood alone
By HIM who gives her laws.

CHARLOTTE SMITH.

Y heart is awed within me when I think Of the great miracle that still goes on In silence round me- the perpetual wor.. Of Thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on Thy works I read The lesson of Thy own eternity.

O! all grow old and die-but, sec again!

Youth presses--ever gay and beautiful youth In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees Wave not less proudly than their ancestors Moulder beneath them.

THE SIERRAS.

IKE fragments of an uncompleted world,
From bleak Alaska, bound in ice and spray,
To where the peaks of Darien lie curled

In clouds, the broken lands loom bold and gray;
The seamen nearing S Francisco Bay
Forget the compass here; with sturdy hand
They seize the wheel, look up, then bravely lay
The ship to shore by rugged peaks that stand
The stern and proud patrician fathers of the land.

They stand white stairs of heaven-stand a line Of lifting, endless, and eternal white; They look upon the far and flashing brine, Upon the boundless plains, the broken height Of Kamiakin's battlements. The flight Of time is underneath their untopped towers; They seem to push aside the moon at night, To jostle and to loose the stars. The flowers Of heaven fall about their brows in shining showers.

They stand a line of lifted snowy isles,
High held above a tossed and tumbled sea, -
A sea of wood in wild unmeasured miles;
White pyramids of Faith where man is free;
White monuments of Hope that yet shall be
The mounts of matchless and immortal song.
I look far down the hollow days; I see

The bearded prophets, simple-soul'd and strong, That strike the sounding harp and thrill the heeding throng.

Serene and satisfied! supreme! as lone

As God, they loom like God's archangels churl'd: They look as cold as kings upon a throne; The mantling wings of night are crush'd and curl'd As feathers curl. The elements are hurl'd From off their bosoms, and are bidden go, Like evil spirits, to an under-world; They stretch from Cariboo to Mexico, A line of battle-tents in everlasting snow.

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