THE bush that has most briers and bitter fruit: Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red, Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit, And thou mayst find e'en there a homely bread. Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide, Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in spring; And, straggling e'en upon the turnpike's side, Their ripened branches to your hand they bring. I've plucked them oft in boyhood's early hour, That then I gave such name, and thought it true; But now I know that other fruit as Beneath the lowly alder-tree, And we will sleep a pleasant sleep, And not a care shall dare intrude To break the marble solitude, And hark! the wind-god, as he flies, Sweet flower! that requiem wild It warns me to the lonely shrine, Where as I lie, by all forgot, A dying fragrance thou wilt o'er my ashes shed. H. K. WHITE. THE PRIMROSE. Ask me why I send you here This sweet Infanta of the yeere? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew? I will whisper to your eares, The sweets of love are mixt with tears. Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. KEATS. THE NIGHTINGALE. As it fell upon a day In the merry month of May, Which a grove of myrtles made, Every thing did banish moan, None takes pity on thy pain: Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee; King Pandiva, he is dead, All thy friends are lapp'd in lead: R. BARNEFIELD, THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG. ROUND my own pretty rose I have hovered all day, I have seen its sweet leaves one by one fall away: They are gone, they are gone; but I go not with them, I linger to weep o'er its desolate stem. They say if I rove to the south I shall meet With hundreds of roses more fair and more sweet; But my heart, when I'm tempted to wander, replies, Here my first love, my last love, my only love lies. When the last leaf is withered, and falls to the earth, The false one to southerly climes may fly forth; But truth cannot fly from his sorrows: he dies, Where his first love, his last love, his only love lies. T. H. BAYLY. THE NIGHTINGALE'S DEATHSONG. MOURNFULLY, sing mournfully, The rose, the glorious rose, is gone, The skies have lost their splendor, The waters changed their tone, And wherefore, in the faded world, Should music linger on? Where is the golden sunshine, And where the flower-cup's glow? And where the joy of the dancing leaves, And the fountain's laughing flow? Tell of the brightness parted, Thou bee, thou lamb at play! Thou lark, in thy victorious mirth! Are ye, too, passed away? With sunshine, with sweet odor, Alone I shall not linger When the days of hope are past, To watch the fall of leaf by leaf, To wait the rushing blast. |