Whose spirit in the Willow spoke, Like Jove's from dark Dodona's oak.

Yet, fallen Willow! if to me

Such power of song were given,
My lips should breathe a soul through thee,

And call down fire from heaven,
To kindle in this hallow'd Urn
A flame that would for ever burn.

By harvest moonlight there he spied

The fairy bands advancing; Bright Ariel's troop, on Thames's side,

Around the Willow dancing ; Gay sylphs among the foliage play'd, And glow-worms glitter'd in the shade.

One morn, while Time thus mark'd the tree

In beauty green and glorious, - The hand,” he cried, “ that planted thee

O'er mine was oft victorious ;
Be vengeance now my calm employ,
One work of POPE's I will destroy."

He spake, and struck a silent blow

With that dread arm whose motion Lays cedars, thrones, and temples low,

And wields o'er land and ocean The unremitting ax of doom, That sells the forest of the tomb.

Deep to the Willow's root it went,

And cleft the core asunder, Like sudden secret lightning, sent

Without recording thunder: -From that sad moment, slow away Began the Willow to decay.

In vain did Spring those bowers restore,

Where loves and graces revellid, Autumn's wild gales the branches tore,

The thin grey leaves dishevellid, And every wasting Winter found The Willow nearer to the ground.

A WALK IN SPRING.
I WANDER'd in a lonely glade,
Where, issuing from the forest shade.

A little mountain stream
Along the winding valley play'd,

Beneath the morning beam.
Light o'er the woods of dark brown oak
The west-wind wreathed the hovering smoke

From cottage roofs conceal'd,
Below a rock abruptly broke,

In rosy light revealed.
'Twas in the infancy of May,-
The uplands glow'd in green array,

While from the ranging eye,
The lessening landscape stretch'd away,

To meet the bending sky.
"T is sweet in solitude to hear
The earliest music of the year,

The Blackbird's loud wild note,
Or, from the wintry thicket drear,

The Thrush's stammering throat.
In rustic solitude 't is sweet
The earliest flowers of Spring to greet,-

The violet from its tomb,
The strawberry, creeping at our feet,

The sorrel's simple bloom.
Wherefore I love the walks of Spring,
While still I hear new warblers sing,

Fresh-opening bells I see ;
Joy flits on every roving wing,

Hope buds on every tree.
That morn I look'd and listen'd long,
Some cheering sight, some woodland song,

As yet unheard, unseen,
To welcome, with remembrance strong

of days that once had been ;-
When gathering Powers, an eager child,
I ran abroad with rapture wild ;

Or, on more curious quest, Peep'd breathless through the copse, and smiled

To see the linnet's nest.

Hoary, and weak, and bent with age,

At length the ax assail'd it:
It bow'd before the woodman's rage;

-The swans of Thames bewail'd it. With softer tones, with sweeter breath, Than ever charm'd the ear of death.

O Pore! hadst thou, whose lyre so long

The wondering world enchanted,
Amidst thy paradise of song

This Weeping Willow planted;
Among thy loftiest laurels seen,
In deathless verse for ever green

Thy chosen Tree had stood sublime,

The storm of ages braving, Triumphant o'er the wrecks of Time

Its verdant banner waving, While regal pyramids decay'd, And empires perish'd in its shade.

An humbler lot, O Tree! was thine,

-Gone down in all thy glory;
The sweet, the mournful task be mine,

To sing thy simple story;
Though verse like mine in vain would raise
The fame of thy departed days.

Already had I watch'd the flight
Of swallows darting through the light,

And mock'd the cuckoo's call ; Already view'd, o'er meadows bright,

The evening rainbow fall. Now in my walk, with sweet surprise, I saw the first Spring cowslip rise,

The plant whose pensile flowers Bend to the earth their beauteous eyes, In sunshine as in showers.

Yet, lowly Cowslip, while in thee
An old unalter'd friend I see,

Fresh in perennial prime,
From Spring to Spring behold in me

The woes and waste of Time.

This fading eye and withering mien
Tell what a sufferer I have been,

Since more and more estranged,
From hope to hope, from scene to scene

Through Folly's wilds I ranged.
Then fields and woods I proudly spurn'd,
From Nature's maiden love I turn'd,

And woo'd the enchantress Art; Yet while for her my fancy burn'd,

Cold was my wretched heart,
Till, distanced in Ambition's race,
Weary of Pleasure's joyless chase,

My peace untimely slain,
Sick of the world,--I turn'd my face

To fields and woods again. 'Twas Spring ;-my former haunts I found, My favorite flowers adorn'd the ground,

My darling minstrels play'd ; The mountains were with sun-set crownd,

The valleys dun with shade.

Lone on a mossy bank it grew,
Where lichens, purple, white, and blue,

Among the verdure crept;
Its yellow ringlets, dropping dew,

The breezes lightly swept.
A bee had nestled on its blooms,
He shook abroad their rich perfumes,

Then fled in airy rings;
His place a butterfly assumes,

Glancing his glorious wings.
O, welcome, as a friend! I cried,
A friend through many a season tried,

Nor over sought in vain,
When May, with Flora at her side,

Is dancing on the plain
Sure as the Pleiades adorn
The glittering coronet of morn,

In calm delicious hours,
Beneath their beams thy buds are born,

'Midst love-awakening showers. Scatter'd by Nature's graceful hand, In briery glens, o'er pasture-land,

Thy fairy tribes we meet ; Gay in the milk-maid's path they stand,

They kiss her tripping feet. From winter's farm-yard bondage freed, The cattle bounding o'er the mead,

Where green the herbage grows,
Among thy fragrant blossoms feed,

Upon thy tufis repose.
Tossing his forelock o'er his mane,
The foal, at rest upon the plain,

Sports with thy flexile stalk,
But stoops his litile neck in vain,

To crop it in his walk. Where thick thy primrose blossoms play, Lovely and innocent as they,

O'er coppice lawns and dells, In bands the rural children stray,

To pluck thy nectar'd bells ; Whose simple sweets, with curious skill, The frugal cottage-dames distil,

Nor envy France the vine, While many a festal cup they fill

With Britain's homely wine.
Unchanging still from year to year,
Like stars returning in their sphere,

With undiminish'd rays,
Thy vernal constellations cheer

The dawn of lengthening days.
Perhaps from Nature's earliest May,
Imperishable 'midst decay,

Thy self-renewing race
Have breathed their balmy lives away

In this neglected place.
And O, till Nature's final doom,
Here unmolested may they bloom,

From scythe and plow secure,
This bank their cradle and their tomb,

While earth and skies endure !

With lorn delight the scene I view'd,
Past joys and sorrows were renewd;

My infant hopes and fears
Look'd lovely, through the solitude

Of retrospective years.
And still, in Memory's twilight bower,
The spirits of departed hours,

With mellowing tints, portray
The blossoms of life's vernal flowers

For ever fall'n away.
Till youth's delirious dream is o'er,
Sanguine with hope, we look before,.

The future good to find;
In age, when error charms no more,

For bliss we look behind.

A DEED OF DARKNESS.

The body of the Missionary, John Smith, (who died February 6, 1824, in prison, under sentence of death by a court-martial, in Demerara), was ordered to be buried secretly at night, and no person, not even his widow, was allowed to follow the corpse. Mrs. Smith, however, and her friend Mrs. Elliot, accompanied by a free Negro, carrying a lantern, repaired be forehand to the spot where a grave had been dug, and there they awaited the interment, which took place accordingly. His Majesty's pardon, annulling the condemnation, is said to have arrived on the day of the unfortunate Missionary's death, from the rigors of confinement, in a tropical climate, and under the slow pains of an inveterate malady, preriously afflicting him.

COME down in thy profoundest gloom,

Without one vagrant fire-fly's light, Beneath thine ebon arch entomb

Earth, from the gaze of Heaven, O Night! A deed of darkness must be done, Put out the moon, hold back the sun.

Are these the criminals, that flee

Like deeper shadows through the shade ? A flickering lamp, from tree to tree,

Betrays their path along the glade, Led by a Negro ;-now they stand, Two trembling women, hand in hand.

THE OAK.

Imitated from the Italian of Metastasio.

A grave, an open grave, appears;

O'er this in agony they bend,
Wet the fresh turf with bitter tears;

Sighs following sighs their bosoms rend:
These are not murderers!-these have known
Grief more bereaving than their own.
Oft through the gloom their straining eyes

Look forth, for what they fear to meet: It comes; they catch a glimpse; it flies :

Quick-glancing lights, slow-trampling feet, Amidst the cane-crops,-seen, heard, gone,Retum, -and in dead-march move on. A stern procession gleaming arms,

And spectral countenances, dart, By the red torch-flame, wild alarms,

And withering pangs through either heart; A corpse amidst the group is borne, A prisoner's corpse, who died last morn. Not by the slave-lord's justice slain,

Who door'd himn to a traitor's death;
While royal mercy sped in vain

O'er land and sea to save his breath:
No; the frail life that warm'd this clay,
Man could not give nor take away.
His vengeance and his grace, alike,

Were impotent to spare or kill;
-He may not lift the sword to strike,

Nor turn its edge aside, at will: Here, by one sovereign act and deed, God cancell'd all that man decreed.

Tue tall Oak, towering to the skies,
The fury of the wind defies,
From age to age, in virtue strong,
Inured 10 sland, and suffer wrong.
O'erwhelm'd at length upon the plain,
It puts forth wings, and sweeps the main;
The self-same foe iMdaunted braves,
And fights the wind upon the waves.

THE DIAL.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,

That corpse is to the grave consign'd; The scene departs :—this buried trust,

The Judge of quick and dead shall find, When things which Time and Death have seald Shall be in flaming fire reveal’d. The fire shall try Thee, then, like gold,

Prisoner of hope !-await the test; And 0, when truth alone is told,

Be thy clear innocence confess'd ! The fire shall try thy foes ;-may they Find mercy in that dreadful day.

This shadow on the Dial's face,

That steals from day to day,
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,

Moments, and months, and years away;
This shadow, which, in every clime,

Since light and motion first began,
Hath held its course sublime-

What is it ?-Mortal Man!
It is the scythe of Time :
-A shadow only to the eye;

Yet, in its calm career,
It levels all beneath the sky;

And still, through each succeeding year
Right onward, with resistless power,
Its stroke shall darken every hour,
Till Nature's race be run,
And Time's last shadow shall eclipse the sun.
Nor only o'er the Dial's face,

This silent phantom, day by day, With slow, unseen, unceasing pace,

Steals moments, months, and years away; From hoary rock and aged tree,

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls, From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea,

From every blade of grass it falls. For still, where'er a shadow sweeps,

The scythe of Time destroys, And man at every footstep weeps

O'er evanescent joys; Like flow'rets glittering with the dews of morn Fair for a moment, then for ever shorn. -Ah! soon, beneath the inevitable blow, I too shall lie in dust and darkness low.

THE SWISS COWHERD'S SONG,

IN A FOREIGN LAND.

Imitated from the French.

O, when shall I visit the land of my birth,
The loveliest land on the face of the earth?
When shall I those scenes of affection explore,

Our forests, our fountains,

Our hamlets, our mountains, With the pride of our mountains, the maid I adore ?

Then Time, the Conqueror, will suspend

His scythe, a trophy, o'er my tomb, Whose moving shadow shall portend Each frail beholder's doom.

321

O'er the wide earth's illumined space,

Though Time's triumphant flight be shown, The truest index on its face

Points from the church-yard stone.

THE ROSES.

Addressed to a Friend on the Birth of his first Child.

Then listen, Agnes, friendship sings;

Seize fast his forelock grey,
And pluck from his careering wings

A feather every day.
Adorn'd with these, defy his rage,

And bid him plow your face,
For every furrow of old age

Shall be a line of grace.
Start not: old age is virtue's prime;

Most lovely she appears,
Clad in the spoils of vanquish'd Time,

Down in the vale of years. Beyond that vale, in boundless bloom,

The eternal mountains rise ; Virtue descends not to the tomb,

Her rest is in the skies.

AN EPITAPH.

Two Roses on one slender spray,

In sweet communion grew, Together hail'd the morning ray,

And drank the evening dew;
While, sweetly wreathed in mossy green,
There sprang a little bud between.
Through clouds and sunshine, storms and showers,

They open'd into bloom,
Mingling their foliage and their flowers,

Their beauty and perfume ;
While, foster'd on its rising stem,
The bud became a purple gem.
But soon their summer splendor pass’d,

They faded in the wind,
Yet were these roses to the last

The loveliest of their kind,
Whose crimson leaves, in falling round,
Adorn’d and sanctified the ground.
When thus were all their honors shorn,

The bud unfolding rose,
And blush'd and brighten'd, as the morn

From dawn to sun-rise glows,
Till o'er each parent's drooping head,
The daughter's crowning glory spread.
My Friends! in youth's romantic prime,

The golden age of man,
Like these twin roses spend your time,

-Life's little, less'ning span;
Then be your breasts as free from cares,
Your hours as innocent as theirs.

ART thou a man of honest mould,

With fervent heart, and soul sincere ? A husband, father, friend ?-Behold,

Thy brother slumbers here. The sun that wakes

yon

violet's bloom, Once cheer'd his eye, now dark in death, The wind that wanders o'er his tomb

Was once his vital breath.

The roving wind shall pass away,

The warming sun forsake the sky; Thy brother, in that dreadful day,

Shall live and never die.

THE OLD MAN'S SONG. Suall man of frail fruition boast ?

Shall life be counted dear, Oft but a moment, and, at most,

A momentary year? There was a time,—that time is past,

When, youth! I bloom'd like thee! A time will come-'t is coming fast,

When thou shalt fade like me :

And in the infant bud that blows

In your encircling arms,
Mark the dear promise of a rose,

The pledge of future charms,
That o'er your withering hours shall shine,
Fair, and more fair, as you decline;-

Till, planted in that realm of rest

Where Roses never die, Amidst the gardens of the blest,

Beneath a stormless sky, You flower afresh, like Aaron's rod, That blossom'd at the sight of God.

Like me through varying seasons range,

And past enjoyments mourn ;-
The fairest, sweetest spring shall change

To winter in its turn.
In infancy, my vernal prime,

When life itself was new, Amusement pluck'd the wings of time,

Yet swifter still he flew.

TO AGNES

Reply to some Lines, beginning, "Arrest, O Time, thy fleeting

course."

TIME will not check his eager flight,

Though gentle Agnes scold, For 't is the Sage's dear delight

To make young ladies old.

Summer my youth succeeded soon,

My sun ascended high, And pleasure held the reins till noon,

But grief drove down the sky. Like autumn, rich in ripening corn,

Came manhood's sober reign; My harvest-moon scarce fill'd her horn, When she began to wane.