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"I CANNOT FORGET WITH WHAT

FERVID DEVOTION."

I CANNOT forget with what fervid devotion
I worshipped the visions of verse and of fame:
Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and
ocean,

To my kindled emotions, was wind over flame.

And deep were my musings in life's early blos

som,

Mid the twilight of mountain groves wander

ing long;

How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom,

When o'er me descended the spirit of song.

'Mong the deep-cloven fells that for ages had listened

To the rush of the pebble-paved river between, Where the kingfisher screamed and gray precipice glistened,

All breathless with awe have I gazed on the

scene;

Till I felt the dark power o'er my reveries steal

ing,

From the gloom of the thickets that over me

hung,

And the thoughts that awoke in that rapture

of feeling,

Were formed into verse as they rose to my

tongue.

Bright visions! I mixed with the world, and ye faded ;

No longer your pure rural worshipper now; In the haunts your continual presence pervaded, Ye shrink from the signet of care on my brow.

In the old mossy groves on the breast of the mountain,

In deep lonely glens where the waters com

plain,

By the shade of the rock, by the gush of the fountain,

I seek your loved footsteps, but seek them in

vain.

Oh, leave not, forlorn and for ever forsaken, Your pupil and victim to life and its tears! But sometimes return, and in mercy awaken

The glories ye showed to his earlier years.

TO A MUSQUITO.

FAIR insect! that, with threadlike legs spread

out,

And blood-extracting bill and filmy wing, Dost murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about,

In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins should bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need.

Unwillingly, I own, and, what is worse,

Full angrily men hearken to thy plaint;

Thou gettest many a brush and many a curse, For saying thou art gaunt, and starved, and

faint:

Even the old beggar, while he asks for food, Would kill thee, hapless stranger, if he could.

I call thee stranger, for the town, I ween,
Has not the honor of so proud a birth,-

Thou com'st from Jersey meadows, fresh and

green,

The offspring of the gods, though born on

earth;

For Titan was thy sire, and fair was she,
The ocean nymph that nursed thy infancy.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung,
And when, at length, thy gauzy wings grew

strong,

Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung,

Rose in the sky and bore thee soft along;