Yew-trees.

Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially-beneath whose sable roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked
With unrejoicing berries-ghostly Shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow ;-there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.
WORDSWORTH.

125

CHILDHOOD AND HIS VISITORS.

NCE on a time, when sunny May
Was kissing up the April showers,
I saw fair Childhood hard at play
Upon a bank of blushing flowers;
Happy, he knew not whence or how;

And smiling,-who could choose but love him;
For not more glad than Childhood's brow,
Was the blue heaven that beamed above him.

Old Time, in most appalling wrath,
That valley's green repose invaded :
The brooks grew dry upon his path,
The birds were mute, the lilies faded;
But Time so swiftly winged his flight,
In haste a Grecian tomb to batter,
That Childhood watched his paper kite,
And knew just nothing of the matter.

With curling lip, and glancing eye,
Guilt gazed upon the scene a minute,

But Childhood's glance of purity

Had such a holy spell within it,

Childhood and his Visitors.

That the dark demon to the air

Spread forth again his baffled pinion, And hid his envy and despair,

Self-tortured, in his own dominion.

Then stepped a gloomy phantom up,

127

Pale, cypress-crowned, night's awful daughter, And proffered him a fearful cup,

Full to the brim of bitter water:

Poor Childhood bade her tell her name,

And when the beldame muttered "Sorrow," He said, "Don't interrupt my game, I'll taste it, if I must, to-morrow."

The Muse of Pindus thither came,

And wooed him with the softest numbers

That ever scattered wealth and fame

Upon a youthful poet's slumbers; Though sweet the music of the lay, To Childhood it was all a riddle,

And "Oh," he cried, "do send away

That noisy woman with the fiddle."

Then Wisdom stole his bat and ball,

And taught him, with most sage endeavour,

Why bubbles rise, and acorns fall,

And why no toy may last for ever: She talked of all the wondrous laws Which Nature's open book discloses, And Childhood, ere she made a pause, Was fast asleep among the roses.

Sleep on, sleep on!-Oh! Manhood's dreams
Are all of earthly pain, or pleasure,
Of Glory's toils, Ambition's schemes,
Of cherished love or hoarded treasure:
But to the couch where Childhood lies
A more delicious trance is given
Lit up by rays from Seraph eyes,
And glimpses of remembered heaven!

PEARD.

I MOURN NOT THE FOREST.

I MOURN not the forest whose verdure is dying,
I mourn not the summer whose beauty is o'er,
I weep for the hope that for ever is flying,

I sigh for the worth that I slighted before,
And sigh to bethink me how vain is my sighing,
For love, once extinguished, is kindled no more.

The spring may return with his garland of flowers,
And wake to new rapture the bird on the tree;
The summer smile soft thro' his crystalline showers;
The treasures of autumn wave brown on the lea;
The rock may be shaken, the dead may awaken,
But the friend of my bosom returns not to me.

HEBER.