FLIGHT OF THE WILD GEESE.

RAMBLING along the marshes,
On the bank of the Assabet,
Sounding myself as to how it went,
Praying that I might not forget,
And all uncertain

Whether I was in the right,
Toiling to lift Time's curtain,

And if I burnt the strongest light;
Suddenly,

High in the air,

I heard the travelled geese

Their overture prepare.

Stirred above the patent ball,
The wild geese flew,

Nor near so wild as that doth me befall,

Or, swollen Wisdom, you.

In the front there fetched a leader,
Him behind the line spread out,
And waved about,

As it was near night,

When these air-pilots stop their flight.

Cruising off the shoal dominion
Where we sit,

Depending not on their opinion,
Nor hiving sops of wit;
Geographical in tact,
Naming not a pond or river,

Pulled with twilight down in fact,
In the reeds to quack and quiver,
There they go,

Spectators at the play below,
Southward in a row.

Cannot land and map the stars
The indifferent geese,

Nor taste the sweetmeats in odd jars,
Nor speculate and freeze;
Rancid weasands need be well,
Feathers glossy, quills in order,
Starts this train, yet rings no bell;
Steam is raised without recorder.

"Up, my feathered fowl, all,"
Saith the goose commander,
"Brighten your bills, and flirt your
pinions,

My toes are nipped, let us render
Ourselves in soft Guatemala,
Or suck puddles in Campeachy,
Spitzbergen-cake cuts very frosty,
And the tipple is not leechy.

"Let's brush loose for any creek,
There lurk fish and fly,
Condiments to fat the weak,
Inundate the pie.

Flutter not about a place,
Ye concomitants of space!"

Mute the listening nations stand
On that dark receding land;
How faint their villages and towns,
Scattered on the misty downs!
A meeting-house

Appears no bigger than a mouse.

How long?

Never is a question asked,
While a throat can lift the song,
Or a flapping wing be tasked.

All the grandmothers about
Hear the orators of Heaven,
Then put on their woollens stout,
And cower o'er the hearth at even;
And the children stare at the sky,
And laugh to see the long black line
so high!

Then once more I heard them say,"Tis a smooth, delightful road, Difficult to lose the way,

And a trifle for a load.

"Twas our forte to pass for this, Proper sack of sense to borrow,

Wings and legs, and bills that clat

ter,

And the horizon of To-morrow."

CHANNING.

TO A WATERFOWL.

WHITHER, 'midst falling dew, While glow the heavens with the last steps of day?

Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

A WET sheet and a flowing sea,

A wind that follows fast, And fills the white and rustling sail,

And bends the gallant mast. And bends the gallant mast, my boys, While, like the eagle free, Away the good ship flies, and leaves Old England on the lee.

There's tempest in yon hornèd moon,

And lightning in yon cloud; And hark, the music, mariners!

The wind is wakening loud. The wind is wakening loud, my boys, The lightning flashes free; The hollow oak our palace is, Our heritage the sea.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!

Whom slumber soothes not, pleasure cannot please,

Oh! who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,

And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide,

The exulting sense, the pulse's maddening play,

That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?

BYRON: Corsair.

THE CORAL GROVE.

DEEP in the wave is a coral grove, Where the purple mullet and goldfish rove;

Where the sea-flower spreads its leaves of blue,

That never are wet with falling dew, But in bright and changeful beauty shine

Far down in the green and glassy brine.

The floor is of sand, like the mountain drift,

And the pearl-shells spangle the flinty snow:

From coral rocks the sea-plants lift Their boughs, where the tides and billows flow;

The water is calm and still below, For the winds and the waves are absent there,

And the sands are bright as the stars that glow

In the motionless fields of upper air: There with its waving blade of

green,

The sea-flag streams through the silent water,

And the crimson leaf of the dulse is

seen

To blush like a banner bathed in slaughter:

There with a light and easy motion The fan coral sweeps through the clear deep sea;

And the yellow and scarlet tufts of

ocean

Are bending like corn on the upland lea;

And life, in rare and beautiful forms, Is sporting amid those bowers of

stone,

Where He the huge sea-monsters wracks,

That lift the deep upon their backs,
Unto an isle so long unknown,
And yet far kinder than our own?
He lands us on a grassy stage,
Safe from the storms, and prelate's
rage:

He gave us this eternal spring
Which here enamels every thing,
And sends the fowls to us in care
On daily visits through the air.
He hangs in shades the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night,
And does in the pomegranates close
Jewels more rich than Ormus shows:
He makes the figs our mouths to
meet,

And throws the melons at our feet;
But apples, plants of such a price,
No tree could ever bear them twice.
With cedars chosen by his hand
From Lebanon he stores the land;
And makes the hollow seas that roar
Proclaim the ambergris on shore.
He cast (of which we rather boast)
The gospel's pearl upon our coast;
And in these rocks for us did frame
A temple where to sound his name.
Oh! let our voice his praise exalt
Till it arrive at heaven's vault,
Which then perhaps rebounding may
Echo beyond the Mexique bay."
Thus sung they in the English boat
A holy and a cheerful note:
And all the way, to guide their
chime,

With falling oars they kept the time.
A. MARVELL.