The crackling of the gorse-flowers near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o'er the desert wide?
To hear the buzzard's whimpering shrill,
Hovering above you high and still?
The twittering of the bird that dwells
Among the heath's delicious bells?
While round your bed, o'er fern and blade,
Insects in green and gold arrayed,
The sun's gay tribes have lightly strayed;
And sweeter sound their humming wings
Than the proud minstrel's echoing strings.

WILLIAM HOWITT.

SUMMER MOODS.

I LOVE at eventide to walk alone,
Down narrow glens, o'erhung with dewy thorn,
Where, from the long grass underneath, the snail,
Jet black, creeps out, and sprouts his timid horn.
I love to muse o'er meadows newly mown,
Where withering grass perfumes the sultry air;
Where bees search round, with sad and weary
drone,

In vain, for flowers that bloomed but newly there;

While in the juicy corn the hidden quail
Cries, "Wet my foot"; and, hid as thoughts
unborn,

The fairy-like and seldom-seen land-rail
Utters "Craik, craik," like voices underground,
Right glad to meet the evening's dewy veil,
And see the light fade into gloom around.

SIGNS OF RAIN.

JOHN CLARE.

FORTY REASONS FOR NOT ACCEPTING AN INVITATION OF A FRIEND TO MAKE AN EXCURSION WITH HIM.

1 THE hollow winds begin to blow;

2 The clouds look black, the glass is low, 3 The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep, 4 And spiders from their cobwebs peep. 5 Last night the sun went pale to bed, 6 The moon in halos hid her head; 7 The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, 8 For see a rainbow spans the sky. 9 The walls are damp, the ditches smell, 10 Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel. 11 Hark how the chairs and tables crack! 12 Old Betty's nerves are on the rack; 13 Loud quacks the duck, the peacocks cry, 14 The distant hills are seeming nigh. 15 How restless are the snorting swine! 16 The busy flies disturb the kine ;

17 Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, 18 The cricket, too, how sharp he sings, 19 Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws, 20 Sits wiping o'er her whiskered jaws, 21 Through the clear streams the fishes rise, 22 And nimbly catch the incautious flies. 23 The glow-worms, numerous and light, 24 Illumed the dewy dell last night, 25 At dusk the squalid toad was seen, 26 Hopping and crawling o'er the green, 27 The whirling dust the wind obeys, 28 And in the rapid eddy plays; 29 The frog has changed his yellow vest, 30 And in a russet coat is dressed. 31 Though June, the air is cold and still, 32 The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill; 33 My dog, so altered in his taste, 34 Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast; 35 And see yon rooks, how odd their flight, 36 They imitate the gliding kite, 37 And seem precipitate to fall, 38 As if they felt the piercing ball. 39 T will surely rain; I see with sorrow, 40 Our jaunt must be put off to-morrow.

ANONYMOUS.

SUMMER STORM. UNTREMULOUS in the river clear, Toward the sky's image, hangs the imaged bridge; The slender clarion of the unseen midge; So still the air that I can hear

Out of the stillness, with a gathering creep, Like rising wind in leaves, which now decreases, Now lulls, now swells, and all the while increases, The huddling trample of a drove of sheep Tilts the loose planks, and then as gradually ceases In dust on the other side; life's emblem deep, A confused noise between two silences, Finding at last in dust precarious peace. On the wide marsh the purple-blossomed grasses Soak up the sunshine; sleeps the brimming

tide

Save when the wedge-shaped wake in silence passes Of some slow water-rat, whose sinuous glide Wavers the long green sedge's shade from side to side;

But up the west, like a rock-shivered surge, Climbs a great cloud edged with sun-whitened

spray;

Huge whirls of foam boil toppling o'er its verge, And falling still it seems, and yet it climbs alway.

Suddenly all the sky is hid

As with the shutting of a lid, One by one great drons are falling Doubtful and slow,

And thus the loiterer's utmost stretch of soul
Climbs the still clouds, or passes those that roll,
And loosed imagination soaring goes
High o'er his home and all his little woes.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

A SUMMER EVENING'S MEDITATION. "One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine." - YOUNG.

'Tis past, the sultry tyrant of the South Has spent his short-lived rage; more grateful hours Move silent on; the skies no more repel

The dazzled sight, but, with mild maiden beams
Of tempered lustre, court the cherished eye
To wander o'er their sphere; where, hung aloft,
Dian's bright crescent, like a silver bow,
New strung in heaven, lifts its beamy horns
Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair Venus shines
Even in the eye of day; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of softened radiance with her dewy locks.
The shadows spread apace; while meekened Eve,
Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires
Through the Hesperian gardens of the West,
And shuts the gates of Day. T is now the hour
When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierced woods, where wrapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripened by the sun,
Moves forward and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swelled by breath divine,
Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven
Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether
One boundless blaze; ten thousand trembling
fires,

And dancing lustres, where the unsteady eye,
Restless and dazzled, wanders unconfined
O'er all this field of glories; spacious field,
And worthy of the Master: He whose hand
With hieroglyphics elder than the Nile
Inscribed the mystic tablet; hung on high
To public gaze, and said, Adore, O man!
The finger of thy God. From what pure wells
Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn,
Are all these lamps so filled? -- these friendly
lamps,

Forever streaming o'er the azure deep

To point our path, and light us to our home.
How soft they slide along their lucid spheres!
And, silent as the foot of Time, fulfil
Their destined courses. Nature's self is hushed,
And but a scattered leaf, which rustles through
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard
To break the midnight air; though the raised ear,
Intently listening, drinks in every breath.

How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise !
But are they silent all? or is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank;
An embryo God; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun
(Fair transitory creature of a day !)
Has closed his golden eye, and, wrapt in shades,
Forgets his wonted journey through the East.
Ye citadels of light, and seats of gods!
Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul,
Revolving periods past, may oft look back,
With recollected tenderness, on all
The various busy scenes she left below,
Its deep-laid projects and its strange events,
As on some fond and doting tale that soothed
Her infant hours, - O, be it lawful now
To tread the hallowed circle of your courts,
And with mute wonder and delighted awe
Approach your burning confines.

thought,

Seized in

On Fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled earth,
And the pale moon, her duteous, fair attendant;
From solitary Mars, from the vast orb
Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk
Dances in ether like the lightest leaf;
To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system,
Where cheerless Saturn midst his watery moons
Girt with a lucid zone, in gloomy pomp,
Sits like an exiled monarch: fearless thence
I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,
Of elder beam, which ask no leave to shine
Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light
From the proud regent of our scanty day;
Sons of the morning, first-born of creation,
And only less than Ilim who marks their track
And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop,
Or is there aught beyond? What hand unseen
Impels me onward through the glowing orbs
Of habitable nature, far remote,
To the dread confines of eternal night,
To solitudes of waste unpeopled space,
The deserts of creation, wide and wild ;
Where embryo systems and unkindled suns
Sleep in the womb of chaos? Fancy droops,
And Thought, astonished, stops her bold career.
But, O thou mighty Mind! whose powerful word
Said, "Thus let all things be," and thus they

were,

Where shall I seek thy presence? how unblamed Invoke thy dread perfection?

INDIAN SUMMER.

So shall the truant bluebirds backward fly, And all loved things that vanish or that die

ANONYMOUS.

through,

And all the faded grass is wet with dew.

A gauzy nebula films the pensive sky,

The golden bee supinely buzzes by,

In silent flocks the bluebirds southward fly.

The forests' cheeks are crimsoned o'er with shame,
The cynic frost enlaces every lane,
The ground with scarlet blushes is aflame!

The one we love grows lustrous-eyed and sad,
With sympathy too thoughtful to be glad,
While all the colors round are running mad.

The sunbeams kiss askant the sombre hill,
The naked woodbine climbs the window-sill,
The breaths that noon exhales are faint and chill.

The ripened nuts drop downward day by day,
Sounding the hollow tocsin of decay,
And bandit squirrels smuggle them away.

Vague sighs and scents pervade the atmosphere,
Sounds of invisible stirrings hum the ear,
The morning's lash reveals a frozen tear.

The hermit mountains gird themselves with mail,
Mocking the threshers with an echo flail,
The while the afternoons grow crisp and pale.

Inconstant Summer to the tropics flees,
And, as her rose-sails catch the amorous breeze,
Lo bare, brown Autumn trembles to her knees!

The stealthy nights encroach upon the days,
The earth with sudden whiteness is ablaze,
And all her paths are lost in crystal maze !

Tread lightly where the dainty violets blew,
Where the spring winds their soft eyes open flew ;
Safely they sleep the churlish winter through.

Though all life's portals are indiced with woe,
And frozen pearls are all the world can show,
Feel! Nature's breath is warm beneath the snow.

Look up! dear mourners! Still the blue expanse,
Serenely tender, bends to catch thy glance,
Within thy tears sibyllic sunbeams dance!
With blooms full-sapped again will smile the land.
The fall is but the folding of His hand,
Anon with fuller glories to expand.

The dumb heart hid beneath the pulseless tree
Will throb again; and then the torpid bee
Upon the ear will drone his drowsy glee.