POEMS OF NATURE.

SONNET.

Does thy wounded spirit prove

Pangs of hopeless, severed love! THE World is too much with us; late and soon,

Thee the stream that gushes clear, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ;

Thee the birds that carol near Little we see in nature that is ours ;

Shall soothe, as silent thou dost lie We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

And dream of their wild lullaby ; This sea that bares her bosom to the nioon;

Come to bless these scenes of peace, The winds that will be howling at all hours,

Where cares and toil and sadness cease. And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ;

WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES. For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; It moves us not. — Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

TINTERN ABBEY.
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Five years have past ; five summers, with the
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

length
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Of five long winters ! and again I hear

These waters,* rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur. - Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
NATURE.

That on a wild, secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion, and counect The bubbling brook doth leap when I come by,

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
Because my feet find measure with its call;
The birds know when the friend they love is nigh,

The day is come when I again repose
For I am known to them, both great and small.

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view The flower that on the lonely hillside grows

These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,

Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Expects me there when spring its bloom has given ; And many a tree and bush my wanderings knows,

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves And e'en the clouds and silent stars of heaven;

Mid groves and copses. Once again I see For he who with his Maker walks aright,

These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines

Of sportive wood run wild : these pastoral farms, Shall be their lord as Adam was before ; His ear shall catch each sound with new delight,

Green to the very door ; and wreaths of smoke Each object wear the dress that then it wore ;

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees !

With some uncertain notice, as might seem And he, as when erect in soul he stood,

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Hear from his Father's lips that all is good.

Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire
JONES VERY.
The hermit sits alone.

These beauteous fornis,

Through a long absence, have not been to me COME TO THESE SCENES OF PEACE. As is a landscape to a blind man's eye ; Come to these scenes of peace,

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din Where, to rivers murmuring,

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, The sweet birds all the sunmer sing,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; Where cares and toil and sadness cease!

And passing even into my purer mind,
Stranger, does thy heart deplore
Friends whom thou wilt see no more?

• The River Wye.

With tranquil restoration : --- feelings too And all its aching joys are now no more,
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
As have no slight or trivial influence

Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur ; other gifts On that best portion of a good man's life, Have followed ; for such loss, I would believe, · His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Abundant recompense. For I have learned Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To look on nature, not as in the hour To them I may have owed another gift, | Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, The still, sad music of humanity, In which the burden of the mystery,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power In which the heavy and the weary weight To chasten and subdue. And I have felt Of all this unintelligible world,

A presence that disturbs me with the joy Is lightened, — that serene and blessèd mood, Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime In which the affections gently lead us on, Of something far more deeply interfused, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And even the motion of our human blood And the round ocean, and the living air, Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : In body, and become a living soul :

A motion and a spirit, that impels While with an eye made quiet by the power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, | And rolls through all things. Therefore am I We see into the life of things.

still If this

A lover of the meadows and the woods, Be but a vain belief, yet, O, how oft

And mountains ; and of all that we behold In darkness and amid the many shapes

From this green earth ; of all the mighty world Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir | Of eye, and ear, - both what they half create, * Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize Have hung upon the beatings of my heart - In nature and the language of the sense, How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, | The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer through the woods, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul How often has my spirit turned to thee ! Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance, And now, with gleams of half-extinguished If I were not thus taught, should I the more thought,

| Suffer my genial spirits to decay : With many recognitions dim and faint,

For thou art with me here upon the banks And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

of this fair river ; thou my dearest friend, The picture of the mind revives again :

My dear, dear friend ; and in thy voice I catch While here I stand, not only with the sense The language of my former heart, and read Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts My former pleasures in the shooting lights That in this moment there is life and food Of thy wild eyes. O, yet a little while For future years. And so I dare to hope, May I behold in thee what I was once, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when My dear, dear sister! and this prayer I make, first

Knowing that Nature never did betray I came among these hills : when like a roe The heart that loved her ; 't is her privilege, I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Through all the years of this our life, to lead Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, From joy to joy : for she can so inform Wherever nature led : more like a man

The mind that is within us, so impress Flying from something that he dreads, than one With quietness and beauty, and so feed Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days

Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, And their glad animal movements all gone by) Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all To me was all in all. - I cannot paint

The dreary intercourse of daily life, What then I was. The sounding cataract

| Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,

Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Their colors and their forms, were then to me

Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
An appetite ; a feeling and a love,

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thoughts supplied, nor any interest

• "This line has a close resemblance to an adinirable line of

Young's, the exact expression of which I do not recollect." - THE Unborrowed from the eye. — That time is past, "AUTHOR.

The windy forest, rousing from its sleep,
Voices its heart in hoarse Titanic roar;
The ocean bellows from its rocky shore;
The cataract, that haunts the rugged steep,
Makes mighty music in its headlong leap ;
The clouds have voices, and the rivers pour
Their foods in thunder down to ocean's floor ; -
The hills alone mysterious silence keep.
They cannot rend the ancient chain that bars
Their iron lips, nor answer back the sea
That calls to them far off in vain; the stars
They cannot hail, nor their wild brooks. Ah me!
What cries from out their stony hearts will break,
In God's great day, when all that sleep shall wake !

WILLIAM PRESCOTT FOSTER.

From upland slopes I see the cows file by,

Lowing, great-chested, down the homeward trail,

By dusking fields and meadows shining pale With moon-tipped dandelions; Alickering high, A peevish night-hawk in the western sky

Beats up into the lucent solitudes,

Or drops with griding wing; the stilly woods Grow dark and deep, and gloom mysteriously. Cool night-winds creep and whisper in mine ear;

The homely cricket gossips at my feet;

From far-off pools and wastes of reeds I hear
With ebb and change the chanting frogs break sweet

In full Pandean chorus; one by one
Shine out the stars, and the great night comes on.

ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN.

To blow against thee : and, in after years,

NATURE'S CHAIN.
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured

FROM "THE ESSAY ON MAN."
Into a sober pleasure ; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,

Look round our world ; behold the chain of love Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

Combining all below and all above,
For all sweet sounds and harmonies ; 0, then, See plastic nature working to this end,
If solitude or fear or pain or grief

The single atoms each to other tend,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts | Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Of tender joy wilt thou remeinber me,

Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace. And these my exhortations ! Nor, perchance, See matter next, with various life endued, If I should be where I no more can hear

Press to one centre still, the general good. Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these See dying vegetables life sustain, gleams

See life dissolving vegetate again : Of past existence, — wilt thou then forget All forms that perish other forms supply That on the banks of this delightful stream (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die); We stood together ; and that I, so long

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, A worshipper of Nature, hither came

They rise, they break, and to that sea return. Unwearied in that service : rather say

Nothing is foreign ; parts relate to whole;
With warmer love, - 0, with far deeper zeal One all-extending, all-preserving Soul
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget Connects each being, greatest with the least;
That after many wanderings, many years Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, All served, all serving ; nothing stands alone ;
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake! Has God, thou fool ! worked solely for thy good,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food ?

Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flowery lawn.

Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? FOR A COPY OF THEOCRITUS. Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.

Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat ?
VILLANELLE.

Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.

The bounding steed you pomponsly bestride FROM "ESSAYS IN OLD FRENCH FORMS OF VERSE."

Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. O Singer of the field and fold,

Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain ? Theocritus! Pan's pipe was thine, --

The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. Thine was the happier Age of Gold.

Thine the full harvest of the golden year?

Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer : For thee the scent of new-turned mould,

| The hog that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call, The beehives and the murmuring pine,

Lives on the labors of this lord of all. O Singer of the field and fold !

Kuow, Nature's children all divide her care ;

The fur that warnis a monarch warmed a bear. Thou sang'st the simple feasts of old,

While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!" The beechen bowl made glad with wine :

“See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose : Thine was the happier Age of Gold.

And just as short of reason he must fall

Who thinks all maile for one, not one for all. Thou bac'st the rustic loves be told, Thou bad'st the tuneful reeds combine, O Singer of the field and fold !

EACH AND ALL. And round thee, ever laughing, rolled LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon redl-cloaked The blithe and blue Sicilian brine:

clown, Thine was the happier Age of Gold. Of thee from the hill-top looking dcm;

The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Alas for us! Our songs are coll;

Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm ;
Our Northern suns too sadly shine : - The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
O Singer of the field and fold,

Deems not that great Napoleon
Thine was the happier Age of Gold!

Stops his horse, and lists with delight,
AUSTIN DCBSON. (Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;

ALEXANDER L'OPE.