THE IDLER.

WHEN days are long and skies are bright,
When woods are green and fields are breezy,
I take my fill of air and light,
And take

yes, take things rather easy.

You men of figures sneer, I know,
Call me an idle, dreamy fellow;
But my chief business here below
Is, like the apple, to grow mellow.

I coax the fish in cove or creek;

My light skiff rocks on rocking billow; Or, weary, in some shade I seek

A mossy hummock for my pillow.

There, stretched upon the checkered grass,
Above the bare, brown margin growing,

I watch the still, soft shadows pass,
Lulled by the hum of warm airs blowing.

On bending spray of tallest tree

CREATION.

FROM "PARADISE LOST.”

THE earth was formed, but in the womb as yet
Of waters, embryon immature involved,
Appeared not; over all the face of earth
Main ocean flowed, not idle; but, with warm
Prolific humor softening all her globe,
Fermented the great mother to conceive,
Satiate with genial moisture; when God said,

Be gathered now, ye waters under heaven,
Into one place, and let dry land appear."
Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds; their tops ascend the sky:
So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters: thither they
Hasted with glad precipitance, uprolled,
As drops on dust conglobing from the dry:
Part rise in crystal wall, or ridge direct,

For haste; such flight the great command im-
pressed

The brown thrush balanced takes his station, On the swift floods; as armies at the call And now in jest, now soberly,

Holds forth, half song and half oration.

The red-capped workman on a limb,

Up, down, in circles briskly hopping,
Nods to the helpmeet calling him,
With knowing air his sage head dropping.

At times, by plashy shore, the still
White-belted watchman springs his rattle,
While faintly from the distant hill

Come tinkling bells and low of cattle.

The waves in long procession tread

Upon the beach in solemn motion, Fringed with white breakers; overhead, Cloud-islands dot the upper ocean.

I know you solid men will sneer;
Call me a thriftless, idle fellow;
But, as I said, my business here

Is, like the apples, to grow mellow.

And since the summer will not stay,
And since the winter follows fleetly,
To fitly use the passing day
Requires my time and thought completely.

But, if of life I get the best,

The use of wealth without its fetters,

Am I more idle than the rest,

Or wiser than the money-getters ?

H. E. WARNER.

Of trumpet (for of armies thou hast heard)
Troop to their standard; so the watery throng,
Wave rolling after wave, where way they found,
If steep, with torrent rapture, if through plain,
Soft ebbing; nor withstood them rock or hill ;
But they, or under ground, or circuit wide
With serpent error wandering, found their way,
And on the washy ooze deep channels wore ;
Easy, ere God had bid the ground be dry,
All but within those banks, where rivers now
Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.
The dry land, Earth; and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters, he called Seas ;

And saw that it was good and said, "Let the
earth

Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed,
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the earth."
He scarce had said, when the bare earth, till then
Desert and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure

clad

Her universal face with pleasant green;
Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flowered
Opening their various colors, and made gay
Her bosom, smelling sweet: and, these scarce
blown,

Forth flourished thick the clustering vine, forth
crept

The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed
Embattled in her field, and the humble shrub,
And bush with frizzled hair implicit : last
Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread
Their branches hung with copious fruit, or gemmed

Their blossoms: with high woods the fields were | Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,

crowned,

With tufts the valleys, and each fountain-side;
With borders long the rivers: that earth now
Seemed like to heaven, a seat where gods might
dwell,

Or wander with delight, and love to haunt
Her sacred shades: though God had yet not rained
Upon the earth, and man to till the ground
None was; but from the earth a dewy mist
Went up, and watered all the ground, and each
Plant of the field; which, ere it was in the earth,
God made, and every herb, before it grew
On the green stem: God saw that it was good:
So even and morn recorded the third day.

Again the Almighty spake, "Let there be lights
High in the expanse of heaven, to divide
The day from night; and let them be for signs,
For seasons, and for days, and circling years;
And let them be for lights, as I ordain
Their office in the firmament of heaven,
To give light on the earth"; and it was so.
And God made two great lights, great for their

use

To man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night, altern; and made the stars,
And set them in the firmament of heaven
To illuminate the earth, and rule the day,
In their vicissitude, and rule the night,
And light from darkness to divide. God saw,
Surveying his great work, that it was good :
For of celestial bodies first the sun

A mighty sphere he framed, unlightsome first,
Though of ethereal mold; then formed the moon
Globose, and every magnitude of stars,

Revolved on heaven's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appeared
Spangling the hemisphere: then first adorned
With their bright luminaries that set and rose,
Glad evening and glad morn crowned the fourth
day.

And God said, "Let the waters generate
Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul:
And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings
Displayed on the open firmament of heaven."
And God created the great whales, and each
Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously
The waters generated by their kinds ;
And every bird of wing after his kind;
And saw that it was good, and blessed them,
saying,

"Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas,

And lakes, and running streams, the waters fill;
And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth."
Forthwith the sounds and seas, each creek and

bay

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals
Of fish that with their fins, and shining scales,
Glide under the green wave, in sculls that oft
Bank the mid sea: part single, or with mate,
Graze the sea-weed their pasture, and through

groves

Of coral stray; or sporting with quick glance,
Shew to the sun their waved coats dropt with gold;
Or, in their pearly shells at ease, attend
Moist nutriment: or under rocks their food
In jointed armor watch on smooth the seal
And bended dolphins play: part huge of bulk,

And sowed with stars the heaven, thick as a field: Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait,
Of light by far the greater part he took,
Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and placed
In the sun's orb, made porous to receive
And drink the liquid light; firm to retain
Her gathered beams, great palace now of light.
Hither, as to their fountain, other stars
Repairing, in their golden urns drew light,
And hence the morning planet gilds her horns;
By tincture or reflection they augment

Tempest the ocean: there leviathan,
Hugest of living creatures, on the deep
Stretched like a promontory, sleeps or swims,
And seems a moving land; and at his gills
Draws in, and at his trunk spouts out, a sea.
Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens, and shores,
Their brood as numerous hatch, from the egg that

soon

Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed

Their small peculiar, though from human sight Their callow young; but feathered soon and fledge

So far remote, with diminution seen.

First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,

Regent of day, and all the horizon round

Invested with bright rays, jocund to run

They summed their pens; and, soaring the air

sublime,

With clang despised the ground, under a cloud

In prospect; there the eagle and the stork

His longitude through heaven's high road; the On cliffs and cedar-tops their eyries build ;

gray

Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon,
But opposite in leveled west was set,
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him; for other light she needed none
In that aspéct, and still that distance keeps

Part loosely wing the region, part more wise
In common, ranged in figure, wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth
Their aëry caravan, high over seas
Flying, and over lands, with mutual wing
Easing their flight; so steers the prudent crane
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air

Floats as they pass, fanned with unnumbered Minims of nature; some of serpent-kind,
plumes;
Wondrous in length and corpulence, involved
From branch to branch the smaller birds with Their snaky folds, and added wings. First crept
The parsimonious emmet, provident
Of future; in small room large heart enclosed;
Pattern of just equality perhaps
Hereafter, joined in her popular tribes
Of commonalty: swarming next appeared
The female bee, that feeds her husband drone
Deliciously, and builds her waxen cells
With honey stored: the rest are numberless,
And thou their natures knowest, and gavest them

songs
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays:
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast; the swan with archèd neck,
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and, rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aërial sky: others on ground
Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion Needless to thee repeated; nor unknown
sounds

names,

The serpent, subtlest beast of all the field,

The silent hours, and the other whose gay train Of huge extent sometimes, with brazen eyes Adorns him, colored with the florid hue

Of rainbows and starry eyes. The waters thus
With fish replenished, and the air with fowl,
Evening and morn solemnized the fifth day.

The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With evening harps and matin; when God said,
"Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
Cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the
earth,

Each in their kind." The earth obeyed, and
straight

Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,

And hairy mane terrific, though to thee
Not noxious, but obedient at thy call.

EACH AND ALL.

MILTON.

LITTLE thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked
clown,

Of thee from the hill-top looking down ;
The heifer that lows in the upland farm,
Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm;
The sexton, tolling his bell at noon,
Deems not that great Napoleon

Limbed and full grown out of the ground up Stops his horse, and lists with delight,

rose,

As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked:
The cattle in the fields and meadows green;
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks the swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head: scarce from his
mold

Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved
His vastness: fleeced the flocks and bleating rose,
As plants: ambiguous between sea and land
The river-horse, and scaly crocodile.

At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or worm: those waved their limber fans
For wings, and smallest lineaments exact
In all the liveries decked of summer's pride,
With spots of gold and purple, azure and green;
These as a line their long dimension drew,
Streaking the ground with sinuous trace; not

all

Whilst his files sweep round yon Alpine height;
Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.
All are needed by each one;
Nothing is fair or good alone.

I thought the sparrow's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;

I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky;
He sang to my ear, - they sang to my eye.
The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.

I wiped away the weeds and foam,

I fetched my sea-born treasures home;

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore,
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar.
The lover watched his graceful maid,
As mid the virgin train she strayed,
Nor knew her beauty's best attire
Was woven still by the snow-white choir.
At last she came to his hermitage,
Like the bird from the woodlands to the cage ;-
The gay enchantment was undone,