TO A YOUNG LADY ON HER WEDDING-DAY.

WHILE youth's keen light is in thine eye,

While each new hour goes dancing by,

While girlish visions are not gone,

And sorrow is almost unknown,

Go, dear one, go, and take with thee
Thy fresh-born thoughts and natural glee,
And keep them still, like flowers to bloom,
Engarlanding thy new-found home.
The time may come when thou shalt have
More than enough to make thee grave ;
When worldly thoughts and common cares
Will touch with grey thy brightest hairs;
And all too soon the matron's mien,
O'ercasting what the maid hath been,
Will show thee good and wise of heart,-
But not, sweet girl, what now thou art.

S. R.

The Nightingale.

So many nightingales; and far and near,
In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other's songs,
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical and swift jug-jug.

And one, low piping, sounds more sweet than all—
Stirring the air with such an harmony

That, should you close your eyes, you might almost
Forget it was not day! On moonlit bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

(Even like a lady vowed and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove)

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,
That gentle maid! and oft a moment's space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and these wakeful birds
Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
As if some sudden gale had swept at once
An hundred airy harps!

THE GRASSHOPPER.

THOU that swing'st upon the waving hair

Of some well-filled oaten beard,

Drunk ev'ry night with a delicious tear

Dropp'd thee from heav'n, where now thou'rt rear'd;

The joys of earth and air are thine entire,

That with thy feet and wings dost hop and fly;

And when thy poppy works, thou dost retire

To thy carved acorn-bed to lie.

Up with the day, the sun thou welcom'st then,
Sport'st in the gilt-plats of his beams,
And all these merry days mak'st merry men,
Thyself, and melancholy streams.

But ah, the sickle! golden ears are cropp'd ;
Ceres and Bacchus bid good night!

Sharp frosty fingers all your flow'rs have topp'd ;
And what scythes spared, winds shave off quite.
Poor verdant fool! and now, green ice, thy joys
Large and as lasting as thy perch of grass,
Bid us lay in 'gainst winter, rain, and poise

Their floods with an o'erflowing glass.
Thou best of men and friends! we will create
A genuine summer in each other's breast;
And spite of this cold time and frozen fate
Thaw us a warm seat to our rest.

Our sacred hearths shall burn eternally

As vestal flames; the north-wind, he

Shall strike his frost-stretch'd wings, dissolve and fly This Ætna in epitome;

Dropping December shall come weeping in,

Bewail th' usurping of his reign;

But when in show'rs of old Greek we begin,
Shall cry, he hath his crown again!

Night, as clear Hesper shall our tapers whip,
From the light casements where we play,
And the dark hag from her black mantle strip,
And stick there everlasting day.

Thus richer than untempted kings are we,

That asking nothing, nothing need: Though lord of all what seas embrace, yet he That wants himself is poor indeed.

SOUTHEY.