After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises are in one,
To live in paradise alone.

How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs this dial new, Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run, And, as it works, the industrious bee Computes its time as well as we! How could such sweet and wholesome hours

Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers?

MARVELL.

LACHIN Y GAIR.

AWAY, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses!

In you let the minions of luxury

rove;

Restore me the rocks where the snowflake reposes,

For still they are sacred to freedom and love:

Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,

Round their white summits though elements war,

Though cataracts foam, 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains,

I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Gair.

Ah! there my young footsteps in infancy wandered;

My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;

On chieftains long perished, my memory pondered,

As daily I strode through the pinecovered glade;

I sought not my home till the day's dying glory

Gave place to the rays of the bright

polar star;

For Fancy was cheered by traditional story

Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch na Gair.

"Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices

Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?"

Surely the soul of the hero rejoices, And rides on the wind o'er his

own Highland vale:

Round Loch na Gair, while the stormy mist gathers,

Winter presides in his cold icy

car;

Clouds there encircle the forms of my fathers:

They dwell in the tempests of dark
Loch na Gair.

"Ill-starred, though brave, did no visions foreboding

Tell you that Fate had forsaken your cause?"

Ah! were you destined to die at Culloden,

Victory crowned not your fall with applause;

Still were you happy; in death's early slumber

You rest with your clan, in the caves of Braemar,

alone,

Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;

And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands

Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth

Uplifted, he, as through an instrument,

Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls,

That they might answer him. And they would shout

Across the watery vale, and shout again,

Responsive to his call, with quivering peals,

And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud

Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild

Of mirth and jocund din! And when it chanced

ways bear;

I laugh aloud in sudden gusts of rain

To see the ocean lash himself in air;

I throw smooth shells and weeds along the beach,

And pour the curling waves far o'er the glossy reach;

Swing birds' nests in the elms, and shake cool moss Along the aged beams, and hide their loss.

The very broad rough stones I gladden too;

Some willing seeds I drop along their sides,

Nourish the generous plant with freshening dew,

Till there where all was waste, true joy abides.

The peaks of aged mountains, with

I bind the caverns of the sea with hair,

Glossy, and long, and rich as kings'

estate;

I polish the green ice, and gleam the wall

With the white frost, and leaf the brown trees tall.

CHANNING.

THE PASS OF KIRKSTONE.

WITHIN the mind strong fancies work,

A deep delight the bosom thrills,
Oft as I pass along the fork

Of these fraternal hills,

Where, save the rugged road, we find

No appanage of human kind,

Nor hint of man; if stone or rock
Seem not his handiwork to mock
By something cognizably shaped;
Mockery, or model roughly hewn,
And left as if by earthquake strewn,
Or from the flood escaped:
Altars for Druid service fit;
(But where no fire was ever lit,
Unless the glow-worm to the skies
Thence offer nightly sacrifice,)
Wrinkled Egyptian monument;
Green moss-grown tower; or hoary
tent;

Tents of a camp that never shall be raised

On which four thousand years have gazed!

A genius dwells, that can subdue
At once all memory of You,
Most potent when mists veil the
sky, -

Mists that distort and magnify; While the coarse rushes to the sweeping breeze

Sigh forth their ancient melodies!

III.

List to those shriller notes! that march

Perchance was on the blast,
When, through this height's inverted
arch,

Rome's earliest legion passed!
They saw, adventurously impelled,
And older eyes than theirs beheld,
This block, and yon, whose church-
like frame

Gives to this savage pass its name.
Aspiring Road! that lov'st to hide
Thy daring in a vapory bourn,
Not seldom may the hour return
When thou shalt be my guide.
WORDSWORTH.

SOLITUDE.

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless

woods;

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is society where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its

roar:

I love not man the less, but nature

more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain:

Man marks the earth with ruin: his control

Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,

A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows, and the woods,

And mountains, and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half

create,

And what perceive; well pleased to recognize

In Nature and the language of the

sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts. WORDSWORTH.

AH, sunflower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden
clime,

Where the traveller's journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,

And the pale virgin shrouded in

snow,

Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my sunflower wishes to go. WILLIAM BLAKE.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear. Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the withered leaves lie dead: They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs the jay; And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprang and stood,

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves:

the gentle race of flowers Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours. The rain is falling where they lie;

but the cold November rain Calls not, from out the gloomy

earth, the lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago; And the brier-rose and the orchis

died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sunflower by the brook, in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven, as falls the plague on

men,

And the brightness of their smile was gone from upland, glade, and glen.

And now when comes the calm mild day, as still such days will

come,

To call the squirrel and the bee from out their winter home; When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the trees are still.

And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more. And then I think of one who in her

youthful beauty died, The fair, meek blossom that grew up, and faded by my side: In the cold moist earth we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

And