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

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

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, And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief;

Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched

To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea,

And drew their sounding bows at Azincour;

Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound

This solitary tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent

To be destroyed. But worthier still of note

Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,

Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;

Huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine Up-coiling, and inveterately convolved;

Nor uninformed with fantasy, and looks

That threaten the profane; a pillared shade,

Upon whose grassless floor of redbrown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged

Perennially; beneath whose sable. roof

Of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked

With unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes

May meet at noontide; Fear, and trembling Hope,

Silence, and Foresight; Death the Skeleton,

And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple scattered o'er

With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,

United worship; or in mute re

pose

To lie, and listen to the mountain flood

Murmuring from Glaramara's in

most caves.

WORDSWORTH.

THE OSMUNDA REGALIS.

OFTEN, trifling with a privilege Alike indulged to all, we paused, one now,

And now the other, to point out, perchance

To pluck, some flower or water-weed too fair

Either to be divided from the place On which it grew, or to be left alone To its own beauty. Many such there are,

Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern,

So stately, of the queen Osmunda named;

Plant lovelier, in its own retired abode On Grasmere's beach, than Naiad by the side

Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere,

Sole-sitting by the shores of old ro

Beneath the lowly alder-tree,

And we will sleep a pleasant sleep, And not a care shall dare intrude

To break the marble solitude,
So peaceful and so deep.

And hark! the wind-god, as he flies,
Moans hollow in the forest trees,
And, sailing on the gusty breeze,
Mysterious music dies.

Sweet flower! that requiem wild
is mine;

It warns me to the lonely shrine,
The cold turf altar of the dead;
My grave shall be in yon lone
spot,

Where as I lie, by all forgot, A dying fragrance thou wilt o'er my ashes shed.

H. K. WHITE.

THE PRIMROSE.

Ask me why I send you here This sweet Infanta of the yeere? Ask me why I send to you This Primrose, thus bepearl'd with dew?

I will whisper to your eares, The sweets of love are mixt with

tears.